I’m Really a Superstar

Several days later.

At home.

The car was already waiting outside.

Wu Zeqing smiled as she helped him with his luggage. “Everything is packed.”

Zhang Ye smiled and said, “Alright.”

His mother reminded him repeatedly, “You better not cause any trouble!”

“Aiya, I know,” Zhang Ye said impatiently.

His mother said, “You had better not get into another fight this time!”

Zhang Ye rolled his eyes. “It’s the Nobel Prize award ceremony. Why would I be fighting?”

His mother harrumphed, “When have you not caused trouble whenever you’re overseas?”

“Enough.” His father said, “Our son still has a flight to catch.”

Sisi said in her childish voice, “Daddy, when are you coming home?”

Zhang Ye lowered his head to give her a kiss. “Daddy will be home in another two days. Be good and listen to Mommy, Nana, and Pops. Daddy will bring you a little present when I get back.”

Sisi nodded hard. “Mhm!”

Zhang Ye waved and said, “I’m off.”

His father said, “If you really can’t win, then so be it.”

Zhang Ye smiled. “I know.”

He was about to set off for England. This time, Zhang Ye maintained a very good attitude ahead of the award ceremony. With only so much time and so much that he could do, he had done everything that he needed to do and could do. Everything would depend on the Nobel Prize Committee’s decision. He had already done his best, so there was nothing more he could do even if they chose not to award it to him.

…

In the evening.

At the airport.

Zhang Ye and his colleagues boarded the plane.

Zhang Ye’s seat was in the first-class cabin. Due to there being very few direct flights from Beijing to England, there were not too many tickets available either. This flight was operated by British Airways, so Ha Qiqi and Little Wang were both booked in economy. If it weren’t for Zhang Ye’s popularity, he would probably not have even qualified for a upgrade. The Nobel Foundation had only provided an economy seat.

Little Wang brought a blanket over. “Here, I brought this for you.”

Zhang Ye smiled and said, “I already have one here.”

“It’s too thin. Cover yourself another layer. It will get really cold at night,” Little Wang said.

Ha Qiqi smiled and said, “We’ll be heading back to our seats then. Call for us if there’s anything you need.”

Zhang Ye said, “Go on then. Rest early tonight.”

Ha Qiqi said, “Alright.”

Zhang Ye said, “If it’s too much of a squeeze there, let me know. I’ll change seats with you two.”

Little Wang said, “Aiya, there’s no need.”

Ha Qiqi laughed and said, “You don’t have to worry about us.”

The two of them went back to the economy class.

At this moment, an English stewardess came over to help ensure that all of the passengers had their seatbelts on. The flight was about to take off.

Zhang Ye checked his watch. He knew that the plane would be landing tomorrow morning, so he pulled up the blanket and reclined his seat to catch some z’s.

Half an hour.

An hour.

After who knows how long, he was awoken by the sound of people speaking near him.

A few foreigners were talking with each other. Their voices were not that loud, and it was obvious that they were trying to keep it down. But as the few of them were seated very close to Zhang Ye, he could still hear their conversation.

“There’s no solution to this model!”

“I feel that this train of thought is correct.”

“I don’t think it is. It was headed in the wrong direction ever since the beginning.”

“Yes, this is still an impossible to calculate three-dimensional quantum system.”

“I’m hoping to use the exact diagonalization techniques to find the quantum system’s low energy state.”

They were all speaking in English. Some of them had an average command of English, while others spoke it better. They didn’t seem to be from the same country. Two of the foreigners were by themselves, while the other two were probably teacher-student. The older of those two was debating with the others while the younger one did not say anything at all. He just raised his head and looked at them as he drew and wrote into a notebook while listening to them. It seemed like he was jotting down their viewpoints.

Zhang Ye also got rather interested the more he listened.

Unable to sleep, he casually joined in on the conversation by saying something in English.

Zhang Ye said, “How about using a density matrix renormalization group ¹ ?”

The few foreigners looked at the youth in astonishment.

The gray-haired foreigner who was the oldest of the group said, “You know what we’re talking about?”

