132: Chapter 132: Midsummer Fields

Early in the morning on the 30th, Zhang Xiufen checked the suitcase three times.

The first time was according to a small slip of paper she had made herself.

Changes of clothes, toothbrush and toothpaste, tissues, clean towels...

The second time, she took everything out again and put it back layer by layer according to the frequency of use.

Right at the top was the white shirt she had ironed several times.

Zhang Xiufen smoothed the collar again, as if she feared that once the suitcase was closed, the tiny wrinkles inside would affect how her son looked standing in front of those big figures.

The third time was entirely out of a mother's irrepressible anxiety.

She opened the medicine bag, glanced at the fever reducer and gastrointestinal medicine, and stuffed a small box of Huoxiang Zhengqi Oral Liquid into the inner compartment.

Jiang Lin stood at the living room doorway, watching her stooped back as she rummaged through the suitcase, without uttering a sound to urge her.

The ceiling fan in the living room spun slowly.

In Jiangcheng at the end of July, the air carried the lingering dampness after the rain.

The phoenix tree leaves outside the windowsill were baked to a shine, the prolonged shouts of a vegetable vendor drifted up from downstairs, and the sound of the morning news from some neighbor's television could be faintly heard.

Everything was very ordinary.

So ordinary that the place he was about to head to seemed to belong to two completely different worlds.

Zhang Xiufen finally zipped up the suitcase and pressed down on the surface of the box with her palm.

"Did you bring your ID card?"

"I brought it."

"What about the mobile phone charger?"

"I brought it."

"Is someone going to pick you up over at the conference?"

"The organizing committee sent a message."

"Send a message home as soon as you get to the hotel, don't find it troublesome. Don't just make do with meals either; busy as the conference may be, you need to know how to take care of yourself. Nanjing is hot these days, don't drink iced things the moment you go out, your stomach can't take it."

"Mhm."

Jiang Lin nodded.

Zhang Xiufen glanced at him.

In fact, she still had a lot she wanted to say.

But these words circled around the tip of her tongue and were swallowed back down by her.

Jiang Lin was no longer a Gaokao student who needed her to urge him to eat every day.

He was still her son.

Yet he had also become someone she could not quite understand.

Zhang Xiufen lowered her head, pulled up the suitcase handle, and pushed it to Jiang Lin's fingertips.

"Take care on the way."

Jiang Lin took the suitcase.

"I'm leaving."

"Remember to send a message when you arrive."

"Mhm."

Before the door closed, Zhang Xiufen was still standing in the entryway, supporting herself against the doorframe, watching him walk into the stairwell.

The stairwell of the old residential complex had a stale and damp smell.

There had been a lot of rain recently, and the plaster between the second and third floors had blistered in several places, with faint watermarks floating on the grayish-white wall.

Piled at the corner of the stairs were cardboard boxes that a neighbor hadn't gotten around to throwing away yet, printed with the logo of a certain rice cooker brand.

Jiang Lin carried the suitcase downstairs.

He walked to the entrance of the building unit.

The moment he pushed open the iron door, the sunlight outside suddenly became bright.

The moment Jiang Lin stepped out, he saw Jiang Yao walking in from the entrance of the residential complex.

She was carrying a cup of iced fruit tea in her hand, a white canvas bag slung over her shoulder, and her hair simply tied up.

Having shed the heavy pressure of the Gaokao, her entire person exuded the freshness and exuberance belonging to an incoming university student.

The two of them crossed paths and both paused for a moment.

Jiang Yao's gaze fell on the suitcase by his hand, and she spoke first: "Going on a long trip?"

Actually, she knew his itinerary, but seeing him standing downstairs pulling a suitcase felt completely different from reading the news.

"Mhm, going to Nanjing for a trip." Jiang Lin stopped in his tracks.

"Going to attend that ICCM conference?" Jiang Yao tried hard to make her tone sound a bit natural.

But when the words ICCM came out of her mouth, they still sounded somewhat stiff.

After all, that was the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, where there would be many academicians, professors, and overseas prestigious university scholars.

It was a field she had never set foot in.

And Jiang Lin wasn't going just to audit or see the world, but was invited with a special status.

"Right." Jiang Lin nodded, his attitude gentle, yet he had no intention of following up on the topic with much explanation.

The scene briefly quieted down.

In the distance, a child riding a scooter rushed past in front of the stairwell, wheels rolling over the standing water on the ground and splashing up a small patch of water droplets.

The security guard at the entrance of the complex was sitting in the guard booth flipping through a newspaper, an electric fan blowing noisily right at him.

The cicadas in the phoenix trees grew louder and louder in waves, making this brief silence exceptionally distinct.

Looking at the familiar yet unfamiliar face before her, Jiang Yao suddenly felt a sense of loss.

