5: Energy fluctuations! The first time they attracted attention.

After Excellence almost set his dorm on fire for the Nth time, was stared at like an idiot by his roommate for the N+1th time, and was nearly dying on the spot from sleep deprivation and nervous exhaustion, his "device"—composed of a Pinduoduo beaker, oxygen-free copper wire pulled from home, Taobao diamond, Alibaba palladium powder, and various bizarre small parts hand-crafted by Uncle Liu, all of which could be described as "wasteland sci-fi style"—finally, barely, looked like something.

Although its appearance was still appalling—a high borosilicate glass beaker as the main reaction vessel, wrapped crookedly with thick copper wire coils, several electrodes of different materials piercing into the cup from different directions, connecting to exposed wires barely fixed with tape; at the bottom of the beaker was that ceramic base covered with a palladium powder catalytic layer, and the top was sealed with more measurement lines and cooling water pipes (made from modified thick milk tea straws) led out. The entire device was propped up on an old shoebox, inside which were even messier wires and a modified laptop power supply. It looked more like a large, post-modern art-inspired failed junior high science experiment, or the product of a steampunk enthusiast's fever dream, bearing no resemblance to "high-tech."

But regardless, all the parts were finally in their places.

[All components installed. Please perform the final overall airtightness check and energy circuit calibration.] The system's prompt sounded, carrying a near-solemn gravity, although it was still an electronic voice.

Excellence took a deep breath, feeling his lungs tremble slightly. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes, forced himself to perk up, and like a bomb disposal expert dealing with an extremely unstable bomb, began the final steps according to the "Guide" on the light screen in his mind. He tested the continuity of the circuit with a small program generated by the system, applied soapy water to every interface that might leak (fortunately, no bubbles appeared), and retightened every screw that might be loose. The days of extreme operation and high tension actually allowed his hands to enter a strange, relatively stable state at the final moment, although his fingertips were still ice cold.

"Okay! The last step!" Excellence's voice was hoarse, carrying an excitement bordering on collapse. His gaze turned to the switch of the "energy input device"—which was actually a button switch removed from an old desk lamp and taped to the corner of the table—that looked extremely unreliable and was connected to the modified laptop power adapter.

Success or failure depended on this! Whether he would avoid social death and enjoy this incredible success, or be completely finished and welcome a future of system hibernation and becoming a fool, all depended on now!

He took one last look at the pile of trash-like device, glanced at his roommate sleeping soundly on the bed, silently whispered "bless me" in his heart, then closed his eyes, as if using up all the courage and luck of his life, and slammed the switch!

Hum—

A low humming sound, as if coming from a distant place, immediately came from the center of the crude device. The sound was not harsh, but carried a peculiar penetrating power, causing Excellence's heart to resonate with it. Immediately after, through the beaker wall, he could clearly see that inside the device, two streams of particles (the system said they were deuterium ion streams, from the gas produced by the electrolysis of a tiny bit of ultrapure water) guided by the weak magnetic field barely constrained by the crooked copper coils, violently collided with each other!

In an instant, right at the center point of the collision, a tiny, mustard-seed-sized, but exceptionally stable and pure faint blue light lit up!

It did not flicker like a flame, nor was it as dazzling as an LED; it was a deep light emanating from within, as if a star reduced countless times was quietly burning in that cheap beaker!

Almost at the same time, on the screen of his old laptop, the interface of a monitoring program written with crude programming software that could only monitor voltage and current, the numbers that had been jumping wildly suddenly stabilized, displaying a small but undeniable positive energy output value! Although the value was pitifully low, perhaps not enough to light up a mobile phone screen, it existed! It was no longer zero!

[Warning: Micro-controlled fusion reaction triggered! Energy output stable! Output power estimated: approx. 1.4 W. Expected sustainable output time: 7 hours 32 minutes (based on current fuel stock and device loss model)!]

[Initial task: "Glimmer of Civilization" completed!]

[Civilization contribution + 0.0001.]

[Task reward has been issued to the system space, please check in time.]

The system's prompt was faster than ever, and even in that cold electronic voice, there seemed to be a trace of an extremely faint... fluctuation?

