Chapter 40

"Zhixing! Zhixing!" Someone peeked out from the laboratory door and called out softly to Ji Zhixing.

Upon hearing this guilty and hurried voice, Ji Zhixing knew that this person must have broken some equipment again and was afraid of being scolded by his supervisor, so he came to ask him to fix it.

The fact that he had repaired the Young's modulus measuring instrument and the liquid chromatograph had already spread far and wide thanks to Yan Jiusheng's irrepressible gossip. At first, some people didn't believe it, but Yan Jiusheng proudly showed them the video he had taken with his phone at the time. From then on, everyone in the laboratory building knew that Ji Zhixing was a repair whiz.

After that, people would frequently come to them asking Ji Zhixing to help them repair equipment. Although the school lab equipment could be reported for damage free of charge, and the tutors in private labs wouldn't ask students to pay for it, being scolded for writing reports was unavoidable.

Therefore, some students who were afraid of being scolded or leaving a bad impression on their mentors regarded Ji Zhixing as an "emergency doctor" and would only follow the procedure if they couldn't be saved.

Sure enough, as soon as Ji Zhixing reached the door, Qi Bian nervously grabbed his arm: "Are you free today? Are you free? Can you help me check the marking of the rheostat?"

"A scribing rheostat?" Ji Zhixing thought for a moment, making sure he had repaired such a thing before answering, "It's possible, but we'll have to wait until noon. My reactor just started feeding the materials."

"Okay, okay, you absolutely must come at noon!" Qi Bian gave him a thousand and one instructions before heading back with a heavy heart.

Ji Zhixing spent the whole morning in the lab watching the reactor. During his lunch break, he went down to the second floor to find Qi Bian.

As soon as Qi Bian saw him, he immediately offered him a bottle of Master Kong Oolong Tea: "Please have some tea!" When someone comes to help, especially for free, the proper etiquette cannot be neglected.

Ji Zhixing reluctantly took the bottle and drank a sip. He didn't know when it started, but whenever people asked him for help, they would ask for a bottle of this first.

Actually, he didn't particularly like this drink; he just had a dry throat from explaining the built-in sensor to the club members for two hours that day. On his way back to the dorm after the club activity, he went into the school supermarket, bought a random drink, and gulped it all down in one go right at the entrance.

Someone saw it, took a picture, and posted it on the school forum. From then on, everyone assumed that Ji Zhixing's favorite drink was Master Kong Oolong Tea. This rumor spread to the experimental area, and sending Ji Zhixing a bottle of Master Kong Oolong Tea gradually became a common way for everyone to express their gratitude.

Ji Zhixing took a couple of sips, put down the bottle, and walked around the rheostat before he understood what was going on.

"You're playing it like a piano?" He was probably still frantically fiddling with it.

"Waaaa, it looks so much like a guzheng! I can't contain my desire to pay homage to Zhuge Liang, the Qin Demon!" Inviting Ji Zhixing was definitely the right decision; if he could spot the problem, the professor certainly could too. If it had been accidentally broken during an experiment, that would be one thing, but it was purely a case of careless misbehavior; he'd be in for a severe scolding.

Sigh, actually, at least eight or nine out of ten people in their lab have done this before, and it just so happens that it breaks when it gets to him. What bad luck...

"Can it be repaired?" Qi Bian looked at Ji Zhixing, his eyes overflowing with expectation and pleading.

"Yes, it's just that the slider has lost pressure. We can fix it." Ji Zhixing said as he disassembled the contact system, straightened the contact bridge, reinstalled it, and then flattened the surfaces of the brushes and resistance wires.

"It's ready, give it a try," Ji Zhixing said casually, though he was actually bursting with a sense of accomplishment; he really loved repairing things.

Qi Bian quickly connected the generator and tested the excitation and speed control resistors. Before long, he exclaimed happily, "It's back to life! That's great!"

Seeing that Ji Zhixing was about to retire successfully, Qi Bian stopped him: "I'll treat you to dinner tonight, you can choose the place."

Ji Zhixing waved his hand and declined: "Just be more careful next time. I have club activities tonight, so I'll skip the dinner invitation."

Thanks to his great-grandson, he now has no shortage of meals. He silently wondered how to make use of all those meal cards. Selling his great-grandson's good intentions wasn't appropriate. Even if he used the cards from the two restaurants outside the school as club benefits, after deducting the school cafeteria cards, there would still be 117 cards left. Ji Zhixing was troubled by this thought.