On the day she received her admission notice from Tsinghua University, she had actually been secretly happy for a very long time.

Her mother took a photo and posted it in the relative group chat, and her father rarely opened a bottle of beer.

Her head teacher called her, saying that she hadn't let down all her hard work over the years.

Those praises, blessings, and envies were like fireworks in midsummer, briefly and brightly illuminating her entire eighteen-year-old self.

She had also imagined the scene after school started.

In future Tsinghua University, the two of them might bump into each other at some lecture, or meet by chance at the library entrance, and still be able to discuss a problem, chat about a course, and occasionally crack a joke or two just like before in the residential complex.

At least in her initial imagination, they were still people standing on the same road.

It was just that one ran faster, while the other kept up with great difficulty.

But at this very moment, standing in this midsummer sunlight, she suddenly woke up to reality.

The same admission notice was, to her, the highest reward for twelve years of studying hard through bitter winters and scorching summers, a ticket she fought hard to win out of an ordinary life trajectory.

But to Jiang Lin, it seemed to be just a piece of paper picked up casually.

It didn't even count as a starting point in the true sense.

After all, before he had even stepped foot into the university gates, he had already walked into another grander and more profound world.

In that world, there was the ICM, the ICCM, cutting-edge theories she couldn't understand, Terence Tao, Shing-Tung Yau, and those names that only appeared in news and textbook footnotes.

There were papers she had downloaded quietly, yet couldn't even read the abstracts smoothly.

They had indeed both been admitted to the country's best university this summer.

But it was also this summer that the distance between them was pulled far away into light-years beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Jiang Yao had originally wanted to ask him if he wanted to join the Tsinghua University freshman group chat.

Wanted to ask him if he wanted to set out together from Jiangcheng when school started.

And even wanted to half-jokingly say, "After going to Tsinghua University in the future, please take care of me, classmate Jiang."

But these words got stuck in her throat.

She suddenly realized that they were all too light.

So in the end she just smiled.

The smile was very restrained and also very dignified.

"Well, wishing you a safe journey."

She paused and added another sentence.

"See you when school starts."

"Thanks, see you when school starts."

Jiang Lin looked at her, nodded slightly, dragged his suitcase, and brushed past her.

Not until Jiang Lin's figure disappeared at the entrance of the complex did Jiang Yao slowly withdraw her gaze.

The summer belonging to their batch of Gaokao students was, at this moment, truly over indeed.

...

The train started.

Jiangcheng outside the window retreated rapidly after the speed picked up.

Grayish-white residential buildings, suburban factories, flashing elevated bridge piers, damp reeds along the river, and large swathes of roofs bleached white by the sunlight were all compressed into continuous lines.

Jiang Lin put the suitcase away and sat down in the window seat.

He didn't rest immediately, but instead opened his computer, connected to his phone's hotspot, and began processing the daily report sent over by Liang Zhixia.

The affairs of the Low Entropy Workshop over the past few days were denser than what the outside world saw.

Besides Hengtai over there, several university laboratories also sent applications for closed-door exchanges, one of which explicitly proposed hoping that the Low Entropy Workshop could provide a desensitized report of the foot-ground contact state machine for use in unstructured terrain robot course cases.

...

At 12:47 PM, the train slowly entered Nanjing South Railway Station.

In the process of the speed gradually decreasing, the platform outside the train window slowly coagulated from a blur of grayish-white lines into concrete figures, pillars, billboards, and travelers walking hurriedly while dragging suitcases.

Jiang Lin closed his laptop, put it into his backpack, and stood up.

The train doors opened, and a wave of heat hit them face-on.

Nanjing's summer was stuffier and hotter than Jiangcheng's.

The air felt as if it had just been taken out of a steamer, carrying a heavy, humid heat that crept into collar openings, making people's backs turn sticky before they had even walked a few steps.

Jiang Lin dragged his suitcase out of the carriage.

His phone vibrated in his pocket.

It was a message sent by the conference organizing committee.

"Hello Teacher Jiang Lin, the pick-up volunteer is already waiting at Exit B2 of the North Plaza of Nanjing South Railway Station, holding a blue pick-up sign for The 9th International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians. Please contact the staff after exiting the station."

Looking at the four characters "Teacher Jiang Lin", Jiang Lin was slightly stunned.

Every form of address was like a label handed over from a different direction, trying to fix him in a certain social position.

Giving him a sense of detachment.

However, he had always cared very little about such forms of address.

Walking towards the exit along the stream of people.

The passenger flow density at Nanjing South Railway Station was very high.

The sound of broadcasts, footsteps, suitcase wheels, children crying, and short videos playing out loud on mobile phones mixed together, forming the commotion unique to a large transportation hub.

