Quatrième campus

Chapitre 11

Jin Dun touched his earlobe, standing quietly without saying anything more, knowing that there wasn't enough evidence and that speaking would be useless. After hesitating for a moment, he added, "There's one more thing: I oppose the Matrix project."

Professor Park Woo-seok glanced at him with eyes as sharp as knives, and in that instant it was clear that he was not sick at all. A sickly person could not possibly have such a piercing gaze.

"The Matrix project involves synthesizing the human brain with a computer, implanting computer chips into the brain, and seamlessly integrating the two to upgrade the programming and replace human evolution. While technically feasible, it's not 100% guaranteed. Even if it succeeds technically, how will ethical, religious, human nature, and desire issues be addressed? Humanity will be completely programmed. Do we really no longer need God?"

Mr. said, "It's not about all humans doing this; it's a voluntary process. It's about legalizing the Matrix project medically and technologically."

"If some people are programmed while others evolve naturally, what if humanity mutates into two races and slaughters each other?" Jin Dun said.

Park Woo-seok gave a barely perceptible smile: "We've already considered your guess. Technically, we're prepared. The volunteers have remotely controlled termination programs in their brains." He stood up and said earnestly, "Faced with catastrophe, the most important goal now is to ensure the continued existence of humanity."

Jin Dun didn't hear Professor Park Woo-seok's words. He received a new message: "Special Agent 305 of the Global Investigation Bureau left a message for Jin Dun Detective: Professor War Cole is missing. Time of disappearance: 3:00 AM on [Date]. Chu Xunfeng, a classmate from the Philosophy Department of Leipzig University, also claims to have witnessed the suspect."

“A new development has just emerged: Professor Kohl of the Mathematics Department at Leipzig University of WAR has gone missing, and Chu Xunfeng, a classmate of Chu Xunfeng in the Philosophy Department at Leipzig University, claims to have witnessed the suspect.”

Harbis frowned. "I heard Chu Xunfeng's name again? He's always involved in these things."

“He’s Saviel’s boyfriend, Chinese, and studying Classical Philosophy at Leipzig University,” Jin Dun said. “I’ll go first and find out the truth. I’ve said everything I’ve said, and I will stick to it.” Jin Dun’s eyes shone with an unwavering determination that even metal and stone could not break.

Habis gestured for him to wait: "Professor Nie's computer is locked with quantum cryptography, and no one else can crack it. Go and study it, and see if you can find anything. Also, Chu Xunfeng is always involved. Generally speaking, people like him are the most suspicious."

As Jin Dun stepped out of the conference room, a cool breeze hit him, and he suddenly remembered something. He called the French branch of the Global Investigation Bureau: "I am Jin Dun. Strengthen the protection of Professor Elber of the University of Paris. There can be no mistakes. He could be the next professor to go missing."

"It seems that the other side is getting increasingly aggressive."

Chu Xunfeng said he witnessed the other party firsthand, which is a good clue. I just hope the kid is alright. I hope he's still in Leipzig.”

Jin Dun stood alone in the night, his eyes filled with a bewilderment he himself could not shake off, like a lone traveler walking in a desolate valley where all paths were deserted in a vast snowstorm. He held a map in his hand, yet could not see anything clearly. "What exactly is the connection between Leibniz 300 years ago and the Book of Changes, the man in blue, and magnetic interference?"

Note:

① The *I Ching* discusses principles, images, numbers, and divination. In its form and methodology, it appears to be a treatise on Yin and Yang and the Eight Trigrams, thus often mistakenly believed to be a method used by ancient Chinese to divine good and bad fortune. However, its core discussion revolves around the use of a worldview of "one divides into two," of opposition and unity, and the methodology of materialism and dialectics to reveal the natural laws governing the development and change of things in the universe, the principles of opposition and unity, and to use this worldview and the Eight Trigrams to predict various information about nature, society, and humanity itself.

