147: Chapter 147 Starfall in Immortal Village

4:42 PM.

The braking sound of the G-series bullet train traveled along the steel rails into the carriage. After a slight tremor, the platform sign of Beijing South Railway Station stopped steadily outside the window.

The summer heat, wrapped in human voices, surged in from the half-open carriage doors. The sound of suitcase wheels rolling over floor tiles merged into a cacophony, and the arrival announcement on the public address system was repeated three times before finally being swallowed up by accents from all over the country.

Lin Yizhou was the first to stand up, taking down the suitcase covered in Informatics Olympiad stickers from the luggage rack.

The edges of the stickers were already worn and frayed.

NOI 2020, IOI 2021, and the Tsinghua University Winter Camp—each sticker was a point on a coordinate system, recording this young man's trajectory from provincial team training to the national team.

Gu Mingche carried his backpack and didn't say many words the entire trip. When getting off, he only gave a slight nod in Jiang Lin's direction as a farewell.

Detachment was his protective coloration, and also his most accustomed posture when facing things beyond the boundaries of his cognition.

Xu Zhiyuan walked in the middle.

He was talkative by nature and had held it in all the way on the high-speed rail. Now that they had reached the station, he felt it was too much of a pity to just part ways like this.

Seeing that Jiang Lin was about to walk in the other direction toward the exit, he gritted his teeth and hurried over in two or three steps.

"Jiang Lin!"

Jiang Lin stopped his footsteps and turned back to look at him.

His gaze was very calm, showing neither impatience nor warmth, just like he was waiting for an ordinary passerby to ask a question.

Under his gaze, Xu Zhiyuan suddenly felt a bit nervous. The words he had rehearsed in his mind several times just now got stuck, and after a long while, he managed to squeeze out: "Um, can I add your WeChat? It'll be easier to stay in touch once we get to school."

After saying it, even he felt a bit foolish.

They were both students at Tsinghua University and would see each other all the time in the future; there was no need to be so solemn.

But since the object was Jiang Lin, he always felt it was different.

Jiang Lin didn't hesitate, took out his phone, and brought up the QR code.

With a soft beep.

The friend request was sent and accepted almost immediately.

The profile picture was pitch black, and the nickname was simply the two characters Jiang Lin.

There was no Moments cover, and clicking into it only revealed a single horizontal line.

Xu Zhiyuan stared at the screen, stunned for half a second. When he looked up to say something more, Jiang Lin had already given him a slight nod and turned to merge into the stream of exiting passengers.

Lin Yizhou had somehow walked up beside him. Watching Jiang Lin's retreating figure, he said in a low voice: "You really had the nerve to ask."

"Otherwise what?" Xu Zhiyuan tucked his phone back into his pocket and defended stubbornly, "We'll all be classmates in the future, what's wrong with adding WeChat?"

Gu Mingche also walked over, his gaze sweeping past the gradually receding figure in the crowd without speaking.

The glass doors of the exit kept opening and closing. Outside was the scorching sun of Beijing in August, and the rising heat distorted the distant streetscape.

The four of them split into three paths here.

Lin Yizhou followed his mother to the booked hotel, where relatives were going to host a welcome dinner for them in the evening.

Gu Mingche had a senior student he had contacted in advance to meet him, and he would go straight to stay near Tsinghua University.

The hotel booked by Xu Zhiyuan's family was in the south city, which was not on the way with anyone else.

"See you in three days." Xu Zhiyuan waved his hand.

"Yeah, see you at registration." Lin Yizhou nodded.

Gu Mingche also gave a hum of acknowledgment.

The crowd pushed them forward, and within a few sentences, their figures completely dispersed.

Beijing South Railway Station was too big—so big that four young people about to step into the same campus were swallowed up by the hundreds of thousands of people the moment they turned around, like four drops of water melting into the ocean.

Jiang Lin didn't stay long at the station.

He dragged his suitcase out of the exit and raised his hand to hail a ride-hailing car.

During the interval of order confirmation, he lowered his head to glance at his phone. A message sent by Liang Zhixia twenty minutes ago was lying in the dialogue box.

[I've arrived in Yizhuang. I've booked the hotel for you, which is a twenty-minute drive from the exhibition center. There's a small coordination meeting at the exhibition hall tonight; if you're tired, you don't need to come. Tomorrow morning at nine, let's sync up on-site.]

The car arrived quickly.

The vehicle drove away from the South Station and got onto the South Third Ring Road.

Beijing outside the car window resembled a slowly unfurling handscroll.

Viaducts were stacked layer upon layer, ring roads wrapped around the city like gray ribbons, and billboards flashed past before his eyes.

The glass curtain walls of office buildings reflected the sunlight dazzlingly bright. Inside the densely packed windows, every single grid concealed different lives and projects.

