Ever since the paper was published, members of the media had continuously tried to enter Changda to interview Huang Tian. Most were stopped at the campus gates by security, leaving only two or three of the most influential outlets permitted inside.
Huang Tian spared time for two interviews before shutting his doors to visitors, turning his full attention back to reading literature.
In the blink of an eye, several days slipped by. The online fervor gradually calmed, and the swarming reporters dispersed after gentle discouragement from the university. Only then did Huang Tian pack his laptop and leave campus.
He did not return to his apartment. Instead, he went traveling, planning to take a grand tour across Xia. The reason was simple: he wanted to see if the renowned mountains and vast rivers throughout the land hid any secluded cultivation sects, concealed dragon clans, descending peerless masters, legendary Dragon Kings, alien ruins, or the like...
If any such bizarre things truly existed, he would have to keep a low profile and tread carefully. If not, he could naturally act with far greater confidence and audacity.
*Wuuu—*
A long train glided across the land, hurtling through endless open fields.
Sitting inside and gazing out the window, one saw an unbroken sea of snow. Tracks, farmland, and mountain ridges were blanketed in white, exuding a rugged, sprawling grandeur.
Stands of white birch rapidly receded from view, their stark branches appearing stark black against the vast white expanse. Every now and then, a solitary village drifted past, its low rooftops dusted with a layer of snow that lent an aura of serene distance.
"Haaah—"
A rosy-cheeked little girl breathed onto the carriage window, producing a film of white mist. Then, using her index finger, she drew flowers, houses, and trees upon it.
She looked utterly absorbed, lost in her own private world.
Beside her sat a middle-aged couple—her parents—both smiling warmly.
"Young man, judging by your refined air, are you a student?" the middle-aged man asked, looking across at the youth seated opposite them. "New Year's is right around the corner. Has your winter break started?"
"I've already graduated. I'm just traveling around," Huang Tian replied with a smile. "I just came back from Mount Changbai."
"Mount Changbai? Ah, that place is freezing this time of year," the man remarked wistfully. "Still, the scenery must be gorgeous. And with all the talk about water monsters and dragons at Tianchi, it certainly draws quite a crowd."
Huang Tian nodded slightly. It was precisely those rumors of dragons and water monsters that had brought him there.
Over the past month or so, he had journeyed across the country from south to north, visiting famous peaks and grand rivers alike. He had explored the Ailao Mountains, Shennongjia, and various locales steeped in myths and legends. The outcome was that he found nothing.
There were no immortal cultivators, no extraterrestrials, and certainly no dragons, phoenixes, or qilin from the *Classic of Mountains and Seas*.
Mount Changbai had been his final stop. Yet, standing amid the peaks with his divine sense sweeping outward, he had likewise encountered no anomalous creatures.
As for the supposed water monster, he had merely spotted several unusually large fish beneath the surface, which were very likely what people had mistaken for a monster.
"Judging by your accent, are you from Gan Province?" the man asked.
"That's right."
"Headed back to your hometown this time?"
"With New Year's approaching, it's about time to go home."
"..."
The two made casual small talk for a while before the man stood up to fetch hot water for his instant noodles. Huang Tian closed his eyes and quietly pondered the construction of his new theoretical tool.
Although he had spent these past weeks traveling everywhere, it had not hindered his progress much. He would likely finish it in the next day or two.
*Wuuu—*
The train sped onward as day shifted into night.
Crossing into Gan Province, he arrived at his hometown of Boyang.
*Step—*
Welcomed by the gentle, warming winter sun, Huang Tian stepped off the train, exited the station, and hailed a ride on his phone to head straight for his village.
The driver was a man in his fifties who looked somewhat stern and reticent. Once Huang Tian took his seat and confirmed the last four digits of his phone number, the entire drive proceeded in silence.
About an hour later, after twisting and turning through the town's roads, the car finally reached Huangjia Village.
The village was not particularly large, home to seven or eight hundred people. Its main thoroughfare was narrow and long, making it difficult for vehicles to turn around. Consequently, Huang Tian got out at the entrance. Standing by the stone marker and looking up, he saw several vibrant red banners hanging directly above it.
*"Warmest congratulations to Huang Tian, an outstanding talent of our village, for publishing a paper in a top international journal!"*
*"Talents emerge from generation to generation; this year shines even brighter!"*
*"The roots of the Huang Clan flourish; ancestral virtue bestows blessings for a thousand autumns!"*
*...*
They felt a little rustic, yet unmistakably endearing.
Walking into the village, he came upon a small supermarket just a few steps in. Over twenty people sat inside playing mahjong and poker, making the place lively and bustling. Someone with sharp eyes spotted Huang Tian and shouted aloud. All twenty-some heads turned outward, and several warmly stepped out to invite him in to sit for a spell.
Huang Tian smiled and politely declined, explaining that upon returning, he naturally had to go home first. The villagers did not press him, merely telling him to drop by whenever he had free time to chat and join the fun.
