Chapter 872 - Is He Ok?

Wang Zhengfei was indeed a savvy businessman.

He had never thought about negotiating with Lu Zhou. However, when he was about to speak, he was able to gather information from Lu Zhou’s facial expressions.

It seemed like Lu Zhou didn’t want to work with them anymore, and he was even ready to cooperate with other Chinese semiconductor companies.

For example, Unisplendour, which had the same production capacity as HiSilicon.

At that moment, Wang Zhengfei made a decision.

If Star Sky Technology cooperated with Unisplendour or another semiconductor company, the key to the future of carbon-based semiconductors would be out of their hands.

If Huawei still wanted to join in on the carbon-based revolution, they would have to buy these chips from semiconductor companies for a much higher price. Even though they would have total control over HiSilicon, it wouldn’t mean anything.

HiSilicon was Huawei’s top-performing subsidiary, but if they couldn’t keep up with the times, they would be overtaken by other companies.

On the surface, it seemed like Huawei made a compromise, but that might not be the case.

They did have to pay for an upfront cost, but the returns on this investment would make HiSilicon even stronger. Huawei’s product would be even more competitive in the international market...

This was far more valuable than having total control over a company that could become obsolete in the future...

Wang Zhengfei, who felt a little down, suddenly felt a lot better.

The reason why he made this decision wasn’t that he was trying to please Academician Lu.

It was for the greater good!

...

After Molina left Jinling, she didn’t immediately fly back to Princeton. Instead, she went back to her hometown in France for a week-long vacation.

Everyone needed to rest sometimes, to recharge the brain and relax a little.

Molina was no exception.

Even though her career was also her hobby, her career didn’t always make her happy.

Especially since she had to compete with other scholars...

This trip to China totally exhausted her brain energy.

She felt like her mathematics career was going nowhere, and she began to feel an existential crisis about her life.

If it weren’t because of Professor Abel’s portrait hanging in her grandfather’s house, she might even give up her mathematics career.

An old man wearing pajamas knocked on Molina’s bedroom door. He opened the door and saw his granddaughter sitting at her desk. He spoke with a hint of distress in his eyes.

“Are you still thinking about that problem?”

“No, that’s for when I return to Princeton.” Molina shook her head and said, “I’m not going to think about any mathematics problems for this week.”

Old man: “Your father is teaching at École Normale Supérieure, and you rarely get to see him. Why don’t you come and live here?”

Molina said without hesitating, “Princeton’s environment is more suitable for me. There are a lot of excellent scholars there. Even a cup of afternoon tea can inspire me.”

The old man said, “But there are many excellent scholars in École Normale Supérieure as well.”

Molina said with a poker face, “But I don’t like Paris. Paris is full of rubbish.”

Not to mention, she didn’t want to see her father.

Not because she had a problem with him, but they were just not emotionally connected. She and her father were both similar people; people who devoted their entire lives to mathematics.

From a very young age, she lived in the suburbs of Paris and grew up in her grandfather’s house. That was until she went to Princeton for her university studies.

The only thing left here for her was a bit of nostalgia.

The old man looked at his granddaughter’s stubborn face and sighed.

“Okay... Molina, regardless, I hope you are happy. Mathematics is not everything.”

“Maybe.” Molina looked at the portrait of Abel on the wall and said, “But it is for me. It has accompanied me throughout my entire life. I want to... do something you guys couldn’t.”

A flash of pain appeared on the old man’s face.

He sat down on the sofa and sighed. He spoke in a persuasive tone.

“Some things require talent, especially when it comes to art... Even painters who have studied under the same teacher would see the world in different ways. Mathematics is like an art, do you get what I’m trying to say?”

“I don’t get it.” Molina shook her head and looked at the portrait on the wall. She then said with a confused expression, “I don’t get it, I’m related to Abel, how come I don’t get any share of his intellect?”

The old man looked at Molina’s eyes and hesitated for a bit.

“Molina, there’s something else... I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“Yeah what?”

The old man opened his mouth. He then shook his head.

“Nevermind, forget about it.”

Molina: “...”

...

The week-long holiday quickly went by.

Molina felt like her brain had recovered. She got on a flight and arrived at New York airport. She got into a taxi and checked arXiv on her phone.

She saw a bunch of preprints on the numerical proof of the value of epsilon. It seemed like someone had pushed the value of epsilon to one over ten thousand.

It took the mathematics community seven days to push the number from one over sixty million to one over ten thousand. This was quite an improvement.

They were slowly approaching the finish line, and the hyperelliptic curve analysis research path was becoming more popular than the critical line research path.

Molina couldn’t help but feel a sense of urgency.

She didn’t want to admit that, within a month’s time, Lu Zhou threw years of her research out of the water. However, she had to admit that the hyperelliptic curve analysis method was sophisticated enough to impact the entire analytic number theory field...

Even though she had a different approach to researching the Riemann hypothesis, she should still read his thesis...

Molina convinced herself that she just wanted to know where her opponent was, and even though Lu Zhou’s research results were good, she didn’t want to give up the critical line proof method.

Yeah, I’m just doing research...

After Molina got back to Princeton, she put her luggage into her room. Without wasting a second, she went to the library nearby. She found the meeting room that she and Vera had reserved.

However, when she opened the door, she saw Vera sitting there, daydreaming.

“Are you okay?” Molina asked.

Vera’s cheeks were pale, and her blonde hair seemed to have lost its brightness.

Vera noticed Molina, and she gave her a weak smile.

“I’m fine, I just have a cold.”

Molina wasn’t convinced at all.

Molina grabbed Vera’s shoulders and rested her forehead on Vera’s forehead.

Molina’s forehead felt a burning sensation, and she immediately stood up.

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“It’s fine, I already went.” Vera avoided eye contact and said, “The doctor gave me some medicine... I’ll be fine.”

Molina looked at her suspiciously. She let go of her shoulders.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Vera felt an itch in her throat. She grabbed a tissue and began coughing.

Molina wasn’t sure, but she felt like she saw a trace of blood on Vera’s tissue.

Is she really okay?

Molina started to become more and more worried.

Vera wasn’t just her co-worker. They had become close friends.

Vera didn’t want Molina to worry about her, so she forced a smile and spoke.

“Forget about me, tell me how Jinling was.”

Molina sighed and opened her mouth.

“What do you want to know?”

The girl replied nervously, “Anything about him.

“He’s been away from Princeton for so many years, is he doing okay?”