930: Chapter 925 Achilles heel

Old Xie suddenly became agitated, grabbing the soldering iron beside him as if to swing it.

Chen Guangke was startled and quickly shielded Shen Yan.

"Hey old man, what are you doing! Trying to stage an accident?"

Shen Yan reached out and pushed Chen Guangke aside.

He looked at Old Xie's bloodshot eyes and calmly uttered a number.

"The revised value for the Planck constant is 6.62607015."

"If you introduce an imaginary time variable in the third quadrant, your rice cooker... no, your small-scale hadron collider simulator, will run successfully."

Old Xie froze.

The soldering iron in his hand was still emitting wisps of smoke, but he didn't feel the heat.

That formula.

The deadlock that had plagued him for ten full years.

It was like a rusty lock suddenly being inserted into by a master key.

Click.

It opened.

Old Xie's breathing became rapid, his ribs bulging out one by one with each gasp.

Ignoring the filth on the floor, he immediately dropped to the ground, dipped his finger in the engine oil, and frantically started drawing on the tile.

"Imaginary time... yes... introduce an imaginary number..."

"This way the wave function won't diverge... This is the damned variable!"

The Fat Boss looked at Old Xie on the floor as if he were watching a madman, then looked at the dignified Shen Yan. He opened his mouth as if to curse, but was glared at by Chen Guangke, forcing the words back down his throat.

A full ten minutes passed.

Old Xie finally stopped his movements.

The ground was covered in dense formulas, a heavenly script that would make an ordinary person nauseous just by looking at it.

But he felt as if he had just completed a masterpiece for the ages.

Old Xie looked up, and the hostility in his eyes toward Shen Yan was gone, replaced by an almost fanatical yearning.

"How did you calculate that?"

"With this level of precision, even borrowing the computing power of the National Supercomputing Center would take three years!"

Shen Yan smiled, pulled out an unopened pack of special-issue cigarettes from his pocket, took one out, and handed it to Old Xie.

"The pangu Supercomputing Center, ever heard of it?"

Old Xie took the cigarette, his hand trembling slightly.

Of course he had heard of it.

It was the loudest name in the tech circle recently, the new king of computational power hegemony.

"You are that... Shen Yan?"

Although Old Xie was living in seclusion in this junkyard, it didn't mean he was completely cut off from the world.

"Come with me."

Shen Yan didn't want to waste time. He directly took out a lighter and snapped it open with a "pa," lighting Old Xie's cigarette for him.

"I will give you the best laboratory in the world."

"I will give you unlimited computational support."

"And, the chance to prove that those academic types are all blind."

Each of these three conditions hit Old Xie's fatal flaw precisely.

But Old Xie took a drag of the cigarette, and the fanaticism in his eyes suddenly dimmed.

He exhaled a murky smoke ring and gave a self-deprecating laugh.

"Mr. Shen, you have the wrong person."

"I'm just a rice cooker repairman now. My brain has long been broken; sometimes I can't even remember my own name."

"Besides..."

Old Xie pointed to his slightly limping right leg.

"I signed a confidentiality agreement, also a non-compete agreement. I cannot engage in physics research for the rest of my life, or I'll go to jail."

That was a scandal in the academic world ten years ago.

The so-called mainstream academic overlords, in order to cover up their own incompetence, colluded to nail Xie Wenyuan, this anomaly, onto the pillar of shame.

Shen Yan looked at this genius whose back was bent by life.

He certainly knew all this.

The system's intelligence was more detailed than any archive.

"Non-compete agreement?"

A mocking curve appeared at the corner of Shen Yan's mouth.

He turned his head and looked at Chen Guangke, who was standing nearby, already dumbfounded.

"Guang Ke, call the head of our company's Legal Department."

"Tell him, no matter what means, no matter how much money."

"I want to see that so-called agreement turned into a waste of paper within twenty-four hours."

Chen Guangke was momentarily stunned, then immediately pulled out his phone.

"Understood, Brother Yan! Our Legal Department guys were just itching for a fight; they're experts at this kind of job!"

Shen Yan turned back and looked at Old Xie again.

"As for jail..."

Shen Yan bent down, his gaze level with Old Xie's. His deep eyes seemed to hide an abyss.

"What I, Shen Yan, intend to do, not even the Jade Emperor can stop."

"You just need to nod."

"Leave the rest to me."

Old Xie looked at the man before him, thirty years younger than himself.

In those eyes, he didn't see the greed of a capitalist, but a dominance capable of crushing all rules.

He had only ever seen this look in the eyes of the true madmen who changed history.

Old Xie threw away the cigarette butt in his hand and stomped it out forcefully.

He supported his knee and staggered to his feet.

"I have one condition."

"Speak."

"I don't work set hours, I don't clock in, and I don't write daily reports."

"Furthermore, no one is allowed into my laboratory except you."

"Especially those idiots who use PPTs to swindle funding; just looking at them makes me sick."

The Fat Boss nearby listened, stunned.

Is this old fellow crazy?

He dares to negotiate terms with such a powerful boss?

If it were him, he would have already been kneeling and calling him 'Dad'.

Unexpectedly, Shen Yan didn't hesitate at all.

"Deal."

"And one more thing."

Old Xie seemed to remember something and pointed at the toolbox that had been kicked over.

"That soldering iron cost me twenty yuan, and it works well; I need to take it with me."

Chen Guangke almost spat out a mouthful of old blood.

Is this the demeanor of a top scientist?

He doesn't blink at projects worth tens of billions, but gets upset over a twenty-yuan soldering iron?

"Take it."

Shen Yan turned and started to leave.

"Guang Ke, settle the bill with this boss."

"Buy this entire shop. Pack up everything and ship it all to Jinghai."

"Even if it's a single screw, if Mr. Xie wants it, pack it up nicely."

Until he was seated in the private car heading straight for the airport, Old Xie was still in a daze.

He looked down at his flip-flops covered in grime, then looked at the rapidly receding view of Huaqiangbei outside the car window.

That was the cage where he had barely survived for ten years.

Now, he was just walking out?

"Mr. Xie."

Shen Yan sat in the passenger seat, not looking back, just casually tossing out a sentence.

"Stop spacing out."

"The blueprints are already on your tablet."

"Before we land in Jinghai, I want to see the preliminary feasibility report."

Old Xie fumbled to pick up the brand-new tablet computer.

The moment the screen lit up, displaying the image of the "Elementary Quantum Entanglement Communication Module Blueprint," Old Xie's pupils contracted violently.

His breathing stopped.

His heart felt as if it were being fiercely squeezed by an invisible, giant hand.

"This... this is..."

"This is what you longed for."

Shen Yan's voice drifted from the front seat, carrying an irrefutable magic.

"Welcome back to the world of madmen, Xie Wenyuan."