Chapter 59 Patient 3

She wrote down her questions on paper and eagerly dropped them into Xu Shaoqian's inbox that same day. That weekend, after completing all this, she spent a whole morning receiving one-on-one English pronunciation instruction from Mr. Henry, under Mrs. Ge's combined persuasion and persuasion. She ultimately succeeded in transforming Mr. Henry's standard, sexy British pronunciation of "daughter" into the American one. Amidst the laughter of the Ge Residence crowd, her weekend accent training came to a temporary end.

On Sunday morning, Chu Wang had returned, forcing Leon to continue his English classes. So, early in the morning, the Qiao Mansion's maid, accompanied by Leon and Zhenzhen, arrived at the Ge Mansion's gates with unerring punctuality. After watching Chu Wang and Leon board the bus to the city, Xue Zhenzhen secured the privilege of a free breakfast at the Ge Mansion.

After summer vacation, Leon and Wenjun were about to enroll at Queen's College together, and so Latin classes were about to begin. Because Chu Wang initially claimed that her Latin was "taught by Professor Xu," she was met with disdain from her classmate Xu Wenjun on the first day of class.

He asked, "Since Mr. Lin learned Latin quickly in six months from my uncle, why can't we let him teach us directly, instead of having his students teach us?"

Chu Wang smiled and said, "If you can learn from him to the same level as me within half a year, then you won't need my guidance."

Leon laughed heartily, and Wenjun lowered his head silently amid his laughter, concentrating on memorizing the alphabet.

Compared to her first days at the Qiao Mansion in Hong Kong, her first weekend at the Ge Mansion was busy and fulfilling. She didn't have to worry about overly complicated interpersonal relationships, and the servants at the Ge Mansion took care of all the trivial matters of life for her.

Being able to focus on doing what she likes, even in her previous life, her life was not so comfortable.

——

Monday is here soon.

Xu Shaoqian's class was in the afternoon. This was the first time since she enrolled at the University of Hong Kong that he had been absent. He had entrusted his own teaching assistant to teach a class that the assistant himself hadn't quite grasped. As class was about to end, the assistant had no choice but to tell the students, "What I've covered in class today is for reference only! Review Professor Xu's notes carefully, and follow his instructions for everything else!"

Chu Wang never expected that at the end of a physics class, words like "This story is purely fictional. Any similarity is purely coincidental" would appear. It sounded very familiar.

At this time, the teaching assistant added: "Linzy, who is it?"

Chu Wang raised his hand.

The teaching assistant nodded at her and said, "Professor Xu asked me to take you to the physics lab after class."

Chu Wang nodded and walked across the classroom under everyone's gaze.

As they followed the teaching assistant out, a student said sourly, "I thought so. She's Professor Xu's favorite student, so much so that he even gave her a lab class."

She sighed. Back in college, lab classes weren't strictly supervised, so she'd usually skip them whenever she could. It was just a lab class, what was there to be jealous of?

However, it was not until she arrived at the laboratory door that she finally realized that in this dark age of nuclear physics, giving an experimental class to students of theoretical physics was truly a luxury.

The laboratory building is a Bauhaus-style building, which was at the forefront of its time. It is a two-story building with the words "Institute of Nuclear Physics" written in large letters on the entrance.

Chu Wang was surprised when he saw these six words - it turned out that the Department of Physics at the University of Hong Kong was supported by capitalist tycoons. Although there were few faculty members, there seemed to be many researchers behind the scenes who were making great contributions to the advancement of nuclear physics?

The teaching assistant led her to a room at the end of the corridor, which had a simple iron door for security. Through the iron bars, he knocked on the wooden door. Hearing a noise from inside, the teaching assistant immediately turned and left, leaving Chu Wang standing alone at the door, bewildered.

After a while, the wooden door inside creaked open, and a man with a purple baby face and a pair of small round glasses opened the door sleepily.

Chu Wang glanced at him twice.