② In the first chapter of Volume Three, Modern Philosophy, of Bertrand Russell's *History of Western Philosophy*, under the section on Leibniz, paragraph 2 states: Leibniz publicly proclaimed a system that was optimistic, orthodox, absurd, and superficial; another system, gradually unearthed by more recent editors from his manuscripts, was profound, coherent, Spinoza-esque, and possessed astonishing logic. Paragraph 45 states: Now we will discuss Leibniz's esoteric philosophy. In esoteric philosophy we see an explanation of his doctrine…and there is also an explanation in esoteric philosophy.

The Lost Ancient Silver Coin (Part 1)

Chu Xunfeng was still in Leipzig, and he examined Professor Cole's residence even more carefully than Detective 305.

Hellman said that Professor Cole didn't sleep at all that night and stayed in his study reading.

The curtains in the study were slightly torn, and the glass window wasn't properly secured. When Chu Xunfeng stood at the window and looked out, he could feel the winter wind squeezing in through the slats, howling in his ears.

There wasn't a speck of dust on the oak desk, and the desk lamp was dimmed to its lowest setting, emitting a faint orange-yellow glow.

The bookshelves were neatly filled with all sorts of natural science books, including biographies of Pythagoras, Newton, Gauss, Leibniz, Lagrange, Cauchy, Euler, Einstein, Fermat, and Shing-Tung Yau. They also included many works on number theory and arithmetic.

An English version of "The Origin of Calculus" lay on the table, the first article being Leibniz's 1684 paper "A Wonderful Type of Calculation for Maximals and Minimasses" published in "The Teacher's Journal".

The title of this paper also prominently features the German phrase Neue Kleidung des Newtons, which means "Newton's New Clothes." Chu Xunfeng gasped in shock.

Hermann exclaimed in surprise and grabbed Chu Xunfeng's hand tightly.

What does Newton's New Clothes really mean? It seems to have a kind of terrifying magic.

Chu Xunfeng suddenly remembered something and said to the detective, "Go and protect Professor Elber from the University of Paris! He might be the next target."

The Japanese-American detective gave him a sarcastic look: "Does the Global Bureau of Investigation need your guidance?"

Hermann said, "What's the use of you if you're like this?" Hermann's eyes blazed with anger, and he wanted nothing more than to call them cowards.

Chu Xunfeng's single eyelids revealed a hint of wickedness: "If anything happens to Professor Elber, you will be guilty of dereliction of duty."

The Japanese detective, codenamed 305, carefully examined Chu Xunfeng before opening his mobile terminal: "Reporting to headquarters, Chu Xunfeng, who has met with the suspect, requests that the Global Investigation Bureau strengthen protection for Professor Elber. He may be the next target."

"Headquarters replied that the Golden Shield detectives are temporarily unreachable, and the information has been uploaded to Chief Habis."

Chu Xunfeng thought to himself, "This guy who looks a bit dim-witted actually has a pretty high status. His information can be directly uploaded to the bureau chief."

Little did Chu Xunfeng know that Professor Nie's disappearance had already attracted worldwide attention. The detective's name was Koizumi Jiro, one of the best detectives in the Global Bureau of Investigation.

Koizumi Jiro glanced furtively at the exquisitely beautiful Hermann. Her pajamas accentuated her sexiness, revealing her shapely figure with her prominent breasts. Her irresistible youthful aura made him swallow hard. A wicked thought surged within him, causing his blood to rush and his body to race. He almost forgot his duty.

Why did Professor Cole laugh so maniacally when he disappeared? What kind of sorcery did the man in blue use? Remembering the pale face he saw at Saviel's window, Chu Xunfeng felt a chill run down his spine. He couldn't let anything happen to Saviel.

After settling the still-shaken Herman in, Chu Xunfeng returned to "Yizhuang". The door was ajar, and the lights were still on.

He called out softly to Saviel, but there was no answer. He immediately realized something was wrong and kicked the door open with a bang. The door wasn't locked. Saviel was gone. He touched the sheets; their fragrance lingered, and their warmth remained.

Where did she go? Didn't I tell her not to wander off?

He saw something glowing on the ground, face down, with radiating patterns shining down from the silver coin, illuminating the darkness like divine light. It lay there quietly, flickering in the gloom, exuding an unfathomable eeriness. It was the ancient silver coin that Professor Nie had hung on the window frame.

Chu Xunfeng picked it up, his face grim and his brows furrowed: "What secret is Xavier hiding?"