The traffic on the road was connected end-to-end, brake lights connecting into a red river, and when moving off, they merged into a torrent of steel.

Jiangcheng's pace was like the Yangtze River—broad, slow, and carrying a composed sense of mortal warmth.

The phoenix trees in the old city blocked out the sky, the breakfast stalls in the alleys could stay open until ten in the morning, and even internet companies seemed to get off work half a beat slower than in this first-tier city.

But Beijing was not like that.

It was more like a continuously iterating computation graph.

Administration was one layer, industry was another, academia was another, capital was another, media, foreign affairs, transportation, meetings...

Countless layers were superimposed together, and every node could affect the whole body with a single pull.

Any tiny action would propagate along the link, leave traces, and then be magnified, interpreted, and endowed with various meanings.

Doing things here had a lower fault tolerance rate, higher exposure, and tested the control over boundaries even more.

Jiang Lin withdrew his gaze, opened WeChat, and clicked into the work group of the Low Entropy Workshop.

There were quite a few messages in the group.

Chen Zhi had arrived in Beijing yesterday and had been keeping an eye on the booth construction in Yizhuang, having just sent site photos half an hour ago.

[The booth framework is built, the display stand dimensions are fine, and the equipment will enter tomorrow. I'll check the entry materials once more and send them to you for confirmation tonight.]

Xu Man's message followed behind, attached with a screenshot of the logistics order.

[The G-01 C unit 3 will arrive at the Yizhuang warehouse at 4 PM. I'll supervise the unboxing and inspection. If the status is fine, it will be delivered to the exhibition hall tomorrow morning.]

At the very bottom was a screenshot sent by Chen Yan, which was the final version of the state machine demonstration interface.

The interface was very concise. On the left was the task input box, and on the right was the state transition diagram, with nodes marked in different colors: green representing completed, yellow representing running, and red representing exception backtracking.

Below it was a line of text.

[All demonstration use cases have been tested, the exception recall accuracy is 99.7%, and the live demonstration will be fine.]

Jiang Lin read them one by one and replied.

[Thanks for your hard work. Let's meet at the entrance of the exhibition hall tomorrow at nine, go over the talking points first, and then joint-debug the equipment.]

The vehicle continued forward, and the buildings outside the window gradually changed from the low buildings of the old city to the neat factories and office buildings of the development zone.

At 5:20 PM, they arrived at the hotel.

This was a chain business hotel, and the room was not large.

A single bed, a desk by the window, a chair, and the bathroom on the left side of the entrance.

The window faced the street, and the sound of vehicles driving past downstairs could be heard.

Jiang Lin threw his backpack onto the chair and went to the bathroom to wash his face first.

After coming out, he placed his laptop on the desk and turned it on.

He directly entered the isolated environment, mounted the PFR / Marton engineering image, entered the command, and started the full cold-start verification.

The terminal window was instantly filled with characters, and the green code scrolled upward at a speed of dozens of lines per second.

The dependency tree unfolded layer by layer. Lemmas, definitions, theorems, and proof steps—every node was being recompiled, verified, and state-marked. The progress bar moved very slowly; finishing the first main path would take at least two and a half hours.

In the gap of waiting, Jiang Lin sent another instruction to Chen Yan, asking him to compress the three edge cases in the demo version once more to ensure no accidents would happen on-site.

Finally, he flipped through the agenda manual of the World Robot Conference and marked out the times of several industry forums after the official opening.

It was still the exhibition setup period, but he needed to have a clear idea in advance of which meetings to attend and which media talking points to avoid.

The sky outside the window gradually darkened.

At 6:40 in the evening, Jiang Lin went downstairs to find a small eatery and simply ate a bowl of noodles. Beijing's flavor tended to be salty, the noodles were chewy, and the soup base exuded a soy sauce fragrance. He didn't eat fast, watching the street lamps on the roadside light up one by one, with car headlights flowing past before his eyes, forming a golden river.

When walking back after finishing his meal, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

Pulling it out to look, it was a WeChat message sent by Xu Zhiyuan.

[God Jiang, do you have any plans tonight?]

Jiang Lin glanced at the screen, didn't rush to reply, and walked towards the hotel lobby.

Just as he entered the elevator, the second message popped out.

[I'm not disturbing your work, just asking. Tonight the Perseid meteor shower still has a tail; although the peak passed two days ago, you definitely can't see it in Beijing city.]

The elevator door opened, and Jiang Lin walked out.

The third message followed closely and popped out.

[My mom asked for a spot from a Beijing local stargazing group—over in Bulaotun, Miyun. The National Astronomical Observatories Miyun Station is right there, with a radio antenna array, super sci-fi. We rented a business van, and both Lin Yizhou and Gu Mingche are going. Do you want to come along?]

Miyun.

Bulaotun.

National Astronomical Observatories Miyun Station.

