Huayu: From charlatan to great entertainer

Chapter 575, "Ball Lightning (Part 1)," is an extra chapter for R-Ge.

The screen was completely black, then opened with a very imposing aerial shot of a distant view:

The pitch-black city, torrentially raining, trembled under a sky teeming with lightning. The camera slowly zoomed in, finally focusing on an ordinary family of three in a suburban house enveloped by the storm.

The warm yellow light inside contrasts sharply with the cold blue-white lightning outside the window, like a fragile island of civilization amidst the raging nature. The perspective shifts to the interior, and a steady panning shot sweeps across a cozy family of three around the dining table, with clusters of candlelight from the cake dancing on their faces.

Whenever a blinding flash of lightning suddenly appears, through exquisite special effects, the raindrops outside the window instantly freeze into a crystal curtain of crystal beads, directly presenting the strange imagination of the "transformed world" in the mind of young Chen Guang.

The stunning and realistic special effects, combined with the strikingly contrasting atmosphere, quickly draw the audience into the film.

At the dinner table, Chen Guang, played by Wu Lei, is celebrating his birthday with his parents. Together with Chen's father, played by Wang Qianyuan, and Chen's mother, played by Yan Bingyan, the family has just finished eating cake.

“Life…” Mr. Chen picked up his wine glass and drank it all in one gulp, his gaze somewhat unfocused as he looked at the flickering candlelight. “It’s like a small twig floating in a stream with no end in sight. You never know which stone it will trip over or which whirlpool it will be swept away by.”

"The child is still young, why are you telling him these things?" Chen's mother interrupted gently, her tone carrying a hint of reproach.

“He’s not young anymore!” Father Chen waved his hand, poured himself another half glass, and turned to his son. “Xiao Guang, listen to Dad. To live a wonderful life is actually very simple. Just choose the most difficult problem in the world, like… like Goldbach’s Conjecture! Then dive in headfirst, only care about the effort and not the reward, and your life will pass by without you even realizing it. That’s called having something to rely on.”

“Or,” he paused, pointing to the meticulously painted but uninspired watercolors in the room, “like me, I’ve become obsessed with painting. I may never become Van Gogh, but at least I’ll have something to hold me back in this life.”

"Son," Chen's father said with the satisfaction of teaching his son after a few drinks, "the key to a wonderful life lies in what you can become obsessed with."

“That’s true.” Chen’s mother sighed softly: “Idealists and cynics both feel sorry for each other, but they are actually quite lucky.”

Young Chen Guang was still unaware of what was about to happen, but his gaze fell on his mother's dark hair, and he mischievously reached out his hand: "Mom, don't move."

As she spoke, she gently plucked a hair that was half white and half black.

Mr. Chen took the hair and examined it closely under the light. As lightning flashed, the hair seemed to glow: "As far as I know, this is your mother's first gray hair."

"What are you two doing! If you pluck one gray hair, seven more will grow back!" Chen's mother looked at the father and son in front of her with some helplessness.

“Look!” Mr. Chen gently placed his hair on the table and pointed to the cake candles. “This is life. Think about it, you’re holding such a small flame, standing on the boundless Gobi Desert. Even if you light it, a gust of wind can blow it out. It’s fragile and unpredictable.”

The three of them fell silent for a moment, their gazes unanimously focused on the small flame that was burning hard, as if it were fighting against the thunder outside the window.

Just then, an exceptionally bright flash of lightning struck, and inside the house, even the thunder seemed to pause.

shock!
After a brief, uneventful two-minute narrative, the first "technical showcase" of the science fiction film arrived.

Without any warning, a basketball-sized sphere, emitting a hazy red glow, silently pierced through the wall, as if it were a ghost that had wandered out of that oil painting of the Greek gods' revelry.

Captured in slow motion, it floats lightly and eerily in the air above the living room, its trajectory elusive, trailing a dark red streak of light behind it, emitting a low yet sharp whistling sound, like the sound of an ocarina drifting from an ancient wasteland.

Chen's mother gasped and grabbed Chen's father's arm tightly in terror.

The ball of light hovered, seemingly searching for something, and finally hovered less than half a meter above Chen's father's head. The howling sound became intermittent, low and deep, almost like a cold laugh.

To Chen Guang's horror, he saw that deep within the translucent red glow, there seemed to be an endless abyss, from which large groups of blue, star-like points of light kept flying out.

At that moment, he had no idea that this would become the truth he would study and pursue for the rest of his life.

As the father instinctively raised his hand, a rapid cutscene burst forth with a bright white light across the entire screen, accompanied by a deafening sonic boom.

Just as his finger was about to reach its highest point, the red ball of light seemed to be drawn by an invisible force, suddenly "dripping" downwards and precisely adhering to his fingertip!
"Dad—!" Chen Guang's exclamation was completely swallowed up by an unprecedented, deafening roar!

The deafening roar was followed by a pure white light that devoured everything, as if the entire world had exploded around them!

After the bright light, there was a deathly silence and a brief period of blurred vision.

After the white light faded, the color saturation of the screen disappeared drastically, and the picture fell into a dead black and white world. In the close-up shot, the parents' bodies had turned into lifelike but lifeless gray-white stone sculptures, and the mother's terrified grip on the father's arm was frozen in time.

The moment the boy's trembling fingers touched the stone statue, the macro lens captured the subtle process of the surface cracking and collapsing into dust, with the falling white dust piling up on the carpet to form two glaring tombs.

The camera then follows the boy from a dreamlike, handheld perspective, witnessing a surreal scene:
Some books on the bookshelf turned to ash while the bookshelf remained undamaged; raw food in the refrigerator was cooked through while the equipment was intact; his vest inside his jacket turned to ash while his outer garment was unharmed. All these illogical scenes, through precise props and digital compositing technology, created a breathtakingly eerie realism.

"Dad...?" he called out in a trembling voice, his voice sounding unusually hollow in the silent room.

no respond.

"mom……?"

There is only silence.

Apart from the two piles of ash in front of him, all traces of his parents' existence seemed to have been completely erased. The wooden bench they sat on was intact and even felt cold to the touch.

Compared to killings with firearms and cold weapons, this wasn't actually a particularly bloody scene, but its shock and eeriness were enough to leave a teenage boy's mind blank.

I even forgot to cry.

The first appearance of ball lightning demonstrated its seemingly all-knowing and mastery of physics and truth, turning two living people into dust.

Chen Guang slumped back into his chair, utterly dejected, staring blankly ahead, his soul seemingly detached and suspended in the endless void.

The lights in the cabin were out, and the cold blue-gray hues replaced the initial warm yellow and pale white, leaving him standing alone between heaven and earth.