"Success?! I succeeded?! I actually... Holy shit!" Excellence abruptly covered his mouth, forcefully suppressing the roar that was about to blurt out, but the violent movement still knocked over the chair next to him, making a dull thud. The roommate grunted and turned over on the bed in dissatisfaction.

Excellence stared fixedly at the faint blue light in the beaker, his eyes wide, simply unable to believe everything he was seeing! His heart felt like it was going to burst through his chest, and a huge, indescribable joy and sense of achievement washed over his dam of reason like a tsunami! He, Excellence, a mediocre physics student struggling on the verge of failing, actually! In the dorm! With a pile of junk! hand-crafted controlled nuclear fusion?! Although this output power was so pathetic it could only light up a bright LED bulb...

Ecstasy engulfed him; he couldn't help but want to jump up, want to cheer, want to shout out the window, want to tell the whole world he did it!

However, at this moment—

Bang! Snap!

The fluorescent light tube on the ceiling of the dorm flashed violently a few times, emitting a harsh electrical hiss, and then, accompanied by a slight popping sound, went out completely! It wasn't just his dorm; several intermittent exclamations and curses came from the entire dormitory building.

"Damn it! What's going on? Did the breaker trip?!"

"Fuck! I was just in a team fight in my ranked game! Power cut?!"

"What the hell! Dorm manager! Power outage!"

Noisy footsteps and complaints came from the hallway.

Excellence: "..."

He felt like he had been doused from head to toe with a basin of ice water, instantly falling from the peak of ecstasy back to the cold reality. In a panic, almost instinctively, he yanked out the plug of the modified power supply! The faint blue light in the center of the beaker flickered once and disappeared instantly, as if it had never existed. A few seconds later, the lights in the dormitory building struggled to come back on, power supply was restored, and the cursing in the hallway gradually subsided, leaving only the wails of gamers heartbroken over lost points.

[The energy output phase caused a slight local disturbance in the power grid, leading to a protective trip. It is recommended that the host choose a more stable, independent, or buffered power supply environment for the next experiment.] The system reported without a ripple, as if it were just reminding him to remember to bring an umbrella when going out.

Excellence slumped on the floor, his back against the cold bed frame, panting heavily, looking at the pile of "junk" device that was still slightly hot and emitting a faint smell of ozone, his heart belatedly starting to beat wildly, a lingering fear sweeping over his whole body.

He actually... really created something? Something enough to trip the breaker for the whole building?!

Just as Excellence sat slumped on the floor, immersed in the dual impact of success and shock, he did not know that his "insignificant" success had already become like a small stone thrown into a calm lake; although extremely small, it had already rippled out, and had been captured by certain "sonars" specifically responsible for monitoring "anomalies."

Almost at the same time.

The city's power grid dispatch center. In the brightly lit hall, a huge screen displayed a complex operating map of the city power grid. A duty officer was holding a cup of coffee, routinely scanning the various parameters on the screen. Suddenly, his gaze paused in a corner, where a recorded extremely short, weak abnormal fluctuation signal was logged, with a duration at the millisecond level, and the energy disturbance was so low it was almost negligible, but its waveform and the way it cut into the power grid were somewhat peculiar. The precise location of the wave source was somewhat fuzzy, but it generally pointed to the University Town area.

The duty officer frowned, dragged the mouse, marked this abnormal signal, and skillfully entered in the remarks column: "Suspected local power grid harmonic interference caused by the startup/shutdown of large precision instruments in a university laboratory or instantaneous overload of small experimental equipment, possibly accompanied by protective action." He then filed it into the "To be observed, low priority" database category and did not delve deeper. Every day there were hundreds of similar small anomalies, most of which were insignificant.

However, hundreds of kilometers away, a secret agency in Huaxia—the Ninth Division under the National Security and Technology Investigation Bureau (abbreviated as National Special Bureau), a department specifically responsible for monitoring, analyzing, and assessing domestic and foreign non-traditional, unconventional technological activities and potential super-conventional technical risks.