His student asked, “You’re also a physicist?”

Zhang Ye smiled. “Something like that. I know a little.”

The 40-year-old foreign lady who was sitting at the front got excited and turned around to pass Zhang Ye a piece of paper. “Have a look at my algorithms and model.”

Zhang Ye took it and scanned it. His eyes lit up. “Interesting.”

The gray-haired man immediately said, “That model of hers is wrong. It definitely has to be wrong.”

That last foreigner, who was a balding man, said, “I still think there’s some feasibility to, and it’s a possible breakthrough. I’ll be preparing a class on this topic when I get back.”

Zhang Ye looked at the calculations for a long time and suddenly shook his head. “This method is pretty interesting, but it still won’t work. You’re trying to reduce the degrees of freedom in the quantum system and attempting a renormalization technique here in the reduced space. In this iterative process, you would want to employ a reduction method to retrieve the true low energy state of the system, but the NRG ² way is generally only suitable for a complex system. When it is used for a grid system like this, it often returns results of rather poor accuracy.”

When the four of them heard this, they were astonished.

The lady exclaimed, “You actually understood that?”

Zhang Ye smiled and said, “I’ve done research on it for a similar project.”

The bald man said, “There will surely be a slight error, but it should be fixable.”

Zhang Ye shook his head. “For this kind of error, it wouldn’t be fixable even if there was only a difference of 0.01.”

The gray-haired man said in a serious tone, “What are your thoughts then?”

“I think,” Zhang Ye said, “we possibly split the system into two subsystems, or blocks, with one being the system and the other being the surroundings. These two blocks would then combine to be known as a superblock. Now a candidate for the ground state of the superblock, which is a reduced version of the full system, may be found. The density matrix renormalization is then applied after that to select the most important states to be kept at the end of each step.”

The lady said excitedly, “This is a marvelous way of approaching it!”

The gray-haired man frowned. “But there are still problems with this method.”

Zhang Ye did not shy away from it. “Yes, it remains an unsolvable problem. For example, when it comes to specific applications, it would be very difficult to build a model for it.”

The bald man immediately said, “Let me do some calculations first!”

The gray-haired man said, “There’s no need to calculate anymore. This kid is right. It will be very difficult to establish a working model.”

They just couldn’t stop chatting.

They analyzed.

They debated.

They studied the problem.

They did calculations.

They chatted all night, and in the end, no one slept at all.

The seats were littered with model drawings and algorithms, filling up over fifty pieces of paper.

It wasn’t until the plane landed that they finally snapped out of it.

The gray-haired man looked out the window. “We’ve arrived?”

The bald man sighed and said, “How time passes.”

The lady said, “Thank you all so much. I have gained a lot of new ideas today on this subject. Let’s exchange contact info and stay in touch. When can we meet again?”

But the gray-haired man just smiled. “I’m afraid we’ll still be seeing each other a lot these few days, right?”

The bald man said with a laugh, “I think so too.”

The lady looked at Zhang Ye and the others. “You are?”

“My name is Hans.” The gray-haired man pointed at his student next to him and said, “This is my student, and we’re here to attend the Nobel Prize award ceremony.”

The lady said in surprise, “Oh, you’re Professor Hans! The world’s leading authority in physics?!”

The gray-haired man laughed and said, “I dare not accept that title.”

The lady introduced herself. “My name is Anna, and I’m also one of the nominees for the Nobel Prize in Physics.”

Hans said in surprise, “So you’re Anna?”

The bald man also looked at her. “The Anna who specializes in quantum physics?”

Anna said, “That’s me.”

The bald man said, “My name is Paige.”

Anna exclaimed, “That’s you? Professor Paige? I’ve read your paper!”

Paige said, “I’ve read yours too.”

Anna said with a wry smile, “Your reputations precede you. So you’re all here to attend the Nobel Prize award ceremony.” She looked at Zhang Ye and the others. “I was wondering what a coincidence this was. How could there possibly be so many physicists taking the same flight together? Our country does not have direct flights to England, which is why I am transferring flights in China.”