The close-up shot remained focused on Chen Guang's empty pupils, which seemed to still reflect the lightning and thunder of the previous night and the two piles of blinding white ash. Then, it slowly zoomed out, revealing that he was not sitting alone in his ruined home, but in a slightly messy, yet lively university dormitory.

Outside the window, it was no longer the dawn after a downpour, but a bright and sunny morning, with faint chants of drills and the sound of bicycle bells drifting from afar.

A small gasp rippled through the audience. From the initial understated tone to the stunning visuals of the first appearance of ball lightning, and now to the composition and transitions, it's clear that this is a very smooth commercial film.

But this still doesn't fully showcase the Chinese director's skill. For example, as everyone can guess, the next scene will be Chen Guang being awakened from this nightmare in bed, which is extremely cliché.

But they were wrong.

In this transition, director Lu Kuan did not use the traditional method of waking up with rapid breathing and a sudden sitting up, but instead used an extremely steady, even somewhat stagnant, long take—

The image still centers on Chen Guang's face, but the background smoothly transitions from the disaster scene to the dormitory environment.

There are no editing points; it's as if it's just a natural movement of a camera, suggesting the blurred boundary between "reality" and "memory." The light also seamlessly transitions from a cool blue-gray to the ordinary, slightly warm morning light in the dormitory.

Xin Baiqing, who plays the adult Chen Guang, only twitched his eyelids slightly before slowly and fully opening them.

His eyes held no terror, profuse sweating, or rapid breathing after waking from a nightmare; only a bottomless weariness and an almost numb calm.

After staring silently at the upper bunk for a few seconds, Chen Guang slowly sat up, his movements completely calm, as if he were simply completing a routine.

This unusual calmness might cause some viewers to feel puzzled and slightly uncomfortable: "He just experienced such a terrible 'dream,' why is he reacting like this?"

This confusion is precisely what the director intended, and the subsequent shots immediately resolve the doubts.

An over-the-shoulder shot pans across Chen Guang's desk.

The table was piled high with books such as "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics", "Plasma Physics", and "Studies on Anomalous Atmospheric Phenomena". Notebooks were open, filled with complex formulas and sketches of the morphology and structure of ball lightning. There might also be some blurry photos of lightning or clippings of news reports pasted on the walls.

Just then, his roommate pushed the door open and casually said, "Chen Guang, you're awake? Did you stay up all night looking at those 'Lightning' materials again?"

Another roommate, while packing his bag, chimed in without turning his head: "Isn't he like this every day? He's practically going crazy."

Chen Guang didn't answer, but a few lines of inner monologue from the protagonist revealed the core tone of the rest of the film—

That stormy night was not only my birthday, but also became a new altar for completely reshaping my life.

Just as my father said, I eventually became "fascinated" with that red phantom that destroyed everything, and from then on embarked on a "wonderful" life journey of pursuing ball lightning for the rest of my life.

"The key to a wonderful life lies in what you can become obsessed with," this is the first point of the theme.

The global filmmakers in the audience were captivated, but some were puzzled, thinking, "This isn't Lu's level at all!"
Even a typical commercial science fiction film wouldn't just throw out such a philosophically significant bait at the beginning, let alone with such wonderful behind-the-scenes footage in the teaser and trailer.

Only a very few top directors can more or less glimpse some of his intentions.

Woody Allen adjusted his signature black-rimmed glasses. The opening family conversation was too long for him, almost like a mediocre family drama, with the father's incessant chatter being jarring.

But it wasn't until the appearance of ball lightning that he realized this was a way of building a sense of the ordinary through the mundane, in order to highlight the surreal disaster that followed.

As for the understated way Xin Baiqing woke up, that's what truly impressed him—:
The real trauma is not a nightmare, but the daily routine you can never wake up from. This guy is telling an existential tragedy in a science fiction shell.

Takeshi Kitano, the inheritor of violent aesthetics, has a greater appreciation for this kind of quiet death.

True violence is not the outward display of carnage, but the compression of immense destruction and sorrow into absolute silence and routine. The boy's entire life would be frozen in that stormy night. This despair beneath the calm is more powerful than any scream.

Ordinary viewers may not see these details, but that doesn't stop them from continuing to watch the film with the hooks already thrown out, because the plot is smooth enough and the visual effects are sophisticated enough.

The scene shifts to Chen Guang, who, during his sophomore summer vacation, went home to pay for his tuition and other expenses. He planned to rent out the old house across the street that he hadn't dared to cross in a long time.

It was already dark when I got home, and the morning dream was still lingering. The scene before me seemed to have been left behind on that rainy night of my birthday, and it seemed that nothing had changed much.

This isn't because there hasn't been much change in a literary or cinematic sense, but rather...

Indeed, there haven't been many changes, and attentive viewers quickly noticed this:
The close-up shots of the tabletops in the film don't show much dust. Is this an unknown clue, or a plot hole in the movie?

Like all the audience members, Chen Guang, played by Xin Baiqing, was also caught in a kind of inexplicable suspicion. He continued to look around at the old house that held both a beautiful childhood and terrible trauma, and felt more and more as if he had seen some hidden reefs in a foggy voyage.

Then, starting with details of dust, a long monologue begins, as if leading the audience into a puzzle game:

Chen Guang turned on the faucet. The iron pipe faucet, which had been shut off for two years, should have been filled with murky water full of rust, but the water flowing out now was very clear.

There was an upside-down glass on the table. He had clearly placed it upright before he left, but he had too much luggage and gave up the idea. Now it looked like his mother had casually taken care of a small matter at home and turned it upside down to prevent it from getting dusty.

The film's background music abruptly shifts from the rhythm of everyday life to a somber, ominous melody as Chen Guang begins tidying up his father's third-rate paintings. The pace is slow, the colors are dark, and the content of the paintings is somber.

As he pulls a face-down painting from the bottom shelf, a rapid contrast edit appears on the screen:

The painting includes close-ups of the water tower, Chen Guang's shocked facial expression, and even his sudden upward gaze out the window.

In the distance, the dark silhouette of a real water tower stands against the rainy night.

Through concise visual language and comparison, viewers, like Chen Guang in the film, suddenly realized—

This water tower was built after he left home! How could it appear in his father's painting from nearly ten years ago?
The painting in Chen Guang's hand fell to the ground. He turned on all the lights in the room and forced himself to concentrate on other things.

The thought in his mind was like an iron needle suspended by a thin thread, and the cardboard box was a strong magnet. Although he could try to turn the needle in other directions, as soon as he relaxed his efforts, the needle was immediately pulled back to that direction.

