Chapter 36
After hanging up with Lin Lang, Ji Zhixing received another call from Xu Dongyang.
Xu Dongyang's voice was never as loud as Lin Lang's, but this time it sounded unusually deep.
Ji Zhixing asked with concern, "What happened?"
Xu Dongyang was silent for a long time before saying on the other end of the phone, "Wang Zhanpeng has been contacting me recently."
Ah, this...
Ji Zhixing thought, "Is he trying to persuade Xu Dongyang to issue a letter of understanding because of Wang Sikai's matter? Wang Zhanpeng is truly inhuman, disregarding the harm suffered by his other son for the sake of one son!" However, Ji Zhixing did not expect that Wang Zhanpeng was even more despicable than he thought.
"I originally thought it was for Wang Sikai, but he didn't even mention it once. It's like he just wanted to mend his father-son relationship with me. He's completely forgotten about his son over there." Xu Dongyang's voice was filled with undisguised sarcasm.
He knew perfectly well that Wang Zhanpeng's change of heart and his interest in him were only because Wang Sikai was now a failure and because his two assistants had only given birth to daughters. Wang Zhanpeng possessed many of the common qualities of a man from a humble background who had achieved success, including a preference for sons over daughters.
Xu Dongyang called Ji Zhixing at this time because he was hesitant: "Do you think I should play along with Wang Zhanpeng?" This would make it much easier to get the Xu family's company back from Wang Zhanpeng.
But now he feels disgusted just looking at that scumbag hypocrite and doesn't want Xu's mother to suffer.
Ji Zhixing didn't speak, but listened to Xu Dongyang explain his thoughts one by one. He felt that Xu Dongyang already had a plan in mind, but just needed someone to listen to him sort out the pros and cons.
In the end, Xu Dongyang made up his mind, blocked Wang Zhanpeng, and used fair and square means to defeat him and take back the company from him!
Ji Zhixing, of course, only affirmed and encouraged him. After hanging up the phone, for a fleeting moment, he wondered how Wang Sikai's mother, his cousin, was doing. However, the thought vanished in an instant; Ji Zhixing didn't intend to dwell on it, as he had far too much material to read right now.
After reading materials for a few days, Yan Anjin gave the lab a year-end holiday. Yan Jiusheng, Zhao Yi, Sun Er, and even Professor Yan himself were all going home for the New Year.
After thinking about it, Ji Zhixing decided to go back to his hometown for the Spring Festival this year to sweep his grandfather's grave and tell him that he was doing well and had even won first prize in a national competition.
Now that the economy has improved, Ji Zhixing no longer needs to bother comparing prices for various modes of transportation. He simply takes a plane the day before New Year's Eve and lands in his hometown a little over an hour later. He recalls when he first went to Guangling University to register, he chose a cheap long-distance bus to save money, a journey that took nearly 20 hours, and his hip joint was stiff when he got off the bus.
Returning to his hometown after a year and a half, Ji Zhixing didn't contact anyone. Of course, there wasn't anyone worth contacting anyway.
He spent an afternoon at his grandfather's grave, burning photos of his award and talking for a long time.
After leaving the cemetery, Ji Zhixing took a detour to his hometown, wanting to take one last look before leaving.
After Wang Sikai was arrested for drugging someone, his mother went to Guangling University to look for Ji Zhixing, but was unable to enter due to strict access control. Ji Zhixing had already blocked all contact information for this so-called cousin. Later, the cousin bombarded Ji Zhixing with text messages from various unknown numbers, ranging from aggressive threats to desperate pleas, even offering to return his old house to him in exchange for a letter of forgiveness from him to the police.
Ji Zhixing refused without hesitation. His aunt persisted for a while, but seeing that he was completely unmoved, she disappeared. Some time later, Ji Zhixing heard that his aunt had sold their house in their hometown at a low price. He learned this from the owner of a braised meat shop in the canteen, who was from his hometown.
After receiving Xu Dongyang's call, Ji Zhixing was quite certain why his aunt was in such a hurry to sell the house—it was simply because she needed money urgently, just like he had back then.