Hans smiled and said, “Me too.”

Paige noticed that Zhang Ye had already started to take his luggage. He couldn’t help but ask, “And which professor might you be?”

Zhang Ye smiled and introduced himself. “Zhang Ye.”

Anna asked, “Are you also a nominee for the Nobel Prize?”

Zhang Ye smiled and gave a nod.

The three world-famous physicists looked at each other, obviously not having heard of his name before. However, they also knew that there were too many famous physicists in the world, and they couldn’t possibly know everyone. If nominated for a Nobel Prize, none of them would be a pushover. All of them must surely have made significant contributions in some aspects to the field of physics.

Anna said happily, “Let’s mingle more over the next few days.”

Hans nodded with a smile. “Our ride should have arrived already. Let’s continue the talk later.”

Paige said, “Alright!”

Zhang Ye smiled and said, “No problem.”

A moment later, the cabin’s hatch was opened.

Zhang Ye and the few physicists chatted as they got off the plane.

On the way, they discussed yet another problem. This time, Zhang Ye and Hans had a different stand on the matter. Anna supported Zhang Ye’s point of view, while Paige supported Hans’s. The group started yet another round of debates at the baggage carousel.

In the distance.

Ha Qiqi and Little Wang also came over.

Little Wang said startled, “Who is Director Zhang talking with?”

Ha Qiqi did not know whether to laugh or cry. “Who knows?”

Little Wang said with a sigh, “Director Zhang is so good at conversation. He can make friends everywhere he goes.”

The two of them did not know what the group was talking about. They knew that it was English, but they could not understand any of the technical vocabulary used in the conversation. After getting their luggage, they followed Zhang Ye and the others out of the airport.

The person from the pick-up service had already arrived.

There were two cars over there.

An Englishman raised a placard with Zhang Ye’s name on it.

Zhang Ye went up to him. “You must have waited a long time.”

The Englishman said, “You’re Mr. Zhang Ye, right?”

Zhang Ye laughed. “Yes, that’s me.”

The Englishman smiled. “Please enter the car.”

Beside them, Hans, Anna, and the other two men wanted to get in as well.

But they were stopped by the driver of the other car.

The English cabbie said, “You all must be Professors Anna, Hans, and Paige, right? I’m here to take you all to the hotel. Please enter this car.”

Zhang Ye waved to them. “I’ll see you all later.”

Hans and the others were taken aback. He asked, “Why aren’t we traveling in the same car?”

Anna clearly hadn’t had enough of the conversation yet either. “Aren’t there still seats available in there?”

The English cabbie looked at the car carrying Zhang Ye and explained, “Oh, he’s not taking the same car as you all.”

Paige asked in a speechless manner, “Why is that? We’re all physicists, so wouldn’t it be better for us to be taking the same car?”

The English cabbie was taken aback. “Physicists? That car isn’t arranged for picking up physicists.”

“Ah?” Anna was stunned.

Hans said with a chuckle, “How is that possible!”

The English cabbie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He said, “That cab is for the nominees of the Nobel Prize in Literature.”

Paige said stunned, “The Nobel Prize in Literature? Did you all make a mistake?”

The English cabbie wiped at his sweat. “It can’t be wrong.”

Anna said, “He’s obviously a physicist. We’ve been talking about the frontiers facing the field of physics for the entire night!”

“I had a look at the sign just now,” the English cabbie said with a wry smile. “That person’s name is Zhang Ye, right?”

Hans said dumbfoundedly, “Right, he’s called Zhang Ye!”

The English cabbie coughed and said, “Then I definitely did not get it wrong. He’s a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Don’t you all know him? He was the one who wrote Gone with the Wind.”

Gone with the Wind?

He was the one who wrote Gone with the Wind?

The trio of Hans, Anna, and Paige nearly spat out a mouthful of blood upon hearing that!

We’ve been talking about physics the entire journey here!

But you’re telling us that he’s actually involved in the literary field?

Are you fucking kidding us!

Looking at the sedan that Zhang Ye was in driving off into the distance, the four of them were utterly confused!