5: The Chinese Academy of Sciences was completely engulfed in chaos late at night by an email!

The time rewinds to the late night three days prior.

C Building, Office 703, Institute of Physics, Xia Kingdom Academy of Sciences.

Postdoctoral researcher Li Wenbo yawned, rubbed his tired eyes, and squeezed out a few physiological tears.

As Academician Zhang Jingtong's "youngest" research grunt, the tedious chore of cleaning out the institute's public mailbox naturally fell to him.

"What kind of monsters and weirdos are these now..."

While muttering a complaint, Li Wenbo expertly selected the emails with outlandish titles, preparing to delete them all at once.

"Shocking! I Have Proven the Goldbach Conjecture!"—Delete.

"Feasibility Report on Perpetual Motion Machines"—Delete.

"I Have Discovered the Ultimate Theory of the Universe That Transcends Relativity"—Delete.

He was already numb to this. This mailbox was the carnival ground for the nation's "folk scientists," where the ratio of normal emails was harder to find than a drop of water in the Sahara Desert.

Just as he was about to empty the trash, the title of one email made his finger, which was poised over the delete key, pause slightly.

[A Direction]

No exclamation marks, no exaggerated adjectives, just four characters that were calm to the point of being cold.

"A bit interesting."

Li Wenbo raised an eyebrow and, on a whim, clicked it open.

There was no signature, no polite formalities, just a dense block of text composed of formulas and theories.

"Tch, another one trying to be mysterious."

He curled his lip, scrolled the mouse wheel down, and casually scanned the content.

However, that single glance struck him like lightning, freezing him instantly on the spot!

His pupils contracted to the size of a pinprick in one-tenth of a second!

What kind of feeling was that?

It was as if a martial arts expert who had spent his life studying the incomplete fragments of the Nine Yin Manual suddenly had the complete Nine Yin General Outline slapped onto his face!

No!

This was even more shocking than that!

Every word and every formula in the email was like a heavy hammer, smashing deep into his soul!

"Quantum spin... topological insulation... coupling... My heavens! It can be done like this?"

Li Wenbo's voice began to tremble. He stared intently at the screen, the color draining visibly from his face, replaced by a pallor mixed with fear, ecstasy, and disbelief!

The theory proposed in this paper completely overturned everything he had learned in the past decade!

But... logically, it was so perfect!

Perfect to the point of being terrifying!

"A lunatic... the person who wrote this letter is definitely a lunatic!"

Li Wenbo tremblingly fished a cigarette case out of his pocket, but his fingers were shaking so badly he couldn't even flick the lighter.

With a "clatter," the lighter fell to the floor.

He didn't notice, however. He suddenly sprang up from his chair and, ignoring the fact that it was 3 a.m., rushed like a madman toward the office at the end of the corridor, the one that was always lit.

"Teacher! Professor Chen! Something huge has happened!"

The office door was violently thrown open by him.

Inside, a middle-aged mentor working at his desk was startled and frowned unhappily: "Wenbo? What are you yelling about in the middle of the night!"

"The email! Teacher, quickly look at this email!"

Li Wenbo slammed his laptop onto his mentor's desk with a crash, pointing incoherently at the screen.

Professor Chen impatiently adjusted his glasses, and his gaze fell upon the screen.

One minute later.

"Absurd! This is utter nonsense!" Professor Chen's first reaction was anger.

Five minutes later.

His brows were tightly furrowed, his fingers unconsciously tapping the desktop, and he muttered to himself, "Wait... this line of thinking... it's quite interesting..."

Ten minutes later.

With a "crash," Professor Chen abruptly stood up, knocking over the chair behind him due to the force of his movement.

He paid it no mind, grabbing Li Wenbo's shoulders, his eyes bloodshot, his expression frantic with excitement!

"Quick! Call Old Zhang! No! We'll go find him right now! Immediately! At once!"

...Half an hour later.

The top-floor conference room of the Institute of Physics was brightly lit.

Academician Zhang Jingtong, who had already gone home to rest, was woken up by an emergency phone call.

After he put on his clothes, put on his reading glasses, and finished reading the paper that had been printed overnight, this scientific titan, who had weathered countless storms, only said one thing.

"Call up every Academician still in Jinghai! I don't care if they're sleeping or in a meeting, I want to see them here within fifty minutes!"

And so, the following scene unfolded.

The core minds of the entire Institute of Physics were completely ignited by one email late at night!

Inside the conference room, the sounds of argument, astonishment, and sharp intakes of breath rose and fell.

"This model... I ran it three times on the supercomputer, and theoretically... it's actually feasible!"

"Unbelievable! This is practically God's perspective! All our previous research was heading in the wrong direction!"

"Look here, the method for constructing this 'zero-resistance channel' is too ingenious! Too beautiful! It's practically a work of art!"

Academician Zhang Jingtong did not participate in their discussion; he merely smoked silently, cigarette after cigarette.

His heart was more shaken than anyone else's.

Because he knew better than anyone present exactly what this seemingly "immature" paper meant.

It meant that Xia Kingdom would have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to overtake others in the field of fundamental physics, or even perform a direct "lane change and overtake"!

"Old Zhang, what's your take?" asked a nearby Old Academician, who was equally respected, his tone grave.

Zhang Jingtong slowly exhaled a plume of thick smoke and extinguished the cigarette butt in his hand.

He looked up, and an unprecedented flame burned in his cloudy eyes.

Instead of answering his old friend's question, he directly picked up the red telephone on the table, which represented the highest level of confidentiality.

The call was quickly connected, and a majestic yet steady voice came from the other end.

"Hello?"

Zhang Jingtong took a deep breath, trying his best to keep his voice steady, but the uncontrollable excitement still made his vocal cords tremble slightly.

"Chief, this is Zhang Jingtong."

"I might have discovered a key here... one that can unlock the door to the next hundred years of technology."