121: Chapter 121 Forty-Five Minutes

Forty-Five Minutes.

When the official website of the ICM (International Congress of Mathematicians) updated its schedule, it was precisely 1:15 AM domestically.

The first to spot that line of names was neither the sharp-nosed tech media nor the administrative personnel in charge of publicity at various universities.

Instead, it was Chen Yu, a Department of Mathematics PhD student who happened to be staying up late.

His research direction happened to be discrete geometry and tiling theory.

Over the past month, the sudden emergence of Jiangs Brick had caused researchers across the entire field to experience a heaven-shaking, earth-shattering tremor.

Tonight, Chen Yu had originally gotten stuck while deducing the boundary conditions of a local tiling. Feeling upset and vexed, he habitually opened his browser and refreshed the online report page of ICM 2022, wanting to see if his advisor's poster presentation on high-dimensional grids had its time adjusted.

The dark-toned web UI slowly loaded.

The mouse wheel made a subtle clicking sound, and the page slid downward at a steady speed.

After skipping a series of already-scheduled plenary reports, invited reports, and sectional reports, his gaze suddenly stopped at the special online presentation column.

That was simply a report listing on the ICM official website that conformed to the standard layout format, with no special markings on font size, color, or indentation.

[ Jiang Lin ]

[ The Jiang Tile: Local Forcing, Finite-State Verification, and a Single Aperiodic Monotile ]

[ Special Online Presentation ]

[ 45 min + Q&A ]

Chen Yu's gaze froze on the LCD screen.

A moment later, his first reaction was not excitement or shock, but a doubt born out of academic rigor and instinct.

He suspected that he had developed some absurd hallucination due to staying up late too much, or that the cache had crossed wires with some unknown local satellite conference webpage.

He raised his hand, rubbed the space between his eyebrows hard, and pressed the F5 key.

The page reloaded, the layout remained the same, and those four lines of text still stayed right there.

He moved the mouse again to the language option in the upper right corner, switched to the pure English original schedule, and even clicked open the webpage source code to check the text attributes of that line.

The name hadn't changed, the title hadn't changed, and the duration hadn't changed.

Chen Yu quickly used the screenshot tool, boxed this section, saved it, and then opened WeChat, finding a domestic mathematics core group named Frontier Exchange of Discrete Geometry and Tiling Theory.

There were dozens of young teachers, researchers, and core PhD students from major universities in the group.

He sent the screenshot.

The time was 1:17 AM.

For the first dozen seconds, the group chat was as silent as stagnant water, with no one replying.

At this time slot, even if there were night owls pulling all-nighters, their brains were most likely in a crashed state after high-load operation.

Until 1:28 AM, someone finally typed out the first character.

[ ? ]

Immediately afterwards, as if triggering some kind of chain reaction, the silent group chat instantly boiled over, and the message notification sounds began to jump wildly.

[ ICM, I'm not seeing things, right? Is this the official website of this year's ICM? ]

[ It is not a satellite conference? Not a peripheral forum? ]

[ Not a poster? ]

[ Holy crap, did you guys look closely at the duration? 45 minutes? ]

[ I just logged onto the VPN myself to take a look at the official website, and it's real. Special Online Presentation, this is neither a student forum nor a poster. Even if it is a temporarily added online presentation, its duration and presentation format are already close to the processing specifications of an official invited report. ]

[ The title is directly The Jiang Tile, without even a function word. It is too hardcore. ]

[ Wait, didn't he just finish the Gaokao not long ago? ]

[ Your sentence has no meaning here anymore. The important thing is that the ICM organizing committee, as well as the entire international mathematical community behind it, has officially recognized this result. They have cleared out forty-five minutes of time to hear him personally dissect the finite-state verification chain. ]

Chen Yu looked at the rapidly scrolling messages on the screen with complicated feelings.

Only those who have truly struggled in this system understand what kind of overwhelming weight these characters composed of dozens of pixels possess.