As he walked down the main road, families on either side greeted him warmly, and Huang Tian responded with courteous nods. Along the way, snatches of village chatter drifted into his ears.
"Our village's great scholar is back!"
"Look at you, and then look at Huang Tian. He's practically your cousin—how can the difference between you two be so vast?"
"Yusheng and Guihua have it made now. Raising such an outstanding son has truly turned their fortunes around."
"I saw on the news that some university wanted to hire Huang Tian as a teacher. Is that true or not?"
"Not a teacher—no, not a lecturer, a professor! There's a world of difference between the two. Lecturers at universities might spend their entire lives without making professor, or even associate professor!"
"Does that mean he's an official now? Does he hold real power?"
"How vulgar! He's a man of letters—why must you always bring up power?"
"Aiya, isn't that what everyone chases these days—money and power? Still, if he becomes a professor, his standing won't be small. I heard officials from the township have already come to the village several times, bringing bags of rice, flour, and cooking oil to Yusheng's house. What tremendous prestige..."
*...*
Amid the chatter, Huang Tian stopped in front of a three-story house. Before he could step inside, the voices of several men conversing in the living room reached his ears.
"Hey, Xiao Tian is back?!"
A man in his thirties caught sight of the figure outside and let out a surprised, delighted shout. The others immediately paused their conversation and stood up.
Huang Tian's father, Huang Yusheng, beamed with joy. "You're back? Come in and take a seat! Your uncles happen to be here, so you can join in the conversation."
"Our great scholar has come home!"
"Come in, sit down, let's catch up!" the uncles greeted him with familiar warmth.
Hearing the commotion, Huang Tian's mother, Yang Guihua, emerged from the kitchen. Smiling, she took the backpack containing his laptop from his hands and set it down in a nearby room.
Huang Tian sat on a brown wooden bench in the living room to keep his uncles company. Though they knew little about academia, they were immensely curious about the anecdotes behind it all, asking about this and that. After an animated conversation that saw two fresh rounds of tea and sunflower seeds, they finally took their leave.
Huang Yusheng saw them out with a face full of smiles, then returned inside, pacing around Huang Tian while examining him from head to toe. "You've really made something of yourself. Truly made something of yourself."
Yang Guihua said with a chuckle, "Xiao Tian takes after me—clever. Of course he'd have his day in the sun."
Huang Yusheng scoffed playfully. "Takes after you? That sharp mind clearly comes from me! Back when I was in middle school, my math, physics, and chemistry grades were always near the very top. I was well-known throughout the township..."
Seeing his parents bickering back and forth, Huang Tian smiled without interjecting. He simply walked into the bedroom, brought out his laptop, opened it, and began tapping rapidly away on the keyboard.
Back when the train entered Gan Province, the entire theoretical framework had fully crystallized in his mind. Naturally, the Navier-Stokes equations had been resolved alongside it.
*[Title: Proof of Global Regularity for the Navier-Stokes Equations Based on Manifold Fibration and Global Attractors]*
*[Abstract: By reformulating the three-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations on a particular smooth infinite-dimensional manifold of their phase space...]*
*[...]*
Noticing their son getting down to business, both Huang Yusheng and Yang Guihua stopped their banter. The former threw on a thick coat and headed off to the supermarket down the lane to chat with fellow villagers, while the latter returned to the kitchen to prepare dinner.
In the blink of an eye, several more days passed.
Today was the twenty-ninth of the twelfth lunar month—New Year's Eve.
In the living room of the Huang household, Yang Guihua had laid out a table laden with dishes. The family of three gathered around it. Huang Yusheng had specially bought a small bottle of liquor, pouring himself a modest cup and sipping it slowly.
After a sip of liquor and a few bites of food, he suddenly remembered something and spoke up: "Xiao Tian, the village is holding a big opera performance on the second day of the new year. Someone suggested that you go up on stage to deliver the opening remarks. Would you be willing?"
Huang Tian shook his head. "Watching from below the stage is fine, but going up to speak is unnecessary. There's no need to seek the limelight."
"Mm, I think so too. You're famous now, and the villagers admire you, but there are bound to be people who feel jealous and envious. Under such circumstances, there's no reason to stand out in everything," Huang Yusheng agreed, nodding.
Whether neighbors or relatives, people might be willing to lend a helping hand when someone was down on their luck. Yet when that same person did exceedingly well, it often stirred unease in their hearts.
"Besides, I see you've been busy these past few days. You wouldn't have time for other matters anyway. I'll turn it down for you."
"All right."
In truth, over the past few days, the paper was nearly complete, with only the final wrap-up remaining. Another hour or two today would see it finished.
"Eat, both of you. Don't just sit there talking," Yang Guihua urged.
"Right, let's eat. This fish is wonderfully fresh..."
After finishing their New Year's Eve dinner and tidying up briefly, Huang Yusheng cheerfully carried firecrackers and fireworks outside.
*Sizzle—Crack-crack-bang!—*
Firecrackers popped, and brilliant fireworks burst across the dim night sky, scattering glittering trails of light.