One of the most famous stargazing spots in the suburbs of Beijing.

The radio antenna array of the Miyun Station, that group of huge parabolic antennas, was an important infrastructure for Beijing's astronomical observations.

Although worsening light pollution year by year made its optical observation conditions inferior to before, for astronomy enthusiasts, it was still a place of great significance.

If it were just an ordinary invitation, he would probably refuse.

The reasons were very sufficient.

The PFR / Marton v1.0 distribution package had not yet been officially locked, the materials before the World Robot Conference exhibition of the Low Entropy Workshop had not been fully confirmed, and the runtime sketch of MPS - Agent α was still in the initial boundary setting stage. Those architecture diagrams he drew on the blank pages of his notebook had not yet turned into a single line of truly executable code.

But the three words "meteor shower" made him not immediately press reject.

The Perseid meteor shower.

The peak was on the night of August 12 to 13, and the zenith hourly rate could reach over 100 at most.

The peak had already passed, and the meteor flux of the Perseids was rapidly decaying.

But the tail was still there.

As long as one's luck was good enough, a dozen or even more meteors could still be seen every hour.

He had seen meteors in the Wasteland.

But that was different.

Completely different.

A few seconds later, Xu Zhiyuan's fourth message was sent over.

[Right at the terrace of a nearby guesthouse and an open field, the boss said the clouds aren't too thick tonight and we should be able to see them. No overnight stay, we'll head back right after watching, and the driver is waiting over there.]

Jiang Lin, who had already returned to his room, glanced at the verification progress in the computer backend.

Not bad, within plan.

His fingertips tapped twice on the screen and he replied.

[What time are we departing?]

Less than two seconds after the message was sent, Xu Zhiyuan's reply popped out, as fast as if he had been guarding his phone the whole time.

[Eight o'clock, where are you, we'll come pick you up.]

As if afraid he would go back on his word, Xu Zhiyuan immediately added a location.

Jiang Lin glanced at the time; it was now quarter past seven.

So he replied.

[Then I'll trouble you guys.]

Xu Zhiyuan on the other end of WeChat stared at the screen and almost cried out.

He had already prepared himself to be rejected.

A person like Jiang Lin looked like someone whose time was calculated by the minute, chewing on proofs even on the high-speed rail. How could he run off to the suburbs for two hours late at night to watch the tail of a meteor shower that might not even be visible?

His heart was pounding when he sent the message, and he had even figured out how to smooth things over if he got rejected.

As a result, Jiang Lin agreed.

Xu Zhiyuan sat on the sofa in the hotel lobby, typing rapidly with his fingers, typing and deleting, deleting and typing, until three messages popped up consecutively.

[Holy crap.]

[Wait, no.]

[Received!]

After sending them, he looked up and saw Lin Yizhou and Gu Mingche both sitting on the nearby sofa looking at him, instantly feeling a bit embarrassed, and scratched his head: "He agreed."

Lin Yizhou raised his eyebrows, obviously a bit surprised: "He agreed?"

"Yeah." Xu Zhiyuan nodded, "We'll go pick him up at eight."

Gu Mingche turned a page of the book in his hand without speaking, but his gaze also flickered slightly.

After the three of them separated in the afternoon, Xu Zhiyuan had originally only invited Lin Yizhou, but later thinking the car was big enough anyway, he casually called Gu Mingche along.

Gu Mingche originally didn't want to come. Xu Zhiyuan nagged for half a day, saying it could count as going out for some fresh air and was better than grinding problems in the hotel, so he reluctantly agreed.

As a result, even Jiang Lin was coming now.

Xu Zhiyuan found it magical just thinking about it.

Eight-ten.

A black seven-seater business van stopped at the entrance of the hotel where Jiang Lin was staying.

When Jiang Lin went downstairs, he saw Xu Zhiyuan leaning against the window of the second row, waving at him, the smile on his face impossible to hide.

He pulled open the car door and got in, a wave of cool air hitting his face, dispelling the muggy heat of the night.

There were only the four of them in the car, with no parents around.

"My mom booked the car and the homestay terrace for us. She was too lazy to make the trip herself and is resting at the hotel," Xu Zhiyuan explained, his lowered voice carrying a hint of smugness. "She originally wanted to come along, but when she heard that all four of us are incoming Tsinghua University freshmen—especially when she heard you were going too—she flat out said she didn't need to keep an eye on us, saying it's completely safe."

Lin Yizhou was sitting in the third row with a tablet on his knees. Hearing this, he looked up and added, "To be precise, she thinks that with Jiang Lin here, the two of you won't run around and cause trouble."

Xu Zhiyuan let out a chuckle and didn't deny it.

He pulled a bag of snacks out of the plastic bag by his feet and placed them on the armrest in the middle of the seats: potato chips, chocolate, preserved plums, two bottles of mineral water, and a can of sugar-free cola.

