1021 Blood

Lu Zhou opened his eyes violently.

He bounced up from his bed, his chest was thumping, and he was breathing heavily.

He suddenly realized that his clothes were soaked in sweat.

Lu Zhou rubbed his forehead and got out of bed. He went to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, and took a sip, trying to calm himself down.

What happened was entirely in his mind.

But perhaps it was too realistic, the memory was burned into his mind.

It was almost like…

He walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared at the night scene. He stood there until the bottle of mineral water in his hand didn’t feel cold anymore. He turned around and muttered to himself.

“It’s like…

“It’s like a nightmare.”

He went to the bathroom and took a shower.Lu Zhou put on some new clothes and sat down at his computer desk.

He returned to the system s.p.a.ce and made sure that the pure white system s.p.a.ce hadn’t changed because of the “Void Memory a”.

However, the purple sample inside his inventory had disappeared.

Like it had never even existed.

Lu Zhou snapped back to reality and opened a doc.u.ment. He typed down some lines of words.

[What were those black buildings?

[If it is a computer, who does it belong to?

[What is it calculating?]

In addition, those golden cubes soaked at the bottom of the pool were the same thing as his “Debris No.2”.

He wasn’t in a hurry. After he returned to Jin Ling, he would use his newfound knowledge to research the Debris No.2.

Lu Zhou contemplated for a second before setting a pa.s.sword for the doc.u.ment.

Even if someone read about his ridiculous dream, nothing would happen.

But it was better to be safe.

…

The next day.

Vera’s 45-minute report began, and the venue was set to be at the lecture hall 7.

The lecture hall was quite lively.

A lot of people were curious about this female Fields Medalist.

After all, even though there were plenty of female physicists and chemists, there weren’t a lot of female mathematicians.

Especially outstanding female mathematicians.

Not to mention that Vera was both talented on the inside and outside.

Even scholars that weren’t in the field of a.n.a.lytic number theory decided to attend the report.

Lu Zhou, who arrived at the venue ten minutes in advance, almost couldn’t find a seat. Schultz, who was sitting in the middle of the lecture hall, waved at him.

“I was saving this seat for my friend Akshay, but he’s attending another report instead.”

Lu Zhou: “Thank you.”

Schultz smiled.

“You’re welcome.”

Lu Zhou yawned as he grabbed the thesis sitting in front of him. He casually flipped through the pages.

He didn’t sleep well last night.

His brain was a mess, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the metal city, the black buildings, the metal blades, the liquid helium…

Schultz: “You didn’t sleep well?”

Lu Zhou: “Yeah.”

Schultz: “All nighter?”

“Sort of,” Lu Zhou paused for a second and said, “I had a long nightmare.”

Schultz curiously asked, “What did you dream about?”

Lu Zhou: “… About the future.”

Schultz frowned and asked, “Are you sure it was a nightmare?”

Lu Zhou: “I think so… I’m not sure if it’s the future of humanity… I mean, I’m not sure whether or not I’ve seen it in science fiction movies before. It had an apocalyptic vibe.”

“Like ‘I am legend’?”

“Haha, kind of, but that’s an old movie.”

Schultz shrugged and jokingly said, “That’s kind of sad, the greatest scientist of this century has a pessimistic view about the future. Looks like I should consider buying some insurance.”

Lu Zhou shook his head and smiled.

“Hey, that’s not funny.”

Schultz smiled and said, “But you’re laughing?”

Lu Zhou: “I’m laughing because the first thing you thought of is to buy insurance… Who’s going to insure your insurer?”

Schultz rubbed his chin and thought.

“That is a problem.”

While the two were talking, the report began.

Vera stood on stage, and Lu Zhou felt like she didn’t look too well.

However, he could ask about that after the report.

Now that the report had begun, he should focus on the academic side.

This was out of respect for the presenter.

Lu Zhou took a deep breath and focused his attention on the thesis in his hand.

Because he had been so busy recently, he didn’t have time to read the report thesis.

However, that didn’t really matter.

He could comprehend most of the concepts just by glancing through them.

“Supplement to the hyperelliptic curve a.n.a.lysis method?” Lu Zhou said after reading the abstract. He raised his eyebrows with interest. “That is interesting.”

Basically, Vera built on the foundation of the hyperelliptic curve a.n.a.lysis method. However, she used a more sophisticated method to introduce the Plancherel formula to the Heisenberg group. This made the hyperelliptic curve a.n.a.lysis method more applicable to connected one-dimensional complex manifolds on Riemann surfaces.

It was difficult to explain this in layman’s terms. But in short, this was a novel idea that caught the attention of Lu Zhou and the audience.

It even inspired Lu Zhou so much that Lu Zhou had the impulse to go back to his hotel immediately and go on a retreat.

Of course, that was just a thought.

He wouldn’t act on his impulse like that.

Not to mention that Vera was still presenting.

She finally had the chance to give a talk to the entire mathematics community. If her mentor had suddenly left in the middle of her talk, she might start crying on stage…

Schultz listened to Vera’s report. With his arms folded, he suddenly sighed.

“Honestly, I’m quite jealous of you.”

Without turning his head, Lu Zhou spoke.

“… Jealous of what?”

“Of you having a smart and obedient student. Whenever you come up with a new theory, she’s there to help you perfect it.”

Lu Zhou smiled.

However, something suddenly happened.

Vera suddenly began coughing violently on stage.

“… Sorry.”

Vera covered her mouth and was about to continue her report. However, when she tried to speak, she began coughing again.

Vera began to sweat, her hand leaned on the whiteboard, and her face turned pale.

A staff member immediately went on stage.

“Miss Pulyuy, let’s stop the report for now, if you don’t feel well—”

“No, let me finish writing!”

She clenched her fists as a flash of confusion appeared in her eyes. However, the look of confusion was soon replaced by courage and determination.

A year ago, when she first started to get sick, she knew she didn’t have much time.

She came all this way…

The staff member hesitated for a bit and retreated.

Vera looked at the whiteboard.

Her mind had never been clearer.

She clenched her teeth and began writing on the whiteboard.

Because of her pain and anxiety, the numbers and symbols on the whiteboard began to look distorted, but the flow of thoughts in her mind hadn’t stopped.

She wrote down all of her thoughts on the whiteboard, including those that weren’t written in the thesis.

It seemed like time and s.p.a.ce had disappeared, so did the pain in her chest.

Apparently, when a person reached their physical limit, the body would allocate all resources to the brain.

However, she didn’t have time to think about this.

She didn’t do this for the mathematics community, or her mentor…

This might be her last report…

But…

She was going to do her best!

Finally, she finished writing down the last line of equations.

She took half a step back and faintly smiled.

Even though she hadn’t solved the maze.

At least…

This might be of help to other people.

Especially Lu Zhou.

Suddenly, she began to lose consciousness.

She leaned against the whiteboard but her sleeve left a blood mark on the whiteboard.

Blood!

There was an uproar and commotion in the lecture hall.

Sh*t…

Vera’s heart dropped when she saw the red marks.

I’ve survived for so long, I can’t believe this is happening today…

This is both the worst and best day of my life.

Her legs gradually lost their strength.

Before she lost consciousness, she saw a figure rus.h.i.+ng toward her as she collapsed to the ground.

She finally realized that…

She had no regrets.