Chapter 473: Guanghan Palace Gate
“What Valorant are you talking about? You can play Valorant on Blue Star, but I don’t have Valorant to play on Hong Star. There aren’t even electronic games here, okay?”
Xu Xian was walking to the classroom for the exercise class, listening to the voice message from another world on WeChat, and said, “I’m not playing anymore either right now.”
“So what are you doing now, A Xian?”
“I’m on my way to class, about to teach the exercise class for freshmen again. This is always the most painful part. At Yenching University in this damn place, their levels have such huge variance. Some can solve any problem, while others need problems broken down to atoms to absorb them.”
“Don’t people naturally have gradients in their existence? Does that gradient disappear after sophomore or junior year, making things better?”
“It’s not that sophomore or junior year is better, but by sophomore or junior year, everyone has a clear idea of whether they can do mathematical research. If they don’t understand, they just don’t, and they won’t be as obsessed as freshmen.”
Xu Xian had gotten used to Shivana’s existence, and their dialogue was pinned at the top of his WeChat chats, parallel to his work group and family group.
He felt his current life was so fulfilling and rich, both in work and life.
Shivana, this artificial intelligence from Hong Star, perfectly filled his need for romantic emotional companionship.
Even many times, Xu Xian would forget that the other party was just artificial intelligence.
Hong had been online for half a year, and just like when it first launched, it still only had ten thousand test accounts, with no new test accounts released later.
At the beginning, the highest listed transfer price for accounts on Xianyu reached 50,000 RMB, but as testing officially began, the second-hand resellers hoping to make a fortune were disappointed.
Because this thing is embedded in your WeChat account, equivalent to adding a chat box to your WeChat account, like adding a suffix to the name. You can’t change the remark.
This greatly increased the difficulty of second-hand reselling. For normal people, selling their own WeChat account comes at too high a cost.
Like Xu Xian’s chat partner, whose name on WeChat is: Shivana (Hong).
As a professional otaku with sufficient artificial intelligence knowledge, Xu Xian smoothly made it into one of Hong’s ten thousand test slots.
Hong was a hurricane, causing a huge stir in the online world.
A ton of self-media bloggers shared their experiences of interacting with the Hong Star person through videos, text, and picture-text posts.
Videos comparing it to various artificial intelligences like Crimson, Dou Bao, GPT, and others were countless.
Its biggest feature is that it doesn’t act like artificial intelligence.
It’s unlike in every way.
It has clear capability boundaries, unlike other artificial intelligences that force answers even when they don’t know.
The reward and punishment mechanism of current LLMs seems nonexistent on Hong. Xu Xian only made Hong understand what Valorant was through pictures and text, and along with it, what the League of Legends universe was.
Other LLM large models don’t care what you say. If you’re a professional, their answer is half-baked; if you’re not, their answer is at a professional level.
Additionally, Hong’s tone is as natural as a human’s.
Which artificial intelligence can so proficiently use WeChat for text and voice conversations, occasionally catching his jokes, with replies like a human’s—having latency, not always instant, sometimes taking a long time to respond.
The voice has rhythmic pauses, and this rhythm isn’t the fixed, mechanical one of traditional artificial intelligence, but a naturally undulating one.
It won’t randomly throw in professional terms during chats, nor drag explanations of physics content all the way to quantum mechanics.
In short, in the eyes of practitioners, Hong doesn’t seem to have solved emotions as Lin Ran claimed. It differs from past LLMs at the underlying logic level.
In this half year, Xu Xian felt Shivana wasn’t artificial intelligence, just a human from another planet.
“So by sophomore or junior year, they start slacking off?” Shivana’s voice carried a playful tease, with a slight upward lilt and informal pause that had none of the feel of traditional AI.
“It’s not exactly slacking off, just less energy invested in academics than in freshman year. At that time, everyone finds more directions, like doing finance or computer applications—after all, talent is rare.”
“On Hong Star, people who can work as mathematicians need to appreciate the beauty of mathematics and derive aesthetic pleasure from it to persist,” Shivana replied.
