19: Chapter 19 A Beautiful Teacher Brings Warmth to the Door? The Big Boss in Beijing Can't Sit Still!
"Are you sure this thing will work?"
Su Pingan looked at the pitch-black tile with a skeptical expression.
"Don't go setting the back of the car on fire again!"
"Don't worry, Dad."
Su Che was very confident.
"This is aerospace-grade thermal insulation tile. Never mind engine exhaust; even if you blast it with a flamethrower, it won't break."
"I guarantee that once I install it, it'll be quieter than Grandpa Wang's tractor at the end of the village when you start it up."
Su Che got straight to work.
He fished a few metal pipes of different calibers out of the pile of scrap, then set to hammering, cutting, and welding.
Less than an hour later, a strange-looking "silencer" that resembled layers of honeycomb briquettes stacked together was fresh out of the oven.
He crawled straight under the wuling hongguang, and in a few quick moves, welded the device onto the bowl-sized exhaust pipe.
"All done."
Su Che brushed the dust off his hands and crawled out from under the car.
"Dad, try it again."
Su Pingan sat in the driver's seat with half-hearted belief, as if he were heading to the execution grounds, and turned the key.
No sonic boom.
No roar.
There was only a barely perceptible "buzzing" sound, like the whir of a laptop fan.
"Huh?"
Su Pingan was stunned.
"It's… really quiet now?"
He tried pressing the gas pedal, and the car moved forward smoothly. Apart from the sound of tires rolling over pebbles, the engine noise was almost non-existent.
"Miraculous!"
A smile finally appeared on Su Pingan's face.
"This works! This is much better!"
He patted the steering wheel in satisfaction and shouted to Su Che outside the car window:
"Alright, I'm off to town to deliver the oranges!"
Su Che watched his dad drive away, disappearing at the end of the village road, with an inscrutable smile on his face.
He had forgotten to tell his dad something.
Although this silencer solved the noise problem, because it forcibly altered the exhaust structure, the turbojet engine's thrust would become… extremely unstable.
While it wouldn't affect the vehicle's safe operation, it would certainly give his dad some "fun."
Su Pingan drove his "silent wonder car," feeling absolutely fantastic.
No noise—that's the good stuff!
Humming a little tune, he soon reached the main road in town.
There was a red light ahead, and he stopped steadily behind the stop line.
In a sedan next to him, a young woman curiously glanced at him a few times, seemingly puzzled as to why this beat-up wuling hongguang didn't make a sound.
Su Pingan proudly puffed out his chest.
The red light countdown.
3, 2, 1…
Just as the light turned green, before he could even press the gas pedal, he felt the car beneath him get kicked hard from behind by someone, and it shot forward with a "whoosh!"
"Holy crap!"
Su Pingan was scared out of his wits, gripped the steering wheel for dear life, and slammed the brake pedal to the floor!
"Screech—!"
The car stopped just barely, less than ten centimeters away from the rear of the sedan in front.
The young woman in the sedan was pale with fright; she rolled down her window and cursed:
"How are you driving! Do you have a death wish?"
Su Pingan's face turned the color of liver, and he waved his hands apologetically.
He really hadn't pressed the gas pedal just now!
After finally making it to the wholesale market in town and unloading the oranges, Su Pingan drove the empty car back.
There was a long uphill stretch on the way back to the village.
In the past, whenever he drove this beat-up car, he had to floor the gas pedal, and the car would roar like a bellowing ox just to barely make it up.
Today, he was full of confidence.
But as soon as the car reached the bottom of the slope, he felt something was wrong.
The speed was getting slower and slower.
Slower and slower…
No matter how he pressed the gas, the car moved forward weakly, as if it hadn't eaten a full meal.
"Creak… creak…"
An old man riding an old-fashioned bicycle slowly overtook him.
The old man turned his head, took a look at the wuling hongguang "crawling" up the slope, then looked at Su Pingan's red, flushed face, and shouted with full vigor:
"Hey brother! Is this car of yours burning firewood?"
"It's not even as fast as my pedaling!"
