High Martial: I Grind Professions

'Sender... Li... Li Wen?!'

Her heart felt as if it were suddenly clenched by an invisible hand, and her breathing stopped.

With trembling fingers, she tapped open the message.

A concise and clear reply leaped into view:

[Invitation accepted. The topic will be submitted within three days. —Li Wen]

"AH—!!!"

A short, sharp shriek escaped the female assistant's throat uncontrollably.

It was particularly jarring in the quiet office.

She shot up from her seat, the legs of her chair letting out a piercing SCREECH as they scraped against the floor.

Her eyes were wide as saucers, glued to the line of text on the light screen.

Her face was a mask of utter shock and disbelief, as if she were witnessing the most incredible miracle.

A full ten seconds or more passed before her frozen thoughts began to stir again.

"He... he agreed? He agreed?! The Changning King agreed?!"

The immense shock instantly turned into wild joy.

She spun around abruptly, not caring that she had knocked over her chair or even that she had bumped into a stack of lab equipment beside her.

She stumbled out the door, her high heels tapping out a chaotic and urgent rhythm on the polished floor.

"Professor! Professor Liu!!"

She sprinted down the hallway, her clear voice, distorted with excitement, piercing the air. "He agreed! He agreed!!"

At that moment, in the main conference room at the end of the hall, Professor Liu Zhenhua, the forum's host and a senior academician at the Yanjing Advanced Research Institute, was frowning as he reprimanded several students for a minor mistake they'd made setting up the venue.

He was known for his rigorous scholarship and stern, unsmiling demeanor.

Hearing the undignified shouting and running approaching from down the hall, the professor's already serious face grew as dark as a thundercloud.

"Who is making that racket outside?! Have you no sense of propriety! Have you forgotten the Institute's rules?!"

Professor Liu flung open the conference room door and bellowed into the hallway, his voice laced with unquestionable authority.

Just then, the sprinting female assistant screeched to a halt, nearly crashing into the professor.

Her cheeks were flushed, her hair was a mess, and her chest heaved as she leaned against the doorframe, gasping for breath, completely oblivious to her appearance.

She just pointed excitedly back the way she came, babbling incoherently, "He... he agreed... Professor Liu... He... he agreed!"

"What was agreed to? Who agreed?!" Professor Liu's brows furrowed deeply as he took in his assistant's distraught state. "Pull yourself together! What is this panicked display! Is the sky falling? Speak clearly!"

"It's... it's the Changning King! Li Wen!" The female assistant finally caught her breath, practically shouting the words.

"He! He accepted our invitation! He's agreed to come to the forum and give a lecture!!"

"..."

Time seemed to freeze in that moment.

The stern, reprimanding expression on Professor Liu's face froze instantly, as if someone had hit a pause button.

His eyes, sharp as a hawk's and weathered by decades in academia,

stared intently at the female assistant, who looked ready to jump for joy.

The entire hallway fell silent.

The students he had been scolding, as well as other staff members who had peeked out to see what the commotion was about,

all stared dumbfounded, as if frozen in place.

Several long seconds passed.

"Wh-what?!" A gasp burst from Professor Liu's throat.

It was filled with incredulous joy and astonishment, his voice even cracking slightly. "The Changning King, Li Wen? He agreed to give a lecture?!!!"

Professor Liu's voice echoed through the quiet hallway.

He trembled slightly with excitement, taking an unconscious step forward and grabbing the female assistant's shoulders.

He was desperate to confirm this explosive news, completely forgetting that just moments ago he had been berating her for her lack of composure.

His grip was a little painful, but the assistant was too excited to care. She just nodded vigorously, desperately.

"It's absolutely true, Professor Liu! It was a system reply! He replied personally! He accepted the invitation!"

"He really... he really agreed..." he murmured, letting go of his assistant. He swayed slightly and instinctively reached for the doorframe to steady himself.

A tsunami of immense shock, followed by overwhelming joy, washed over him.

His face, usually so stern it bordered on rigid, was now a complex mixture of bewilderment, ecstasy, and even a hint of panic.

The onlooking students and staff finally snapped out of their daze, and an irrepressible wave of gasps and murmurs erupted:

"My god! The Changning King is coming here to give a lecture?"

"Am I dreaming? The Changning King? The one who slays Demon Kings like it's nothing?"

"Professor Liu... The professor looks like he's about to faint..."

"This forum is going to be explosive! Scholars from all over the Alliance are going to lose their minds!"

Because of a single reply from the Changning King, that entire floor of the Yanjing Advanced Research Institute was thrown into an unprecedented, immense, and blissful vortex of chaos.

This session might just become the first conference in history to be personally attended by an enthroned King.

A forum destined to be recorded in the annals of academic history had just begun, kicked off by a turn of events that was as absurd as it was thrilling.

