394: Chapter 844 You're Too Focused

Zhao Yang looked at the account balance on the screen and pondered for a moment. Leaving so much money sitting idle in the account was essentially a waste and completely meaningless.

Excluding inflation, given Shin-chan's earning speed, no matter how he spent it, the money in this account would only ever increase.

If money isn't used, it will forever just be a string of numbers lying there.

He had Shin-chan compile a list of cutting-edge foreign laboratory instruments, filtering out all the top-tier equipment for which there were currently no export restrictions imposed on the Dragon Kingdom.

Cryo-electron microscopes, high-precision mass spectrometers, superconducting nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, synchrotron radiation light source accessories, high-energy laser systems—the list grew longer and longer.

He planned to place orders directly in the name of Spark Technology, purchasing several sets of top-tier equipment. Part of it would be placed in the newly built top-tier laboratory at the Spark Technology headquarters, and the rest would be donated or leased at a low cost to research groups of collaborating professors undertaking key projects.

Money was meant to be spent, after all, and piling it up in an account wouldn't make material formulas evolve on their own. The technological progress of the Dragon Kingdom couldn't be driven by him alone; he had to cultivate talent, invest in people truly engaged in scientific research, and then drive industrial progress and development.

Besides BYD, many other car companies had sent people to find Spark Technology. Zhao Yang didn't get involved in these matters; Chen Haifeng was responsible for handling all of them.

Zhao Yang was mainly interested in Wang Chuanfu; he felt that his style of doing things resonated with his own, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to meet with BYD in person.

A few days later, Professor Wu Kai from CATL also arrived. He sat in the reception room, looking at Zhao Yang with a complex expression, holding his teacup for a long time without taking a sip.

"Dr. Zhao, to be honest, I don't even know how to bring this up. Ever since your Blade Battery came out, the pressure on our projects here has more than doubled. The higher-ups asked me to talk to you, saying that since you've opened a battery factory, you now have a direct competitive relationship with CATL, so that special researcher title..."

"It's fine, just cancel the contract."

Zhao Yang's expression remained calm.

"Professor Wu, I've received quite a lot of salary from CATL over the past two years, and I haven't done much for you."

Professor Wu Kai waved his hand hurriedly.

"You absolutely cannot say that. The core problems you helped us solve—just that one issue with the cycling life plummeting in high-nickel materials—would be worth more than ten years of salary, even if we paid you again."

He paused and added another sentence.

"Professor Zhao, there's really nothing we can do about this matter this time. If there are other directions where we need to cooperate in the future, you can come to me at any time."

Zhao Yang nodded, and the two sat and chatted for a few more minutes about technical issues regarding solid-state batteries. Only then did Professor Wu Kai rise to take his leave, declining Zhao Yang's offer to host a meal.

After seeing Professor Wu Kai off, Zhao Yang stood in the reception room for a moment. He could fully understand CATL's approach. Once there was a competitive relationship in business, no matter how good the personal friendship was, boundaries had to be drawn where necessary; this was normal.

If CATL had ignored this and still let him be a special researcher, allowing him to obtain some of their experimental data, that would be truly strange!

Coming out of the reception room, Zhao Yang walked through the hallway towards his office. The midday sun shone through the glass windows on one side of the corridor onto the floor tiles, and the entire School of Mathematics building was quiet.

He pushed open the door. Inside the office, only Wang Hong was sitting by the window, with a few pages of draft paper covered in derived formulas spread out in front of her. She hadn't noticed anyone coming in at all; holding a pen in her right hand and resting her chin on her left hand, her brows were furrowed, and she was muttering something under her breath.

Zhao Yang didn't make a sound and quietly walked to stand behind her. What was drawn on the draft paper was a set of derivations regarding exponential sum estimates in Waring's problem. The previous steps had gone quite well, and the Circle Method tools that should have been used were used in the right places, but she was clearly stuck when dealing with a remainder term integral.

She had drawn it repeatedly several times, stopping at the same spot every time she derived it. Beside her, several discarded drafts were crumpled into balls and tossed into the corner of the table.

"You chose the wrong contour for this remainder term integral."

Startled by the voice that suddenly sounded behind her, Wang Hong almost jumped off her chair, and the pen in her hand clattered onto the table. She turned her head abruptly and, seeing it was Zhao Yang, immediately exhaled in relief, speaking to him with a touch of helplessness.

"Teacher Zhao! Why do you walk without making a sound?"

"It's because you are too focused."

Zhao Yang pointed to the integral expression on the draft paper that had been repeatedly circled and drawn over.

"You can't perform the contour integration for this remainder term directly on the unit circle; it will cause resonance with the preceding principal term. Expand the contour outward a bit, try taking a path along a complex circle with modulus q, and use the periodicity of the exponential sum to cancel out the resonant term."

Wang Hong was stunned for a moment, then lowered her head to stare at her draft paper for quite a while. Then she let out an "Ah," grabbed her pen, and quickly redrew a contour path on the paper.

She calculated for a few lines, her expression shifting from confusion to sudden realization. When she looked up, there was a hint of excitement in her eyes.

"It really cancelled out! Teacher Zhao, I've been stuck on this spot for almost the entire noon, unable to derive it no matter what. It turned out the issue was just the contour."

"The choice of contour is often more critical than the calculation itself. In the future, when you encounter remainder term integrals, don't be in such a hurry to start calculating. Spend a few minutes going through the various possibilities for the contour path in your mind to avoid doing useless work later."

Zhao Yang picked up the pen that had fallen to the floor, placed it back on the table, and glanced at her.

"Why didn't you go eat at noon?"

Wang Hong smiled a little embarrassedly.

"I have a habit: if I encounter a problem and haven't solved it, it stays on my mind, and I can't eat even if I go to the cafeteria. It's better to just calculate it all in one go first."

"That won't do. Scientific research is a marathon, not a sprint. You feel like you can handle it now because you're young, but you'll understand in a few years when your body starts developing all sorts of minor ailments."

Zhao Yang said, looking at Wang Hong seriously.

"Pack your things, I'm taking you to eat."

Wang Hong obediently organized her draft papers and followed Zhao Yang out of the office. The two found a seat by the window in the faculty cafeteria, and Zhao Yang got two servings of food, one for himself and one for Wang Hong. When Wang Hong took the tray, she was visibly embarrassed.

"Thank you, Teacher Zhao."

Then she lowered her head and shoveled a few mouthfuls of rice.

While eating, Zhao Yang asked her a few questions about the progress of the Waring's problem. Wang Hong said she had gone through all the literature assigned previously, and the two main threads, the Circle Method and the Sieve Method, were basically sorted out, but she hadn't fully grasped Vinogradov's methodology of trigonometric sums yet.

Zhao Yang said there was no rush; Vinogradov's methodology was inherently more dependent on experience than other tools, so she should sort out the two lines at hand first. He then casually asked about her life, how the dormitory was, and if she was used to the food in the cafeteria. Wang Hong said she was originally an undergraduate graduate of Peking University, so she was very familiar with all of this, and there was no issue with adaptation.