Since returning home tonight, a host of unknown fears have been lingering in his mind, refusing to dissipate.

In the long take, cold sweat beaded on the forehead of Chen Guang, played by Xin Baiqing. The monologue without dialogue was very challenging, but he perfectly portrayed the gradually developing complex emotions.

Unable to suppress this strange anxiety, Chen Guang took out the painting, intending to burn it.

The handling of this scene is quite distinctive:
The scene of burning the painting is full of ritual and fear. The light mainly comes from the flame of the lighter and the flickering light emitted when the painting is burning, creating an unsettling interplay of light and shadow in the small space of the bathroom.

Close-up shots closely follow the process of flames engulfing the water tower, as if destroying evidence that should not exist.

When Chen Guang couldn't resist turning the painting over for one last look, the colors briefly became unusually vibrant, even surreal, as if the energy in the painting was resisting destruction.

After the flame was extinguished by water, the color scheme instantly returned to the cold tile color of the bathroom, cool white and light blue.

Before Woody Allen and others could even marvel at the use of color, ordinary viewers, following Chen Guang's perspective, discovered yet another strange event, much like in a horror movie!

As he extinguished the unburned painting and went to the bathroom sink to deal with the residue, the camera zoomed in on the edge of the sink, revealing a few thin strands of a woman's hair!

An extreme close-up shot focuses on a few strands of long, half-black, half-white hair on the edge of the sink, illuminated by extremely clear lighting, revealing every detail.

As Chen Guang tremblingly picked up a strand of hair, the camera zoomed in again. The moment the hair fell, leaving a phantom trail before disappearing, the slow-motion shot, combined with possible, subtle CGI effects, presented and enhanced an unnatural quality.

The sound effects disappeared completely at this moment, leaving only his rapid breathing, a high-frequency, subtle tinnitus-like sound that intensified his psychological pressure.

This time, the director didn't need to use flashbacks and character monologues to provoke thought; the timid audience was already completely chilled by this science fiction tale, which rivaled a horror film, and their minds were filled with a line from the previous scene on the birthday night, spoken by Chen's mother to her son:

If you pluck one, seven will grow back.

……

The water glass that was never turned upside down, the water tower that never existed, and the fulfillment of his deceased mother's words all transformed into the numbness, confusion, and deep-seated fear on Chen Guang's face captured in the close-up shot.

The sound of rain outside the window was amplified and distorted by the sound effects design, gradually evolving into a recurring, low, and distorted voice-over: "There was thunder that day... there was thunder that day..."

These are not actual lines, but rather a sound design that externalizes his inner fears, as if the environment itself is whispering to him.

The color scheme maintains a cool and somber tone throughout, creating a strong sense of immersion.

Chinese directors like Wang Xiaoshuai and Jia Zhangke, who were relatively familiar with him, were astonished. They weren't astonished by the sound effects and special effects, which were comparable to those in a horror film, but rather by the young director's progress in the art of color.

Just like Quentin Tarantino remarked many years ago, he has been improving, and is still improving.

From his innate talent for training actors, to the philosophy of light and shadow in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", to the use of three-line and cyclical narrative in "The Sky of History", and even the scene staging he honed in "Tangshan" and the Olympics.

There's also the breakthrough in color that's being presented to the audience in such a short time.

Even if what will shock them even more is yet to come, the potential and room for growth shown by this young director is already truly admirable.

The opening two segments, which take place in the same setting but introduce suspense through dreams and reality respectively, end here, leading to the film's biggest mystery: the explanation for these bizarre events caused by ball lightning.

The audience certainly knows this is science fiction, not horror, so what kind of hard science and science fiction will the director use to explain this phenomenon?
This is also the journey that the protagonist Chen Guang will embark on to uncover the mystery, to pursue the "ball lightning" that he can never get rid of in this life.

The plot accelerates from here, as Chen Guang returns to a university campus in the south, where he finds Professor Zhang Bin after a professional course on "Atmospheric Electricity".

Feng Yuanzheng plays Zhang Bin, a scholar who is around forty or fifty years old. He is of average height, with glasses that are neither too thick nor too thin, and speaks in a moderately loud or soft voice. His lectures are neither particularly good nor bad.

In short, he was the most ordinary kind of person. The only thing that set him apart was that he had a slight limp, but you wouldn't notice it unless you paid close attention.

In the classroom where everyone had already left, Chen Guang mustered up his courage and asked him a question: "Teacher, I would like to ask you a question about ball lightning."

"What do you want to know."

"Everything, everything about it." Chen Guang's fervor was almost impossible to conceal.

Feng Yuanzheng, who plays Zhang Bin, looks displeased. "Give me a multiple-choice question, not a fill-in-the-blank one, if you really want to know something."

As he spoke, he slowly walked out. In his mind, this was just another physics student interested in vague and ethereal theories.

Chen Guang followed suit: "For example, its history?"

"The earliest record of ball lightning is by Zhang Juzheng of the Ming Dynasty, and the first scientific record in Europe was in 1837. As a natural phenomenon, it has only been accepted by the scientific community in the last forty years."

"So what about the theory behind it?"

Zhang Bin remained expressionless, pursed his lips, and recounted the story with great familiarity: "The most traditional theory holds that it is a vortex-shaped high-temperature plasma. Due to the centrifugal force caused by the high-speed internal rotation, it achieves equilibrium with the external atmospheric pressure, thus maintaining stability for a relatively long period of time."

"There is also the maser soliton theory, which posits that ball lightning is caused by atmospheric masers with a volume of approximately several cubic meters. Masers are equivalent to lasers with much lower energy. When the volume of air is large, masers generate local electric fields, i.e., solitons, which lead to visible ball lightning."

He then went on to discuss some of the latest theories from two New Zealand scientists and research findings from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but Zhang Bin clearly did not endorse them.

But Chen Guang listened intently, gritting his teeth as he asked, "Professor Zhang, how many people in China have witnessed ball lightning?"

"There are thousands of them, the most famous of which is a ball lightning that was unintentionally and clearly captured in a documentary about the fight against the Yangtze River floods in 1998."

"Does anyone in the domestic atmospheric physics community, that is, those who specialize in studying ball lightning, have ever seen it with their own eyes?" Chen Guang persisted.

"Have."

"When?"

"February 1990."

"where?"

"Mount Tai, Jade Emperor Peak".

The extremely brief and rapid conversation indicated that Zhang Bin's patience had also been exhausted. He waved his hand to indicate that he was going to eat, but Chen Guang would not let go of these "culprits" who destroyed his childhood.

"Teacher, can you imagine something that can effortlessly pass through a wall in the form of a fireball, instantly turning a person into a marble sculpture, and then into ashes?"