With that, the old man laughed heartily and zipped away in a flash.
Su Pingan sat in the car, staring in the direction where the old man had disappeared, feeling like he had lost all face.
Su Che was in his studio, engrossed in studying that aero-engine blade.
To him, the material and craftsmanship of this thing were practically a treasure trove.
"Student Su Che, are you home?"
A crisp, melodious voice came from the doorway.
Su Che turned around; it was Lin Waner.
She was carrying a vegetable basket filled with fresh vegetables and meat.
"Teacher Lin? What is this?"
"I… I came to thank you."
Lin Waner's face was slightly flushed as she placed the basket on the table.
"The kids really loved the printer you helped fix last time. I didn't know how to thank you, so… I thought I'd cook a meal for you."
As she spoke, she started to tidy up.
Su Che stood up hurriedly.
"No, no, no, Teacher Lin, you're being too polite. It was nothing."
In his haste, he forgot that he had just been touching that pile of greasy parts and his hands were covered in black oil.
When he raised his hand, he left a black streak right across his face.
"Pfft."
Lin Waner was amused by his messy face.
She put down what she was holding, took a pack of tissues from her small bag, and pulled one out.
She walked up to Su Che and stood on her tiptoes.
"Don't move."
Her voice was very soft and gentle.
A warm tissue gently wiped Su Che's cheek.
Su Che froze, not daring to move an inch.
He could clearly see her long eyelashes and those clear, water-like eyes just inches away.
Su Che felt his heart rate spiking rapidly.
Just at this subtle moment, neither of them noticed that, a few dozen meters away, behind the curtain of that two-story building, Captain Li Jun was holding a high-powered telescope, taking in the entire scene.
He frowned and put down the telescope.
Meanwhile, in the capital, deep within a certain red-walled compound, in a heavily guarded conference room, several top scientists with graying hair—people who could cause an earthquake in the Dragon Kingdom's scientific community just by stamping their feet—were arguing incessantly around a small piece of lined homework paper.
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible! How could the mass-energy equation have a direct mathematical correlation with quantum entanglement?"
"But look at this framework. If you treat energy as the foundation of information existence and superposition states as the carrier for information transmission… it is theoretically self-consistent!"
"Self-consistent? A homework paper, three formulas, not even a derivation process—what kind of theory is this!"
"Old Ma! Calm down! Think about it, if this theory holds, what does it mean?"
"It means… we could break free from the physical limitations of existing fiber optics and achieve true, zero-latency, zero-loss super-distance communication!"
The entire conference room fell into an instant silence.
Sitting in the main seat, Lieutenant General Peng, Director of the Central Military Commission's Science and Technology Commission, listened to the debate among these national treasure-level scientists without saying a word.
Only when the argument subsided did he speak slowly.
"So, you've studied it for a day and a night; what is the conclusion?"
An academician wearing reading glasses stood up tremblingly, picking up the homework paper as if holding a peerless treasure.
"General… we don't understand it."
"But we know… what is written on this paper is a brand-new type of thought we have never seen before, one sufficient to overturn the existing framework of physics."
"We need more raw data, and we need to communicate face-to-face with the person who proposed this idea!"
General Peng was silent for a moment.
He picked up a red classified telegram on the table, which had just arrived from the Xiang Province Military Region regarding the entire process of Su Che handing over this technology.
When he saw that Su Che's condition was simply to let the village children watch cartoons during the New Year, his weathered face showed an expression of being unable to laugh or cry.
General Peng slammed the table and stood up.
"Immediately order Political Commissar Li of the Southern Theater Command's Xiang Province Military Region to go to Su Family Village!"
"Have him go and meet this young man in person!"
And just as General Peng gave his order, in Su Family Village, Captain Li Jun watched the young man in the courtyard in the distance who was clumsily helping Lin Waner wash vegetables.
He spoke into his headset, in a cold, emotionless tone, and issued another order.
"Run a check for me."
"Village elementary school teacher, Lin Waner."
"I want to see her complete background information within 24 hours."