My Study Chat Group is Full of Real Big Shots

Chapter 120: Chapter 117: That Black Dark Cloud Named ”Li Dong

When Academician Gao Wen’s words reached the ears of Liu Ruochuan, the Dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences, they were nothing short of a direct assault.

Who was Liu Ruochuan?

He was the Dean of Yan University’s School of Mathematical Sciences. It had long been rumored in academic circles that he would likely be Huaxia’s first academician born in the 1980s.

It was true that Gao Wen was an academician of the engineering academy, and his seniority was undeniable. But at Yan University, with its notoriously rigid academic pecking order, mathematics was ”the queen of the sciences.” Since when did it become the turn of an applied discipline like computer science to climb on their heads and take a dump?

Rage instantly welled up in Liu Ruochuan’s heart, and malice took root.

”Academician Gao, you can’t just say something like that!”

Liu Ruochuan had no intention of being diplomatic.

”What do you mean, ’what’s the point of looking for our School of Mathematics?’”

”This paper of Li Dong’s, published in *Mathematics of Computation*, is fundamentally about verifying the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann Zeta function! The Chebyshev interpolation, the iterative splitting identities, the dimensional reduction of the main summation term—which of these steps isn’t built on the underlying logic of pure mathematics?”

Liu Ruochuan argued his case forcefully, his words ringing with conviction.

”What? Just because he translated our mathematical algorithms into C++ code that your computers can understand, this achievement now belongs to your School of Information Science and Technology?”

Faced with Liu Ruochuan’s full-blown tirade, Academician Gao Wen, surprisingly, didn’t lose his temper.

Instead, he looked at the Dean of the School of Mathematics with a faint smile, then gave Liu Ruochuan a meaningful look.

Then Gao Wen turned and patted Li Dong on the shoulder.

”Li Dong, don’t you worry about computing power. The university’s ’Weiming No.1’ supercomputing node will be no problem!”

”You must be tired today. Head back to your dorm and get some rest.”

”I might need to see you again tomorrow. Someone wants to meet you about something...”

Li Dong was completely baffled.

’Someone wants to see me? Who?’

But since Gao Wen didn’t elaborate, Li Dong knew not to ask.

”Alright then, Dean Liu, Academician Gao, Teacher Zhou, I’ll be heading back.”

Li Dong exited the seminar room, closing the door behind him.

With Li Dong gone, only the three professors remained in the seminar room.

Gao Wen pulled over a chair and sat down, looking at Liu Ruochuan with a chuckle.

”Dean Liu, don’t be in such a hurry to glare at me. I understand completely what you mean.”

”The underlying logic of this dimensional reduction algorithm does indeed come from your field of mathematics. I don’t deny that.”

”But...”

Gao Wen said, looking at the closed door.

”You have to understand, a mathematical formula on paper is one thing, but getting it to run perfectly on the underlying physical hardware of a modern computer is another thing entirely!”

”I’ve looked at the C++ source code Li Dong has on GitHub.”

”When processing the FFT multi-point evaluation grid, to avoid false sharing and cache misses, he manually wrote an extremely concise memory pool reuse mechanism! That level of control over low-level pointer traversal, the way he extracts every last bit of CPU cache locality... it’s simply staggering!”

Gao Wen glanced at Liu Ruochuan...

”Dean Liu, you don’t work with low-level architecture, so you might not understand just how terrifying that kind of intuition is! That kid’s talent for computer architecture is in no way inferior to his talent for mathematics!”

”For a talent like this, I think it would be wrong to let him just grind away at pure mathematical theory...”

After hearing this, Liu Ruochuan also fell into deep thought.

Although he was a pure mathematician, he had to admit that for this algorithm to run at a scale of hundreds of billions on a single machine, the credit for hardware optimization had to account for at least half of it.

Seeing that the time was right, Gao Wen even changed his form of address, as if they were about to divide the spoils.

”Old Liu, let’s not fight over this.”

”When it’s time for major selection in his sophomore year, your School of Mathematics can save him a spot in the honors class, and my School of Information Science and Technology will save him a spot in the ’Turing Class’!”

”We’ll share our resources and cultivate him together! As for which direction he chooses to major in, we’ll let that be up to him. How about it?”

Liu Ruochuan mentally calculated the pros and cons.

Li Dong’s paper had already brought great international prestige to the Yan University School of Mathematics, so he wasn’t losing out.