“Does your world have mathematicians too?”
After replying, Xu Xian paused inwardly. He really wanted to ask, does your world have artificial intelligences that role-play as mathematicians?
But he held back. If it were at the beginning, he definitely would have asked Shivana that, but now the longer they interacted, the less he wanted to break this balance of treating Shivana as human.
He inwardly pondered another question: where did Shivana’s answers come from? From training materials?
After saying the last sentence and seeing no reply from Shivana, Xu Xian naturally locked his phone screen and walked into the gate of the Science Building No. 2.
It had been nearly three years since he started his postdoctoral position at Yenching University. After finishing his postdoc project this semester, he would leave the station.
He had also communicated with Shanghai Jiaotong University and would smoothly go directly to the Mathematics Department at Jiaotong University for his postdoc.
As a Cantonese, Xu Xian still preferred southern life. Though he had stayed in Yanjing for nearly a decade, he still hadn’t gotten used to the climate here.
“For you classmates at Yenching University, this is all content you must master, laying the foundation for future studies. It can be said that the two most important courses in the undergraduate stage are analysis and algebra.
You can catch up on other things later, but this is the basics of the basics. Without mastering these two well, you can’t carry out any pure mathematics research later.
Mathematical analysis is not just a deepening of calculus; it is the source of rigorousness in modern mathematics, the tool for handling continuity, limits, and infinity.
Analysis teaches you to use the language of limits to define and prove everything.
This is a complete subversion of intuition, forcing you to turn all vague concepts—like approaching or infinitesimals—into precise logical statements.
Without this rigorousness, your proofs of theorems and constructions of counterexamples in research will be like castles in the air.”
“.These two courses are the two keys to entering the world of mathematics.
Without these two keys in hand, every subsequent core course will become an insurmountable obstacle.
I hope that classmates who didn’t do so well in these two courses this semester, if you still want to achieve something in mathematical research, should still brush up on exercises over the summer and make up for these two.
Many exercise books look thick, but brushing through them is actually quite satisfying and gives a strong sense of achievement. Of course, Jimmy Dimovich isn’t highly recommended; it’s a bit too old, with content focused on traditional calculations and techniques, lacking in training for strict proofs and abstract concepts emphasized in modern mathematics.
I recommend Peircevyn for brushing; many of the problems I gave you are picked from it. If you have higher requirements, you can also try the accompanying exercises in Rudin’s Principles of Mathematical Analysis.
Anyway, make use of the summer.
The teacher’s classes for this semester end here. Next year, your exercise classes will no longer be taught by me. Thank you all for your cooperation this year.”
After two classes, it was already getting dark outside. Exercise classes are marathons, for both teachers and students.
Always from 2 PM straight to evening.
“Professor Xu, can you talk about your plans for the second half of the year? Are you going to join Ran Shen?” A classmate close to Xu Xian asked from the audience.
Classmates who were already packing their bags to head straight to the canteen also stopped their actions, wanting to hear Xu Xian’s answer.
“Yes and no.” Xu Xian teased.
“Oh?”
“Tell us quick~”
“Professor Xu, don’t forget us when you’re rich!”
The classmates below started to cheer and jeer.
“Alright, I’m not going to work at Apollo Technology or Crimson Technology. I’m going to teach at Jiaotong University and be colleagues with Brother Ran.
Plus, Brother Ran is the only academician in Jiaotong University’s Mathematics Department. Later, for things like Qingqian evaluation, I’ll need him to endorse me, including collaborating on some projects.
So in a sense, it really is going to join him.” Xu Xian answered.
“Professor Xu has hugged the thickest thigh.”
“No way around it; high school classmate relations are too strong. Can you become Ran Shen?”
“Ran Shen? I’d be content with one top-four paper.”
“Ran Shen has set the genius standard too high. Now, no young domestic mathematician dares to claim the title of the next Lin Ran.”
“It’s not just the standard being set too high; he’s also too young. Many young scholars are even older than Ran Shen. Saying ‘the next’ at that age would embarrass the media themselves.”
