Chapter 87: Something Broke===GLOSSARY=== [{

Of course, Su Kewei needs no explanation—he’s a doctoral candidate—but the boy beside him was also nodding continuously? Everyone marveled at where this prodigy had come from, for Xu Qingzhou looked far too young, his face brimming with youthfulness, surely no older than a third-year student.

Moreover, Senior Meng Bin now seemed utterly lost.

Gazing at the formula on the blackboard, Xu Qingzhou felt a sudden clarity—he could continue working even if Gu Zhizhong didn’t speak.

Gu Zhizhong was still writing, his pace slow.

This might be the charm of mathematics—even Gu Zhizhong had to proceed slowly, step by step, to determine the next move.

Another twenty minutes passed.

The other blackboard was nearly full.

“Wrong—the values are off. For (p, q), the gap is 14, far below the upper bound of 418.08.”

Read! {

The call connected—Song Yao’s voice came through: “Took you long enough to answer—what were you doing?”

def is_prime(n): check whether n is prime

He put down the chalk. “Write out the next steps.”

“Yes.”

if n return false for i in range(2, int((n))+1): if n%i==0: 22:30 PM.

!.

Xu Qingzhou didn’t hesitate—he stepped forward and wrote swiftly.

“Old Kong, leaving so early?” Xu Zhengyang had been planning to catch a few more hours of sleep.

Song Yao was annoyed: “Xu Qingzhou, can you be any more dismissive?”

Xu Qingzhou frowned. Piles of draft paper surrounded him. Just as he was about to recalculate, he suddenly felt his phone vibrating in his pocket.

The audience below had all gone numb.

At that moment, Xu Qingzhou suddenly noticed the function under his finger—the result had an error. He’d found the problem!

Song Yao hummed in acknowledgment. “Tomorrow at 9 a.m., meet at the South Gate to find Jiahui and the others. Don’t forget.”

Xu Qingzhou bid farewell to Gu Zhizhong and the others, found an empty classroom, and didn’t rush into the next steps—instead, he decided to first read up on the Cramér conjecture.

*whoosh*—Xu Zhengyang sat bolt upright on his bed. “I’m going to work hard too!”

“Also, it’ll cool down tomorrow—only 18 degrees. Wear more clothes.” Song Yao continued. “Got it.”

Xu Qingzhou kept nodding—the next steps required introducing complex analysis from analytic number theory, studying prime distribution through the zeros of the Riemann zeta function.

“Doing math problems,” Xu Qingzhou replied, checking his draft paper for errors.

Next, you’ll need Python to generate primes and calculate their gaps using a computer program.

Su Kewei fell into deep thought.

The girls’ dormitory balcony.

Gu Zhizhong stopped, turned to Xu Qingzhou and Su Kewei: “You understand this part?”

Xu Qingzhou lowered his head, organizing the draft paper, scanning the rows of data, and gave a slight nod.

*beep*—the call connected.

The goal now: prove f(p) ≤ 3×(log p)^1.5 for all sufficiently large p. Ten minutes later, Xu Qingzhou stopped, stared at the verification steps on the blackboard, then nodded slightly and put down the chalk.

Thus, the dormitory was left with only Xu Zhengyang alone. He sighed, closed his eyes, and prepared to sleep again. Song Yao stood frozen, phone in hand—all her anger vanished. What had that bastard just said?

Kong Xian shook his head. “I get stronger every single day. Old Xu, old Xu, get ready to kneel and sing ‘Conquer’—with lofty dreams, he picked up his bag and headed out.”

“Looks like a man,” Xu Zhengyang muttered inwardly, filled with envy, jealousy, and resentment.

“Xu Qingzhou, you’re going to drive me crazy!”

First step: go through every verification calculation again.

Late September, Beijing’s temperature plummeted. When stepping out in the morning, the air carried a chill—the clothes Song Yao had helped him buy were finally useful.

The receiver emitted a dial tone.

“I’ll go back and calculate,” Xu Qingzhou said with renewed energy.

“Beep… beep…”

He’d originally joined the guitar club, but after his recent heartbreak, he quit both the guitar club and the street dance club to show his resolve—only the Eagle Society remained.

Xu Qingzhou’s mind was entirely on the numbers—he hadn’t heard what Song Yao said. Only after she finished did he realize something was off. His fingers paused. “What did you just say?”

He rubbed his temples, set aside the Cramér conjecture for now, and decided to first solve this truncated version of the prime problem.

He hung up, took a deep breath, and recalculated, redefining g(p) = 3×(log p)^1.5 + ε(p), where ε(p) was an error term dependent on p, used to adjust the upper bound for better fit with actual data.

One hour passed. He exhaled heavily. “No wonder this has stumped mathematicians—it’s too hard.”

Gu Zhizhong was surprised. He’d thought Xu Qingzhou was tackling this too early—it was already a weakened version of a mathematical conjecture. Even a first-year doctoral student like himself would need days to solve it.

Kong Xian muttered: “Yeah, I didn’t fully grasp a few points from yesterday’s advanced algebra class. Going to the library to look up some materials.”

The conjecture primarily concerns the distribution pattern of consecutive primes—specifically, it involves some mathematical relationship or property between two adjacent primes in the sequence. Xu Qingzhou found it fascinating: a certain mathematical property between two consecutive primes, like quantum entanglement—two entangled particles remain correlated even after decoupling.

If Song Yao hadn’t interrupted him, he might have overlooked it.

Gu Zhizhong nodded approvingly. He knew the approach but not the result. “This problem is clever and difficult. If you solve it, bring it to me.”

“Song Yao, I love you so much! By the way, I’ve got something to do—see you tomorrow!”

Ten minutes passed.

Xu Zhengyang leaned back against his pillow, face serious. He opened his contacts and dialed the top number.

Saturday morning, Xu Qingzhou wore clean clothes and waved goodbye to the three single guys in his dorm.

“Very good. The rest requires you to use a computer program to generate many prime pairs.”

Seeing Kong Xian had left, Zhai Ziqiang also didn’t stay—he picked up his guitar and headed to class.

“Senior, good morning. You got up early? To thank you for your care these past few days, I’ll treat you to dinner tonight.”

“Alright,” Gu Zhizhong waved his hand.

The Cramér conjecture is an important problem in mathematics, proposed by Swedish mathematician Harald Cramér in 1937.

Xu Qingzhou’s fingers slid across the draft paper, paused slightly, and he sighed in disbelief: “I’m not senile—I wouldn’t forget something this simple.”

“Sure,” came the girl’s soft voice. After a pause, she added: “Can we add one more person?”

Xu Zhengyang nodded with tears in his eyes: “Sure, more people means more fun.”

“Fine. If you’re okay with it, I’ll tell my boyfriend—we’ll go together.”

Xu Zhengyang: “...”

Something seemed to have broken.

(End of Chapter)