A Beginning

They had set out in high spirits and returned thoroughly satisfied. It was nearly ten-thirty when Huang Tian and Zong Wenjun finally returned to the apartment. Collapsing onto the bed, Zong Wenjun looked worn out. "I'm not going out tomorrow. I just want to stay burrowed in the covers all day." Huang Tian pinched her soft, smooth cheek, chuckling. "Little Zong, who never gets tired after a whole day of studying, is actually exhausted after an outing?" Zong Wenjun let him squish her cheek, replying in all seriousness, "Studying doesn't involve emotional swings. Traveling and having fun are different. The highs and lows are too intense, so your mental energy drains much faster. Of course it's tiring." "All right. Then tomorrow we'll stay in the room and go nowhere," Huang Tian said. Zong Wenjun wrapped her arms around his and nuzzled her face against him. Huang Tian leaned back against the headboard, pulled out his phone with his left hand, and smoothly logged into the Changda online library, searching through its digital repository for various books and literature. *A Course in Probability and Mathematical Statistics*, *Topology*, *Groups and Representations*, *Second Order Elliptic Partial Differential Equations*, *Proof of Global Well-Posedness and Exponential Decay for Low-Regularity Solutions of the Three-Dimensional Density-Dependent Magnetohydrodynamic Equations*... After committing the contents of the books and papers to memory, his consciousness instantly shifted back to the late Han world. Utilizing the one-to-thirty time dilation, he swiftly digested and absorbed the knowledge. The next day was Zong Wenjun's third day in Chang City. Aside from heading downstairs to eat, the two did not leave the apartment, each keeping busy with their own pursuits. Zong Wenjun wore headphones to practice listening with VOA, switching to music when she got tired, while Huang Tian immersed himself so deeply in the sea of mathematics that he lost track of everything else. Early on the fourth morning, the two rose with the dawn, and Huang Tian escorted Zong Wenjun to the high-speed rail station. At the station entrance, Zong Wenjun hugged Huang Tian and murmured softly, "I'll miss you." "Me too." After a brief embrace, Zong Wenjun shouldered her backpack and walked through the gate, turning back from a distance to wave at him. Huang Tian watched until she vanished from sight, then headed back to the apartment. For the next five days, Huang Tian spent his time devouring literature. Converted to late Han time, that amounted to a full five months. During those five months, he still maintained his daily cultivation without fail, only reading through references and papers in his spare time. Even so, it was a considerable amount of time, especially given his evolved comprehension. Five days later. Huang Tian powered up the laptop he had bought with his own part-time earnings during his undergraduate years. Inspiration surged in his mind. After a moment of contemplation, he thought, *Let's start with an appetizer for the mathematics community—a stone cast to test the waters.* He opened LaTeX, his fingers clattering rhythmically against the keyboard. Paper Title: *A Study on the Blow-up Phenomenon for Supercritical Defocusing Nonlinear Wave Equations* Abstract: ... For Huang Tian, conducting the actual research was easier than writing the paper, as writing was simply too time-consuming. This paper on PDEs (partial differential equations) took him two full days, running fifty-five pages in total. And that was only because he didn't need to ponder or second-guess himself, typing away continuously from start to finish. Once the paper was finished, Huang Tian uploaded it to arXiv. arXiv was not a peer-reviewed journal but a preprint repository where researchers could post unpublished papers, staking a claim to preemptively establish priority. With his claim staked, Huang Tian copied the paper onto a flash drive. After a moment's thought, he walked down to a print shop on the ground floor to print out a hard copy. Then he hailed a cab to Changda to see his undergraduate partial differential equations instructor, Professor Feng Zechun of the Department of Mathematics. He sought Feng Zechun out because, as an academic newcomer, any submission Huang Tian sent to a major journal would almost certainly be overlooked by reviewing editors, left to gather dust among thousands of unread emails. To get an editor's attention, he needed an endorsement. Only after publishing a first paper and gaining some reputation would his name alone command serious consideration from editorial boards. Moreover, beyond securing Feng Zechun's endorsement, Huang Tian also needed to secure funding through him. Otherwise, the publication charges for academic journals—often running into tens of thousands of yuan—would be quite a headache. Feng Zechun was sixty-three this year. After finishing his master's degree in his youth, he had taught at Changda ever since. In middle age, he had earned a doctorate in mathematics. Over several decades, he had produced a prolific body of work and finally attained full professorship. However, as age caught up with him and his energy waned, he had scaled back his research in recent years, focusing primarily on teaching and advising students. He supervised a few doctoral candidates and taught undergraduate courses, fully embracing the integration of teaching and research, with teaching taking precedence. Though Feng Zechun had settled into a more relaxed routine, he was a good-natured man. His career had been smooth sailing with very few disputes, having spent most of his life within the ivory tower, carrying a stubborn, scholarly air. That was precisely why Huang Tian had come to him. Were there scoundrels in academia? Certainly. But ordinary, decent people still made up the majority, and Feng Zechun was one of them. In decades of teaching and research, no scandal had ever attached to his name. Stepping out of the cab at Changda's main entrance, Huang Tian looked up at the familiar, sprawling gate stretching over three hundred meters wide, feeling a wave of nostalgia. Just over a year ago, he had been a carefree student, high-spirited and filled with bright hopes for the future. Yet the harsh realities of life had quickly put him in his place, showing him that he was utterly ordinary—someone who had simply studied for a few years and received praise from parents, teachers, and classmates, only to revert to his true colors the moment he entered society. After lingering in reflection for a brief moment, Huang Tian walked to the pedestrian turnstile beside the security booth, scanned his face, and entered the campus. Strolling along the quiet grounds, he passed the shimmering waters of Runxi Lake and the charming Beilian Fountain Square before arriving at an unhurried pace outside the Science and Life Building. Inside, students carrying books or wearing backpacks chatted and walked along the stairwells and hallways. Downstairs, young men and women braked on shared bicycles, hurrying inside with their bags. Huang Tian joined the flow of students heading up the stairs. Reaching the fifth floor, he stopped before a door bearing a plaque that read: *Faculty Lounge*. The door stood ajar. Inside sat a slightly plump elderly man with thinning, gray-streaked hair, reading through documents on the sofa. *Professor Feng really does stick to his habit of resting in the lounge after class...* *Knock, knock.* At the crisp sound of knocking, Feng Zechun looked up and saw a handsome young man standing in the doorway. "Huang Tian?" Feng Zechun sounded somewhat surprised. He still had a strong impression of Huang Tian. The young man had a clean look, carried himself well, and possessed the demeanor of a genuine scholar. Paired with his excellent grades back then, he was naturally memorable. "Professor Feng, it's me," Huang Tian said with a smile, stepping into the lounge. Seeing his former student, Feng Zechun brightened visibly, rising and waving him over. "Come in, come in! Have a seat and let's talk." As he spoke, he walked over to the water dispenser, pulled out a disposable cup, and poured Huang Tian some water. "I can get it myself, thank you, Professor." Huang Tian accepted the cup and sat down beside him. "It's been over a year since you graduated, hasn't it? How have things been?" Feng Zechun asked with a warm, lively smile. "Just getting by. Nothing particularly good or bad." "Just getting by is already pretty good these days." Feng Zechun glanced at the thick document envelope in Huang Tian's hands. "Are you here to handle some paperwork or get a certificate stamped?" Huang Tian unfastened the envelope and drew out a thick stack of densely printed manuscript pages. "Actually, I wrote something in my spare time, and I was hoping you could take a look and give me some feedback..."