Chapter 3 The Blue Miracle
At seven o'clock on Saturday morning, Lin Mo woke up.
He hardly lingered in bed, washing up twice as fast as usual, and even forgot to check his perpetually messy hair before heading out. He walked quickly all the way, only nodding as he passed an old professor doing morning exercises, his pace never faltering for a second.
The laboratory door was locked. He pulled out his key, his hand trembling slightly, and it took two tries to insert it.
Pushing the door open, a wave of heat rushed toward him. The high-temperature furnace was still running, and the numbers on the display told him that there were still two hours left before the insulation phase ended.
Lin Mo walked to the furnace and looked inside through the observation window. The sample lay quietly in the crucible, its surface covered with a layer of grayish-white powder, looking no different from ordinary ceramics. But he knew that some kind of change was occurring inside that powder—if the drawings were correct.
He sat down at the computer, opened a literature database, and began searching for the latest papers related to "Room-Temperature Superconductivity." Over the past few years, news of "major breakthroughs" would emerge every few months in this field, only to be proven as misinterpretations or fabrications. The most recent one was last year when an Indian team claimed to have discovered Room-Temperature Superconductivity, only to be overturned by peer review, leaving them utterly humiliated.
Lin Mo flipped through those papers one by one, becoming more clear-headed as he read. Those claimed "breakthroughs" all had one thing in common—either the data was incomplete or they could not be replicated. True Room-Temperature Superconductivity, if it really existed, should be able to withstand any scrutiny.
His finger stopped on a news item: an internationally renowned laboratory announced a billion-dollar investment to assemble a hundred-person team to tackle Room-Temperature Superconductivity, estimating it would take five to ten years.
Ten years. A hundred-person team. A billion dollars.
Looking at that news, Lin Mo suddenly felt ridiculous. Just by himself, in a shabby laboratory with some leftover reagents, could he produce something that a hundred-person team couldn't achieve in ten years?
“Beep—”
The prompt from the high-temperature furnace interrupted his stray thoughts. The insulation time was up.
Lin Mo stood up, took a deep breath, and opened the furnace door. A blast of scorching air hit him; he put on heat-resistant gloves and carefully removed the crucible. The sample had sintered into a black flake with a metallic luster on its surface.
Next was quenching. The drawings required a rapid drop from 1250°C to 600°C, followed by natural cooling in the air. Lin Mo followed the steps, placing the sample into a specialized cooling device. A few seconds later, a dark red oxide layer appeared on the sample's surface.
Then came annealing. Six hours of insulation at 400°C.
Lin Mo set a new program and put the sample back into the furnace. He checked the time; it was nine in the morning. The annealing would not end until three in the afternoon.
"Just wait," he said to himself.
By half-past two in the afternoon, Lin Mo could no longer sit still. He turned off the furnace early and opened the door to let the sample cool naturally. At exactly three o'clock, the sample's temperature dropped to room temperature.
Lin Mo removed the flake. It was slightly larger than a coin and less than two millimeters thick, with a uniform black surface that had a faint metallic luster. It looked no different from ordinary ceramic superconducting materials.
Next was the final step—doping.
The steps marked on the drawings were very tedious: the sintered sample needed to be ground into powder, a special organic solvent added, then the solution of rare metal oxides dripped in, followed by low-temperature drying and a second sintering.
Lin Mo began grinding. The ceramic powder was very fine, quickly becoming a delicate grayish-black powder. He added the solvent, stirred it evenly, and then picked up the bottle of rare metal oxide solution.
This was his first time opening this reagent. The pale blue liquid swayed slightly in the glass bottle, looking harmless.
According to the drawings, exactly 0.5 milliliters needed to be dripped in. Lin Mo used a pipette to draw the solution—one drop, two drops... the numbers on the display jumped to 0.5.
He pressed the plunger.
The last drop of blue liquid fell into the powder.
Instantly, something incredible happened.
The clump of grayish-black powder began to glow—not the faint light of a chemical reaction, but as if someone had turned on a lamp; the entire clump of powder lit up from within. The color changed from grayish-black to deep blue, then from deep blue to indigo, finally settling on a blue that Lin Mo had never seen before.
