413: Chapter 863 The Urgent Problem of the WS-15!

"Mom, Dad, you must take that Foundation Establishment Pill every day! Also, you must exercise more and eat more protein! Your health will improve!"

"We are! I'm taking it! Your mother is still the same as before; she doesn't like to exercise, so she doesn't take it!"

Mother Zhao poked her head out from the kitchen again, and the two of them quickly started bickering.

Watching this scene, Zhao Yang smiled slightly.

Not long after, the doorbell rang.

Zhao Yang opened the door to find a neatly dressed middle-aged man standing there, who smiled and reached out a hand toward Zhao Yang.

"Professor Zhao, right? Hello, I am from the Municipal Government Office. I have come specifically to invite you to a dinner hosted by The High-Ranking Official tonight. I wonder if you have time?"

"Yes, I do."

Zhao Yang shook hands with the man.

The man smiled and told him the time and location.

The dinner was arranged in an unlisted private room at the municipal guesthouse. There was no alcohol on the table, only a few plates of exquisite home-cooked dishes.

The High-Ranking Official first asked about Zhao Yang's work in Peking University, then talked about how Changcheng had introduced some supporting enterprises in the electronic information sector over the past two years, and that a batch of upstream and downstream suppliers had already formed around the lithography plant that had landed earlier.

"The national fund has already taken a stake."

Zhao Yang picked up his teacup and took a sip, then glanced at The High-Ranking Official, smiled, and didn't continue.

The High-Ranking Official immediately understood the meaning of that smile.

"Understood, understood. Let's not talk about that then. I heard that Fenglan International is going to build a new factory area in the new district next year and is also planning to set up a regional headquarters. The progress is very good!"

"Yes. If Wang Ming encounters any difficulties with the specific site selection and approval, I will have to trouble the city to provide more support."

"Rest assured, Professor Zhao. The company's affairs are our affairs. Whether it is the land approval for the new factory area or the policy support for the branch, Fenglan International will have dedicated personnel to handle it, and it will be prioritized."

When the dinner ended, Zhao Yang stood up to take his leave. The High-Ranking Official personally walked him to the stairwell, and the two shook hands again. Several black sedans drove away from the guesthouse gate one after another, and several deputy directors stayed in The High-Ranking Official's office for a while longer.

Someone said with regret that it was a pity they couldn't negotiate for shares. Zhao Yang's vision and stature were truly incomparable to the average entrepreneur; wanting to ride his coattails was not an easy thing.

Another said that if that lithography plant line could take off, Changcheng's industrial foundation for the next ten years would be stable. Even without a stake, just the tax revenue and employment would be enough to sustain the local treasury for a long time. The High-Ranking Official held his teacup without speaking, remaining silent for a while before opening his mouth.

"Looking back in ten years, this man, Zhao Yang, will probably be the most remarkable figure to have come out of Changcheng since its founding. His future status in the scientific community will likely not be inferior to Old Qian!"

Hearing The High-Ranking Official's words, the surrounding leaders looked at each other in dismay.

They couldn't quite believe it.

That was Old Qian.

Really?

He stayed at home for the New Year for a few days, during which Zhao Yang only enjoyed a brief moment of peace. In fact, there were far more people who wanted to visit him than those he actually met. High school classmates, teachers, and alumni association members sent messages through various channels, all of which Zhao Yang had Shin-chan decline.

However, the social obligations during the New Year were not so easy to decline.

On the second day of the Lunar New Year, Huang Jianguo brought a few old teachers whom Zhao Yang didn't recognize to pay a New Year visit. On the third day, several groups of high school classmates came in teams, some of whom were indeed people he had been on good terms with back then.

Although Zhao Yang was impatient with these social obligations, it was hard to completely refuse some relationships. Fortunately, he didn't have many close classmates during high school; Wang Ming was one, and he could barely manage the others.

After the New Year, Zhao Yang returned to the capital. Wang Ming did not leave with him this time; the groundbreaking ceremony for Fenglan International's new factory area in Changcheng was to be held in a few days, and Wang Ming had to stay to attend.

When the plane landed in Peking, Wang Hai was already waiting at the arrival gate. On the way back, Zhao Yang leaned against the seat and closed his eyes for a while, his mind already beginning to sort out the arrangements for the next few months.

The Seoul Congress of Mathematicians was the most urgent matter at hand. A one-hour report could not be fobbed off with previous achievements; he planned to make a piece of phased research on the Hodge Conjecture that he had been pushing forward with Terence Tao the topic of the report.

The day after returning to Peking University, Zhao Yang first went to the laboratory.

The students in the Biology department had all returned to school. Zhou Ting was leading a few master's students in running a new batch of Western blots, and seeing him come in, she took the initiative to report on the data accumulation of the experiments during the holiday.

Zhao Yang checked the experimental records item by item and asked several people about the progress of their respective sub-projects. Zhou Ting said that the third-generation mutant screening for the Directed Evolution line had completed the initial screening and was currently undergoing functional verification.

After coming out of the laboratory, Zhao Yang went to the School of Mathematics office. When he pushed the door open, only Wang Hong was sitting by the window, with several pages of draft paper spread out in front of her.

"Where are the others?"

Zhao Yang glanced at the few empty seats.

Wang Hong looked up.

"Fiers and the others went back. They booked their Spring Festival tickets early and will be back in a few days. He Changyan and the other two domestic students are also staying at home and will return one after another starting tomorrow."

"What have you been calculating these past few days?"

Wang Hong turned over the draft paper in her hand to show Zhao Yang. On it were drawn several sets of tentative derivations regarding the Warings Problem exponents and estimates.

"During the holiday, I had some free time, so I reorganized the improvement directions you mentioned at the group meeting earlier. One of the contours we discussed before needs more refined boundary condition support. I tried new conditions; could you help me see if there are any loopholes?"

As she spoke, Wang Hong's eyes looked toward Zhao Yang with a hint of anticipation.

Zhao Yang took the draft paper and looked at it for a long time, then picked up a pen and drew a small circle in front of a term in a certain line.

"Your reasoning here is very good; it's much more stable than before. You used the real-symmetric assumption for this boundary, which is correct in most cases, but if the characteristic falls near a non-trivial complex unit root, the final contour will still be opened up by a gap. This gap looks very small on its own, but after scaling on higher powers, the contribution to the vertex estimate is very difficult to flatten. When you get home, try running a few sets of asymmetric numerical examples on the complex plane; you should be able to understand where the fluctuation comes from."

Wang Hong took back the draft paper and carefully looked at the marks Zhao Yang had made. She bit on her pen cap and was quiet for a while before slowly speaking.

"I always felt that symmetric processing was more elegant than asymmetric, which is why I used this set of assumptions without verification. Teacher Zhao, when you chose tools in the past, how did you judge whether to choose symmetric or asymmetric?"

"Elegance cannot put food on the table. My experience is to calculate a few more numerical examples before deciding which one to use. Intuition is not guessing; intuition is a conditioned reflex built up from experience."

When Zhao Yang said this, there was a hint of a smile in his eyes.

Zhao Yang spent some time in his office in the afternoon.

Before sunset, he packed up his manuscript and prepared to return to the villa to continue working. Just as he reached the stairwell of the office building, the phone in his hand vibrated. He opened the phone and saw it was a call from General Li.

Zhao Yang was slightly puzzled, but he pressed to answer.

As soon as the call connected, before Zhao Yang could speak, General Li said in a serious and somewhat urgent voice: "There's a problem with the WS-15. It's on the test stand. Can you come over right now?"