In a command hall filled with countless screens and slightly dim lighting, a young analyst, Xiao Liu, stopped his hand that was quickly sliding the mouse. On one of the split screens in front of him, it displayed data streams transmitted from "wide-area low-intensity abnormal energy sensor networks" in many parts of the country, which had undergone layers of filtering and algorithmic processing. This system was extremely sensitive, aimed at capturing energy signatures that conventional monitoring means could not detect, which might indicate new technological breakthroughs or abnormal events.

"Director Wang, come take a look at this." He called out to the middle-aged man who was walking past behind him, conducting a night patrol.

The man known as Director Wang—Wang Jianguo, one of the deputy directors of the Ninth Division—walked over. He was in his forties, with a well-maintained figure, capable and steady, wearing fitting casual clothes, his eyes as sharp as an eagle's, and a seemingly casual glance seemed to be able to see through everything. He had an aura of someone who had been through many battles and remained calm in the face of danger.

"What's wrong, Xiao Liu? Which laboratory is messing with new toys again?" Wang Jianguo's tone carried a hint of teasing, but his gaze had already precisely landed on the screen Xiao Liu was pointing at.

"Look, this is a piece of data captured about 7 minutes ago by the No. 03 sensor Node deployed in the University Town area," the analyst pointed to a weak pulse curve on the screen that was almost submerged in background noise and required special algorithms to be extracted, "very, very weak, with a very short duration, the energy level is so low that there is almost no direct danger, but... Director Wang, its spectral characteristics are very, very strange."

Xiao Liu enlarged the spectrum analysis chart: "Look at this peak, and the instantaneous curve of energy release, it doesn't fit the characteristics of any known civilian high-energy-consuming equipment (such as arc furnaces, particle collider startup/shutdown) at all, and it also ruled out the possibility of natural phenomena (such as cloud discharge under specific meteorological conditions). If I have to make an analogy... it's more like some kind of... um... extremely crude, inefficient, but fundamentally different... some kind of ultra-low-yield constrained fusion attempt? Or, a rough energy release method we have never seen before?"

Wang Jianguo leaned over, resting his hands on the console, looking closely at the highlighted, minuscule pulse curve, his fingers unconsciously tapping lightly on the cold countertop. His expression gradually changed from initial relaxation to something a bit intriguing and thoughtful.

"University Town? Constrained fusion? And ultra-low-yield? Rough?" He repeated these keywords, smiled, his tone still carrying a hint of unbelievable teasing, "Which university's laboratory is so naughty? Not sleeping in the middle of the night, doing this kind of dangerous little experiment? And even tripped the dorm building's breaker? This advisor's heart is big enough."

"Do we need to notify the local field comrades to go and check it out tomorrow?" Analyst Xiao Liu asked for instructions. According to the procedure, this kind of abnormal signal that could not be immediately explained usually needed preliminary verification.

Wang Jianguo straightened up, rubbed his chin, thought for a moment: "No need to make a big fuss for now. Record it in the file, mark it as 'Anomaly - To be observed, low priority.' Send an informal notice to the peripheral liaison in University Town, let them find an opportunity, when convenient, to understand if there are any... alternative, student-made scientific research projects or graduation designs in the universities there recently, especially in the physics, electronics, or energy laboratories. I guess it's some genius student (or madman) who tinkered with a new gadget without the professor's knowledge. The energy level is so low, aside from scaring people and tripping a breaker, it can't be considered harmful."

He turned and left, continuing his patrol, and did not take this insignificant energy fluctuation too much to heart. After all, in this position, there were too many reports of strange and bizarre suspected "anomalies" coming from all over the country through various channels every day. In comparison, this little commotion in University Town was like a tiny, almost invisible splash in the vast Pacific Ocean, not even counting as a ripple.

However, whether it was Excellence sitting slumped on the dorm floor with his heartbeat just calming down, or Deputy Director Wang Jianguo who issued the "low priority" order, neither of them knew at this moment that this insignificant little splash was the first almost imperceptible sign of a huge vortex beginning to form that exceeded everyone's imagination.

Excellence's seemingly destined-to-be-ordinary, struggling-on-the-passing-line mediocre life, from the moment he pressed that switch and lit up that faint blue light, was already destined to be swept into it and stir up huge waves that even he could not predict.

That faint light, named the beginning of a miracle, or the prototype of a storm.