7: Chapter 7 I'll sell it as waste paper, and worship the academicians of the Dragon Academy of Sciences as my ancestors.

In the Physics Department office, the air pressure was terrifyingly low.

The air was filled with a scent of old books and cheap tea.

Professor Yuan sat behind his desk, his wrinkled face as dark as the bottom of a pot, holding Jiang Chen's attendance record, which rattled as he shook it.

"Jiang Chen, you still know how to come back?"

Professor Yuan slammed his thermos onto the desk, splashing a few drops of water out. "Look for yourself, how many classes have you skipped this week? Mechanical Principles, Mechanics of Materials... Do you think just because you're about to graduate, I wouldn't dare fail you?"

Jiang Chen stood before the desk and placed his bulging backpack on the floor.

"Teacher, something happened at home."

He didn't intend to play the victim; he was just stating a fact. But to Professor Yuan, this was nothing more than a common excuse used by poor students.

"Something happened? Does something happening mean you can stop submitting assignments? Does it mean you can treat your studies like child's play?"

Professor Yuan pushed up his reading glasses, his disappointment undisguised. "Jiang Chen, I know your family situation isn't good. If you really can't continue your studies, you might as well apply for a suspension early, go to a factory to work and earn money. Don't waste time here, and don't drag down our department's employment rate."

These words were a bit harsh.

If it had been the old Jiang Chen, he probably would have been so ashamed upon hearing this that he would have wanted to crawl into a hole. But the current Jiang Chen, carrying 400,000 in cash and a head full of black technology, had long since changed his mindset.

He even felt a little like laughing.

Suspend studies and work? What kind of work? Go be a cross-dimensional reseller for that Empress?

"Teacher Yuan, I am not suspending my studies."

Jiang Chen bent down, unzipped his backpack, and pulled out a wad of A3 printer paper that had been rolled up like pickled vegetables. "I didn't come the past few days because I was working on this... design assignment."

"Design assignment?"

Professor Yuan glanced at the crumpled wad of paper, his brow furrowing enough to crush a fly. "You're trying to fool me with this thing? Is this a design blueprint or toilet paper?"

On a guest sofa nearby sat a little old man wearing a Zhongshan suit.

The old man had graying hair and was slowly sipping tea from a purple clay teapot. He was Sun Zhenhua, an academician from Longke Academy, who had stopped by his alma mater to visit an old colleague and incidentally grab a cup of tea.

Hearing the commotion, Sun Zhenhua chimed in with a chuckle, "Old Yuan, don't be so hot-headed with the student. Young people nowadays have many ideas; who knows, maybe he really did come up with something new?"

Professor Yuan snorted coldly, "Something new? If he could draw a qualified structural diagram of a reducer, I'd be burning incense in gratitude!"

As he spoke, he reached out to take the wad of paper with an expression of disgust. As soon as his fingertips touched it, he recoiled as if burned.

"Look at all this ink on my hands! Jiang Chen, is this your attitude?"

Jiang Chen felt a bit helpless.

That was the problem with that broken printer downstairs; it had nothing to do with him.

He didn't waste words, simply spreading out the blueprint, pressing down on the creases with his palm, and laying it flat on Professor Yuan's desk, which was piled high with lesson plans.

"Teacher, just make do and take a look."

The moment the blueprint was spread out, dense lines were exposed to the air.

It was not an ordinary mechanical drawing.

There were no common gears or bearings; instead, there was a complex geometric structure that made one's scalp tingle. Countless incredibly fine lines, like a giant maze, swirled crazily around a strange lens group at the center.

Professor Yuan had originally intended to look at it with a critical eye.

He was just about to curse at what kind of gibberish this drawing was, but the words stuck in his throat.

As an old scholar who had spent his whole life working with mechanics, his intuition told him that this drawing... was not right.

That aesthetic sense of structure, that seamless logical closed loop, could never have been drawn by random doodling.

"Is... is this a lens group?"

Professor Yuan squinted, slid his reading glasses down, and leaned in closer to look. "This optical path design... why is it so strange? Where is the light source? And this angle of reflection doesn't conform to convention..."

He couldn't understand it.

But he was greatly shocked.

"This doesn't seem to be a reducer, right?" Professor Yuan muttered, subconsciously wanting to flip to the next page.

Just then.

"Crash!"

A crisp shattering sound exploded in the quiet office.

Jiang Chen and Professor Yuan were both startled and turned to look.

They saw that Academician Sun, who had just been carefree and smiling while drinking tea, was now holding a stiff posture.

The precious purple clay teapot he had been nurturing for years lay shattered on the floor, and boiling tea had splashed onto his pant leg, but he was completely unaware.

Sun Zhenhua's eyes were locked onto the blueprint on the table, his eyeballs almost popping out, and his whole body was trembling violently as if shaking like a sieve.