The screenshot began to spread rapidly outward from this core small circle like a virus.

Flowing from algebraic groups to analysis groups, then from university teacher groups to PhD student groups, and further spreading to major competition coach groups and academic science popularization circles.

At 1:40 AM, the Department of Mathematics building of Jiangcheng University.

The innermost office on the fourth floor was still lit.

Professor Gu Nanzhou was leaning against the ergonomic chair reading literature.

The mobile phone on the desk vibrated once, emitting a dull buzzing sound.

The screen lit up.

It was an image.

The WeChat message was sent by an old classmate from Peking University, who was currently doing geometric analysis.

The other party didn't send any nonsense greetings, but only attached a minimal sentence.

[ Old Gu, take a look at this. ]

Professor Gu Nanzhou picked up his phone and opened the original image.

The dark blue ICM official website background.

[ Jiang Lin ]

[ The Jiang Tile ]

[ 45 min + Q&A ]

Professor Gu Nanzhou's gaze lingered on that line of 45 min for a long time, so long that the screen automatically dimmed due to a long period of no operation.

He of course knew what the ICM represented, and even clearer about what awe-inspiring level forty-five minutes occupied in this academic pyramid.

To the lay public, this might sound like just an ordinary online video conference, a chance to show their faces.

But in the harsh academic circle ecology, this was by no means an edge embellishment for people to browse hastily like the poster exhibition area, nor was it a padding speech with an encouraging nature on the student forum.

Being able to have forty-five minutes on the ICM meant that your mathematical achievements already possessed the energy to change the course of a certain subfield.

It meant that the entire mathematical community, those professors whose names were printed on textbooks, potential laureates of the fields medal, and editorial board members of major top journals, were truly willing to stop their arrogant footsteps, pull out chairs and sit down, listen to you attentively, ask you questions, and record this moment as a coordinate point in modern mathematical history.

Even if this was merely a temporarily added special online presentation, it still hung upright and proper in the official main sequence of the ICM.

Professor Gu Nanzhou did not reply to that old classmate, but directly turned to face the secondary computer screen, skillfully entered the URL, and logged into the ICM official page.

He wanted to verify it personally.

The page was pulled down.

It was not a prank of a screenshot PS, nor a misinformation, nor a seminar organized by a university trying to catch clout.

It was indeed the ICM 2022 official website.

He repeatedly scrolled the mouse, confirming the classification block where the report was located, the length of time, and the yet-to-be-announced session chair information.

Finally, Professor Gu Nanzhou put his phone back on the desk, leaned his body backward into the back of the chair, and exhaled a long, slow breath of foul air.

The office was exceptionally quiet. Outside the window, the street lamps on the campus path of Jiangcheng University exuded a dim yellow light, which shone through the glass, reflecting his face with the fatigue of staying up late.

After a long time, his low murmurs sounded in the air: "I haven't even given a forty-five-minute talk at the ICM."

There was no bitterness, no resentment, nor any jealousy in the worldly sense in this sentence.

It was just the most instinctive judgment produced by someone who had spent half his life climbing in a huge and rigorous academic system when facing absolute ladder height.

Professor Gu Nanzhou was not a bystander netizen sitting in front of the screen typing on the keyboard, nor was he a student blindly worshiping geniuses.

He was an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at Jiangcheng University, a regular army who walked out step by step from the thorny road of heavy coursework, painful doctoral dissertations, peer reviews rejected and revised countless times, project applications, and title evaluations.

Precisely because of this, he was clear that a person's name appearing on the Weibo hot search and a person's name appearing in the official report sequence of the ICM were two completely different dimensions.

The tide of hot searches would recede in a few days, and the memory of the internet was pathetically short.

But the ICM report records would be permanently retained.

Decades later, when future historians of mathematics write about the history of the development of aperiodic tiling theory, when mentioning how Jiangs Brick, the strange geometric body that completed the puzzle of human cognition, officially stepped into the mainstream mathematical vision, this forty-five-minute report would be that indelible historical epoch node.