Simultaneously, the surrounding villages erupted in a chorus of crisp firecrackers and blossoming fireworks, turning the night increasingly festive.
Amid the lively atmosphere, Huang Tian sent New Year's greetings to Zong Wenjun, Feng Zechun, Xu Kaizhi, Vice President Yang Dong, and others.
Replies arrived in short order. After chatting with Zong Wenjun for a while, Huang Tian put away his phone, took his laptop, sat to the side, and once again immersed himself in an ocean of symbols and numbers.
Roughly an hour and a half later.
He typed the final symbol and let out a gentle breath. "Done!"
The paper was a full one hundred and twenty pages long. The first fifty pages elaborated on the constructive framework and logical chain of the brand-new mathematical tool, while the subsequent seventy pages contained the rigorous proof of the Navier-Stokes equations.
As long as one could comprehend the first fifty pages, the remainder would not be difficult to understand. Moreover, the preliminary material was not excessively impenetrable—at least, it was nowhere near as baffling as the work of the Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki.
Years ago, in an attempt to prove the famous abc conjecture, Mochizuki had constructed an entirely new mathematical framework called Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory out of whole cloth.
That self-devised theory introduced a vast array of novel mathematical concepts, melding algebraic geometry, number theory, differential geometry, and other fields. Its abstraction and complexity far exceeded the conventional mathematical framework. Crucially, establishing the theory alone took over five hundred pages!
Over five hundred pages simply to construct an abstract mathematical tool...
It left the mathematical community exasperated, as scarcely anyone possessed the time and stamina to dissect his new system. Consequently, to this day, no one could state with certainty whether the abc conjecture had truly been proven by him.
Checking the time, Huang Tian saw it was around nine o'clock. Outside, the steady crackle of firecrackers continued unabated.
*I'll submit it first. This time, I'll still send it to Inventiones Mathematicae.*
In truth, given the sheer weight of this paper, submitting it to any of the Big Four mathematical journals would be suitable. After all, once the proof was validated by the academic community, it would undoubtedly rank among the greatest scientific breakthroughs of this century!
Whichever journal published it would receive an honor, rather than the other way around. As for why he chose *Inventiones Mathematicae* again instead of journals like *Annals of Mathematics*, it was purely because he couldn't be bothered to switch platforms...
After submitting the manuscript, Huang Tian considered for a moment and posted it to arXiv as well.
Doing so allowed him to present the academic breakthrough to his peers ahead of time. Scholars interested in the field could read and debate it early on, and the speed at which their discussions yielded a consensus would far outstrip the journal's peer-review process, saving him the hassle of waiting aimlessly for review results.
With everything handled, Huang Tian closed his laptop, walked upstairs, and remained on the second floor to continue his cultivation.
As for his parents, they were still down at the village supermarket chatting with neighbors. The place was at its liveliest right now, with thirty or forty people gathered together playing cards and talking; they likely wouldn't return home until eleven at night.
New Year's Eve slipped past amid the crackle of firecrackers, giving way to the first day of the Lunar New Year. The paper Huang Tian had posted on arXiv had not yet drawn any attention.
This was only natural. The entire country was celebrating the Spring Festival, and mathematicians were human too—hardly anyone spent the holiday throwing themselves into work. Meanwhile, scholars in the relevant fields abroad had not yet noticed his upload.
He was in no hurry, content to savor the festive atmosphere of the New Year. He accompanied his parents on visits to various relatives, becoming the legendary "child of someone else's family" praised on everyone's lips.
The leisurely days flew by quickly, while a fresh storm—one destined to sweep across the international mathematics and physics communities—was quietly brewing...
On the seventh day of the first lunar month, in a tidy study in Jingcheng.
Academician Zhang Ping, Vice President of the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science at the Xia Academy of Sciences, sat in his chair. Just as he was about to boot up his computer to clear through the backlog of emails as usual, his phone suddenly rang.
Glancing at the screen, he saw it was a call from Li Nuo, Vice Dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences at Jingda.
"Hello, Old Li. What's the occasion? You can't be calling to wish me a Happy New Year on the seventh, can you?
"Hm? You're saying someone proved the Navier-Stokes equations? Haha, pulling practical jokes during the New Year, are we?... You say you've already read through the proof, and it seems to have no major flaws?!"
The smile on Zhang Ping's face froze. He immediately listened intently to the account on the other end of the line. After a moment, he cut in, "Understood. Huang Tian, right? I remember him. I read the paper he published in *Inventiones* before; the young man certainly has solid foundations. I'll go check his newly uploaded paper right now..."
Hanging up the call, he immediately opened arXiv, located Huang Tian's account, and caught sight of the newly uploaded paper at first glance.
*"...Proof of Global Regularity for the Navier-Stokes Equations..."*
Drawing a deep breath, he downloaded the paper, opened it, adjusted his reading glasses, and began to read with an expression of utmost gravity.
Chapter 155