When I was poor, I worried about food; now that I have a little money, I still worry about food.

Just as Ji Zhixing was politely seen off by Qi Bian, his neighbor called out to him, "Zhixing! Zhixing! Are you free now?"

"What's the problem?" He's very busy with repair work today.

"I just broke the TGA thermogravimetric analyzer." Tao Ci was almost in tears. The analyzer costs more than 600,000 yuan, and this one was a brand new one that was replaced with the old one just last week.

Ji Zhixing thought for a moment and said, "Let me see, it's not certain that it can be fixed."

When he helps the senior students in the lab repair instruments, he generally avoids the more expensive ones. Besides, the TGA thermogravimetric analyzer is extremely delicate; many parts can only be replaced if they break, they can't be repaired.

He checked it over and over, and sure enough, the reaction gas tube, which was the ceramic gas tube, was broken.

“This can only be replaced, and it will cost around three or four thousand,” Ji Zhixing said. “You should talk to your teacher about it.”

In fact, unless someone breaks the equipment like Qi Bian did, damaging the equipment during an experiment is perfectly normal.

Qi Bian, who had come over to watch the commotion, also said, "Your mentor is so gentle, what are you afraid of?" His mentor was truly terrifying, only slightly better than the King of Hell.

"I feel guilty because I affected the experiment." Tao Ci's tears were already falling. It was because his mentor was so good that he felt so guilty. But if he dragged it out any longer, it would delay the experiment even more.

Tao Ci wiped away her tears and said to Ji Zhixing, "Thank you for going to all this trouble."

"It's nothing, I wasn't really that helpful. I'll be going now." Ji Zhixing said goodbye to the two of them and turned to leave.

He had originally planned to take a nap at noon to relax, but now he doesn't feel tired anymore and can go back to the lab to continue working! Fixing things is such a pleasant thing to do.

Ji Zhixing honed this skill in the system's basic laboratory. Initially, it was out of necessity, as most of the junk in the basic laboratory was unusable without repair, and even if it was used, the error would be outrageous.

At first, he found it troublesome, but later, as he watched the oscilloscopes, voltage regulators, Torricelli experimental instruments and other instruments come back to life in his hands, he gradually gained a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

This kind of mental pleasure is different from learning knowledge, which is a long process, while the feedback from repairing instruments is immediate and rapid.

During the period when he was busy researching competition projects, Ji Zhixing relieved his fatigue and relaxed by tinkering with scrap metal in the basic systems lab. He especially liked to go to the basic lab to find confidence when his competition research hit a bottleneck.

Later, he became addicted to repairing instruments. Whenever he had a little free time after the competition, Ji Zhixing would spend it in the primary laboratory repairing them one by one.

He hadn't formally studied repair, but in today's information society, there's an abundance of information available online. The manufacturing principles, structural components, operating methods, and repair techniques of various instruments can all be found with a little effort—text and videos alike. Ji Zhixing bookmarked several forums and followed several content creators, mastering many instrument repair skills through self-study.

Moreover, the equipment in the basic lab practically belonged to him, and no one would hold him accountable if he broke it, so Ji Zhixing had no qualms about starting. He dared to disassemble, solder, and clean, displaying remarkable boldness. With his daring and meticulousness, there wasn't a single piece of equipment in the basic lab that Ji Zhixing couldn't fix.

Speaking of this basic laboratory, he has always been a little puzzled. The things his great-grandson gave him, including gifts and mission rewards, were always expensive rather than suitable. Why would the system's laboratory have such a laboratory that seems out of place with his great-grandson's spending style?

This laboratory could be described as rudimentary, but it has everything from small items like communicating vessels, pulley systems, and relays used by undergraduates to large instruments commonly used in scientific research labs, such as total scattering spectrometers, transmission electron microscopes, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy instruments. However, everything is so old and worn that it's hard to describe.

Ji Zhixing couldn't understand why his great-grandson would install such a laboratory in the system space. When he asked the system, it remained mysterious and refused to answer, so he had no choice but to suppress his curiosity.

He was worried that his repair skills might arouse suspicion, but after he explained that he had been learning by searching for information online, everyone accepted his advice without any doubt.

For top students, it's perfectly normal to learn just by looking at things, isn't it?

Because of his repair skills, Ji Zhixing was very popular in the experimental area. Senior students would feed him, bring him meals, lend him equipment, and teach him experimental tips.