He was in a hurry to sell the house to pay for his grandfather's expensive medical treatment, and his aunt was probably in a hurry to raise money to hire a lawyer to help Wang Sikai reduce his sentence. After being abandoned by Wang Zhanpeng, she probably had no source of income, and hiring a capable lawyer would be a considerable expense.
Later, I heard that my aunt had hired several lawyers, but none of them satisfied her. She was even swindled out of a lot of money by a fake lawyer.
Upon hearing this, Ji Zhixing felt a sense of satisfaction; this was probably a case of tit for tat.
Ji Zhixing had considered buying back the house in his hometown, but the family who had bought it from his cousin had finally settled down and didn't intend to resell it. Ji Zhixing didn't force them, but left them his contact information and told them to contact him if they ever decided to sell the house.
Ji Zhixing stood downstairs, looking up at the sixth floor. The once empty balcony was now bustling with activity. With the Spring Festival approaching, the family had hung up red lanterns according to local custom. Several vines climbed up the railing, still green in the southern winter. A soccer ball and a scooter hung in one corner of the balcony; everything looked so full of life.
He thought to himself that this might not be a bad thing for the old house.
Ji Zhixing flew back to Guangling University that very night. He spent New Year's Eve in his dormitory. He ordered a small table of New Year's Eve dinner according to his appetite and had it delivered to his dormitory. Finally, he put one of his meal cards to use. This can be considered as his great-great-grandchildren spending the Spring Festival with him.
Ji Zhixing had originally planned to relax and take a few days off during the Lunar New Year, but after an incredibly boring first day, he couldn't resist picking up his studies again on the second day. The library was naturally not open yet, but he had borrowed many books beforehand.
So Ji Zhixing spent a fulfilling Spring Festival holiday reading and doing tasks.
After the Spring Festival, Ji Zhixing reported to the laboratory on time. The laboratory funding had been allocated, and the newly purchased instruments and materials had all arrived. After Professor Yan Anjin assigned tasks to everyone, the project research officially began.
Ji Zhixing cherishes this opportunity, which not only allows him to participate in actual scientific research activities early on, but also allows him to accumulate experience for their own zero-gravity seat project.
In this lab, he simply followed orders. But on their zero-gravity seat project, he had to be able to plan and guide the research. Therefore, he was very dedicated every day in the lab, absorbing knowledge and processes for conducting research and projects from all sorts of new experiences.
Yan Anjin divided the four people into two groups: Ji Zhixing and Yan Jiusheng in one group, and Zhao Yi and Sun Er in the other. Including himself, there were a total of three groups, each advancing the experiment in a different direction.
On the first day, he reassured the students: "It's okay to make defective products. The initial stage is basically all about trial and error. You don't need to rush to achieve results in a short period of time."
With such a considerate mentor, Ji Zhixing and others naturally felt less burdened when conducting experiments.
Ji Zhixing said to Yan Jiusheng, "Senior Brother Yan, I'll have to trouble you to guide me more. I've basically never done any proper experiments." The experiments I did at the undergraduate level were just reading from the textbook and could hardly be called scientific research.
Yan Jiusheng waved his hand repeatedly and said politely, "No problem, no problem. Actually, I haven't done much work. I've been doing theoretical work in the office."
Yan Jiusheng had thought that starting from the same point, everyone could make progress together, but he never expected that Ji Zhixing would leave him far behind in just a few days.
After becoming familiar with the operation of the high-pressure reactor, Ji Zhixing quickly got the hang of it and began GC analysis while conducting experiments.
Yan Jiusheng extended Er Kang's hand: "Well, Zhixing, other labs usually do experiments one day and GC analysis the next, completing a set of experiments in two days..."
“But wouldn’t it save more time to do them at the same time? That way, we can complete a set of experiments in one day.” Ji Zhixing answered matter-of-factly, why drag it out for two days when it can be done in one day?
Yan Jiusheng was worried that his dual-client setup would cause errors, but to his surprise, the quality of several consecutive analyses was extremely high, and Professor Yan couldn't find any fault with his analysis.
Under Ji Zhixing's leadership, there was almost no idle chatting, watching dramas, or slacking off in the project team. Everyone talked about compression modulus and flame retardant properties. Sometimes Yan Jiusheng wanted to gossip about his mentor's past, but he was too embarrassed to say it.