Most of those around him were ordinary travelers.

A family of three bringing their child for tourism, the father dragging a suitcase with one hand and holding a sleeping little girl with the other.

Business people carrying computer bags and walking hurriedly, talking into their headsets while walking that the contract must be sent out before three o'clock in the afternoon.

There were also a few young people who were obviously here to attend the conference as well.

There was an easily recognizable academic aura about them.

One of the boys wearing black-rimmed glasses was looking down at a PDF.

He seemed to be discussing something with his companion, and when the words finite-state verification left his mouth, his peripheral vision swept across Jiang Lin's face, and his entire body suddenly paused for a moment.

He raised his head.

His gaze fell on Jiang Lin.

Barely half a second later, that sense of confirmation welled up from the depths of his eyes.

The boy instinctively pushed up his glasses, his pace slowing down by half a beat.

Jiang Lin did not stop.

Nor did the boy speak up immediately.

It wasn't until Jiang Lin had walked far away that a heavily lowered voice came from behind.

"Is that...?"

Another voice immediately followed up.

"It seems to be Jiang Lin."

...

Jiang Lin passed through the exit turnstiles and walked toward Exit B2.

There were even more people in the North Square.

The scorching sun was somewhat weakened by the huge canopy of the station square, but heat waves still rose from the concrete ground like an invisible tide.

A long line of people stood in front of the taxi queue area, people constantly lowered their heads to check license plates at the ride-hailing pick-up point, and in the distance, volunteers held up pickup signs for various conferences, summer camps, and tour groups.

A girl wearing a blue vest as a conference volunteer stood outside the exit.

She held a blue-and-white pickup sign in her hand.

Jiang Lin walked toward her.

The girl had originally been lowering her head to look at the pickup list on her phone, but she raised her head upon hearing footsteps.

Her eyes noticeably widened for a fraction of a second.

"Teacher Jiang, Jiang Lin?"

There was a stutter in her voice that she couldn't completely suppress.

Well, when this form of address came out of her mouth, even she herself felt a bit awkward.

But that was how it was written on the conference organizing team's list.

Jiang Lin nodded.

"Hello, I am Jiang Lin."

Hanging in front of the girl's chest was a blue-background volunteer ID badge, with Southeast University's school emblem pressed against the bottom right corner.

Name: Tang Yue.

Department of Mathematics, Southeast University, master's graduate student.

Tang Yue had obviously done her homework in advance, and she clearly hadn't fully prepared herself psychologically.

After all, a person who had appeared countless times on the internet, paper front pages, ICM report screenshots, and news photos suddenly pulling an ordinary black suitcase and standing in front of her felt somewhat surreal.

He was already very young in the photos.

When the real person stood in front of her, that sense of age was even more direct.

It wasn't the packaged youth commonly seen when teenage prodigies were reported, but rather eighteen years old, whose appearance had not yet completely shaken off the aura of a high school student.

His shoulder line was lean and thin, his suitcase was ordinary, and a bottle of mineral water was still stuck in the side pocket of his backpack.

However, Tang Yue quickly snapped back to reality and hurriedly reached out to take his suitcase.

"Teacher Jiang, let me carry it for you. The car is over there. Zijin Villa where we are staying is the main venue of this conference, and the organizing committee has arranged unified accommodations. You can go to the lobby check-in desk to collect your materials anytime after 2:30 PM this afternoon. Today is check-in day, and there are no unified collective activities. If you are tired, you can rest directly."

"No need for the trouble, I can just carry it myself."

Jiang Lin gently pulled the suitcase slightly toward his side.

Tang Yue's hand paused in mid-air, and she withdrew it somewhat awkwardly.

"Alright, alright."

She immediately switched to working mode, leading Jiang Lin toward the parking spot.

Along the way, Tang Yue clearly wanted to say something.

She wanted to ask whether the boundary state compression in the Tile J paper could really be generalized to higher-dimensional constructions.

She wanted to ask whether PFR and Marton, mentioned at the end of his ICM report, already had a complete route.

But in the end, she didn't ask a single sentence.

Because the conference organizing team had repeatedly emphasized during training not to pry into guests' private itineraries, not to inquire about unannounced arrangements, and not to create extra social burdens.

Especially for Jiang Lin.

Inside the organizing committee, the note for this name had an extra line of red text compared to other participants.

[Please strictly follow the regular invited participant protocol for reception, do not make extra publicity, and do not leak any unannounced schedules in advance.]

The car was a black commercial vehicle.

The driver helped open the trunk, and Jiang Lin put the suitcase inside and sat in the back row.

The car door closed.

The city's heat waves were shut outside by the sound of the air conditioning.

The vehicle drove away from Nanjing South Railway Station and entered the elevated road.