At first glance, I was shocked by his appearance that looked like a mutated zombie.

It was only at the second glance that she realized that this person was the stereotyped and weird little guy with glasses who worked in the Science Faculty Magazine when she first came to HKU.

She tremblingly said "Hi" to him, and he turned around expressionlessly and asked, "Shao Qian, did you invite this person?"

There was a rustling of papers in the room. Xu Shaoqian hummed and walked out from the corner. When he saw Chu Wang, he unlocked the door from the inside, invited her in, and briefly introduced the two to each other: "Linzy, Liang Zhang, you have met before."

Liang Zhang said "Oh" and returned to his seat, burying himself in the pile of papers that was half a person's height, and refused to raise his head again.

Xu Shaoqian smiled familiarly and explained, "When I first came to Hong Kong, I applied to the school to set up a research institute. Most of the equipment was complete, but the school wasn't well-known enough, so to this day, there are only the two of us at the institute."

Liang Zhang looked up and said dissatisfiedly, "We will have more people soon. During the theoretical calculation process, many theoretical common sense of classical physics will be discarded. The amount of calculation and testing is huge. It will probably take eight months to a year for just the two of us."

"Human hands will have it, but only after this theory is proven."

Liang Zhang opened his mouth, perhaps wanting to refute something, but had to succumb to reality and shut up.

"I received your letter last weekend, and it confirmed, to some extent, a long-held hypothesis he and I have held—that neutral radiation comes from neutrons—a very good idea. So Liang Zhang and I have been coming to the lab non-stop, and haven't rested since Saturday night. He's probably a bit nervous right now, so please forgive him."

From their fragmentary conversations, Chu Wang could guess what these two men had been up to in the lab for two whole days, working tirelessly. Communicating with intelligent people was a good thing; they often understood everything without further ado. Chu Wang nodded, indicating that he understood their situation perfectly. Then he asked weakly, "So, what can I do?"

Liang Zhang looked up from behind the pages of the book, still seemingly dissatisfied with Xu Shaoqian's proposal. He looked at Chu Wang with a hint of doubt, his eyes filled with suspicion: "Are you really capable of this?"

After a pause, Xu Shaoqian said, "You will regret underestimating her soon."

Xu Shaoqian said, "Although there are only two members in the institute now, for the sake of fairness, I still need to seek the opinion of my only current colleague."

She looked up at Liang Zhang and said with a smile, "Ask me whatever doubts you have about me."

Liang Zhang asked, "Tell me briefly about nuclear transmutation."

Chu Wang finished his explanation in a few words, then smiled and squinted his eyes. "Are you sure you want to use the term 'transmutation' instead of 'nuclear reaction'? I remember that transmutation was a term used by alchemists in ancient times. If you said that in continental Europe, you would be beheaded."

Xu Shaoqian also smiled and said, "It's okay. There are only three of us in the entire institute. And—this is Hong Kong, not Europe."

Liang Zhang coughed twice, buried his head in searching for a while, and found three pages of manuscript paper. He handed it to Chu Wang and asked, "Have you read this paper? If not, I will give you fifteen minutes to read it and briefly explain to me the contradictions in it."

Chu Wang looked down: it was Rutherford's neutron hypothesis.

She didn't need to look at it; she already knew the paper by heart. So she looked up and explained, "The nuclear model proposed by the alpha particle experiment is like the relationship between the moon and the earth—the moon orbits the sun, just as electrons orbit the nucleus. But unlike stars and planets, the electrons and the nucleus are attracted to each other by their positive and negative forces, and the attraction is enormous. Therefore, this theory cannot explain why electrons don't fall into the nucleus. This theory has countless flaws and may even be the answer furthest from the correct answer, but..."

"But." Liang Zhang's eyes were no longer sleepy behind his glasses, and he was now staring at her with a sharp gaze.

Xu Shaoqian sat on the windowsill and looked at Chu Wang with a smile.

