After spending several days poring over dry, hard documents in the office, Liu Li felt her brain was turning to mush, and she was seeing double. That afternoon, she said goodbye to Team Leader Chen, took her notebook filled with questions, and decided to try her luck at the project team's library to see if she could find any clues to untangle the knot in her heart.

The library wasn't large, but it was quite quiet, with towering bookshelves and the distinctive smell of old paper and ink filling the air. There were only a few people around, except for the librarian who was dozing at the entrance.

Following the catalog, Liu Li found the section on machining and metalworking. The aisles between the bookshelves were narrow, and the lighting was dim. She was standing on tiptoe, squinting, struggling to decipher the small print on the spine of a Russian book on a high shelf, unaware that someone was approaching.

"Excuse me, could you please pass by?" A somewhat familiar voice sounded from behind.

Liu Li subconsciously moved aside, then turned around and froze.

The other party was also stunned.

"Liu Li?"

"Fu Jingchen?"

The two called out each other's names almost simultaneously, both looking incredulous. Fu Jingchen was carrying several thick foreign language journals, apparently there to do research as well.

"What are you doing here?" Liu Li asked, both surprised and delighted. Her voice, which she couldn't suppress, was particularly clear in the quiet library, attracting the attention of a person reading in the distance. She quickly covered her mouth, but her eyes crinkled with laughter.

Fu Jingchen was also pleasantly surprised, and lowered his voice: "Our school has a collaboration with this project. Our department sent a few people to support the theoretical calculations. I just reported for duty a few days ago. You...you were seconded here?"

"Yes!" Liu Li nodded vigorously, feeling as if she had suddenly grasped a lifeline in a foreign land, and her heart felt much more at ease. "I'm in the precision machining group."

"That's great!" Fu Jingchen couldn't hide the smile in his eyes. "I was wondering where you were on such a big project. Now that's settled!" He glanced at her empty hands. "What information are you looking up? Did you run into a problem?"

“That’s right,” Liu Li immediately made a face and quietly told Fu Jingchen about the problems she was compiling, the incomprehensible terms she had encountered, and the issues she couldn’t figure out, like pouring out beans. She even showed him her notebook.

Fu Jingchen took the notebook and quickly flipped through the dense records and annotations. The more he read, the more serious he became: "You're really something, Liu Li. You've only been here a few days and you've already figured out so many key points? The problem of deformation in the processing of thin-walled parts is indeed a common difficulty."

He pointed to a record in his notebook and then waved an English journal he was holding: "What a coincidence, I was just looking for the latest international research on this topic. Come on, there's a table over there, let's take a look together."

The two found a corner by the window and sat down. Sunlight streamed through the glass, casting dappled shadows on the open pages of the book. Fu Jingchen opened the English journal, found the relevant chapter, and as he read, he quietly explained the core ideas and experimental data to Liu Li. Liu Li, in turn, discussed with Fu Jingchen similar processing problems she had encountered at the factory, as well as the clues she had gleaned from the reports.

One excels at theoretical analysis and has an international perspective, while the other is deeply rooted in practice and familiar with the domestic factory situation. When these two collide, many previously unclear points gradually become clear.

“Look,” Liu Li pointed to a spot on the notebook, “several factories have mentioned that the dimensions of this kind of thin-walled sleeve change after it’s been machined and left overnight. Is it related to the release of internal stress?”

“Very likely!” Fu Jingchen nodded, pointing to a passage in the journal, “It mentions a concept called ‘prestressed clamping,’ which involves actively applying a reverse stress to the workpiece before processing to counteract the deformation that occurs during processing…”

In a quiet corner of a foreign land, the two sat head to head, engrossed in the world of technology, losing track of time. That familiar, tacit understanding of working side-by-side returned, and this unexpected reunion made it all the more precious and heartwarming.