"Or, could you put them in the refrigerator and instantly turn all the frozen food inside into steaming cooked food without damaging any of the containers?"

Zhang Bin suddenly stopped and looked at the curious student with a serious expression. "Have you ever seen ball lightning?"

"I'm just using a metaphor, and based on the information I found." Chen Guang couldn't bring himself to say his deepest secret, so he just swallowed hard.

Zhang Bin left without hesitation, seemingly no longer caring that others would see its slightly limping leg, and quickened its pace to get away.

Chen Guang was tired of his numbness as a teacher. On his way to the cafeteria, he ran into Zhao Yu, a graduate student supervised by Zhang Bin.

Zhao Yu laughed heartily after hearing his complaints, thus creating a character image of Zhang Bin for Chen Guang and the audience alike.

“He’s the kind of person who, if a key falls to the ground, won’t look for it in the direction of the sound, but will find a ruler and a piece of chalk, mark the entire floor of the house with squares, and then search for it square by square.”

Chen Guang laughed and asked, "So what did he find?"

“A kind of lightning protection coating.” Zhao Yu spread his hands. “In terms of lightning protection alone, it works quite well. High-voltage lines using this coating can eliminate the need for the top lightning protection wire that runs with the line. However, the coating is too expensive. If it is used on a large scale, the cost is higher than that of a traditional lightning rod, so it ultimately has no practical value.”

The foreshadowing was quietly laid.

Chen Guang did not give up. He knew that Zhang Bin was one of the earliest scholars in China to study ball lightning, so he took the entrance exam for his graduate program and participated in a summer project led by Zhang Bin.

The task was to conduct parameter verification of lightning protection facilities for a railway under design in Yunnan Province. So, seizing the opportunity, he relentlessly pursued Zhang Bin during this two-month project, desperately seeking even the slightest bit of knowledge that could help him unravel the mystery of ball lightning.

What puzzled Chen Guang was that Zhang Bin consistently refused to comment on the theory of ball lightning, nor did he allow him to use it as his graduate thesis.

"Young people should not be enthusiastic about things that are unrealistic and illusory."

Chen Guang was furious: "Ball lightning is a scientifically recognized objective phenomenon, how can it be something that is completely unfounded?"

The two always stopped talking about this issue after a few words, but Chen Guang still learned a lot from his mentor, including his technical rigor, skillful experimental techniques, and rich engineering experience.

At the same time, he also learned more about Zhang Bin.

For example, his wife passed away early, he had no children, and he had been living alone for many years with very little social interaction.

From undergraduate to graduate school, Chen Guang has been obsessed with the pursuit of ball lightning for so many years, yet he has made no progress and has become even more confused.

The film, which is considered hard science fiction, begins by expressing this helplessness and confusion through character monologues, also aiming to clarify things for the audience.

"Initially, I focused my main efforts on physics, but later I discovered that the whole of physics is a great mystery. At its end, even the existence of the whole world becomes a question."

"If we accept that ball lightning is not a supernatural phenomenon, then the level of physics involved in understanding it should be relatively low: there are Maxwell's equations in electromagnetism and Stokes' equations in fluid dynamics, but it wasn't until later that I realized how shallow and naive my initial thoughts were."

"Because compared to ball lightning, all known structures in electromagnetism and fluid dynamics are very simple. If ball lightning were to form such a self-stabilizing and self-balancing complex structure while obeying the basic laws of electromagnetism and fluid dynamics, its mathematical description would be extremely complex."

"It's like how black and white stones and simple rules make up the most complex game of Go in the world."

Thus, in the film, Chen Guang can only study mathematics frantically, even though his mentor Zhang Bin believes that his mathematical ability has exceeded the requirements of atmospheric physics.

But for Chen Guang, this is still a long way from studying ball lightning.

When faced with complex electromagnetic and fluid structures, mathematical descriptions become grotesque, with bizarre partial differential equations resembling nooses and cumbersome matrices like traps studded with sharp blades, making them daunting.

Chen Guang graduated.

He encountered a doctoral supervisor, Gao Bo, who was the complete opposite of Zhang Bin.

After graduating from MIT, Gao Bo readily agreed when Chen Guang suggested focusing his research on ball lightning and needed his help.

"Listen, Xiao Chen, all you need is a pencil and a piece of paper. Then you need to construct a mathematical model of ball lightning. This model should be self-consistent, theoretically original, mathematically perfect and sophisticated, and computer-compatible. Then I'll apply for funding."

Having been suppressed by his mentor for several years, Chen Guang now hesitated: "Can something that is completely impossible to experiment with be accepted?"

"Is it acceptable?" Gao Bo, a graduate of MIT, was quite pragmatic. "Think about black holes in astrophysics. Is there direct evidence to prove it? What stage has it reached now?"

Chen Guang nodded sullenly and then embarked on his journey home.

He seemed to realize that he would rarely have the chance to go back, or perhaps, after years of painstaking but fruitless research, he thought of going back to see the "strangeness" in those old houses.

The fact that he couldn't see real ball lightning was the only thing that could remind him of any clues.

As the train traveled from south to north, when it passed Tai'an Station, Chen Guang suddenly remembered the few pieces of information Zhang Bin had given him about ball lightning, one of which was that someone had seen ball lightning at Yuhuangding.

So he decided on a whim to climb Mount Tai.

The scene begins with a long, subjective shot to simulate Chen Guang's line of sight.

Stone steps stretched out beneath our feet, flanked by blurry, shadowy jungle silhouettes shrouded in thick fog. The camera shot was slightly heavy and slow, accompanied by soft breathing sounds.

The scene is dominated by a high-key, grayish-white fog with extremely low color saturation. Only when the stone carvings in the foreground flash by in close-up do they briefly show a bluish-gray texture.

The diffused light, without a clear direction, creates a depressing and confusing atmosphere.

The directors present all perked up, knowing that after a bland narrative in the first twenty minutes, similar subjective perspectives in the film usually indicate the appearance of important plot points or characters.

Sure enough, as the medium shot followed Chen Guang and the porters as they struggled forward, a white figure glided lightly into the frame from the edge of the lens at a noticeably faster speed.

This is followed by a contrast montage:

The camera quickly cuts to a couple next to them; the woman is slumped over, panting, with close-ups of her sweat and tired face, while the man bends down to comfort her.
Then the scene immediately cuts back to the girl in white. She walks lightly, her breathing is almost inaudible, and she seems out of place in the heavy atmosphere around her.

As she passed Chen Guang, the camera switched to a close-up panorama of the girl in white, her climbing movements rendered with great rhythm and lightness, as if unrestrained by gravity.