After encountering him a few times, Zhu Ren was extremely surprised. In his view, Ji Zhixing had always been somewhat aloof, and his close friends were limited to the two people in his dormitory. Now, however, he had completely changed his ways, having a wide circle of acquaintances, and all he heard in the experimental zone were good things about Ji Zhixing.

Zhu Ren was very pleased; this young man was teachable.

Seeing the surprise and approval in the director's eyes, Ji Zhixing opened his mouth but didn't know what to say.

Zhu Ren had already left him behind to go find Yan Anjin in the office: "Old Yan, this kid is much better than you..."

When Ji Zhixing returned to the lab, Zhao Yi and Sun Er had already gone to lunch, only Yan Jiusheng was still sitting in front of the computer.

"Senior Brother Yan, let's go eat," Ji Zhixing called out.

But Yan Jiusheng did not respond and did not move at all.

Ji Zhixing felt something was off, so he went over to Yan Jiusheng and saw that he was completely out of sorts. His face was pale, his eyes were blank, and cold sweat was pouring down his forehead; he looked like he had seen a ghost.

Ji Zhixing gently patted his shoulder and softly called out, "Senior Brother Yan..."

Yan Jiusheng reacted this time, stiffening his neck like a robot as he slowly turned his head to stare straight at Ji Zhixing, as if he didn't even have the strength to make another expression.

Ji Zhixing was startled by his strange reaction: "Senior Brother Yan, what's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?" Surely he couldn't be possessed by an evil spirit.

Yan Jiusheng stared at him intently, then terror gradually appeared in his eyes: "Zhixing..." He spoke very softly, as if his soul would be shattered if his voice were even slightly louder.

"I'm here." Ji Zhixing pressed down on his shoulder, hoping to give him some strength. What exactly happened to Senior Brother Yan?

The fear in Yan Jiusheng's eyes was almost tangible: "Zhixing, I'm dead..."

"You're still alive." Ji Zhixing could feel the warmth of his subordinate's shoulder.

"No, I'm dead, I'm dead..."

Seeing that Yan Jiusheng could only repeat those three words over and over again, Ji Zhixing grabbed his shoulders and shook him: "What's wrong with you? Have you encountered any difficulties?"

Yan Jiusheng looked at Ji Zhixing with a heart full of despair, and slowly whispered, "The data... is all gone..." These words were uttered in a breathy voice.

A chill ran down Ji Zhixing's spine, and he couldn't help but lower his voice: "What... what data?" Please don't let it be what he's thinking!

Yan Jiusheng slowly raised his right hand, pointing tremblingly at the computer beside him, not daring to turn his head to look at it.

Ji Zhixing's mind went blank instantly; he experienced tinnitus, panic, and a cold sweat on his back.

"All the data... project services... all gone?" Ji Zhixing's voice was so soft it sounded like he was about to lose his soul. He desperately hoped it was just a joke.

But Yan Jiusheng nodded his head down hard, though painfully and resolutely.

"It's over, it's over," Ji Zhixing thought incredulously, taking a step back. He was dead too. All the research he'd done over the past three months since winter break was here, and now it was all gone…

He could almost picture Professor Yan's murderous gaze.

"What exactly happened? Why is all the data gone?" Could it be that Fan Chuanshuo, following in his father's footsteps, hired hackers to do this? But this computer isn't connected to the internet.

Having someone to share his fear with helped Yan Jiusheng recover somewhat, and he replied, "I just saw that the server's hard drive was almost full, so I wanted to clean up some useless data. After connecting, I typed rm -rf, and before I could decide which folder to delete, I just impulsively pressed enter..." Yan Jiusheng choked up and couldn't continue.

`rm -rf` is a file deletion command in UNIX systems. Its function is to silently and recursively delete files. Furthermore, files cannot be recovered. This is one of the commands programmers dread most because of accidental accidental deletion.

When Yan Jiusheng pressed Enter without specifying a folder, the system received a command to unconditionally delete and erase the entire hard drive! This is irreversible!

"Save..." Ji Zhixing couldn't even utter the word "life"; he was on the verge of death. Even the world's number one hacker couldn't save him in this situation.

Yan Jiusheng was almost in tears: "Is it too late for me to run away now?"

After a moment of stunned silence, Ji Zhixing came to his senses: "It's too late. Not to mention Professor Yan, even Zhao Yi and Sun Er will hunt you down to the ends of the earth."

For the past two or three months, the two of them have been spending all their time in the lab while preparing for their postgraduate entrance exams. They were so focused on making the most of every minute that they didn't even drink much water, afraid of wasting time going to the toilet. I heard that Sun Er even developed constipation.