That blue was so deep it seemed to absorb light, yet as pure as the clearest seawater. It lay quietly in the crucible, emitting a faint fluorescence.
Lin Mo was stunned.
He had performed countless material synthesis experiments and seen all sorts of colors—the red of iron oxide, the black of copper oxide, the blue of cobalt blue. But never had there been a color like the one before him that... didn't seem to belong to this world.
His hands began to shake.
"Calm down, calm down," Lin Mo told himself. Color doesn't prove anything. Maybe it's some impurity, or an optical phenomenon from a chemical reaction. The real test is the superconducting performance.
He picked up the sample and walked toward the four-probe tester.
This instrument could measure the resistivity of materials. Lin Mo carefully fixed the sample onto the stage, connected the electrodes, and then began the cooling process.
Using liquid nitrogen for cooling, the temperature began to drop from room temperature. 0°C, -10°C, -20°C...
The screen displayed the real-time resistance value. Lin Mo stared fixedly at the numbers, not even daring to breathe.
-20°C.
The resistance value flickered—and then became 0.0000.
Lin Mo blinked, thinking it was an instrument failure. He recalibrated once more and measured again.
At -20°C, the resistance dropped to zero.
He changed to different current directions and different test points, repeating the measurement five times.
Every single time, the resistance dropped to zero precisely at -20°C.
Lin Mo slowly set down the probes and sat in his chair. He felt a strange sense of calm, as if all the noise in the world had been sucked away. Only the sound of his own heartbeat remained—thump, thump, thump—beating violently in his chest.
It was a success.
He looked up and gazed out the window. The afternoon sunlight streamed in, casting a golden glow over the lab bench. Downstairs, students were playing basketball, their laughter and shouts faintly audible. Everything was the same as usual.
Only he knew that some things were different now.
Lin Mo lowered his head and looked at that small blue flake. It lay quietly on the sample stage, shimmering with a faint light. It was this inconspicuous little thing that had just created a miracle.
He reached out, wanting to pick it up for another look. Just as his finger was about to touch it, his phone suddenly rang.
Lin Mo was startled and pulled his hand back. An unknown number was displayed on the screen.
He hesitated for a moment before answering.
"Is this Dr. Lin? This is George," that Chinese with a foreign accent came through the receiver. "I've just arrived in Beijing and wanted to ask if it would be convenient to meet tomorrow? I'm truly very interested in your research."
Lin Mo gripped his phone, his eyes still fixed on the blue material. A sudden wave of inexplicable unease surged in his heart.
"Tomorrow..." He paused. "Tomorrow might not work. My experiment schedule is quite full these next few days."
"Oh, that's a real pity," the other person's voice still sounded enthusiastic. "Then when would be convenient for you? I'll be in China for two weeks this time, so anytime is fine."
"I'll get back to you," Lin Mo said and hung up.
He picked up the blue material again and placed it in his palm. It just lay there quietly—warm, light as a feather, yet seemingly weighing a thousand tons.
Lin Mo suddenly realized a problem: what should he do now?
This discovery was too big, so big that he hardly dared to believe it himself. If he told others, would they believe him? If this was real, what should be the next step? Publish a paper? Apply for a patent? Or...
He thought of that system, that mysterious silver spiral. Why did it choose him? What else did it want?
Countless questions flooded his mind like a tangled mess.
Lin Mo put the material into a sealed bag, placed it in the safe, and locked it. He stood in the center of the laboratory and looked around—the familiar instruments, reagents, desk, and computer suddenly felt foreign.
Outside the window, the sun began to set. The golden light stretched very long, casting mottled shadows on the wall.
Lin Mo walked to the window and looked at the familiar campus outside. Students walked by in twos and threes—some carrying books, some holding basketballs, some holding hands. They didn't know that in a certain room in this building, someone had just created something that could change the world.
Perhaps even he himself didn't know what this meant.
The phone rang again. This time it was his mentor, Wang Zhenguo.
"Xiao Lin, still in the laboratory?" Wang Zhenguo's voice sounded very tired. "Are you free tonight? Come over to my place; there's a project I want to discuss with you."
Lin Mo hesitated for a second.
"Okay, I'll head over in a bit."