Chu Wang flipped to the last page of the paper, the last line. He unfolded it and faced Liang Zhang, silently reciting the line of English text: "This theory is not yet perfect and has many shortcomings. However, our scientific endeavors have not only today but also tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is just around the corner." Liang Zhang adjusted his glasses. "So, let me ask you: Do you want this job—to prove this tomorrow is just around the corner?"

Chu Wang thought for a moment and said, "'It's not important whether I want to or not. What's important is whether you want me to join you.'"

Xu Shaoqian smiled and patted Liang Zhang on the shoulder. "Didn't I tell you this before? You've passed this time, right?"

Liang Zhang nodded and reluctantly agreed.

Chu Wang smiled and looked up: "So I am the third member of the institute?"

Xu Shaoqian nodded solemnly.

"So with my joining, maybe eight months to a year will be reduced to six to ten months?"

"I definitely will."

"That's great." Chu Wang narrowed his eyes slightly and clenched his fists.

——

But even if Chu Wang were to flex her muscles, she couldn't change the fact that she was a complete failure at experiments. In her previous life, she'd always failed her lab classes because of her clumsy handling. When she advanced to a higher level, word spread among her classmates, earning her the nickname "ooh! linzyiing!" (Lin Zhi is here, and so is the explosion!).

After breaking the Wilson cloud chamber's particle emitter for the third time, Liang Zhang finally yelled, "Linzy! Please stay away from particle emitters from now on! I'll do the experiments from now on, and Linzy will be responsible for recording!"

The bitter truth proved that Liang Zhang wasn't a very good experimenter. To be fair, after he had also broken the cloud chamber three times, Chu Wang sincerely suggested to Xu Shaoqian, "Then I'll do the counting, he'll record, and you, Professor Xu, will conduct the experiment."

The three of them would gather in the lab whenever they had free time. So much so that one day, when Ye Wenyu, entrusted by Mrs. Xu to deliver lunch to the lab, heard a loud bang at the end of the corridor, accompanied by shattering glass, and Liang Zhang's broken sobs, "I think we're better suited to making bombs!"

Chu Wang carefully dodged the broken glass on the ground, and thought to himself: You're right, aren't you just trying to build the most powerful bomb?

Xu Shaoqian cleaned up the glass shards on the ground as if he was used to it.

Three days later, at Xu's residence on Lianhua Road.

Chu Wang was teaching Leon and Xu Wenjun Latin, while Ye Wenyu was reporting to Mrs. Xu about what he had seen and heard when delivering meals to the laboratory these days.

"I'd heard from other professors at HKU that whenever my uncle was around, the experimental equipment always malfunctioned; the more sophisticated the instrument, the higher the failure rate. I didn't believe it. The first time I went to the lab, my uncle gave me a warning. There was a deafening bang, and I thought a landmine had gone off."

Mrs. Xu was overjoyed after hearing this and quickly asked, "Then where is Miss Chu Wang?"

"As for her," Ye Wenyu said with relish, "I heard she's not as good as my uncle. As soon as she arrived at the lab, she broke the equipment three times in a row. After only the third week, she was fired and relegated to the second line. Otherwise, why would that geeky applied physics expert agree to let my uncle do the experiment?"

Xu Shaoqian helped Mrs. Xu peel the lotus seeds and said with a disapproving smile, "This just proves one thing."

Mrs. Xu pressed on, "Proof of what?"

"'Physics students are particularly poor at experimental work,'" Chu Wang had to refute from a distance in order to save his image in front of the students. "Everyone says that, and it's probably well known. You can't blame us!"

"You're quite good at making excuses," Ye Wenyu said with a hearty laugh. "I remember you used to go to the church choir. So, Miss Lin, do you believe in Newton from Monday to Saturday and in God on Sundays?"

Lotus seeds, as clean as jade beans, rolled down Xu Shaoqian's pale and bony fingertips into the bamboo basket.

He stared at the pot of lotus seeds and said with a smile, "So our Christmas is called: merryneas."