Professor Gu Nanzhou sat quietly for a while, then picked up his phone and opened Professor Lu Zhixing's dialog box.

[ Teacher Lu, the ICM scheduling list has been posted. ]

Even though it was late at night, Professor Lu Zhixing replied unusually quickly.

[ Seen. ]

Professor Gu Nanzhou stared at the screen and tapped the keyboard to add.

[ It is a forty-five-minute special report. ]

This time, Professor Lu Zhixing's side showed typing for a few seconds before sending a short sentence.

[ Their reaction is not slow. ]

Professor Gu Nanzhou looked at this sentence, his gaze narrowing slightly.

He was very clear that what Professor Lu Zhixing said about not being slow did not refer to the work efficiency of the ICM organizing committee.

Professor Lu Zhixing meant that the overall positioning of Jiang Lin by the international mathematics circle had turned from a high school student anecdote in China who solved a world-class problem into facing a major mathematical achievement that must be treated seriously and handled formally, at a shocking speed.

This was the most core part of the whole matter.

In this era, a person being lifted onto a pedestal by the media's spotlight does not necessarily possess substantial weight.

Pushed to the peak by the enthusiasm of netizens, it may not withstand the test of time.

However, when a person's work can force a venue like the ICM, which gathers the top human brains, to temporarily clear a heavyweight position for him under the condition that the schedule has already been determined, it only explains one thing.

The core layer of the mathematical community has reached a consensus that the logic rigor and theoretical impact of this thing named Jiangs Brick are already so huge that they cannot be digested in the marginal zone.

It must be served on the main table and publicly analyzed clearly under the brightest shadowless lights.

Professor Gu Nanzhou pondered for a moment, switched to Jiang Lin's WeChat interface, and sent a message.

[ Do you know that your name has been posted on the scheduling of the ICM official website? ]

The message was sent out like a stone sinking into the sea. Ten minutes passed without a shred of echo.

Professor Gu Nanzhou was not surprised at all.

Based on his observations of Jiang Lin's behavioral logic over this period, at this time point, Jiang Lin was either sleeping on time or doing some hardcore event completely beyond ordinary people's expectations.

Facts proved that his judgment was exceptionally precise.

The next morning, the storm officially swept from the ivory tower of the academic circle to the plains of the entire Chinese internet.

The first to achieve cross-domain dissemination was a hardcore science popularization short video made overnight on Douyin by a graduate student from the Department of Mathematics at a certain C9 university.

The title of the video was direct and extremely impactful.

"Stop comparing it to ordinary lectures. What kind of academic niche is the 45 minutes of ICM really in?"

In the video, the graduate student did not appear in person. The background was merely an enlarged screenshot of the ICM official website's schedule, along with a few lines of bold, high-contrast text.

His voice came through the microphone, carrying an obvious hoarseness from staying up late, but his tone could not suppress the shudder of witnessing history.

"I see many people commenting under the news, thinking that Jiang Lin was just invited to hold an online video conference, or thinking that this is just a genius youth sharing session organized by some university for a gimmick. Everyone, you may not realize at all what kind of situation Jiang Lin is facing this time."

"This is neither an anniversary lecture of any domestic university nor that kind of packaged youth science and technology innovation forum."

"This is the ICM—the International Congress of Mathematicians."

"The most core, top-tier, and highest-threshold conference in the mathematics community of all humanity. Without exception."

<div>"Moreover, everyone, please pay attention to this line on the official website. Special Online Presentation, 45 minutes, plus the Q&A session."</div>

The screen cut to a hand-drawn structural diagram of the academic hierarchy pyramid by him.

"In the conference system of the mathematics world, at the very bottom are various student forums, poster exhibition areas, and ordinary regional discussion seminars. Moving up one layer are the Contributed Talks of various parallel sessions. Moving further up are specialized reports. And at the very peak of the pyramid are the plenary lectures and invited reports of the ICM."