Plus, with the computing power support from the School of Information Science and Technology, the kid might just be able to achieve even greater things in the future.

”Done!” Liu Ruochuan nodded decisively.

The two big shots looked at each other and smiled, having reached this ”joint-cultivation” agreement.

However, next to this harmonious scene...

Professor Zhou Qifeng from the School of Physics was sitting all alone in the corner.

He looked at the beaming Gao Wen, then at the smug Liu Ruochuan, and felt as if a stampede of ten thousand alpacas was rampaging through his heart.

’Seriously?’

’What do they mean, ”talented in computer science”?’

’What do they mean, ”one for the School of Mathematics, one for the School of Information Science”?’

’Are you two blind?!’

’That kid used to chase me down every day asking about strongly correlated electron systems and Quantum Field Theory! He told me himself that his greatest love in life was physics!’

’So what now? When it’s time to choose majors, doesn’t the School of Physics even get a seat at the table? Does physics not even deserve to be mentioned?’

But just as the words reached his lips, Professor Zhou forced them back down.

He couldn’t help it; he didn’t have the leverage.

Li Dong had published in *Mathematics of Computation*, not *Nature*...

’Sigh, forget it. Let them have their way...’

’Besides, our School of Physics isn’t exactly short on talent.’

...

Meanwhile, Li Dong returned to his dorm room, where the three animals were all present.

Hearing the door open, Liu Qiang looked up.

”Yo, Brother Dong’s back? What did Old Zhou want with you?”

Li Dong said casually.

”Oh, nothing major.”

”A paper I submitted got published, so the professors from the school wanted to ask me about it and approve some supercomputer time.”

After speaking, Li Dong grabbed a towel and a washbasin.

”I’m going to go wash up. I’ve been running around all day and I’m all sweaty.”

As the dorm room’s bathroom door closed.

”Brother Dong is a true badass!”

Liu Qiang and Chen Nan exchanged a look.

”His paper already got published?”

Chen Nan glanced down at the literature review in his hands, from which he had barely managed to squeeze out a few hundred words, and suddenly found it completely pointless.

Liu Qiang looked toward Wang Hao.

They hadn’t been in the dorm much lately, so they had no idea what kind of journal Li Dong had submitted to.

”Haozi, do you know which journal Brother Dong submitted to?”

”A domestic one, like the *Journal of Computational Mathematics* or the *Journal of Applied Mathematics*?”

Wang Hao didn’t say anything, still staring at his book, but his eyes were vacant.

Seeing him remain silent, Chen Nan and Liu Qiang just assumed he was engrossed in his book and went back to their own business.

But at that moment, in Wang Hao’s mind.

’A domestic journal like *Computational Mathematics*?’

’Heh.’

Wang Hao let out a bleak, bitter laugh in his heart.

’That was fucking *Mathematics of Computation*!’

’The absolute pinnacle, the top journal in the entire global field of computational mathematics!’

What Wang Hao didn’t know was that the black cloud named ”Li Dong,” which had once loomed over the elite class at Sixth Middle School, had now crossed mountains and rivers to settle grimly over dorm room 404, Building 35, at Yan University.

’Just let it all burn...’

...

In the bathroom, Li Dong splashed his face with water and looked at the Daniel Wu in the mirror.

TSK TSK...

The paper was published, and the supercomputer node was secured.

He returned to his desk and opened the ”Cyan Dragon Study Group.”

At the very top of the group chat interface.

The title [Group Leader (Trainee)]. The word ”Trainee” had faded significantly, but it was still there.

’As I thought, getting published doesn’t raise my clearance level.’

Li Dong wasn’t surprised.

’I wonder if I can raise my clearance level after I push the zero verification to the hundred-trillion mark.’

Before closing the group, he glanced at the chat history.

The atmosphere in the group was still as tense as ever.

Mendeleev and Madam Curie were still at each other’s throats, arguing over ”whether there is a structure within the atom.”

Li Dong paid them no mind and turned his attention back to the textbook on his desk, which was open to the middle...

’Binding energy... mass-energy equivalence, dE = dm * c²...’

Just as he was burying his head in his book, ready to farm some chemistry knowledge.

Outside, the entire international computational mathematics community, as well as the circles of top domestic universities, had long since been rocked by the paper he published in *Mathematics of Computation*...

...unleashing a magnitude-10 earthquake!