And at this moment, far away in Changning City, Jiangnan Province, the man at the center of this storm—the Changning King, Li Wen—

was completely unaware of the uproar about to erupt in Yanjing.

All he was thinking about was the lecture topic he was about to submit and the anticipated experience points he would gain from it.

...

「Galactic Calendar Year 245, February 25th. Yanjing City Core Area.」

Sunlight streamed through a massive, arched glass curtain wall, illuminating a mega-sized academic conference hall large enough to hold several thousand people.

The air was filled with the rich aroma of coffee and the scent of paper and ink, mingled with a low, dense hum of conversation—a convergence of Planet Blue's brightest minds.

Every scholar invited to attend was either a leading expert in their field, renowned and distinguished, or possessed extraordinary potential.

They gathered in twos and threes, quietly discussing their latest research progress.

Or they sat alone, silently flipping through the conference brochures in their hands, waiting for the grand event to begin.

Just then, in the rear section of the hall near an aisle, sat a slightly heavyset, round-faced, middle-aged man.

He had small, squinted eyes and was nervously rubbing the sleeve of his neat, dark gray suit with a slightly sweaty palm.

'Come on, Wei Wu, you can do this. This is a rare opportunity, you have to seize it...'

Wei Wu muttered to himself, as if giving himself a final pep talk before battle, or perhaps trying to overcome the bone-deep awkwardness he felt.

His gaze traveled through the crowd, locking onto the very front of the hall, where a group of people were clustered together.

Taking a deep breath, as if having made up his mind, he shot up from his seat.

His movements were a bit rushed and clumsy as he turned sideways to squeeze past the other attendees in his row, then stepped into the aisle and began walking with clear purpose toward the front of the hall.

The crowd grew denser and the conversations louder as he neared the front rows.

Wei Wu was like a fish swimming upstream, struggling to navigate through the crowd of impeccably dressed and distinguished-looking people.

Finally, he squeezed his way to his destination—the outer edge of a small group of scholars who were passionately discussing something around an old man.

The group was clearly centered around an elderly man in a dark Zhongshan suit, his face stern and his hair impeccably combed.

The old man's eyes were sharp, and his every move carried the calm authority and dignity unique to a leading academic figure.

This was none other than one of the conference's most important guests, a titan of theoretical physics, Academician Wang Shouzhuo.

Wei Wu's heart began to pound like a drum, and his palms grew sweatier.

He forced himself to calm down, straightened his not-so-tall back, and braced himself as he squeezed into a gap at the edge of the conversation circle.

Mustering the greatest courage he had ever shown in his life, he spoke to the imposing old man:

"A-Academician Wang, hello! C-Could I possibly bother you for a moment?"

His voice trembled slightly with nervousness, carrying a faint, almost imperceptible regional accent.

Wang Shouzhuo turned at the sound of his voice and looked the strange, rather timid-looking middle-aged man up and down. His brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. "And you are?"

"Academician Wang, I... My name is Wei Wu. I'm a lecturer at Xiliang University, and I..." Wei Wu hurriedly introduced himself, speaking quickly for fear of being cut off.

"Xiliang University?" Wang Shouzhuo thought for a moment before an assistant-like figure next to him whispered a reminder.

Academician Wang nodded and cut Wei Wu off flatly:

"The person from Xiliang University who was qualified to receive an invitation should be Professor Huang Xinsheng."

"Ye-yes, Academician Wang!" Wei Wu nodded furiously, forcing a somewhat fawning smile as he explained:

"My mentor, Professor Huang, has been unwell recently and couldn't make the long journey, so he entrusted... he entrusted me, his student, to attend the conference in his place to learn and broaden my horizons."

He deliberately emphasized the word "entrusted," trying to add a sliver of legitimacy to his presence there.

"Hm," Wang Shouzhuo grunted, seeming accustomed to people attending on behalf of others. "Then what is it you want?"

His tone carried a certain inherent detachment.

Wei Wu took a deep breath, knowing the crucial moment had arrived.

He forced himself to ignore the scrutinizing gazes from those around him and spoke clearly, his voice filled with a humble hope:

"Academician Wang, I've been researching a field concerning the 'Nonlinear Intervention Model of Micro-Gravitational Field Perturbations on the Energy Flow Stability of Special Biological Tissues.'"

"I believe this field has a very unique entry point and immense potential for simulating cross-scale material effects!"

"Unfortunately, the basic experimental facilities at our Xiliang University... are simply unable to support in-depth research on this topic."

"I've noticed that you are a world-leading authority on the simulation of spatial stress fields at the quantum scale, and the construction of the underlying model for our research might..."

"...might just require your profound expertise in this area! So, Academician Wang, I'm taking the liberty of asking if you would look at my preliminary concept,"

"and see... see if there's any possibility of collaboration? Even if it's just to borrow some of your basic data or your computational platform..."