All that painstaking effort has been ruined in an instant. Ji Zhixing thought that the two of them would go crazy if they knew this.

They had already been let down by a terrible teammate once before, and their carefully prepared competition project yielded no results, wasting more than a year of their time. They were both working on this project with a burning passion, as if they wanted to use the success of this project to wash away all the regret, pain, and humiliation they had experienced from the failure of the competition.

Ji Zhixing himself also devoted a lot to this project. It was his first time participating in such a formal scientific research project, and he didn't want to miss any detail. He would observe and learn from every experiment and every piece of data recorded by Professor Yan, Zhao Yi, Sun Er, and Yan Jiusheng.

But now...

The April wind was no longer cold, but Ji Zhixing felt a chill wind blowing through his heart; his heart was cold, and he wanted to die...

Yan Jiusheng didn't dare to move or speak.

After a long while, Ji Zhixing thought of a possibility: "Could Professor Yan have a backup?"

Those students definitely didn't have it. Generally, students aren't allowed to make their own copies of research projects of this invention nature, for fear of leaking research results.

“I don’t know…” Yan Jiusheng thought for a moment, “but… it probably isn’t.”

The director once asked me when he came to the lab if we wanted to get another computer so we could back up our data.

Professor Yan scoffed: "Backup? More backups mean more risk. Haven't I learned my lesson enough?"

The director earnestly advised, "Well, one should look forward. It's always better to have a backup."

Professor Yan was extremely annoyed: "No need, it's already backed up in my brain!"

It is clear that Professor Yan did not have a backup, and the computers in the lab were not connected to the internet, so there was no cloud backup.

"I'm dead! I'm dead!" Yan Jiusheng began repeating these three words like a broken record.

When he reached a dead end, Ji Zhixing calmed down. The words that Yan Jiusheng had mentioned earlier, which were spoken by Professor Yan, gave him a hint: Could he have a backup in his own mind?

With a thought, the experimental records I had just completed this morning were clearly visible in my mind.

He tried to recall yesterday's data, which was accurate to three decimal places, and he could remember it all, including the records from Zhao Yi and Sun Er's group.

He tried to jump back to the first day of the actual experiment, and he could recall the data recorded that day with perfect accuracy. He could even remember the words and actions of everyone in the lab that day.

Ji Zhixing was surprised. He knew that his memory had improved a lot after training, but he had never consciously mobilized the information recorded in his mind like this before. He didn't know that his memory had become this good.

He has completed three phases of memory training. The first phase focused on visuospatial planar training projects, the second phase focused on 3D stereoscopic training projects such as digital projection and Irutu, and the third phase integrated attention and coordination, using dynamic targets as training objects.

Ji Zhixing, being a non-brain science researcher, hadn't delved into its underlying principles. However, it now seemed that this futuristic, phased, static + dynamic memory training method was truly scientific and highly effective. No! It should be called super! good!

Yan Jiusheng saw Ji Zhixing standing quietly and assumed that he was in too much pain to react, just like he had just been.

"Zhixing, I'm sorry, I'm not going to continue my graduate studies..."

"What's the reason?" Yan Anjin's voice came from the doorway.

Yan Jiusheng was immediately terrified and curled up to hide behind Ji Zhixing, whose body was not very broad.

Yan Anjin: ...

What trouble have you gotten yourself into? You look so scared.

He glanced at Ji Zhixing, whose expression was also grim; it seemed this was no small matter.

Yan Anjin walked over to the two of them, glanced at the computer screen, and combined with their strange behavior, guessed what had happened.

"The data on the computer is lost?" Yan Anjin asked calmly.

But to Ji Zhixing and Yan Jiusheng, this calm sounded like the calm before a storm.

Yan Anjin was still waiting for their answer when Yan Jiusheng peeked out from behind Ji Zhixing and nodded slightly, the movement being even lighter than a dragonfly's wing brushing against a leaf.

"How much was lost?" Yan Anjin's voice remained calm.

Yan Jiusheng trembled and shrank back behind Ji Zhixing.

“We’ve lost everything,” Yan Anjin said, this time using a statement rather than a question.

Yan Jiusheng's legs were so weak that he slid to the ground, almost prostrating himself.

"Teacher, I have a backup in my mind."

"It's okay, I have a backup in my head."

As the two sentences were uttered simultaneously, Yan Anjin looked at Ji Zhixing in surprise, and Ji Zhixing looked back at her in surprise as well.

