Super God-Level Top Student

Perhaps to others, having the opportunity to interact with professors and even academicians as a student seems quite thrilling.

But for Qiao Ze, it was nothing but trouble.

In Huaxia, a place where seniority rules all, Qiao Ze didn't mind adhering to this principle as long as it didn't interfere with his research. Write three papers, earn a Ph.D., and then secure a professorship—that was his plan. Then he could sit at the same table as other professors.

No one would feel uneasy about his status anymore, and that would be just fine.

Next year, he would be twenty years old. There weren't many who became professors at that age, but history had seen its share. It wasn't anything extraordinary.

That's what Qiao Ze thought.

Just when he felt this year should pass without any waves, a minor accident still occurred.

Li Jiangao's Jieqing project was anonymously challenged during the public notification period.

It was argued that the selection process was unfair, that there had been a prearranged outcome.

In principle, this wasn't a big deal. It was an academic matter and moreover anonymous; it could be ignored.

Speaking of which, the project that Li Jiangao applied for was indeed solid. Aside from the innovation aspect which seemed somewhat lackluster compared to Youwei's Group Wisdom and Dou Dou's meteoric emergence, there was no fault to find in other aspects.

It's the era of artificial intelligence, after all. Not long ago, ChatGPT4.0 made a splash, stirring up excitement among major language models around the world, including in Huaxia.

But this time, the matter was directly leaked onto the internet, which made all involved parties feel rather awkward.

Several influential social media personalities somehow got hold of a myriad of professors' chat records from some WeChat groups and then exposed them online in sync. This caused the organizing committee to be quite reactive. Even though they responded swiftly, screenshots had already spread everywhere online—too pervasive to suppress.

The contents of the chats were all about Qiao Ze being an expert reviewer for Li Jiangao's project.

There were many sour remarks, various complaints about how, following Qiao Ze becoming an expert reviewer, Li Jiangao's project was bound to be approved.

No surprise there; it's difficult not to envy someone who seems to have an easy path to success.

Not to mention, this involved the coveted title of Jieqing.

It is well-known that in Huaxia, such a title represents not just a few million in research funding, but also signifies a future of boundless possibilities.

The development of the situation even led many to a mix of laughter and tears.

After learning about this, countless onlookers who followed the drama went straight to the Weibo page of Dou Dou, the world's first AI blogger, and began asking for its opinion on the matter.

Dou Dou's response was as sharp as ever.

"All I can say is that envy can indeed cause a rift between people and spur hopes of inciting others to demand so-called fairness. Regrettably, the person who leaked the chat screenshots hides behind the scenes. I searched the internet and couldn't find them; they lack the courage to stand up and wave the banner for fairness. They are even worse than Chen Sheng and Wu Guang. If only this person would come forward and shout, 'In a land of great lords and officials, is there no fairness at all?' I would surely hold them in higher regard. (︶^︶)"

Indeed, although the exposure by the influencers was sensational, the entire academic community maintained silence.

Even many professors opted to quietly leave the exposed chat groups to distance themselves from the incident.

It wasn't that they were afraid of Qiao Ze; rather, the incident itself was indeed dishonorable and broke the rules.

Behind closed doors, people grumble as a sign of trust in the environment. But making it public indicates dissatisfaction with the organizing committee's selection process.

The incident made Dou Dou's Weibo even more bustling, and naturally, Qiao Ze knew the entire story as well.

However, as for public opinion on the internet, Qiao Ze had never cared about it. He believed that Li would most likely not care either. From Qiao Ze's perspective, the project Li Jian Gao applied for was probably much more reliable than at least half of the other Jieqing projects, and Li Jian Gao's ability was certainly enough to deserve the title of Jieqing and even academician.

Plus, he had been in seclusion lately.

Working on the ζ function topic, after all, was a recent idea, and there were still many issues to work out in his approach.

Mainly, the mathematical tools at hand were insufficient. Although the Weil Conjecture had been proven, the path ahead was clearly still long. Relying solely on contour integration was clearly not enough to bridge the gap between Li(X) and π(x).

So although Qiao Ze was aware, he hadn't paid attention to this incident.

That was until the organizing committee gave him a call, asking for his views on the matter as a member of the expert panel that day.

They subtly conveyed the external skepticism and requested the organizing committee provide the records of the expert reviews that day.

Naturally, all the records existed, and they were stored according to regulations.

However, the discussions by the expert panel that day were indeed too brief.

If they were disclosed as they were, they probably wouldn't satisfy public scrutiny.

After patiently listening to the explanation from the other side, Qiao Ze asked, "So, is this how similar issues were handled in the past?"

"Not really," the person on the other end replied after a moment of silence.

So Qiao Ze gave his view, "I see, you're taking advantage of Professor Li because he's an honest man."

The person on the other side of this call didn't know what to say.

After all, keeping up with Qiao Ze's train of thought was certainly no simple feat.

Especially since from his voice and tone alone, it was hard to discern the emotions of the young man—whether he was angry, frustrated, or simply not too pleased...

In the end, they offered only a few words before concluding the conversation.