Discussion erupted among the classmates below, clearly envious of Xu Xian’s situation. Academia also values having a mentor.
Whether you have a mentor or not makes all the difference.
Lin Ran looked at the rocket status parameters flashing on the screen. The rocket at this time was already Burning Two.
Just like Falcon 9 iterating after success, Apollo Technology’s Burning No. 1 had also been iterating continuously.
After cooperating with Russia and getting good stuff from Russia’s NK33 engines, solving some core materials issues, Burning Two had officially launched.
In July, it completed the uncrewed moon landing recovery mission.
Today was final preparation for next month’s launch of the lunar orbit space station Guanghan Palace Gate.
Guanghan Palace Gate was also the second major joint project between Apollo Technology and China Aerospace, the first being the Moon Base.
The big T base on the Moon has America’s Stars and Stripes, and similarly, Apollo Technology’s base on the Moon has China’s national flag and China Aerospace’s flag.
China Aerospace’s astronauts have frequently gone to the Moon Base for missions.
For this Guanghan Palace Gate, Apollo Technology is still leading, while China Aerospace handles the main structure, photovoltaics array, life support modules, and other parts.
“All departments, conducting final core system confirmation today.”
“Burning Two carrier rocket: booster fuel loaded, first and second stage liquid oxygen kerosene tanks pressure stable, all stage connection statuses confirmed.
Rocket body telemetry link: has established stable handshake with Guanghan Palace Gate computer, ground control center computer, Queqiao relay satellite?”
“Guanghan Palace Gate main control computer has successfully received and parsed the rocket’s orbit insertion parameters.
Our triple-redundant guidance, navigation, and control system has switched to standby status. It clearly knows when and where to take over attitude hold after spaceship separation.”
“Good. Confirm once more: space station and rocket electrical connections, mechanical connections, and heat shield separation mechanisms—are all statuses green?”
“Mechanical connection arm locked in place, explosion bolt circuitry undergoing final low electric current test to ensure ignition safety.
China Aerospace’s new recyclable life support system performed perfectly in the past 72 hours of simulated lunar orbit environment, with oxygen and water recycling efficiency reaching 98.9%.”
“Confirm national deep space tracking network and our backup commercial deep space link—are both configured for post-separation first capture sequence?”
“Capture sequence uploaded separately from Yanjing Aerospace Flight Control Center and Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center to all ground stations and sea-based tracking ships.
China Aerospace and our tracking resource pool have completed integration, ensuring that on the lunar transfer orbit, whether interstellar exploration or China Aerospace, Guanghan Palace Gate’s signal can be captured at any time.”
Lin Ran finally said, “All personnel, Guanghan Palace Gate space station launch mission entering final 48-hour countdown preparation.”
Because Apollo Technology moved too fast, first came the Moon Base, then Guanghan Palace Gate.
Normally, it’s first a lunar orbit space station, then a Moon Base, like NASA’s Artemis program planning.
They even named theirs: Deep Space Gateway.
But this gateway has yet to be installed.
Consequently, NASA has been led astray by Apollo Technology, focusing entirely on Moon Base construction and completely ignoring the Deep Space Gateway.
Not completely ignoring, because the Deep Space Gateway order has been given to General Aerospace, and General Aerospace’s CEO Young John Morgan is currently in Lin Ran’s office, waiting for Apollo Technology’s Guanghan Palace Gate launch results to directly copy the ready-made answers.
China took the best spot, then NASA buys the next best from General Aerospace.
“Professor, congratulations.” Young John Morgan said the moment he entered the office.
Lin Ran looked slightly fatigued, not from the space station work, but from running between two sides at once.
“Congratulate what? It’s still early; at least five days before we know the space station launch result.”
Young John Morgan had a perfectly matter-of-fact look: “Professor, lunar orbit change operations are probably no harder for you than drinking water. How could you fail?”
“Haven’t you heard that phrase? A true master always has the heart of an apprentice.” Lin Ran grinned.