"Old Sun? What's wrong with you?"

Professor Yuan was terrified and quickly stood up. "Did you get burned? Quick, quick, bring a rag!"

Sun Zhenhua shoved aside Professor Yuan, who was trying to help him up.

The force was astonishing, completely unlike that of a man in his seventies.

He stumbled toward the desk, rudely pushing Professor Yuan aside, and with trembling hands, lifted up the crumpled A3 paper.

His gaze didn't look like he was looking at a piece of paper, but rather like he was looking at a long-lost father.

"This... how is this possible..."

Sun Zhenhua's voice was hoarse, with a wheezing sound like a broken bellows. "Extreme ultraviolet light source... EUV... droplet generator..."

His fingers trembled as they traced the lines on the blueprint, and with every point he traced, his breathing became more rapid.

"This optical path compensation structure... Genius! No, this is a miracle!"

"It's solved! The light source stability problem that has plagued Longke Academy for ten years... was actually solved in this way?!"

Sun Zhenhua suddenly looked up; his cloudy old eyes were now bloodshot but shone with a terrifying intensity.

He stared intently at the bewildered Jiang Chen, his voice a roar squeezed from the depths of his throat:

"Who drew this diagram?!"

Jiang Chen was startled by the old man's intensity and subconsciously took half a step back.

Isn't this reaction a bit too exaggerated?

Aren't they just a few lousy blueprints? Is it worth smashing a teapot over?

"Ah... I drew it."

Jiang Chen touched his nose, thinking that since he had already told the lie, he might as well stick to it. "Just doodled it in the dorm, mainly to deal with the assignment..."

"Doodled it?!"

Sun Zhenhua screamed, his voice cracking, almost unable to catch his breath. "You call this doodling? Do you know what this is? This is the core light source structural diagram of an EUV Lithography Machine! It is the brightest jewel on the industrial crown!"

"Our country has poured hundreds of billions into conquering this technology, and batch after batch of people have turned their hair white, without even hearing a sound!"

"And you're telling me that in your dorm, just to submit an assignment, you casually drew it out?!"

Professor Yuan was listening from the side, his head buzzing.

Lithography Machine? EUV?

Of course he knew these terms; they were the killer move Western countries used to choke our country, a top-secret national-level scientific research project.

This thing... appeared on his own desk? And it was waste paper this kid used to submit an assignment?

"Old Sun, you... you didn't see it wrong, did you?" Professor Yuan asked, trembling. "Is this really a Lithography Machine blueprint?"

"It can't be wrong! I'd recognize it even if it turned to ashes!"

Sun Zhenhua acted like he was possessed, not caring about the smell of ink on the paper, pressing his face against the blueprint and greedily looking at every detail. "This design... is even more perfect than ASML's most advanced EUV! This is simply an epoch-making product!"

Suddenly, as if he had thought of something, he turned his head sharply to look at Jiang Chen's still-bulging backpack.

That gaze was green, like a wolf that had been hungry for three days seeing a fat sheep.

"Student... no, young friend!"

Sun Zhenhua grabbed Jiang Chen's wrist with such force that it made Jiang Chen's wrist ache. "In your bag... is there the rest of it?"

Jiang Chen winced in pain as he was grabbed. "Hey, hey, hey, sir, take it easy! I do have some, but they're all just rough drafts..."

"Rough drafts?"

Sun Zhenhua felt his vision go dark and almost fainted.

He took a deep breath and said in a trembling tone that was almost pleading:

"Quick! Take them out quickly!"

"These aren't rough drafts; these are the lifeline of our Long Country!"

"If this thing is real, we can stand tall and slap the face of the Eagle Sauce!"

Watching the old academician's red-rimmed eyes and expression as if he were about to cry, Jiang Chen felt a sudden jolt in his heart.

He hadn't expected that the "trash" the Empress casually threw away would carry such heavy weight in this world.

Is this national destiny?

"Alright, don't get excited, I'll give them to you."

Jiang Chen completely unzipped his backpack.

"Clatter."

A dozen or so rolled-up blueprints were dumped onto the table as if they were scrap metal being sold.

Sun Zhenhua pounced on them.

Professor Yuan pounced on them.

Even the counselor who had just walked into the office to pour water was stunned by this scene, and the thermos in his hand dropped to the floor with a "bang."

"What's wrong? What's wrong? Is there a fire?" the counselor shouted in terror.

Sun Zhenhua turned his head sharply, his gaze as fierce as a tiger protecting its food:

"Shut up! Lock the door!"

"From now on, not a single scrap of paper in this office is allowed to be taken out!"

He turned his head and stared fixedly at Jiang Chen, his tone unprecedentedly solemn:

"Child, tell me honestly, where on earth did this blueprint... come from?"