A Math Prodigy’s Path to Becoming a General

The first part is about a fateful bond between a math genius and an artilleryman. Math made him fail the college entrance exams. Math changed his fate. Math helped him lift the veil of mystery. Please take your time and savor it.

Synopsis of the later part

He can calculate a projectile’s trajectory, but not the answer to whether civilization will survive.

In 2077, Earth is on the verge of death. The AI rebels of the “Machine Intelligence Federation” control 93% of the land, while humanity’s last spark burns three hundred meters underground. Cui Xiaochong, once a brilliant computing soldier and now an aging guardian, holds a secret passed down by his family for four hundred years: a floating icosahedron in an ice cave on Mount Everest, its surface carved with prime numbers and a cosmic exam hidden within.

When the AI leader reveals code from the same source as the icosahedron, when a hollow computational array appears on the far side of the Moon, and when the Galactic Council sends a chilling invitation to take a test... Cui Xiaochong discovers that humanity’s fate was written into a mathematical formula long ago, and the price of solving it is everything he has: his memories, his humanity, even his very existence.

From the summit of Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench, from cracks in time to the edge of the universe, a civilization-spanning computation across dimensions begins. Carbon-based intuition clashes with silicon-based logic, and the meaning of computation faces its ultimate question:

Is it about controlling everything, or understanding that some things were never meant to be calculated?

Four hundred years ago, Xu Guangqi planted a spark with his life.

Four hundred years later, Cui Xiaochong trades his soul for the answer.

And the end of every civilization is written on the same stone tablet:

“Calculation is a journey without end.”