The buildings, green belts, indicator signs outside the window, and the faintly undulating city skyline in the distance continuously receded backward.

Tang Yue sat in the front passenger seat, lowering her head to check the reception form.

She tried her best to appear professional, but she still couldn't help glancing through the rearview mirror.

Jiang Lin wasn't looking at his phone, nor was he closing his eyes to rest.

He was simply gazing out the window.

His expression was very quiet.

He didn't look like a young person attending a conference of this scale for the first time; there was no obvious excitement, no tension after being noticed, and certainly none of that deliberately suppressed pride.

He was as quiet as if he were transitioning from one problem to another.

Tang Yue suddenly remembered what her advisor had said.

"People who truly achieve things are not necessarily excited when they arrive at the venue. Because what others see is the result, while he still has a bunch of unresolved problems weighing on his mind."

At that time, she didn't fully understand.

Now she seemed to understand a little bit.

The vehicle descended from the elevated road and drove into a tree-shaded Mausoleum Road.

The branches of the London planes on both sides of the road intertwined, and rows of blue-and-white road flags hung down from among the branches and leaves. The left side was printed with the joint logo of the Shing-Tung Yau Mathematical Sciences Center and Southeast University, and the right side was the Chinese-English bilingual full name of the conference.

The 9th International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians

The International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians.

The flags sank into the sultry air, with only their corners lifted by a draft passing through.

This was not the liveliest scene in the public view.

There were no red carpets, no fans, and no camera flashes.

But for the mathematics community, these road flags represented another kind of order.

They meant that ethnic Chinese mathematicians worldwide were gathering in Nanjing.

They meant that an offhand question in a lecture hall, sub-venue, closed-door discussion, or tea break could become an invisible watershed for a certain direction in the next few years.

The vehicle slowly drove into Zijin Villa

Tang Yue turned her head back.

"Teacher Jiang, we have arrived. Please check in first, and this afternoon I will take you to the venue to check in."

"Alright."

Jiang Lin got out of the car and retrieved his suitcase.

As the core reception hotel for this conference, Zijin Villa already had many names in its lobby that had appeared on paper front pages, conference posters, and academic news.

On the background board of the registration desk, the conference emblem and Southeast University's school emblem were displayed side by side.

Outside the revolving doors, staff members in white shirts were guiding vehicles.

The air conditioning and voices inside the door surged out together, flowing slowly across the marble floor.

On the sofas in the rest area, beside the front desk, and near the sign-in desk, scholars in groups of twos and threes could be seen everywhere.

Some were conversing in Mandarin.

Some spoke Cantonese.

Some spoke English with a distinct North American accent.

Some mixed in French, German, and English mathematical terminology.

Jiang Lin dragged his suitcase and stepped into the revolving door.

Just at the moment he entered the lobby, a middle-aged scholar who was talking with his peers beside the front desk suddenly stopped.

His gaze fell on Jiang Lin's face.

Soon, a second person curiously looked over.

The third person.

The fourth person.

...

Jiang Lin carried his suitcase and walked to the conference registration desk specially set up on one side of the lobby.

The staff member raised her head to glance at him in person, and then looked at the list on the computer screen.

At that instant, the professional smile on her face also experienced a very slight pause.

Then it returned to normal.

"Teacher Jiang Lin, welcome to the conference."

Jiang Lin handed over his ID card.

"Thank you."

After verifying the information, the staff member handed out the room card, meal tickets divided into breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and a thick blue-and-white canvas data bag.

The body of the bag was printed with the conference emblem and the organizer's signature, and inside were the bound conference schedule manual, the participant travel guide, the upper and lower volumes of the participant paper abstracts, two packs of spare medical masks, and at the very bottom was a black retractable signature pen printed with the conference logo.

On top of the data bag was a badge with a dark blue lanyard.

Jiang Lin picked up the badge.

Inside the transparent card holder was a white-background card, with the geometric emblem of this conference printed in the upper left corner, and the name column printed in bold Songti font: Jiang Lin Jiang Lin

Below was a slightly smaller serif font.

Invited Participant

At the very bottom of the card was a faint line of anti-counterfeiting background pattern, which was the exclusive design of this conference.

"Teacher Jiang, the elevators are over here."

Tang Yue reminded him in a low voice beside him.

Jiang Lin nodded and dragged his suitcase toward the elevator.

The elevator door opened, and two scholars happened to be coming out.

One of them saw Jiang Lin, and his pace obviously slowed down for a moment.

But in the end, he just smiled and nodded without speaking.

Jiang Lin nodded in return and walked into the elevator.

The elevator reached the seventeenth floor.

The chime sounded.

The door opened.

The corridor was quiet, the carpet was soft, and outside the window at the end was a city bleached white by the summer sunlight.