Chapter 313 - 279: Hello, Master (3)
"JASRI in Japan, one machine."
"The Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, one machine."
He looked up.
"I’ve asked them all."
His tone was calm.
But Li Dong understood the weight of that simple phrase, "I’ve asked them all."
Lu Mingyuan was in his fifties and had been making samples on Au(111) substrates for over twenty years.
He knew hundreds, if not a thousand, of people in his field.
When he said "I’ve asked them all," it meant...
...he had cashed in all the favors he’d accumulated over more than twenty years.
And the answer was the same across the board.
"The machines are not available for external use."
"They can run the samples for us, but they get to keep all the raw data."
"And..."
Lu Mingyuan gave a wry smile.
"We’d have to get in line."
"And their schedule for this year is already full."
The office fell silent again.
Wu Kai added some more hot water to Old Lu’s cup.
For Lu Mingyuan to have swallowed his pride and called in so many favors was the absolute limit. He’d never gone this far in his life.
Li Dong took a deep breath.
"Teacher Lu, Teacher Wu."
"I understand."
Hearing this, Wu Kai breathed a small sigh of relief.
He had been afraid Li Dong would pour all his energy into this one problem, only to charge headfirst into a wall and end up broken and bleeding.
This was an obstacle that couldn’t be overcome with math and physics alone.
Wu Kai reached out and patted Li Dong’s shoulder.
"Li Dong."
"This can’t be rushed."
"First, let’s focus on systematically refining the physical path you’ve laid out."
"The rest of the work is meticulous."
He gestured toward the lab outside.
"Cheng Duo, Su Yanqing, and the others can work with me and Old Lu to process this entire data stream."
"You don’t have to keep watching over this part."
"Before we tackle the toughest nut, Old Lu and I need to map out our approach."
"Once we have a clear plan, we’ll bring you in."
He paused, then added.
"Of course, you’re welcome to come by anytime you want."
"If not, feel free to work on your own things."
Li Dong nodded.
He really didn’t need to stay and supervise anymore.
The remaining tasks involved implementing the data sets, calibrating the phase, and getting a clean decay curve.
The graduate students under Wu Kai and Lu Mingyuan were far more practiced at this kind of work than he was—an undergrad in name only.
The two professors were manning the main console.
Staying here now would just be getting in their way.
...
Li Dong didn’t hurry to leave for the rest of the day.
He did a quick tour of the lab.
Su Yanqing was re-calibrating the phase of the lock-in amplifier according to the polarization conditions of the new physical path.
Li Dong went over, took a look, and helped him adjust the parameter bias.
He also observed a set of Lu Heng’s scans for the oxidation state standard.
Over at the LT-STM, Shen Ying and Guo Han were huddled in front of the screen, working on the tail of the distance scan curve.
Li Dong watched their methods and saw nothing wrong.
What did surprise him was Zhang Yan. She had taken the "three-layer" model from paper and implemented it into the data stream script, and her code was much cleaner than he’d expected.
He made a mental note.
’Sister Yan is someone who can shoulder a heavy load.’
...
By the time he left the North Chemical Building, the sky had already grown dark.
Li Dong checked his phone.
6:40.
After a moment’s thought, he decided against heading toward the cafeteria.
He hadn’t slept well the past few days.
He’d gotten a kick out of his "lecture" last night and had slept soundly afterward, but it was the sleep of utter exhaustion—a final burst of energy before a crash.
If he didn’t catch up on sleep tonight, he’d fall apart tomorrow.
He headed for his dorm.
...
Dorm 404.
When Li Dong pushed open the door, Wang Hao was just stepping out of the shower.
The moment he saw Li Dong, he flinched instinctively.
Seeing him flinch, Li Dong couldn’t help but laugh.
"Haozi."
"Relax."
"I’m not giving a lecture today."
Hearing this, Wang Hao visibly relaxed.
He let out a long sigh, releasing all his pent-up frustration.
Li Dong couldn’t be bothered to deal with him.
He washed up.
Less than three minutes after climbing into bed, his breathing evened out.
Wang Hao listened for a while from the bottom bunk.
He snuck a peek at the top bunk.
Seeing that Brother Dong was truly asleep, he stealthily pulled his copy of Vakil out from under his pillow.
Tonight, he could finally study his own book in peace.
...
「In the days that followed.」
Li Dong would drop by Wu Kai’s lab every two or three days.
He never stayed long.
Just for an hour or two.
He’d go over, glance at the data, and check a few of the key exponential slopes.
Every time he visited, the three-segment κ curve generated by the high-performance server was a perfect match.
The decay slope of each segment aligned flawlessly with the trends he had calculated on his stack of scratch paper.
A flawless fit.
Looking at one data set after another, Wu Kai sighed to himself.
’This kid...’
’I really have no idea how his brain works.’
...
Meanwhile, Li Dong, who normally only met with the School of Mathematics group once a month, had started attending their meetings more often since he had some downtime.
The most pleasant surprise from the group came from Fu Chen.
During this time, Fu Chen had been following the main line of reasoning the group was pursuing.
At one of the transitional steps, he was expanding the local root number of the base change L-factor into the cyclic case.
In the middle of the expansion, he suddenly paused.
He discovered a term in the expansion that couldn’t be absorbed by any of the existing tools.
It just hung there, isolated.
According to the logic of the main research line, this term should have been automatically canceled out by the "cyclic symmetry of the base change."
But it wasn’t.
It stubbornly remained.
He decided to pursue that term further.
And Fu Chen made an unexpected discovery...
In terms of its form, the term looked very much like an "anomalous residue of a cyclic L-factor"—something no one had yet formally defined.