Chapter 76 - 73: Setting Off for Zhejiang University
"President Lin! Our reduced-order model has confirmed convergence!"
"As long as we focus all our firepower on cracking that thermo-fluid coupling algorithm problem, we can definitely... in a few years... no, not even years! We can build this wavelength adaptive compensation system within a year or two!"
Zhang Mo could barely contain his excitement.
"Li Dong’s approach is like he drew us a map to the destination, even marking where all the potholes are! This has saved us an unbelievable amount of work!"
Hearing Zhang Mo’s report, even Lin Wei, who had seen it all, was momentarily stunned.
It wasn’t that he thought Zhang Mo was mistaken, but rather that the progress seemed... a little too fast?
’He isn’t getting ahead of himself, is he...’
Semiconductor equipment development was typically measured in decades. A one or two-year turnaround? Was that really possible?
"Are you sure about the assessment you just mentioned?"
Zhang Mo nodded.
"Positive! But President Lin, there are prerequisites. I’ll need an increase in computing power and personnel. As long as we get enough resources, that timeline is no problem!"
Lin Wei was silent for a moment.
If Huaxuan Technology could bring this technology to fruition ahead of schedule, the market value and technical barrier to entry it would create would be immeasurable.
"Alright, I understand."
As the director, Lin Wei naturally wouldn’t take Zhang Mo’s data at face value on such a critical matter.
"For the computing power allocation and personnel slots, go back, draw up a list, and submit it. I’ll approve it for you this afternoon."
"However, I’ll be pulling over people from Team One. Any problem with that?"
"No problem! Thank you, President Lin!"
Zhang Mo knew Team One was full of President Lin’s trusted subordinates, but he hadn’t fudged any numbers, so what was there to be afraid of?
He turned and was about to rush back to the lab to continue grinding.
Just then, Lin Wei suddenly called out to him.
"Wait a moment."
Zhang Mo turned back.
"President Lin, are there any other instructions?"
Lin Wei cleared his throat and asked.
"You have that guy, Liu Chengfu’s, number saved in your phone, don’t you?"
"Huh?"
’Liu Chengfu?’
Zhang Mo racked his brain for a moment before remembering there was indeed such a person.
This Liu Chengfu was an outsourcing boss!
He specialized in subcontracting for a tier-two supplier of Huaxuan Technology, handling marginal business like stainless steel external frames for lithography machines and rough-machined structural parts.
A person like him was naturally a nobody at Huaxuan Technology.
But on the outside, people still had to respectfully call him "Chairman Liu."
At a supply chain conference last year, Liu Chengfu had shamelessly sidled up to offer President Lin a toast and his business card, hoping to get his face known.
Lin Wei had accepted the card out of courtesy at the time but had thrown it away the moment he turned around.
Zhang Mo, who was standing beside him, had saved the number in his contacts, following the principle of not offending anyone.
’Why would President Lin suddenly want his number?’
Though confused, Zhang Mo still searched through his contacts and recited the number to Lin Wei.
"Okay, you can go now."
Lin Wei waved his hand.
The office door closed once more.
Lin Wei looked at the number he had just keyed into his phone.
He recalled his earlier phone call with Li Dong and couldn’t help but smile.
’No inventory system? His uncle doesn’t really get it?’
Who was Lin Wei? How could he not read between the lines?
’An uncle with a middle school education, running a small hardware workshop, needs help with an inventory system? And the uncle doesn’t really get it?’
’Isn’t this just a way of asking for a handout, to leech off his, Lin Wei’s, resources?’
But...
Lin Wei picked up the data report Zhang Mo had left on his desk, his eyes tracing the convergence curve that represented a massive technological breakthrough.
He let out a long sigh.
"A million... I didn’t give him enough."
...
Li Dong, of course, had no idea what arrangements Lin Wei was making.
Not that he cared. He continued his daily routine at Jiangcheng Sixth Middle School’s lab, bouncing back and forth between biology and physics.
In just one short month, Elder Chen was already completely won over by Li Dong.
He had originally thought that for a research project on the level of the Qiu Prize, even someone as gifted as Li Dong would have to grind away for at least half a year.
But now, it seemed he wouldn’t even need half a year. In two or three months at most, Li Dong would be able to completely wrap up the physics project for his Qiu Prize bid!
In all his years, having mentored so many geniuses, Elder Chen had never seen... no, he had never even *heard* of anyone with such an incredible talent for physics!
Was the current project difficult?
For a high school student, it was certainly very difficult!
Even an average university physics major would never be able to do it without a supervisor’s guidance.
But when Li Dong worked on it, he faced no bottlenecks whatsoever.
It was as if he had already seen through all the project’s underlying principles before he even started.
Currently, although they had only built a very rough framework and had yet to calculate many of the microscopic details and data points, the things Li Dong casually derived on the blackboard had already left him astonished.
With just a few strokes, Li Dong had demonstrated a perfect mathematical isomorphism between the mechanical system of the "rotating loop-small ball dynamic system" effective potential energy model, which was constructed with Lagrangian mechanics, and the microscopic thermodynamic phase transition.
Moreover, the kid could even point out that in this system, the rotational speed directly corresponded to the thermodynamic temperature, while the competition between centrifugal and gravitational potential energy perfectly corresponded to the evolution of the order parameter in the phase transition.
Although the part about the shaft eccentricity introducing "explicit symmetry breaking," thus making it equivalent to the effect of an external field, was still just a prototype, the underlying Logic was already completely sound!
Looking at this rough yet impeccable framework, Elder Chen sometimes suspected the kid had a physics cheat-engine installed in his brain.
Because of this, Elder Chen didn’t squeeze every last drop of Li Dong’s free time over the past month.
He gave Li Dong a great deal of freedom.
Li Dong still attended his regular classes, including Chinese, English, and Chemistry.
After all, the kid’s skills were lopsided; he still needed to cram for Chinese and English.
It was only during Physics, Biology, and Math classes that Li Dong didn’t go to the classroom at all, holing himself up in the lab and the library instead.
Time flew, and in the blink of an eye, the day arrived for Li Dong to go to Zhejiang University to meet with Sun Xiang’s advisor.
Before he left, Sun Xiang specifically called Li Dong out into the hallway to give him some earnest advice.
"Li Dong, my advisor... he’s a brilliant academic, but his temper is a bit odd."
"When you get there, make sure you go with the flow and don’t talk back to him, understand?"
Li Dong nodded on the surface, but inwardly, he was complaining.
’A weird temper? Which of the old men I’ve met isn’t weird?’
’Never mind the big shots in the group chat. In real life, there’s Elder Chen who loves giving brain teasers, and Old Wang the Chinese teacher who’s always threatening to call my parents...’
Li Dong felt that if he met a few more old men, he’d be able to assemble the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan!
"Don’t worry, Teacher Sun. I’ve got it under control."