Assistant Zhao said that Professor Lu had something important to announce. Thus, all of the students in the research project group got up early, ate their breakfast, and rushed into the office.

“Allow me to introduce our new group member,” Lu Zhou said as he patted the shoulder of the strange man standing next to him. Lu Zhou looked at the astonished students and cleared his throat. He said, “This is Professor Perelman, a mathematician from St. Petersburg. He will stay here for the rest of the year… if we can finish the Grand Unified Theory by the end of the year.”

The office went silent for a few seconds.

Then, a pen fell onto the ground.

Suddenly, the atmosphere in the office exploded.

“What! Perelman? The… big name that solved the Poincaré conjecture?”

“No way… I heard he quit mathematics?”

Perelman!

The man that never left his house, the man that rejected the secretary-general of the International Mathematical Union!

If it weren’t for Lu Zhou’s serious expression, everyone in the office, including Han Mengqi, would have thought Lu Zhou was joking.

Perelman did not understand Chinese, so he didn’t know what everyone was talking about. He thought they were welcoming him, so he said, “Thank you.”

Chen Yang, who finally recovered from the initial shock, looked at Perelman. He excitedly spoke.

“… I’ve read your paper before!”

Perelman didn’t know how to answer the question. He hesitated for a second and nodded.

“Yeah.”

…

Lu Zhou had heard about Perelman being an idiosyncratic person, so he was a little worried Perelman would not be able to integrate into his research group, or perhaps there would be communication problems. However, he realized quickly that his worries were superfluous.

What surprised Lu Zhou the most was Chen Yang’s relationship with Perelman.

Both of them were taciturn people, people that only talked about mathematics and their work. It seemed like this kind of straightforward communication method was able to overcome any communication barriers.

For the next stage of research, Lu Zhou asked Perelman to participate in Chen Yang’s research project, which was to study direct-sum decomposition in motive theory, something that was related to the irreducible motive H(V).

This research project was half done, but due to various reasons, the progress was relatively slow.

According to Chen Yang, due to Professor Perelman’s help, the speed of the research project had increased dramatically.

Within a week, the two people came up with a groundbreaking method, completing the last problem of the project, which was to establish a close relationship between H(V) and the irreducible motive.

The resulting paper was co-signed by the two and the preprint was uploaded to arXiv, while the paper was submitted to the mathematics sub-journal of Future.

The day after the paper was uploaded to arXiv, the mathematics community was astonished by this unprecedented event.

Perelman, who publicly announced his withdrawal from the mathematics community, had published a paper to arXiv?

Also, the research unit that signed the paper was Jin Ling University, the university at which Professor Lu worked…

It was like pigs were starting to fly!

…

Germany, University of Bonn.

Inside a stylish cafe.

Faltings looked at the newly-published paper and shook his head.

He did not expect Perelman to have this kind of response after initially reading Lu Zhou’s paper.

He was both gratified and confused. He felt a mix of complicated emotions.

Schultz noticed the old man’s expression. He took a sip of coffee and spoke with a sigh.

“I can’t believe he actually went to Jin Ling University.”

He and Professor Faltings visited Perelman in St. Petersburg, trying to invite him to the University of Bonn, to work with them on the Grand Unified Theory of algebra and geometry, opening up a new school of thought for the Bourbaki Group.

However, their efforts were to no avail as Perelman chose Lu Zhou on his own volition.

Faltings looked outside the window and suddenly said, “What do you think about this paper?”

After Schultz thought for a while, he said, “It’s amazing… It’s honestly shocking. I can’t even describe the importance of their work in the field of motive theory and Grothendieck’s standard conjectures. I think any scholar in this field worth their salt will say that they have made a huge step toward Grand Unified Theory.”

After hearing Schultz’s words, Professor Faltings nodded.

He totally agreed with Schultz’s words.

Establishing an abstract meaning of numbers and shapes in the context of motive theory and Langlands program meant that their research was far ahead of the rest of the world.

It was almost as if most scholars in the world were making fire with friction and wood, while they were using a flint fire striker.

Only top scholars in the field of algebraic geometry could differentiate the good from the best.

Schultz looked at Faltings and sighed as he spoke.

“The reason I have been researching complete metric spaces is precisely to find a theorem like this. I created the p-adic number and Diamond principle for this reason.”

The complete metric space provided a new way to look at the classes of geometric objects that were deeply rooted in the Langlands program, such as the Shimura variety. This was the outstanding mathematical achievement that won him the Fields Medal in 2018.

This mathematical method had evolved into a completely new branch of mathematics. This subject had been widely regarded as a promising research direction in unifying algebra and geometry.

“You can say that.” Faltings nodded and noticed the expression on Schultz’s face. He frowned and said, “It looks like you have something to say.”

Schultz awkwardly smiled.

“You know, the Grand Unified Theory of algebra and geometry is what I’ve been pursuing my entire life. Now, I feel like there’s finally a place to apply my theory.”

He coughed and said, “I would like to go on an exchange there for a year.”

Faltings: “…”

Professor Faltings didn’t speak as Schultz scratched his head awkwardly.

“Seeing how you’re not saying anything, I’m assuming you agree to come with me.”

Faltings: “…”

…