"Eat them on the way. It's over two hours."

Jiang Lin sat down and fastened his seatbelt.

The vehicle drove out of the hotel and merged into the traffic in the night.

The night in downtown Beijing was too bright.

Streetlights formed bands of light, the shopping malls' neon lights were colorful, office buildings were lit up entirely block by block, and even the billboards shone dazzlingly bright.

All the lights blended together, washing the night sky into a muddy grayish-black. Looking up at the sky, one could only sparingly see a few of the brightest stars, like a few pieces of crushed diamonds scattered on a grey cloth.

Xu Zhiyuan leaned against the car window to look outside and sighed, "You really can't see anything in the city. This sky looks like it's covered with a layer of gauze."

"It's estimated to take over two hours to reach Bulaotun," Lin Yizhou said, looking down and scrolling through the map on his tablet. "After passing Miyun urban area, the light pollution level will drop. There's an observation station over there with strict controls, and lighting projects aren't allowed in the surrounding area."

Gu Mingche leaned against the window and suddenly asked, "What's the moon phase tonight? If the moon is too bright, we won't be able to see dark meteors clearly either."

"It's alright, but not great," Xu Zhiyuan had checked long ago. "The full moon just passed a couple of days ago, and tonight is still a waning gibbous moon; the moonlight will wash out most of the dark meteors. The group chat says not to expect them flying all over the sky—if we can manage to spot a few bright ones, we'll consider ourselves lucky."

Speaking of this, he turned his head to look at Jiang Lin. "Jiang Lin, have you ever seen a meteor shower before?"

Jiang Lin looked at the streetlights rapidly retreating outside the window, his voice very soft. "I have."

He was talking about the Wasteland.

But he didn't elaborate on this sentence.

The car fell briefly silent.

Xu Zhiyuan didn't notice that momentary anomaly and kept talking enthusiastically, "When I was a kid, I always thought meteor showers were just like the ones in cartoons, falling down in a huge, rushing batch like actual rain. Later I found out it's not like that at all. Actually watching a meteor shower is just stupidly waiting. You wait for a long time, and suddenly a flash of light shoots past—just as you're about to call someone to look, it's gone. It's all up to luck."

"Unpredictability is inherently one of its aesthetic appeals," Gu Mingche said in a flat tone.

Xu Zhiyuan glanced at him. "Hearing you say that, you really sound like you're from Qiuzhen College. You can even lecture philosophy while watching a shooting star."

Gu Mingche ignored his teasing, his gaze falling outside the window.

The vehicle drove all the way in a northeast direction.

From the Third Ring Road to the Fourth Ring Road, and then onto the highway from the Fourth Ring Road, the city lights were gradually left behind.

The buildings on both sides of the road became shorter and shorter, changing from dense apartment buildings to scattered villages, and later into patches of fields and tree shadows.

The atmosphere in the car also gradually relaxed.

A few hours ago, they were still in the high-speed rail compartment, treating Jiang Lin as an expert they had to look up to.

Now, they were crammed into the same car, heading towards the same uncertain meteor shower, just like any ordinary eighteen-year-old boys.

This sense of contrast was quite wondrous.

Xu Zhiyuan was browsing his phone, originally wanting to check if there was any latest weather news in the stargazing group chat, when a news push popped up, its bolded title exceptionally glaring.

He casually clicked into it, and after reading just two lines, his brow furrowed.

"Here they go again," he cursed under his breath.

"What's wrong?" Lin Yizhou looked up.

Xu Zhiyuan handed over his phone. On the screen was a newly updated current affairs commentary: "The CHIPS and Science Act, the one just signed on August 9th. It's analyzing the subsequent impact again, saying that advanced nodes, equipment, EDA software, and talent mobility—restrictions will only get tighter and tighter."

Lin Yizhou took the phone, his fingertips sliding across the screen as he quickly scanned through the entire report.

His expression also turned cold as he handed the phone back: "The subsidies are the sugar-coating for their own manufacturing industry, while the restriction clauses are the cannonballs aimed at us. It's a two-pronged approach."

"To put it bluntly, isn't this just choking us out?" The more Xu Zhiyuan spoke, the angrier he got, his voice raising a few decibels. "They shout about a free market and fair competition with their mouths, but turn around and choke us on equipment, software, and manufacturing. Students like us write code and develop algorithms every day, but in the end, don't our programs still have to run on someone else's hardware? Once they choke us by the neck, the entire upstream is paralyzed."

The driver glanced at them through the rearview mirror and didn't chime in.

The atmosphere in the car instantly grew heavy.

The previously relaxed stargazing mood felt like it had been doused by a basin of cold water.

They were still just students who had just graduated from high school, hadn't officially stepped into university gates, and hadn't truly entered the industry yet.