At first, Yan Jiusheng actually felt pretty good. He was in a group with Ji Zhixing, but Ji Zhixing could handle the theoretical analysis and experimental operations entirely on his own, so he felt he could basically just relax. It was like the chemical engineering lab next door, where one of his undergraduate classmates would spend an hour or two each day watching the software and running data, and then spend the rest of the time playing games.
But he still had a sense of shame. Every time Professor Yan organized a discussion on the project, Ji Zhixing could calmly offer his own ideas, which were insightful and profound, while he could only stammer out a few words of nonsense that even he himself couldn't stand. So, in the end, he had no choice but to get up from the ground with great embarrassment and join in the scribbling. He scribbled so much that he wanted to post on Zhihu (a Chinese Q&A website) with the title "What's it like to have a scribbling king in your project team?"
The only saving grace is that Ji Zhixing did not lead the way in working 996; on the contrary, he was very punctual in going to and from get off work, a practice that was exactly the same as Professor Yan's.
Unlike some professors who only assign tasks and don't get involved themselves, Professor Yan is genuinely passionate about scientific research. He once lamented with regret, "I'm really getting old. I used to never need to sleep."
Yan Jiusheng understood that Professor Yan's words were simply a lament about how time flies, and he didn't mean anything by subtly asking them to work through the night. But he still felt a pressure he hadn't felt in the past two and a half years.
However, while Yan Jiusheng might not excel at other things, he was exceptional at adjusting his mindset. He later realized that a train's speed depends on its engine, and with a research fanatic like Ji Zhixing, the entire research team would benefit. Even if he couldn't outdo Ji Zhixing by following his lead for a few years, his path would definitely be better than his original one.
Yan Jiusheng resignedly tried to keep up with Ji Zhixing's pace, but when chatting with friends, he couldn't help but show a sense of weariness. He thought that doing theoretical physics under Professor Yan's nose was enough to make him go bald, but he didn't expect there to be another mountain to climb. He had already ordered Wangba hair growth tonic yesterday, using it in advance before it was too late, lest his bald patch started to appear!
A friend gave him some advice: "This is just the beginning. You need to establish your senior brother's authority as soon as possible!"
What is this "senior brother's authority"? It dissipated with the dust in the liquid chromatograph the very first day he took Ji Zhixing on a tour of the lab.
"You know what? Every day after I get off the lab bench, I'm so tired I just want to collapse on the spot. I don't even want to take a shower when I get back to the dorm. But Ji Zhixing still has the energy to read books and literature when he gets back to the dorm, and he even gets up early to exercise!"
"Terrifying?!" My friend's eyes widened, then he shook his head: "You two are definitely not in the same league. You'd better find a powerful backer as soon as possible." Forget about the senior brother's dignity.
The lab team worked together diligently, completing in just half a month the work Professor Yan had predicted would take two months. Professor Yan expressed his satisfaction. The prepared composite materials need to be sent to a special laboratory in the capital for analysis, which will take about two weeks. The experiment is now temporarily concluded.
School is about to start. Ji Zhixing is still an undergraduate, and Zhao Yi and Sun Er have to prepare for their postgraduate entrance exams in March. So Yan Anjin simply gave everyone a half-month break, leaving only Yan Jiusheng, who had the most free time, to stay in the lab to take care of the idling reactor.
Yan Jiusheng wasn't unhappy at all. Without the locomotive around, he could play on his phone in the lab without any psychological burden, especially since Professor Yan's stipend was quite high.
With the start of the new school year approaching and the administration building reopening, Zhu Ren made a special detour to Yan Anjin's office in front of the administration building to inquire about her recent situation.
"How's the lab going?" Zhu Ren looked at Yan Anjin's face; she looked radiant.
“Very good.” Yan Anjin replied succinctly as always.
But those two words were enough to surprise Zhu Ren, who knew him well: "It's rare to hear you praise someone like that in years." In fact, after all these years of being classmates and working together, there were very few people who could elicit such praise from Yan Anjin.
Yan Anjin is indeed very satisfied with the current state of the laboratory.