The girl suddenly turns her head and glances back; this shot is crucial:

In a slow, deliberate motion, she glances back, her expression serene, her eyes clear yet carrying a hint of barely perceptible inquiry, a subtle, confident curve perhaps at the corner of her mouth, her slender figure appearing like an elf in the mist.

They quickly disappeared from the camera's view again, as if it were just a preview of their appearance.

Chen Guang stared blankly for a while, and then, after many hardships, arrived at the Yuhuangding Meteorological Station and took out his university and research unit credentials.

The people at the station took it all for granted until Chen Guang was introduced to Zhao Yu, the local deputy station chief, who was also Zhang Bin's graduate student who had graduated a few years earlier.

"Old Zhao! What are you doing here?"

Zhao Yu joked, "Hey kid, is that how you talk to your boss?"

When old friends meet, they are naturally treated to good wine, but Chen Guang, who is obsessed with life, still explained his purpose for coming: the ball lightning at Yuhuangding in 1962 that Zhang Bin mentioned.

"Why are you still studying this ghost?"

Chen Guang smiled bitterly. It was indeed a ghost, a ghost whose face he might never see, even if he chased it his whole life.

"Wait a moment, I'll find an experienced cook for you to ask." Zhao Yu led Chen Guang to his dormitory, where a small square table was set with food and drinks. He also invited the old cook, Chef Wang, to stay and drink with them.

Chen Guang asked the same question he had asked countless times before: "Master Wang, have you seen the ball lightning at Yuhuangding in 1962?"

"What kind of electricity?" Master Wang was taken aback. "Oh! You mean the rolling landmine? Of course I remember, I even saved a young man with it."

"Rolling mines? Rescuing people?" Things seem to be getting more and more interesting.

The scene flashes back, following Master Wang's recollection, and the screen is abruptly cut back to that torrential rainy night in 1962 by a ghastly white lightning bolt that tears through the night sky and a deafening clap of thunder.

In Mr. Wang's subjective view, screams came from outside. He got up, pushed open the door, and rushed into the dense rain. Through the blurred vision, he found the injured person lying on the ground and dragged him back into the house with great effort.

In the dim light of the oil lamp, one could see that the injured man's leg was charred black, and the rain was still sizzling and emitting blue smoke as it was poured on it.

Just as everyone was still reeling from the shock, ball lightning appeared for the second time in the movie!

It emitted an ominous, blood-red light, and silently penetrated the tightly closed west window, as if the glass did not exist.

In an instant, the entire room was enveloped in a flowing crimson glow, making the light of the oil lamp seem insignificant.

The ball of light drifted leisurely inside the room, sometimes skimming over the roof, its red light sweeping across the faces of the people, whether they were terrified or trying to remain calm.

It would occasionally brush against the bed, leaving a scorching mark on the sheets.

The researchers inside hurriedly signaled to everyone not to touch it, while Mr. Wang was so frightened that he dared not breathe.

Only then did the camera focus on the face of the injured young man for the first time!
His eyes widened as he stared intently at the sphere of light, his gaze filled with extreme shock and an almost obsessive curiosity.

The audience couldn't help but gasp in surprise!
Zhang Bin! This is Zhang Bin!
But on this day in 1962, the professor who warned his students not to waste time on ball lightning didn't use that name yet.

Zhao Yu asked in surprise, "Master Wang, are you sure his name is Zhang Hefu?"

Old Wang, his face flushed from drinking, seemed quite unhappy that his glorious deeds were being questioned. "Of course! He even wrote me a thank-you letter, how could I forget?"

Chen Guang, without the perspective of an audience member, couldn't clearly see the young scholar's face. He only looked at his senior brother in confusion: "Who is Zhang Hefu?"

Zhao Yu was silent for a few seconds, then said, "It's Old Zhang. He changed his name during a special period because 'Hoff' sounded like 'Khrushchev'."

The close-up shot showed Xin Baiqing's incredulous expression. He was a minute behind the audience in understanding the ins and outs of this plot. It turned out that Zhang Bin's leg was crippled by being struck by ball lightning!

Old Wang, unaware of what had happened, broke their silence with a drink. "That young man... his leg hurt so much he bit his lip until it bled, yet he was still leaning against the bed reading. I told him to rest for a while, but he said that from now on he had to seize the time because he now had a goal in life, a new one. He wanted to research that thing and build it."

Chen Guang suddenly stood up, causing the small wine glass to shatter and shatter on the ground.

According to Master Wang's description, he was clearly also obsessed with ball flash, so why did he gradually fade away later?

He even repeatedly advised his students: "Young people should not be enthusiastic about things that are neither here nor there!"

But this ethereal thing was clearly the culprit that changed his life.

What exactly happened next?
The renowned directors at the scene quietly appreciated the narrative art and color changes, while ordinary moviegoers were left with a mystery to solve, which, along with the various strange phenomena mentioned earlier, left them scratching their heads in frustration.

However, the director was clearly not going to satisfy the audience so easily. After throwing out a series of suspenseful questions, he finally introduced the film's female lead.

A medium-long shot focuses on the girl in white inside the dormitory room. Zhao Yu, who was leading her junior brother to stroll around Jade Emperor Peak to relax, nudged Chen Guang.

"Don't spy on them, they're powerful figures."

"How big?"

Zhao Yu wanted to distract him, so she smiled and said, "She came here to contact lightning observation. She contacted the provincial meteorological department before coming, but they didn't say where it was from. It must be a very large organization. They plan to use helicopters to transport equipment to the top of the mountain."

"That's big enough," Chen Guang murmured absentmindedly, seemingly not paying much attention to the woman in white.

The thunderstorm arrived as expected the following day, and Mount Tai seemed to have become Earth's lightning rod, attracting all the lightning in the universe.

The camera begins inside the weather station:
A dim electric light flickered violently with each faint rumble of thunder, and tiny, bluish sparks began to dance on the surfaces of the metal instruments on the wall. The air was thick with the smell of ozone.

Chen Guang felt a tingling sensation on his exposed skin, and his hair seemed to stand on end.

The camera abruptly cuts to a fixed wide-angle shot outside the weather station window, where, with top-notch special effects, streaks of pale white lightning appear one after another.

They are no longer single lines, but branch and burst like withered tree branches, instantly illuminating the dark sky and rolling clouds as if it were daytime.

The intervals between lightning strikes are extremely short; sometimes, before the light from the previous second has completely faded, an even more dazzling bolt of lightning has already torn the sky apart.