But they were not children who knew nothing.

Lin Yizhou came from an informatics competition background and was recommended straight into the Yao Class. His sense of reliance on compilers, hardware ecosystems, and open-source toolchains was sharper than anyone's.

Xu Zhiyuan was admitted to the School of Information, and having followed tech news since childhood, he knew clearly that chips were the foundation of the entire digital world.

Gu Mingche studied pure mathematics and also knew that large-scale verification and numerical calculation in modern mathematics had long been inseparable from professional software and computing power support.

"The CUDA ecosystem, EDA toolchain, advanced process technology, IP core licensing, compilers, drivers, and basic scientific computing libraries," Lin Yizhou's voice was very low. "Every single layer is an ecosystem, and none of them is a single-point problem. It's not something we can break through just by making a certain thing."

"That's why it's so annoying," Xu Zhiyuan leaned back against the seat, staring at the car ceiling. "In high school, I felt that getting into Tsinghua University was already amazing, as if any problem could be solved. Now, before even starting school, I see walls everywhere ahead, making one's chest feel stuffy with frustration."

Gu Mingche looked out at the pitch-black night outside the window, his voice as calm as if stating a theorem: "The walls have always been there; it's just that we were too far away before and couldn't see them."

After these words were spoken, the car fell completely silent.

Just at this moment, Jiang Lin's phone vibrated.

It was an email notification. The sender column read: Professor Zhou Zhihua.

The light inside the car was very dim, and the light from the phone screen reflected on Jiang Lin's face.

He opened the email, his gaze quickly scanning across the body text.

The email wasn't long, titled "An Interface Problem That May Be Worth Discussing in the Future".

Student Jiang Lin: I have read the few paragraphs regarding proof compression, dependency graphs, and boundary visibility in the public description of your PFR / Marton v0.9. I noticed that several of these expressions have also long appeared in different forms within the field of machine learning theory: compression, structural visibility, generalization boundaries, dependency graphs, and verifiable representations. I do not think these concepts can be easily bridged. In fact, the more similar words are, the easier they are to create misunderstandings; analogical cross-disciplinary approaches are often traps in academic research. However, if you have time in the future, I hope to discuss a narrower problem with you: Is there some formalizable common interface between proof structures, compression theory, and machine learning generalization? This is not a cooperation invitation, nor is it a project offer. It is simply a question I have thought about for a long time, and what you happen to be doing seems to have touched upon its edge. Wishing you all the best in Beijing. Professor Zhou Zhihua

Jiang Lin finished reading the email, his fingers resting on the screen without moving for a long time.

Professor Zhou Zhihua had a very sharp eye.

Node No. 38 made public was only a very peripheral part of the entire PFR / Marton proof system, involving only a tiny bit of the compression logic of proof structures.

And in the technical materials made public to the outside world by the Low Entropy Workshop, the content regarding state machines, log playback, and failure sample recall was even scarcer, almost just touching upon it briefly.

Yet Professor Zhou Zhihua still managed to capture the most core intersection from these scattered traces: compression.

Proofs can be compressed, models can be compressed, and information can be compressed.

If the underlying logic of compression is isomorphic, then there might exist a universal interface between mathematical proofs and machine learning.

Many people have had this idea, but most of it stayed at the level of casual metaphysical mentions.

Putting words like entropy, compression, generalization, and structure together in a sentence is something anyone can say.

But the most commendable thing about Professor Zhou Zhihua was that he first negated this rash cross-disciplinary approach.

The more similar the words, the easier they are to create misunderstandings.

Looking at these words, Jiang Lin knew very well in his heart that what Professor Zhou Zhihua saw was only the tip of the iceberg.

What he saw was the proof compression technology in PFR / Marton and the failure path tracing in the Low Entropy Workshop's state machine.

It was impossible for him to know that these technologies all originated from the same more underlying framework, MPS - Agent α.

That agent framework capable of cross-domain problem reconstruction, automatic compression of dependencies, and recursive validation of boundaries.

"Whose email is it?" Seeing him motionless for a long time, Xu Zhiyuan couldn't help leaning over to ask.

"Professor Zhou Zhihua," Jiang Lin said.

With a swish, the gazes of the three people in the car all concentrated on him.

Xu Zhiyuan sat straight up instantly. "Pr-Professor Zhou Zhihua, the one who wrote the *Machine Learning* Watermelon Book?"

"Mhm," Jiang Lin nodded.

Lin Yizhou's expression became a bit subtle.

Of course he knew what weight Professor Zhou Zhihua carried.

Let alone freshmen like them, even young teachers in Tsinghua University's Department of Computer Science wouldn't find it easy to have a word with Professor Zhou Zhihua.

As a result, Jiang Lin had just arrived in Beijing and already received an initiative email from Professor Zhou Zhihua.