In fact, by his standards, three out of the four students wouldn't be considered exceptionally talented. But scientific research isn't just for geniuses. While talent is certainly important, Yan Anjin believes that a good mindset, sustained enthusiasm, and unwavering focus are even more crucial.
Talent is certainly rare, and the flashes of inspiration it brings can guide a project in the right direction. However, reaching the destination along that direction still requires the hard work and perseverance of ordinary researchers.
For example, Hubble, the most famous figure in modern cosmology, established his status as the father of galactic astronomy by confirming the existence of extragalactic galaxies. However, he did not discover or develop the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variable stars. He simply used this ingenious distance measurement method to measure the distances to the Andromeda Galaxy and several other nebulae, and continued to observe them at the Yerkes Observatory for more than a decade.
Yan Anjin listed them one by one: "Yan Jiusheng has a good mindset and can endure loneliness; Sun Er is enthusiastic, I can see his love for physics; Zhao Yi is focused enough, you could say he is not swayed by external things. They are all excellent scientific research talents!"
Zhu Ren didn't hear Ji Zhixing's name and couldn't help but ask, "Where is Ji Zhixing?"
Yan Anjin rarely showed a smile: "He can be described as a perfect scientific research talent."
"Wow! It's rare to see you speak so highly of someone." Zhu Ren knew Ji Zhixing was excellent, but he didn't expect Yan Anjin, who always had high standards and requirements, to approve of him so much.
Yan Anjin recalled what happened during the Spring Festival: "That guy Gao Xiao called me during the Spring Festival and still remembered to ask me to send Ji Zhixing to him, saying that his lab had exploded again the day before New Year's Eve."
Ji Zhixing's positive attitude, enthusiasm, and focus were truly impressive, and he also possessed a remarkable tenacity in his thinking. He was very willing to use his brain and tirelessly tried out various ideas. He had patience, enthusiasm, focus, and meticulousness—no wonder Gao Xiao had always remembered this student fondly.
What's even more remarkable is the excellent research atmosphere within the group. Ji Zhixing's efforts are strikingly similar to those he faced in his youth, when he was ostracized by his peers. When everyone is preoccupied with returns and profit distribution, internal strife ensues, making project results slow and difficult. However, Yan Jiusheng, Zhao Yi, and Sun Er are all able to view Ji Zhixing's positive impact on the lab atmosphere with a positive perspective and readily accept it—this is a win-win situation.
Meanwhile, Ji Zhixing, Lin Lang, and Xu Dongyang were also racking their brains to find a win-win situation for establishing the Zero Gravity Seat Club.
Lin Lang and Xu Dongyang each received 500,000 yuan from their families, and Ji Zhixing contributed the same amount. Although they had 1.5 million yuan in initial capital, equipment and materials were the biggest expenses, and they couldn't afford to spend money recklessly yet.
Therefore, we can only follow the plan discussed at the end of last semester and recruit free labor by forming clubs. However, we need to carefully consider how to do it in a way that will avoid controversy.
“I don’t think it’s worth distributing shares during the trial and error phase, even if we consider giving members appropriate benefits,” Xu Dongyang said. He had studied several books analyzing company share structures during the winter break and knew how valuable original shares were, and that shares should never be diluted easily before financing.
“I know nothing about this. If you think it’s not suitable, we can discuss other methods,” Lin Lang said.
Ji Zhixing didn't have any good suggestions either. A person's energy is limited. After his experience during the winter break, he felt that he preferred to stay in the laboratory to do scientific research and was not very interested in business activities.
So after discussing it, the three decided that once things were on track, Ji Zhixing would lead the research, Xu Dongyang would handle business operations in addition to research, and Lin Lang would handle human resources. Since none of them had much experience at this stage, they decided to work together.
Ji Zhixing thought for a moment: "Well, didn't my family send me some meal cards? I looked at them, and two of them are for restaurants around the school. Is it okay to use these as a benefit? Wouldn't it be too meager?" After all, people like him who had no relatives or friends are rare now; most people don't lack food.
Before the three of them could reach a conclusion, the college-wide meeting was about to begin, so everyone headed to the trapezoidal classroom.