He remembered it hanging on the window frame, all alone in the air, sometimes turning half a circle to the left, sometimes half a circle to the right. He had suspected Professor Cole or Hellman had taken it, but it seemed it was Saviel who had taken it. Why would she do that?

What was she hiding from him? Chu Xunfeng sat in the room, lost in thought: her recent behavior had been strange. And then there was her handbag. As a girl's accessory, it wasn't important. Why did Saviel leave in such a hurry with her handbag? There were only two possibilities: one, Saviel had already planned to leave, and as a woman who cared about her appearance, "eyebrow scissors" and "eyeliner" were essential and needed to be carried with her. The other possibility was that her handbag contained something important that needed to be kept close to her.

He remembered how Xavier had snatched the camera from him when he was taking pictures of the boy that day. It seemed there must be a secret hidden in the handbag? What was so important to her that she was keeping it from him?

And that night, she suddenly became so tender towards him, like lovers separated by life and death, tears streaming down her face, as if she would never see him again, and worried that they couldn't be together. She seemed to already know what was about to happen, knew they couldn't be together. But why did she do this? Why did she hide it from him? Saviel loved him, though many times she was hesitant and reluctant, it was all due to her Eastern heritage. Her love for him was ingrained in her very being; it was his poetic intuition.

This problem troubled him until dawn.

He was still in a daze when Hermann burst into the room and he realized what was happening. The outspoken girl was extremely frustrated: "Savill is missing too?" She didn't care whether Chu Xunfeng was dressed or not.

"Yes," Chu Xunfeng said dejectedly, "she disappeared after I came back from your place last night."

"Someone else has gone missing. What's going on?" Hermann was extremely anxious, his big eyes blazing with anger.

"Suddenly I turn back and weep, for there is no woman on this high hill!" Chu Xunfeng suddenly wanted to cry.

"Only Confucius could understand what you're saying. Don't be sad, you have single eyelids..."

Hellman inadvertently revealed Xavier's nickname for Chu Xunfeng.

"Sasha..." Chu Xunfeng pulled Herman into his arms. "Don't leave me. Don't..."

Chu Xunfeng's burning body instantly enveloped Hermann, making it hard for her to breathe.

"It's me! Chu Xunfeng. I've been missing my wife like crazy..." Hermann, who was usually fearless and always loyal to the boys in the department, blushed. Chu Xunfeng's aura was too intimidating.

Only then did Chu Xunfeng realize that the person he was holding in his arms was Herman. He felt as if he had been stung by a scorpion and threw Herman away.

Where did Saviel go?

"I don't know, maybe they were kidnapped by the men in blue?" Chu Xunfeng was still completely confused.

"Another man in blue?"

"Go ask those incompetent detectives. They've been messing around all night and still don't know what they've come up with."

Jiro Koizumi, sporting a standard Japanese Jintan mustache, and two other detectives were filming the scene with infrared cameras. They looked very serious and meticulous, as if facing a formidable enemy.

"Any findings?" Herman asked, quite disdainful of the detectives' serious demeanor.

“Please leave, don’t interfere, young lady,” Koizumi Jiro said to Hermann in a stern manner, “if you want your father to return safely.”

Hermann blushed, her hands clenched into fists, ready to strike at any moment. She had no idea what her father's safety had to do with this Rendanhu.

Jiro Koizumi paid no attention to Herman's punches, but he was quite impressed with Herman's beautiful figure. Herman's youthful and voluptuous body made him secretly rub his heart again, and his eyes were filled with a fawning smile.

When he glanced back at Chu Xunfeng, his gaze was sharp as a knife, piercing through his very core: "Professor Elber also disappeared last night. You were absolutely right."

“A guess—!” Herman sneered. “SHIT, why don’t you try guessing?”

Jiro Koizumi had never received such treatment before; he was completely dumbfounded. SHIT! What kind of talk is this? Such a beautiful woman is using such foul language.

“It’s related to Leibniz,” Chu Xunfeng said.

"Leibniz?" Jiro Koizumi didn't react at first, and after a moment of confusion, he pretended to understand, "Leibniz!"