"I really feel now that the composition of our stargazing team tonight is a bit absurd," Xu Zhiyuan leaned back into his seat, murmuring to himself. "I originally thought it was just a few freshmen coming out to relax, but it turns out there's a big boss hiding inside who can make Professor Zhou Zhihua take the initiative to send an email."

Gu Mingche didn't smile. He looked at Jiang Lin and asked the most critical question: "What are you chatting about? Machine learning?"

"He asked me whether there is a formalizable common interface between proof structures, compression theory, and machine learning generalization," Jiang Lin said.

Lin Yizhou drew in a breath. "This problem is too huge. If it can really be bridged, the entire field will turn upside down."

"It is very big," Jiang Lin said. "So he also said, it's just a question, not a project."

He lowered his head, clicked on the reply box, and began writing his reply letter. His fingers tapped very slowly on the screen, every single word deliberated.

Teacher Zhou: Thank you for your letter. I agree with your judgment. Between proof structures, compression theory, and machine learning generalization, there should not be a forcibly bridged connection through analogy. All cross-disciplinary integrations lacking formal definitions will ultimately degenerate into wordplay. If there truly exists an interface worth discussing, it should first be definable, verifiable, and falsifiable. It must have clear mathematical boundaries, reproducible experimental paths, and clear falsification criteria. After school starts in September, if time permits, I would be very willing to have a discussion with you on this narrow problem. Jiang Lin

Checking it once more to confirm there were no issues, he pressed the send button.

The car was quiet for quite a while.

Xu Zhiyuan looked at the tree shadows rapidly flashing past outside the window and suddenly said in a low voice, "I suddenly feel that when we were right there indignantly cursing the chip sanctions just now, we sounded just like elementary school students."

"It's different," Lin Yizhou shook his head.

"How is it different?"

"Emotion is the starting point, but you can't stop at emotion." Lin Yizhou paused, looking at Jiang Lin. "What he said about doing your own layer well first—that's what it means."

Xu Zhiyuan was stunned for a moment before reacting. "That's true. What's the use of just cursing? After cursing, getting choked by the neck remains getting choked by the neck. So what on earth can we do?"

He scratched his head, feeling a bit lost.

After asking this question, he felt a bit embarrassed himself.

This problem was too huge.

Too huge to be a topic discussed by four eighteen-year-old students who hadn't even reported to school yet.

Too huge that at the national level, countless top talents in various industries were working day and night to break through. For a few kids who had just graduated from high school like them to talk about this was simply overestimating their capabilities.

But outside the car window was the heavy night, and inside the car were four young men about to step into China's highest institution of learning.

Reality had already pushed the problem before them, and there was no hiding from it.

Jiang Lin didn't say any hot-blooded words.

[part:gemini-3.6-flash]

He never fed people chicken soup for the soul.

He simply said, "First, do well with your own layer."

"Which layer?" Lin Yizhou asked.

"If you're building systems, first figure out why the system layer gets bottlenecked, where the bottlenecks are, and what the underlying logic is." Jiang Lin looked at him, his gaze calm. "If Xu Zhiyuan is working on the information industry, he should first figure out the dependencies of each layer—which ones are replaceable and which are the tough nuts to crack."

He then turned to Gu Mingche: "If you're doing mathematics, first figure out how abstract structures can be truly verified, where the boundaries of formal proof lie, and which tools are under our own control."

Finally, he withdrew his gaze and looked out the window at the pitch-black wilderness.

"I'm the same. I'll focus on doing the work in my own hands well first."

"Then which layer are you?" Xu Zhiyuan couldn't help but ask.

Jiang Lin remained silent for a few seconds.

What he did spanned mathematics, computer science, engineering, and even more fields.

PFR/Marton was a pure mathematical proof, Low Entropy Workshop was industrial software, and MPS-Agent α was an even lower-level intelligence framework.

It seemed as though he had a foot in every layer, yet didn't completely belong to any single one.

"It's hard to say right now," he finally said.

The car continued driving forward, the traffic on the highway growing scarcer.

The distant shadows of mountains gradually became clearer, lying dark and looming in the night.

At 10:26 PM, the navigation announced an upcoming exit from the highway to arrive at Bulaotun Town.

The driver slowed down and drove along the country road.

Both sides of the road were lined with cornfields, the wind rustling through the leaves with a loud swoosh.

Streetlights had long vanished; only the headlights illuminated a small patch of road ahead, surrounded by an impenetrable darkness.

Ten minutes later, the car stopped outside the courtyard of a guesthouse.

The courtyard gate was made of wooden palings, and warm yellow lights shone inside.

Hearing the sound, the owner walked out of the house with a jacket draped over his shoulders. In his mid-forties with dark skin, he clearly looked like someone who spent most of his time outdoors.