At the college-wide meeting at the start of the new semester, the dean gave earnest advice to the students of the School of Physics, and then gave different instructions to each grade level.
"Senior year..."
"Junior year..."
"The first semester of sophomore year was great, with the lowest failure rate in history and a record high average score. I hope everyone will continue to work hard this semester..."
Upon hearing this, everyone looked at Ji Zhixing. The lower failure rate and higher average score were all thanks to Ji Zhixing's efforts! Dean, why don't you tell Ji Zhixing to hold another tutoring class before the end of the semester and get a few more perfect scores?
Because of the dean's incredibly long speech, it was already quite late when the plenary meeting ended, so dormitory 310 washed up and went to bed.
The next day, as agreed the day before, Ji Zhixing went to the administration building office to apply for the establishment of the club and to apply for a fixed location.
Office Director Zhu Ren was also there. Upon seeing Ji Zhixing, he called him over and questioned him in detail.
Zhu Ren and the principal shared the same goal of keeping Ji Zhixing at Guangling University, so naturally they made things easy for him.
When Zhu Ren learned of Ji Zhixing and the others' troubles, he laughed and said, "They're still young and easily embarrassed."
"How can you guys be so honest! This is such a great opportunity for growth. Which club in the school can provide such an activity? You'd be begging for it, and you're even thinking of giving everyone a benefit."
Ji Zhixing explained, "Even so, if our club activities produce results, they will inevitably have to be commercialized. I'm afraid that everyone will feel that all our efforts have been for the benefit of others."
“You designed the project, so the results shouldn’t really have anything to do with them,” Zhu Ren said, giving an example. “You’re in Professor Yan’s lab now. If you achieve results in the future, to whom do you think they belong?”
Ji Zhixing immediately replied, "Then it certainly belongs to Professor Yan." It has always been this way; graduate students work for their supervisors, and it's already considered very good if they can publish a few papers through the project.
Zhu Ren shrugged: "That's fine then, isn't this the same as your club?"
Seeing that Ji Zhixing seemed to be deep in thought, he added:
"Let me put it this way, think about it from another perspective. Once you achieve results in your research, wouldn't you definitely want to start a company? Wouldn't you give priority to hiring the students who participated in the research? Jobs are so hard to find these days. If you can get an internship early and build a relationship with your future boss, do you think everyone would be willing to do that?"
That sounds reasonable. Ji Zhixing felt that if he were in Ji Zhixing's shoes, he would also be willing to try for such a pre-employment opportunity.
Seeing that he was somewhat receptive to instruction, Zhu Ren gave him further advice: "As for what you just said about using meal cards as a benefit, it's not impossible. Although no one is short of food, who wouldn't want to eat out for free? However, we absolutely cannot distribute them at the beginning. It's not too late to distribute the benefits to boost everyone's research enthusiasm when they reach a bottleneck in their research or become complacent."
Zhu Ren looked around and whispered, "You have to know how to start by criticizing and then praising! Do you remember when the school issued two notices about the morning exercises?"
Ah! Could it be? Ji Zhixing looked at Zhu Ren in surprise.
The school initially issued a notice mandating morning exercises, which drew widespread complaints from students. Later, the school humbly accepted the feedback and made the changes more humane, even adding monetary incentives. Students collectively changed their attitude, shifting from criticizing the school leaders as idiots to praising their wisdom. Is this a deliberate strategy of first criticizing and then praising?
Zhu Ren smiled knowingly, everything understood without saying a word.
If the school had released the second plan from the beginning, there would certainly have been a lot of complaints from the students. The 6 yuan monetary incentive wouldn't have made them feel grateful; they would have just taken it for granted. However, after comparing it with the first plan, everyone was quite satisfied with the second plan.
"You absolutely mustn't tell anyone!" Zhu Ren warned him. He was only being so open with Ji Zhixing because Old Yan valued him highly.
Ji Zhixing returned to his dormitory after hearing a whole bunch of tips on personnel management, and then poured them all out to Lin Lang and Xu Dongyang.
"How cunning!" Lin Lang exclaimed.
"How cunning!" Xu Dongyang exclaimed.
Then the three of them unanimously decided to do as the director said!
A note from the author:
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