"A famous figure in the history of mathematics," Chu Xunfeng said no more. Who would believe that a disappearance case in the 21st century was related to Leibniz 300 years ago?

"Leibniz is a famous figure in the history of mathematics, not the man in blue you're talking about?" Jiro Koizumi was confused again.

“No.” Chu Xunfeng’s eyes gleamed with a penetrating wisdom. “It’s related to the man in blue.”

He saw another detective still using an infrared camera to film the scene, then transferring the images to a computer for 3D reconstruction using VisualfoxPro analysis software to see who was at the scene.

Chu Xunfeng recalled the blurry blue shadow that wasn't visible on the surveillance camera at the Xianyang Hotel.

He told Jiro Koizumi, "It's no use. The man in blue has taken advantage of the dispersed distribution of static matter to hide his on-site records, making it very difficult to obtain his true image."

"What virtual dispersion distribution of still matter? That's superstition." Jiro Koizumi pretended to know a lot about the theory of virtual dispersion distribution. "Young man, that's superstition."

These detectives all knew that the man in blue was logically rigorous and had extremely strong calculation abilities. Every step he took was meticulously calculated, and even with the elaborate trap set at Leipzig Airport, they found nothing. The investigation bureau's actions were all known to him, and the ambush points he set were calculated with perfect clarity. Yet, Koizumi Jiro had never heard of any kind of dispersed distribution of static matter.

Chu Xunfeng knew the other party wouldn't understand "the virtual dispersion distribution of static matter": "Do you know about the Josephus ring? According to the Josephus ring theorem, if you stand in a calculated position, no one can touch you. It's like the Lingbo Weibu in Chinese martial arts novels; a camera can't capture the real image."

Jiro Koizumi was completely bewildered: "Um, Lingbo Weibu, I know! Lingbo Weibu..." He turned his head to change the subject, asking another detective, "Have you found anything yet?"

"All the infrared images were restored using an oxidant, and the information images were recompressed and recombined. No physical images were found," the detective said.

Jiro Koizumi shook his head: "To reach Professor Cole's villa, this is the only way. To get to Yi Zhuang's window, this is also the only way. There's no trace of it. Does he really know the 'Lingbo Weibu' (a martial arts technique)?" The thorough materialist Jiro Koizumi sneered, "Absolutely impossible."

“Even if he is not a ghost, the development of modern probability theory and mathematical statistics has proven that the random distribution of physical matter can be illusory,” Chu Xunfeng said. “The man in blue chose a location on a Josephus circuit. He stood there, but the video could not capture his real image. That illusory shadow is not a dead soul, but a random distribution of static matter. This is the result of calculation.”

Koizumi Jiro pretended not to hear Chu Xunfeng's words.

Suddenly, the detective shouted, "We have images! There are two shadows!"

When the LCD monitor is set to CMYK② mode and both hue and saturation are set to maximum, a cyan shadow and a pink shadow can be clearly seen.

The green shadow is located at the corner of the flower bed's water reservoir, while the pink shadow is at the opposite corner of the yuzhu. The green shadow and the pink shadow are only 10 meters apart, forming a diamond-shaped diagonal relationship, which is exactly the closest distance.

Jiro Koizumi glanced smugly at Chu Xunfeng and said, "Modern technology is still reliable, much better than some empty theories." He then said to the detective, "Adjust it a bit more, maybe you can see it more clearly now."

The detective said, "This is already the best image we've manually adjusted; it only captures a fleeting moment."

Jiro Koizumi exclaimed in surprise again: "There are a few more words here?" He pointed to the opposite corner of Mengzhu, at the feet of Fenying, where the German word "Denkmal" was neatly drawn, which means "monument" in German.

Chu Xunfeng walked over and quietly observed for a moment. Suddenly realizing something, he said to Herman, "Let's go."

Note:

①The paper published in the Journal of Teachers in October 1684 is considered to be the earliest published calculus document in the history of mathematics.

② A color mode in graphics processing software that is different from RGB; its full name is printing color mode.

Part 9

The Ancient Bodhi Tree (Part 1)

On the way, Herman asked, "Where are we going?"

Chu Xunfeng said, "Find the hideout of the man in blue!"