"Are you the ones who booked stargazing?" the owner said in a loud, booming voice. "Follow me. The terrace is in the back, and the open area has been cleared too. Let me make things clear first: no running over to the observatory area. They have rules against trespassing. Setting up tripods for photos is fine, but don't shine high-powered flashlights around—it interferes with the observations."

"Got it, got it," Xu Zhiyuan nodded hastily. "We'll just look around and won't wander off."

Holding a small flashlight, the owner led the way.

After passing through a small courtyard planted with vegetables and walking a few dozen meters further back, they reached a flat lawn.

A few folding tables and chairs were set along the edge of the lawn, presumably prepared for stargazing guests.

At the end of the lawn, near the foot of the distant mountains, several massive outlines stood silently.

Those were radio telescopes.

The largest parabolic antenna, with a fifty-meter aperture, resembled a giant steel eye tilted slightly toward the night sky.

The reflective surface gleamed with a cold grey matte finish in the dark night, while the framework of the antenna traced bold, rigid lines against the canopy of heaven.

They shone with no lights and made no sound, standing there silently as if they had maintained that gazing posture for millions of years.

The wind blew in from the fields, carrying the scent of corn leaves and soil, humming softly as it passed through the framework of the antennas.

It sounded like an echo from the deep reaches of the universe.

"Wow, it looks way bigger than in photos," Xu Zhiyuan muttered, craning his neck and unconsciously lowering his voice.

Lin Yizhou also looked up at those massive antennas, awe filling his eyes.

He had only seen radio telescopes in textbooks and documentaries; the sense of awe from seeing them in person was something no screen could ever match.

Gu Mingche stood where he was, silent.

His cool, distant features softened slightly in the night. His gaze rested on the antennas, lost in thought.

Jiang Lin stood at the back of the group, looking deep in thought.

"Have a seat here," the owner said, setting up the folding chairs and bringing over a few bottles of mineral water. "There are a lot of mosquitoes at night, so I brought you a bottle of repellent. Take your time if you want to watch; if you get tired, head inside for a rest. Just call me when you leave."

"Thanks, boss," Xu Zhiyuan took the bug spray and passed it around to everyone.

The four sat down on the lawn in a row of chairs, facing the distant antennas and the even broader night sky.

The sky here was completely different from the city's.

Devoid of light pollution, the night sky was a deep navy blue, resembling a piece of freshly cleaned velvet.

Stars were densely scattered across it, not like the sparse, scattered specks in the city, but forming a faint band of light that stretched across the horizon.

That was the Milky Way.

Although it wasn't the season for the clearest view, it was still enough to awe anyone accustomed to city night skies.

Xu Zhiyuan tilted his head up until his neck ached, muttering under his breath, "Totally worth it. Driving two hours just to see this starry sky makes it all worth it."

Lin Yizhou opened a star chart app, dimmed his screen brightness to the minimum, and swiped across the display. "Perseus is to the northeast, roughly around that spot. The rate isn't very high right now, so let's be patient."

Gu Mingche didn't use an app.

He simply raised his head and let his eyes sweep across the starry expanse, accurately pinpointing the location of Perseus.

For someone studying mathematics, memorizing the positions and geometric relationships of constellations was hardly a difficult task.

Jiang Lin raised his head as well.

The night sky unfolded above him, vast, tranquil, and bathed in gentle starlight.

There were no dark red dust belts like in the Wasteland, no debris orbits left behind by the crashed Canopy Project, no anomalous spectrums flickering in the sandstorms outside the Outpost, no alarms, and no radiation level alerts.

This was simply a summer night in the suburbs of Beijing in 2022.

The tail end of an ordinary Perseid meteor shower.

Sitting beside him were three youths of his age, full of expectations for the future, eager for knowledge, and curious about the distant starry sky.

They talked about chips, mathematics, systems, and the walls standing in front of them, yet the light in their eyes remained unextinguished.

The wind blew past his ears, carrying the fresh fragrance of grass and trees.

The distant chirping of insects rose and fell in waves, making the night feel even more serene.

Xu Zhiyuan kept talking excitedly, sharing stories about watching stars back in his hometown and how staying up late to grind practice problems felt less tiring whenever he looked up and saw stars outside his window.

Lin Yizhou interjected occasionally, teasing him about slacking off while doing practice problems.

Gu Mingche spoke little, but whenever they strayed off topic, he would calmly correct a point of basic astronomy.

Jiang Lin listened to them speak without saying much.

He knew very clearly in his heart just how precious this tranquility was.

11:07 PM.

Without warning, an extremely thin streak of white light sliced through the northeastern sky.

It was so fast it felt like an illusion.

As if someone had lightly drawn a line across black velvet with the tip of the finest needle, vanishing in an instant.

