656: Chapter 651 Waiting for his reaction

The heartbeat of a new world.

These six words struck Shen Yan and Chen Guangke like a heavy hammer to the heart.

The roaring sound was no longer noise, but an overture.

Chen Guangke opened his mouth, feeling a lump of fire stuck in his throat, unable to utter a single word.

He looked at the old man before him, whose washed-out white lab coat seemed to emit a faint glow in the darkness.

It turned out that a person's spirit could truly be reignited.

And it could burn so fiercely.

Shen Yan was silent for a moment, then he smiled.

"Old Fang, since it is a new world..."

"Then there must be a first batch of builders."

He pulled out a chair, gesturing for Fang Zhizhuo to sit, while he took a seat opposite.

This was an attitude of equality.

Not the condescension of an investor toward a scientist, but a dialogue between peers.

Fang Zhizhuo was not polite either. He moved his metal prosthetic limb and slowly sat down.

The mechanical joints emitted a slight whirring sound, echoing the roar outside the window.

"A heartbeat alone is not enough."

Fang Zhizhuo looked at Shen Yan, his gaze as sharp as a surgical knife.

"It still needs flesh and blood, it needs meridians, it needs a brain capable of controlling this colossal body."

"Resonance Tidal Energy Matrix sounds beautiful, but it's not a pie that I alone can draw up."

Shen Yan nodded. This was precisely the main purpose of his visit tonight.

"I know."

"So I came to ask you, what kind of people does the Spark Laboratory need?"

"My company has some connections in the software and semiconductor fields. But in high-energy physics and marine engineering, I am an absolute layman."

He spread his hands, adopting a very humble posture.

"Just give me the list of names, and I will handle the matter of finding them."

Chen Guangke listened from the side, nervously clenching his fists.

Those words sounded so easy.

Could the people who catch Fang Zhizhuo's eye really be ordinary Engineers that one could find anywhere on the street?

They were probably all existence on the level of Dragon Kings; finding even one would be harder than ascending to heaven.

Fang Zhizhuo picked up the long-cold tea from the work table and took a sip.

"You have quite the confidence."

He put down the teacup, a hint of consideration in his eyes.

"Shen Yan, the people I need cannot be hired just with money."

"Many of them might not have touched their specialties for over a decade."

"Some are disheartened, some are living under assumed names, and some might even..."

Fang Zhizhuo paused, not continuing.

Shen Yan just watched him quietly, neither urging nor making any guarantees.

That calmness was, in itself, a form of strength.

"Good."

Fang Zhizhuo seemed to have made up his mind.

He picked up a pen from the table and wrote the first name on a clean sheet of white paper.

"Wei Zhengxun."

"Fifteen years ago, he was the leading figure in domestic ultra-high-pressure material science."

"The 'Sea God Steel' we used back then to construct the core reaction chamber of the 'Tidal Eye' was developed by him and his team."

"That material required crystal lattice reconstruction under pressures simulating ten thousand five hundred meters deep in the ocean. Fewer than three laboratories worldwide could achieve that. And Old Wei managed to use semi-obsolete equipment to reduce the cost to one-tenth of the foreign price."

Chen Guangke gasped sharply.

This was no longer an expert; this was a national treasure.

"Where is he now?" Shen Yan asked.

"I don't know." Fang Zhizhuo shook his head. "After the laboratory incident back then, his life's work was destroyed, and all his achievements turned into accusations of guilt. The last time I saw him was at a small kiln factory in the suburbs of the capital, where he was making ceramics."

"He said that clay is the most genuine; it doesn't lie."

Making ceramics?

A material scientist on the level of a national treasure was now making ceramics?

Chen Guangke felt the world was too surreal.

Shen Yan's expression remained unchanged; he simply noted down the name.

"Next."

Fang Zhizhuo seemed slightly surprised by Shen Yan's reaction, but he didn't ask further and continued writing the second name.

"Lin Wanqing."

"She was the most talented student I ever mentored."

"Her doctoral thesis was on 'Nonlinear Turbulence Resonance Modeling.' Simply put, it was about predicting and guiding the most chaotic and disordered energy in the ocean."

"The Tidal Energy Matrix requires transforming this destructive force into stable electrical current output. Her model is the theoretical cornerstone of the entire project."

"Where is she?"

"For a ridiculous research grant, her advisor betrayed her research findings and pinned academic misconduct on her."

Fang Zhizhuo's voice carried a suppressed rage.

"A girl with such high aspirations couldn't bear such humiliation and dropped out of school directly."

"Later, I heard she went to a commercial weather forecasting company, using her invaluable brain to predict whether it would rain tomorrow or if a typhoon would make landfall."

"It's like using a dragon-slaying saber to peel an apple."

Chen Guangke felt choked up listening.

What kind of things were these?

One making ceramics, the other reading the weather.

It was truly a real-life case of a brilliant pearl covered in dust.

Shen Yan remained calm.

"Anyone else?"

"Yes."

Fang Zhizhuo wrote down the third name.

"Qian Liyang."

"We all called him Fatty. A computer genius, and also a paranoid."

"The initial central control system for the Spark Laboratory was coded entirely by him using three old computers."

"That algorithm could predict energy surges caused by minute changes in the Earth-Moon gravitational pull seventeen seconds in advance, and make evasive or augmenting adjustments. Seventeen seconds, at the level of nuclear physics, is the difference between life and death."

"He..."

"He is now the chief architect for the hottest mobile game in the country."

This time, before Shen Yan could ask, Chen Guangke blurted it out, his tone filled with disbelief.

Because he himself had played that mobile game called 'Source War Chronicle.'

He could never have imagined that the physics engine and combat feedback in that game, which were impossibly smooth, came from the hands of such a master.

"Mei Hongyuan tried to acquire his algorithm back then, but he refused," Fang Zhizhuo said lightly.

"Later, his small house had an 'accidental' fire, and all his hard drives and manuscripts burned to ash."

"He had no proof, so he had to accept the loss. From then on, he never touched high-energy physics again. He said that working for a game company at least meant the money earned was clean."

On the white paper, three names, behind them, three buried lives.

Chen Guangke looked at the paper, feeling it weighed a thousand pounds.

Every single one of these people was a treasure.

But they were all pressed beneath the giant boulder of reality, how difficult would it be to dig them out again?

Their spirit was gone, their enthusiasm extinguished. What could be used to invite them back?

Money?

If these people truly cared about money, they wouldn't have ended up in this state.

"Old Fang," Chen Guangke couldn't help but speak up, "This... this difficulty level is too high. They haven't worked in this field for over a decade. Even if we find them, can they still come back?"

Fang Zhizhuo didn't answer, just looked at Shen Yan.

He was waiting for Shen Yan's reaction.