The voice in the video gradually rose: "You can understand it this way: those big shots in the mathematical community who usually don't even reply to emails smashed open a door right next to their most sacred core venue and specifically established a seat for Jiangs Brick."

"What makes people feel an even stronger sense of unreality is that Jiang Lin hasn't even officially stepped into the gates of university yet, and his status on record is still that of a prospective college freshman."

"In other words, the underlying logic of this matter is not that the academic circle is condescendingly promoting a talented junior. Rather, his mathematical achievements themselves possess a terrifying quality, heavy enough to force the ICM to handle it according to the highest specifications."

This logically rigorous and well-popularized video was crazily forwarded within a mere two hours, surging straight to the trending list.

In the comment section, various netizens and lurking academic partisans began interacting frantically.

"Class representative summary: So this isn't about freeloading on a conference at all?"

"Reply to upstairs: Freeloading on a conference? Even if you subsidized millions of dollars out of your own pocket, the ICM official website would never put your name into this sequence. This is hard currency among hard currencies."

"Asking timidly, what on earth is the concept of 45 minutes? It doesn't sound that long either?"

"Let me popularize some science: many doctoral supervisors teaching at top domestic universities who have won titles like Changjiang Scholars or National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars will never have the opportunity in their entire lives to speak for these 45 minutes at the ICM. This requires you to make a paradigm-level breakthrough in a certain field."

"My advisor flew into a rage in the research group chat this morning, saying that the absurdity of this matter is more than ten thousand times higher than him winning the provincial top scorer title. There are dozens of top scorers every year, but something like Jiangs Brick—an aperiodic monotile—humans have been searching for it for half a century."

As the heat continued to ferment, the algorithm mechanism began to add fuel to the fire, and another video well-versed in the code of internet traffic quickly climbed into the top five of the entire network's hot searches.

The title was even more glaring and carried a stronger attribute of inciting flame wars.

"If Wei Shen represents the mathematical genius in the eyes of the public, what level of track is Jiang Lin currently on?"

The two words Wei Shen naturally carried a massive potential energy of traffic in the current Chinese internet ecosystem.

The mathematical genius of Peking University, with his plain image holding mineral water and steamed buns.

The public had a high degree of familiarity with him, as well as a symbolized cognition.

This video blogger clearly understood the profound meaning of communication studies.

He first played a clip of the public's impression of Wei Dongyi in competitions and problem-solving. Then the screen shifted, cutting to Jiang Lin's calm and rippleless face when he was interviewed by the media, and finally freezing on the dark blue list on the ICM official website.

Accompanied by compact background music, the blogger began his commentary at an extremely fast speaking speed:

"Whenever many people mention mathematical geniuses, their first reaction is Wei Shen. Indeed, Wei Shen is unquestionably at the top level in problem-solving ability and mathematical intuition."

"However, please note everyone, the reason why Jiang Lin triggered an academic earthquake this time is not because he got a full score on an exam, not because he won a gold medal in a competition, and certainly not because he solved an extremely difficult exercise."

"The situation Jiang Lin is currently in is that, by his own strength, he has constructed a brand-new mathematical object from scratch. This object was named after his surname by the international mathematics circle, went through rigorous questioning and peer verification, and was finally officially invited to the ICM for a specialized report."

"What Wei Shen represents is the image of a godly problem-solver that is easiest for the public to understand."

"And what Jiang Lin showcased this time is a power from another dimension."

"A young man who had just graduated from high school forcefully smashed a brick carved with his own name into a hidden corner of humanity's long and tedious history of mathematics. Moreover, this brick seamlessly wedged itself into the building of theory."

These remarks were like dropping cold water into a pan of hot oil, and the comment section instantly exploded.

"Blogger, stop inciting fan wars, okay? Is it interesting to use Wei Shen as a stepping stone?"

"Rational discussion: the two people are not on the same track at all. Wei Shen is a mathematical genius well-known to the public in the Real World, and he is also doing his own cutting-edge research. Jiang Lin directly held back a big move, producing a specific achievement with historical node significance."