"Did you see that?!" Xu Zhiyuan jerked upright, keeping his voice low yet unable to suppress his excitement. "Was that streak a meteor just now?"

"Yes," Lin Yizhou nodded, having seen it too. "Direction of Perseus, no doubt."

Gu Mingche said softly, "Very brief. Probably a second-magnitude meteor."

"That was way too fast!" Xu Zhiyuan was so excited he almost jumped up. "Just as I was about to call you guys, it was gone—like lightning."

Jiang Lin saw it as well.

That streak of light lingered on his retina for less than a second.

To ordinary people, it was romance, luck, and a moment worthy of making a wish.

To astronomy enthusiasts, it was a light trail left behind as sand-grained cometary debris entered the atmosphere at high speed, undergoing compressive heating and ablation when the Earth passed through the dust stream left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle.

To Jiang Lin, however, the word "meteor" carried a far heavier meaning.

Seventh Canopy Station.

PMCU-17 Dust Monitoring Protocol.

FDSO-2076A Anomalous Flux Report.

Outer Heliospheric Dust Spectrum Anomaly.

Heliospheric Boundary Compression Response.

Earth-Moon Orbit High-Speed Micro-Particle Peak-Shaving Window.

Lunar Far Side Observation Array Link Disruption.

Mars Lagrange Point Microwave Relay Failure.

Civilization Seed-Level Data High-Dimensional Compression Backup Protocol Initiated.

These terms popped into his mind one after another—cold, clear, laden with the rusty stench and radiation dust unique to the Wasteland World.

A meteor shower.

If it were merely a meteor shower like this, it would be beautiful.

Once the night passed, it would leave no trace behind, becoming nothing more than a romantic fragment in people's memories.

But what if the scale changed?

What if the flux changed?

What if the particle size distribution changed?

What if it were no longer a single night's astronomical phenomenon, but a dust disturbance front slowly passing through the edge of the Solar System over decades?

What if what entered the Earth-Moon space were no longer a few micrometer-sized dust grains, but an entire high-risk particle environment pushed forward by a Solar System-scale disturbance?

Then meteors would no longer be scenery.

It would be relentless bombardment, a graveyard for satellite orbits, scorching at the top of the atmosphere, a nightmare for surface communications, and a death sentence for all space assets.

Dark Dust String.

It emitted no light and possessed no stable visible boundary; it was neither a comet nor a nebula.

It was merely a stream of low-temperature dust spanning interstellar space, like an invisible string sweeping slowly and irresistibly across the Solar System.

A second meteor shot across the sky.

It was brighter than the first, leaving behind a slightly longer tail.

Like a lit match falling from the starry sky, it quickly burned out in the atmosphere.

"Holy crap, another one!" Xu Zhiyuan cursed under his breath, then immediately lowered his voice even further, as if afraid of disturbing the starry sky. "I thought we made the trip for nothing tonight."

Lin Yizhou said nothing, making a quick note on his tablet.

Gu Mingche didn't speak either, staring up at the sky with an intent gaze.

The surroundings were quiet.

The rustling of wind through cornfields, distant insect chirps, and the occasional faint sound of cars on far-off highways merged into background noise.

Four eighteen-year-old youths sat on the grass in the Beijing suburbs, under a vast starry sky, with silent radio antennas behind them, awaiting the next meteor.

Earlier, they had talked about Tsinghua University, chips, systems, mathematics, and those looming walls of unclear shape standing across their path.

Yet now, beneath this real starry sky, those heavy topics suddenly felt very light.

Humanity, after all, was inherently weightless before the universe.

Jiang Lin pulled out his phone, unlocked it, opened the memo app, and created a new note.

His fingertips slowly typed a line of characters on the screen.

[Reality_DustFlux_Risk_Notes]

Reality Dust Flux Risk Notes.

Finished writing, he turned off the screen.

In the distance, the radio antennas pointed silently toward the sky.

The night wind blew across the fields, bringing a slight chill from the distant reservoir.

This one was brighter than the previous two.

Its magnitude was at least close to -3, briefly outshining Jupiter.

Shooting from the radiant point, it crossed the entire zenith, leaving a bright white-gold trail at the tail of Cygnus.

The trail persisted for nearly two seconds.

In meteor observation, this was an extremely rare long persistent train.

The color of the train transitioned from white-gold at the head to pale green at the tail, finally dissipating near Beta Cygni.

This time, Xu Zhiyuan didn't yell.

He simply stood with his mouth agape, eyes wide, like someone who had witnessed the most beautiful thing in the world yet lacked any words to describe it.

This time, Jiang Lin looked in the direction from which it came.

From the dust stream left behind thousands of years ago by Comet Swift-Tuttle, from the cold reaches of the outer Solar System, from the tail remnants of a comet that periodically returned to the inner Solar System.

Yet that was merely the answer of this timeline.