The sound design reaches its peak here; due to the extreme proximity, there is almost no delay between the lightning and the deafening thunder. The thunder is no longer a dull rumble, but rather like a series of giant explosive charges exploding at extremely close range.

It was a deafening, gut-wrenching sound, so loud that the cameras were set to produce slight, high-frequency vibrations to simulate the sensation of Mount Tai being shattered by lightning.

Chen Guang was staring intently at the lightning when suddenly a girl in white appeared not far away.

He immediately recognized her as the same girl who had so gracefully climbed the mountain two days ago. "You'd better move further in; it's not safe there." "Oh, thank you." The girl turned and glanced at him. "You might not believe it, but only now can I feel a moment of peace."

A sense of illusion welled up in Chen Guang's mind, an illusion of destiny.

In such a dense rumble of thunder, the speaker would have to shout for others to hear her, yet she spoke softly, and her gentle voice miraculously pierced through the deafening roar.

The two started chatting about atmospheric physics and lightning, and he learned that the girl's name was Lin Yun, that she was a doctoral student at the National University of Defense Technology, and that her major was air defense weapon systems.

This conversation had a profound, congenial quality, like that of kindred spirits, until the thunderstorm gradually subsided and the setting sun shone through the clouds, casting countless golden rays that were dazzling and brilliant.

"Look how fresh the world is, as if it has been reborn from a devastating thunderstorm." Lin Yun stared blankly at the horizon, but his words reminded Chen Guang of himself.

"Is it necessarily a new student?" He had also experienced a devastating "thunderstorm," otherwise, he wouldn't be in this situation now.

Lin Yun looked at him curiously. The latter pursed his lips. Being in such a terrifying situation, his mentality had quietly changed. So he began to tell the girl in front of him about his unbearable memories.

Strangely, yet seemingly inevitable to the audience, Lin Yun, played by Zhou Xun, didn't utter a single word of sympathy after hearing the story, which perfectly matched her extraordinary temperament.

She simply asked softly, "Do you hate ball lightning?"

“I often think that if it were one person who killed them, then there would be someone to take revenge on,” Chen Guang said with a wry smile. “But it’s hard to feel hatred towards something so mysterious and unpredictable that no one in all of humanity can understand.”

“Me too,” Lin Yun replied, but before Chen Guang could ask for details, she softly began to recite:
The streetlights in the distance came on, looking like countless twinkling stars.

The stars in the sky appeared, like countless streetlights lit up.

A delightful breeze blew by, and the fog completely dissipated.

In the sky, the brilliant sea of ​​stars of the summer night stretched as far as the eye could see. In the distance, the lights of thousands of homes in Tai'an formed another small sea of ​​stars, as if it were a reflection of the former in a small lake.

Chen Guang ultimately didn't ask the question. He simply exchanged contact information with the young female PhD student, agreed to exchange ideas on ball shimmer research, and then returned to the university.

His extraordinary encounter on Mount Tai made him abandon his plans to return home and instead go directly to find his mentor.

It wasn't Zhang Bin, it was Zhang Hefu from 1962.

The scene shifts, and a phase of decryption arrives. Zhang Bin, played by Feng Yuanzheng, and Chen Guang, played by Xin Baiqing, are sitting and talking in Zhang Bin's home.

What moved Zhang Bin was the story of Chen Guang's parents' tragic death, the mathematical model of ball lightning that he had built over the years, and the name Zhang Hefu, which was also his younger self.

"Xiao Chen, you still didn't listen to me." Zhang Bin looked pained, then took a deep drag on his cigarette before standing up: "You come here."

A tightly closed door was opened, and Chen Guang was greeted by a black-and-white photograph of a female scholar, whose identity was his guess.

A guess arose spontaneously based on the woman's temperament.

"This is my wife, who passed away in 1971."

The two stood in the cramped study, the walls covered with calculation papers and the floor piled with cardboard boxes containing documents. There was almost nowhere for them to sit.

Zhang Bin reached out and gently stroked the photos on the wall, beginning to reminisce about the past.

"As you know, I became fascinated with ball lightning after seeing it in Mount Tai. I traveled to many places, usually in the wild, to track its tracks, and that's how I met my love."

"She was also a crazy fanatic and a high-achieving student. We traveled together, traversing almost the entire thunderstorm zone. We relied on our own two feet, stayed in dilapidated temples, and ate dry rations. We contracted pneumonia together, encountered packs of wolves, and lightning struck just steps away..."

“We got married later.” Zhang Bin took out a notebook from the box and gestured for Chen Guang to sit down. “Unfortunately, in 1969, I accidentally wandered into a military base in the mountains of the south.”

“During those special years, I was detained for two years as an enemy agent. I was only released after the school contacted and verified my innocence. But when I got home, she was already gone.”

Zhang Bin's tone and expression were almost identical to when he was teaching: "I heard about her ordeal from someone from her village—"

"She finally encountered ball lightning again during a thunderstorm. She chased after the fireball, and just as it was about to fly across a rushing stream, in desperation, she held up the lightning arrester of her magneto to stop the fireball. Afterwards, people said it was simply reckless. But they couldn't understand how she felt when she finally saw the ball lightning she had been searching for for ten years, only to lose the chance to observe it again in the blink of an eye."

He looked at Chen Guang, the meaning in his eyes was self-evident.

I, you, she—we are all the same kind of people.

There was also Lin Yun, but Zhang Bin was unaware of this at the moment.

"The fireball disappeared after it touched the lightning arrester. She used professional equipment to capture the ball flash, which passed through the magnetometer along the wire, but then reappeared at the other end."

"The accident happened at that moment. Ball lightning exploded above her head, but amidst the screams and fear of the crowd, there was no body that had been electrocuted or charred, only the raincoat she was wearing."

Zhang Bin pointed to the corner of the wall, "Underneath the raincoat was a pile of white ash, which was quickly washed away by the rain, along with her persistent soul..."

Chen Guang turned pale upon hearing this.

Same, same...

He may not have realized at that moment that he uttered a statement as "ruthless" as Lin Yun's: "Navigators die at sea, astronauts die in space."

“Yes, I think so too. She died a worthy death.” Zhang Bin nodded.

"Teacher! What about that magnetic recorder that your wife used to capture electromagnetic signals?"

"It was intact and was promptly taken to the laboratory to have its remanence measured."

"How is it?" Chen Guang was extremely excited. This was the first-hand quantitative measurement data that was unprecedented in the history of ball lightning research, even at the cost of a female scholar's life.

"zero."

"what?!"

This is completely contrary to common scientific sense, and it also proves Zhang Bin's previous warning to Chen Guang that ball flash is a physical phenomenon that cannot be studied.

Extremely difficult.

