158: Chapter 158 Isn't this just a matter of course?

Room-Temperature Superconducting Material?

The moment those words left Lin Yuan's mouth, all forty or fifty people in the entire experimental hall froze in place.

No one spoke, no one moved; even the sound of breathing seemed to vanish collectively at that instant.

Room-temperature Superconductivity.

This term was no stranger to any of the veteran experts present.

It was a miracle that countless scientists dreamed of even touching the edges of, and it was also a major disaster zone where academic scams and farces had cropped up incessantly worldwide over the years.

Every year, unknown laboratories would jump out, solemnly claiming they had discovered Room-temperature Superconductivity, even managing to swindle large amounts of venture capital. But what happened then?

Every year, they were ruthlessly exposed, proven to be data fabrications or ridiculous measurement errors.

A full ten-plus seconds passed.

Only then did He Mingde suddenly shudder, being the first to snap back from that near-catatonic state.

"Academician Lin."

He pressed both hands onto the table, his gaze fixed intently on the seemingly ordinary hard drive in Lin Yuan's hand.

"The Room-temperature Superconductivity you mentioned... is it Room-temperature Superconductivity in the true sense?"

After a beat, He Mingde immediately added another question.

"Without the need for any extremely harsh special conditions, such as... high pressure?"

As this follow-up question was thrown out, all forty or fifty people in the hall looked at Lin Yuan in unison.

No one dared to interject a single word.

Because the answer to this question would directly determine whether the contents of the fifth hard drive were a farce or a nuclear bomb capable of detonating all of human civilization.

The concept of Room-temperature Superconductivity had been so thoroughly tarnished by various pseudo-labs and scammers over the years that He Mingde felt the need to ask in such detail.

After all, superconductivity under high pressure?

That was at best a laboratory toy, still a hundred thousand miles away from engineering applications.

But if it were room temperature and ambient pressure...

Meeting the gaze of everyone present, Lin Yuan held the hard drive, gave his wrist a slight turn, and set it back on the table, lining it up with the previous four.

His movements were unhurried.

"Room temperature, ambient pressure."

Then, those four words left his mouth—crisp and neat, without any additional conditions or ambiguity.

Lin Yuan crossed his hands and leaned back comfortably against the chair, adding in a tone that was almost like casual small talk:

"No need for high-pressure vessels, no need for liquid nitrogen cooling, and certainly no need for any extreme physical environments."

"It is exactly what is understood in the literal sense: the most direct Room-Temperature Superconducting Material."

"At room temperature and one standard atmosphere of pressure: zero resistance, perfect diamagnetism."

Inside the hall.

A dead silence even more terrifying than before descended.

The more nonchalantly Lin Yuan spoke, the more the veteran experts' brains struggled to keep up.

Zero resistance.

Perfect diamagnetism.

Room temperature and ambient pressure.

What did these three conditions coming together mean?

Everyone present—no, it should be said everyone who had received a basic education in physics—could give the answer.

That was a lever that could directly upend the very foundation of human civilization!

This wasn't progress in a single technical field.

This was the total collapse and nirvanic reconstruction of the entire superstructure after the underlying rules of physics had been rewritten!

Zhou Changming was pinned to his chair, his legs shaking uncontrollably.

Having worked with special materials his whole life, he knew all too well what Room-temperature Superconductivity represented in the field of materials science.

It was an epic technological explosion in human civilization, on par with the 'discovery of fire,' the 'invention of electricity,' and the 'emergence of semiconductors'!

The discovery of fire gave birth to civilization.

The invention of electricity reshaped industry.

The emergence of semiconductors spawned the information age.

And Room-temperature Superconductivity...

Would completely rewrite the way humanity utilized energy.

A veteran expert sitting next to Zhou Changming had his hands folded and pressed onto the table, the veins bulging on the back of his hands clearly visible.

He didn't speak, but the surging emotions in his chest had already shaken him into a state of daze.

How many years had the world been researching this?

More than half a century.

From high-pressure hydrogen sulfide to carbonaceous sulfur hydride, from lanthanide superhydrides to copper oxide systems, countless top laboratories globally had poured billions into funding, yet they hadn't even touched the crack of the door to Room-temperature Superconductivity.

And here in Xia Country?

It was here.

It was just here, simply like that!

What made his scalp tingle even more was that Lin Yuan had created this thing 'in passing' while preparing supporting materials for Controlled Nuclear Fusion, because he felt the power transmission problem needed to be solved.

In passing.

These two words crashed wildly back and forth in the old expert's mind, making his temples throb.

This material that Lin Yuan had supposedly created 'in passing' was enough for everyone in the global materials science community to spend their entire lives desperately chasing!

At this moment, an indescribable, eerie atmosphere filled the hall.

It was a complex emotion seeping out from the marrow of their bones—a mixture of extreme absurdity and extreme euphoria.

Although those present were working with Lin Yuan for the first time, they had all heard the legends about him like thunder in their ears.

The team previously working on Photolithography Machines had been led by Lin Yuan from having nothing to crushing the competition The Other Side of the Ocean in just two months.

Later, the group working on Fifth-generation Communication was similarly pulled onto a frantic train by Lin Yuan, forcefully achieving results that crushed the globe in a single month.

The core members of those projects, when chatting privately with people in the industry, would repeat one sentence over and over—

"Working under Chief Engineer Lin, you don't even need to think about whether the direction is right; just follow Chief Engineer Lin and you'll be fine. He's already paved the way; we just need to put our heads down and run."

Before, they didn't understand.

But now, it was finally their turn.

Moreover, they had only been 'on board' for less than a day, their seats weren't even warm yet, and they had already witnessed the birth of Room-Temperature Superconducting Material.

Was this what it felt like to be carried to victory by Lin Yuan?

"Room-temperature... superconductivity..."

He Mingde sat there, repeatedly muttering those words.

He raised his head with great difficulty and stared at the young man in his early twenties opposite him, the shock on his face beyond words.

"Academician Lin..."

"I originally thought that being able to follow you to work on Controlled Nuclear Fusion this time would already be the greatest stroke of luck I could encounter in my life."

"But I never imagined that before Controlled Nuclear Fusion was even researched, you would first develop Room-Temperature Superconducting Material along the way?"

As he spoke these words, He Mingde himself felt it was ridiculously absurd.

Lin Yuan leaned against the back of his chair and chuckled after hearing this.

"Dean He, there's no need to be so surprised."

"The logic is very simple. Once Controlled Nuclear Fusion is ignited and achieved, the biggest subsequent problem will naturally be the transmission of that massive amount of energy."

Lin Yuan raised his hand and analyzed methodically.

"According to existing transmission lines, resistance losses easily range from five to eight percent."

"Even if the energy from a fusion reactor can be called infinite, it shouldn't be wasted like that. After all, given the baseline energy output of future fusion reactors, every percentage point lost represents an astronomical amount of electricity wasted."

"So, since I saw this problem, I naturally had to consider solving the losses at the transmission end as well."

Lin Yuan spread his hands, his sharp brows arching slightly, putting on an air of 'isn't this only natural?'

"When doing engineering, if you encounter a pain point, you solve the pain point."

"Whatever material is needed, you create that material."

"Isn't this only logical?"