"The focus is not on who is stronger than whom at all; you guys missed the point. The point is that the fact itself that the ICM gave a prospective college student a 45-minute report violates the general growth laws of the academic circle. This is what's most absurd."

"Indeed, Jiangs Brick is not the kind of competition problem that can be solved by a flash of inspiration. It is a systematic project that requires constructing a massive local forcing mechanism and verification chain. This requires extreme, no, extremely formidable logical control."

"Don't step on one while praising the other. Jiang Lin himself wouldn't like this kind of comparison full of toxic fandom stench; both of them are national treasures."

"But I have to admit that the blogger using Wei Shen as a reference can indeed make math illiterates like us instantly understand the seriousness of this matter."

...

The fierce debate not only failed to suppress the heat, but instead made the topic's data show an exponential surge.

Major traditional news portals and tech self-media also began to enter the fray one after another, with voluminous reports overwhelming everywhere.

"Hardly a full month since the conclusion of the Gaokao, his name is already listed alongside fields medal winners on the ICM official website"

"Exclusive analysis: The academic game behind Jiangs Brick author Jiang Lin being invited to give a 45-minute special report at the ICM"

"From the provincial science top scorer of Jiangcheng to an international top conference reporter: Deep reflections in the education community triggered by the Jiang Lin incident"

...

At nine o'clock in the morning, when Professor Gu Nanzhou pushed open the door of the administrative office area of the Department of Mathematics at Jiangcheng University, he found quite a few people whispering and discussing.

A young lecturer was holding his phone, playing that short video analyzing the academic hierarchy to the colleague next to him.

Several teachers engaged in translation and foreign affairs coordination were gathered by the water cooler, arguing endlessly about how Special Online Presentation should be accurately translated into Chinese.

"I think translating it as special online report is the safest."

"Not accurate enough. Since it benchmarks Invited, it should be translated as online invited report to show its weight."

"Whatever it's called, anyway, it must never be translated into that dime-a-dozen ordinary online sharing session; that's too degrading."

Professor Gu Nanzhou did not participate in these slightly impetuous discussions.

He walked straight into his office, put down his briefcase, woke up the computer screen, and the first thing he did was still to open that page.

The dark blue background had not changed in the slightest.

Jiang Lin's name still hung quietly there, looking down at the Real World that was going crazy for him.

After thinking for a moment, he took out his phone and dialed Professor Lu Zhixing's number.

The phone rang five or six times before it was answered.

Professor Gu Nanzhou didn't have any polite pleasantries: "Teacher Lu, is Jiang Lin over at your laboratory today?"

Professor Lu Zhixing's end was quiet for a few seconds, as if he had walked to a slightly secluded corner, and then his voice came through clearly: "He didn't come to the key laboratory."

Professor Gu Nanzhou was just about to reply and ask where he had gone.

Professor Lu Zhixing immediately added a sentence, his voice carrying an indescribable calmness and even a trace of an imperceptible sigh: "He is at the school's modern engineering training center."

Professor Gu Nanzhou's hand holding the phone stiffened slightly.

"The engineering training center?" He thought he had heard wrong.

"Mn," Professor Lu Zhixing replied. "He sent me a sketch yesterday, saying he wanted to borrow a few pieces of equipment from the school to process some load-bearing and transmission parts for all-terrain mobile platforms."

Professor Gu Nanzhou maintained the posture of answering the phone for a full five seconds, his brain seeming to experience a logical fault.

Late last night, his name had just shocked the entire academic circle and was hung on the official website of the ICM.

This morning, every server on the Chinese internet was frantically computing and pushing traffic for the weight of these 45 minutes.

And the person at the absolute center of this storm was actually staying in the engineering training center at this moment, manually processing a pile of metal and plastic parts?

Professor Gu Nanzhou slowly put down his phone and took a deep breath.

"I don't have classes this morning; I'll go over and take a look."