He interrupted Chen Guang's thoughts and handed him the notebook he had just taken out: "This is her belongings. The strange thing is the same as when your parents died. Apart from their bodies being rapidly carbonized into ashes, everything else was intact."

"Take a look at this; it might give you some inspiration."

The close-up shot focuses on the worn-out notebook in Chen Guang's hand, the cover of which features an image of Tiananmen Square, but it has been worn away and is somewhat blurry.

Upon opening the cover, one finds a line of elegant handwriting, a quote from Marx—

The entrance to science is the entrance to hell.

It's a very simple sentence, but combined with the atmosphere and ghost stories of the film so far, it's chilling.

But what truly horrifies the protagonist in the film is the bizarre state of the notebook after it is attacked by the ball flash:

The first page was charred, but the next page was intact, with densely packed data clearly visible, looking as if it had just been written yesterday.

The same applies to the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth pages.

The camera followed Chen Guang as he turned the pages, and there were never two consecutive pages that were charred, nor two consecutive pages that were intact.

Some of the charred pages only had a small portion remaining near the binding thread, but the intact pages next to them showed no signs of burning.

He looked up and stared blankly at Zhang Bin, who gave him a strange smile.

"If you hadn't seen it with your own eyes, who would believe that the data in the magnetic recorder is zero? Who would believe that they could selectively attack or interact with objects?"

Feng Yuanzheng, who plays Zhang Bin, says in a chilling and desolate tone, "Look at the cardboard boxes and the manuscripts covering the walls in this room. I've been studying this for thirty years, from when I was younger than you until now, when I'm almost fifty."

"Your mathematical model is quite good, but that's all it is—good. I derived several of them ten years ago, and they were completely useless!"

Zhang Bin's tone suddenly turned indignant: "Now you know why I told you to give up, right? Xiao Chen, because we are all just ordinary people. Although we try harder than ordinary people to explore, we are still just ordinary people in the end."

"We can only deduce within the framework set by Newton, Einstein, Maxwell and others. We cannot go beyond the boundaries. Otherwise, it would be like stepping into an airless void. But within this existing framework of physics, we cannot deduce anything."

Zhang Bin's dejection, as portrayed by Feng Yuanzheng, was deeply moving. The middle-aged professor slumped into his chair, saying, "Xiao Chen, the moment I decided to give up my research on ball shimmer, a quote from Einstein in his later years kept echoing in my mind..."

He murmured, "Every leaf outside the window makes human science seem so naive and powerless."

Chen Guang's face was buried in the shadows of the cramped study. He suddenly recalled the awe-inspiring complexity and mystery he felt when facing the power of nature, with its thunder and lightning and churning clouds, atop Mount Tai. It was a vivid testament to the limitations of the human scientific framework.

As Einstein said, even a tiny leaf is difficult for humans to fully recognize, let alone ball lightning.

Mountaineers can never truly conquer mountains, and scientists can never completely conquer nature.

Surprisingly, Zhang Bin comforted his student instead, saying, "Take all these things if they're useful to you."

“I know you won’t give up. If you achieve any results, please let me know.”

Chen Guang nodded heavily, unsure how to comfort his teacher who had lived a life of disappointment and lost his beloved. "My father said something to me before he passed away—"

"The key to a wonderful life is what you can become obsessed with."

He followed Zhang Bin's gaze to the portrait of the female scholar on the wall. "Teacher, could I scan a photo of her?"

"doing what?"

"If I find anything, I want the whole world to know that she was the first person to directly measure natural ball lightning."

Zhang Bin's expression softened slightly, and he solemnly took down his lover's photo from the wall and handed it to the student to take away. "Her name is Zheng Min, a 63 graduate of the Physics Department of Yenching University."

Chen Guang took the photo frame and stacks of cardboard boxes, called a car and had them towed away. The camera then cut to a conversation between him and his doctoral supervisor, Gao Bo.

The pragmatic Massachusetts scientist invited, "I've been appointed director of the Lightning Institute at the Institute for Atmospheric Sciences. How about it, ball lightning scholar, come with me?"

He highly valued Chen Guang's mathematical abilities; it's no exaggeration to say that they were already at the top level in the field of meteorological physics.

Chen Guang, as was his habit, bargained and joked, "What's in it for me? You know, my graduate advisor just gave me a bunch of first-hand materials."

"The largest mine detection research institution in China is closely related to the military." Gao Bo made a promise that the young scholar could not refuse. "If you want to find experimental support for ball flash in China, the only place is the military."

"Because...it is an excellent source of advanced, conceptual weapons."

Chen Guang was taken aback, and couldn't help but think of Lin Yun, the female PhD from the National University of Defense Technology on Mount Tai, and her understanding of the weaponization of ball flash.

"Okay, then I'll go with you."

He returned to his dormitory to pack his luggage and also called Zhang Bin to arrange to return the photo frame of Zheng Min that he had borrowed a few days ago. Unexpectedly, Zhang Bin himself limped and knocked on the door.

"Got to go?"

"Yes, I heard you've retired too, teacher."

Sitting in the chair, Zhang Bin looked relaxed, perhaps having shared his lifelong obsession with the young man before him. "I've reached my destination. In my next life, I just want to rest well."

"I've come to collect my lover's photo, and by the way... please let me know if anything happens."

"Yes, I understand."

Chen Guang nodded heavily, watching his figure disappear into the night. His leg seemed to be limping more than usual, but he also walked faster.

At this point, three of the four researchers related to the ball flash—Chen Guang, Zhang Bin, Zheng Min, and Lin Yun—have had their backgrounds explained, leaving only the elfin Lin Yun seemingly shrouded in a thin mist.

As night deepened and his mind became preoccupied, Chen Guang couldn't fall asleep no matter what he did, so he turned over and continued reading Zhang Bin and Zheng Min's academic notes.

He seemed to suddenly hear a sigh!
As a genius mathematician and physicist, Chen Guang could not possibly believe in any supernatural phenomena, but at this moment he still looked up in horror at a faint white shadow above the cardboard box, which disappeared in an instant.

Is it an illusion?

Everyone, including the audience, recalled the various strange phenomena that had occurred earlier in the film:

An overturned water glass, white hair on the washbasin, and an extra water tower in the painting!

As if proceeding step by step, this time unknown images flashed by in an instant, as if a mystery was gradually approaching Chen Guang and was about to be solved through his perspective.

He got up reluctantly and tiptoed toward the cardboard box, unaware of anything unusual.

So he opened the cardboard box, took out the top notebook, and flipped through it, starting from where he had seen it last time. He turned to about a dozen pages, and half of the derivation process on this page was crossed out with a big X. The ink color of the X was very different from the original manuscript.