Yan Anjin asked, "Do you also have a photographic memory?"

"Uh... I was trained," Ji Zhixing said. It seems that Professor Yan was born with the ability to remember everything he saw. What a prodigy!

Yan Anjin didn't delve into it further; now was not the time to ask about that.

"How about this, you use the computer, and I have a laptop in my bag. We'll copy the data separately and then verify it using both. That's the safest way."

"Okay!" Ji Zhixing's competitive spirit was somewhat aroused.

Yan Anjin opened the briefcase she had brought and took out a laptop. Ji Zhixing recognized it at a glance as the Scien Re3520, which he had coveted last year when he was looking to buy a new computer, but couldn't afford to buy, and didn't have the money to buy it. It cost 200,000 yuan.

Ji Zhixing was too embarrassed to reach out and touch it. At this moment, he really wanted his great-grandchildren to see what it meant to spend money where it was needed...

Yan Anjin set up her laptop on a table and then got to work.

Ji Zhixing quickly restarted his computer and entered safe mode, then started typing.

For a moment, the only sound in the laboratory was the constant tapping of keyboards.

When Zhao Yi and Sun Er returned to the lab after their lunch break, they were greeted by this bizarre scene.

Yan Jiusheng sat slumped on the ground, only his eyes occasionally flickering, indicating that he was still alive.

Professor Yan and Ji Zhixing, each with a computer, seemed to be secretly competing, relentlessly pounding their keyboards.

What... is going on?

Zhao Yi and Sun Er exchanged glances, neither daring to speak easily. Yan Jiusheng didn't seem to be able to speak normally at the moment, so the two of them tacitly took turns standing on either side of Professor Yan, one looking at Ji Zhixing and the other standing behind him.

After watching for a while, the two understood that Professor Yan and Ji Zhixing were replicating the data from their experiments over this period. Combined with Yan Jiusheng's reaction, although the process was unclear, the result was obvious. What Professor Yan and Ji Zhixing were doing was salvaging the results of their hard work over the past three months.

Time passed quietly, the sun gradually set, and the five people in the laboratory were exactly the same as they were at noon.

The room grew increasingly dim, with only two computers emitting a faint blue light.

It wasn't until the moon was high in the sky that Yan Anjin typed the last character with a heavy thud.

The next second, Ji Zhixing also gave a heavy tap, and it was finished.

Before Zhao Yi, who was standing behind Ji Zhixing, could react, he saw Ji Zhixing bury his face in his hands, groaning, and slump onto the computer desk.

Yan Anjin came over and started massaging Ji Zhixing's Baihui and Qiaogong acupoints. She then asked Zhao Yi to massage his Hegu acupoint. She said with great experience, "You've been using your brain too much. Massaging it will relieve the discomfort quickly. Zhixing, try to clear your mind and don't think about anything."

Ji Zhixing felt his mind was filled with clumps of characters. The data that had been neatly arranged under his control was now running around wildly, causing him a splitting headache.

Upon hearing Professor Yan's words, he tried to adjust his breathing and try not to think about anything.

Gradually, the data that was rushing by like a high-speed train slowed down, becoming like a speeding car, a bicycle going downhill, or a floating balloon, and then it stopped.

Ji Zhixing opened his eyes; he was already covered in sweat.

"Phew—" Ji Zhixing let out a long sigh of relief, finally having the strength to thank Professor Yan and Zhao Yi.

He tried to stand up, but Yan Anjin pressed him down, saying, "Sit down."

Then he turned to Zhao Yi and Sun Er and said, "You two compare the two sets of data."

He then scolded Yan Jiusheng, who was lying on the ground, "You! Write a 10,000-word self-criticism and hand it in within two days. For each book on the reading list I gave you last semester, you must write a 100,000-word book report!"

Around noon, Yan Jiusheng was so frightened he almost fainted. If he had said anything more then, he might have actually died of fright on the spot, which is why he was only dealt with now.

Yan Jiusheng burst into tears, not from pain, but from relief.

A note from the author:

1. Refer to the Baidu Encyclopedia entry for the definition of rm-rf.

2. "Only the occasional flicker of his eyes could indicate that he was a living being." (Adapted from Lu Xun's "The New Year's Sacrifice")

I know that adding annotations to such well-known phrases is redundant and seems like I'm belittling everyone. But Jinjiang requires all citations to be attributed, so I'll do it anyway. This might happen again in the future, so please bear with me.