In the margins, a concise formula was rewritten, clearly to replace the crossed-out parts.

Chen Guang's eyes widened in horror. The delicate handwriting was incredibly familiar to him. The young scholar trembled as he opened the book of Zheng Min's belongings for comparison. The opening line, "The entrance to science is the entrance to hell," was still vivid in his mind.

As expected, the handwriting is exactly the same!
According to the annotations, the notebook I opened was Zhang Bin's research notes dated April 7, 1983. How could it suddenly contain the handwriting of Zheng Min, who passed away in 1971?

The mathematical genius suppressed his fear and began to study the formula that was "suspected" to have been written by Zheng Min.

The part she crossed out was Zhang Bin's physical derivation from twenty years ago, and Zheng Min rewrote the formula for calculating the boundary conditions of plasma fluids in a low-dissipation state.

In the formula, she used a readily available parameter, but this parameter was derived by a Mitsubishi Electric laboratory in 1985 as a byproduct of the failed development of a high-efficiency generator that replaced the rotor with a plasma jet.

But this happened after 1985.

Chen Guang closed his notebook in horror.

Neither Zhang Bin's timestamp nor the source of this parameter could have provided Zheng Min, who passed away in 1971, with access to this data, let alone...

She's already passed away! Is there really another kind of being in that state? And can they still interact with reality?
This time, Chen Guang didn't frantically turn on all the lights in the house like he did many years ago when he discovered those anomalies in his home. He sat blankly on the edge of the bed, feeling in his heart that these were all his destiny.

He suddenly remembered something, hurriedly turned on his computer, and clicked to enlarge the scanned photo of Zheng Min.

He processed the photo from black and white to color, and Zheng Min, who should have been photographed before 1971, looks much older than her actual age.

What was most unsettling was that Chen Guang discovered something amiss in Zheng Min's breast pocket!

In the photo, Zheng Min is wearing a lab coat. There is something in the left breast pocket. The fabric is thin, revealing some of the shape and details of the object.

He cut out that part of the image and put it into image processing software to try to extract more details.

Chen Guang, who frequently processed blurry lightning photographs, was exceptionally skilled and quickly brought out the outline and details of the object.

A three-inch computer floppy disk.

Five-inch floppy disks were not widely used in China until the early 1980s, and three-inch disks were used even later. According to the era in which Zheng Min lived, she should have carried a roll of black punched paper tape in her pocket.

The cinema was in an uproar once again.

The ever-increasing scientific suspense and the increasingly intricate mystery of the ball flash made them almost want to jump onto the stage and drag the progress bar to see what was going on next.

If it's a horror or supernatural movie, no one will bother to explore its causes.

But this is science fiction! It's hard science fiction!
How exactly does the director intend to tell this story, and how does he explain these supernatural phenomena within the framework of mature physics?

Unfortunately, Chen Guang, played by Xin Baiqing on screen, couldn't empathize with the audience's feelings; he abruptly ripped off the power cord and slammed the computer shut.

What he couldn't shake off were the clouds of doubt that loomed over him, and the phantom on the cardboard box that he couldn't even tell if it was a hallucination.

The female scholar Zheng Min's gaze seemed to be penetrating the computer screen, the deathly silence of the night like a cold hand gripping her tightly.

……

Chen Guang joined the Lightning Research Institute where his doctoral supervisor, Gao Bo, works.

His first task was to be sent to the New Concept Weapons Center to communicate with the military about cooperation on ball flash and other lightning-related topics.

Chen Guang was naturally delighted, because he needed experimental facilities, conditions, and funding, and he also wanted to reunite with his pen pal Lin Yun, with whom he occasionally kept in touch.

The camera suddenly zoomed in, showing him on a highway near the capital. On both sides were ordinary wheat fields. This area was home to many military research institutions, which were mostly simple buildings within high walls, with no signs at the gates.

Lin Yun received this friend, whom he would likely have to deal with frequently in the future, and led him through the porch. The staff coming and going were dressed in military uniforms, and some even had Western faces.

The two men sat down in an office marked "System Evaluation Department II".

Lin Yun, dressed in a major's uniform, possessed an unusual charm that made Chen Guang unable to look away. He smiled and asked, "Are you an officer?"

"Yes, my task is to research new concept weapons, including the lightning you're so keen on."

What is a new concept weapon?

Lin Yun explained: "For example, during World War II, the Soviet army strapped explosives to trained military dogs and had them crawl under German tanks, which was a new concept weapon."

"However, it has many variations, such as tying explosives to dolphins and having them attack submarines, or training a flock of birds to carry small bombs. Here's a newest idea—"

Lin Yun leaned over to her computer and pulled up a document with pictures and text that looked like an insect knowledge webpage: "Insert tiny, highly corrosive liquid sacs into insects like cockroaches and let them destroy the integrated circuits of the enemy's weapon systems."

"Is it interesting?"

Chen Guang leaned closer to take a look: "It's very interesting."

However, what distracted the young scholar was the fragrance emanating from Lin Yun. "You don't have any confidentiality requirements?"

"Yes, but what I'm showing you is just a concept. Ordinary people can figure it out themselves, so there's no need to keep it secret."

Lin Yun smiled and said, "Knowing you were coming, I prepared a gift for you. This is a witness record of ball lightning."

She turned on her computer, and Chen Guang was immediately engrossed in listening to only the beginning—

This is the ball lightning record that Zhang Bin mentioned before, which was captured during the flood relief efforts in 98. The eyewitness was a captain pilot who was on his way to the disaster area to airdrop relief supplies.

"Thank you! This is very important!" Chen Guang felt that his decision to follow his mentor Gao Bo to the Lightning Research Institute was the right one, and his interactions and communication with Lin Yun were even more correct.

After all, lightning is a new concept weapon, and the achievements in modern science, including nuclear weapons, are either from state-owned research institutions or military laboratories.

Applications drive development.

Lin Yun arranged for Chen Guang to meet with the flight lieutenant who was still serving later, and then took him to see the military's latest lightning weapon research results, since that was the main purpose of his trip.

As the car drove toward the military base, Chen Guang took the initiative to start a conversation.

"Your perfume smells nice. Are soldiers allowed to wear perfume?"

“Sometimes,” Lin Yun said calmly.

Chen Guang then became interested in a small ornament hanging on Lin Yun's car. It was a piece of bamboo with two sections, about the thickness of a finger, and with a branch and leaf attached. The design was quite charming.

He was interested because the bamboo joints and leaves were completely withered and yellow, and the bamboo joints had cracked in several thin lines in the dry northern air, clearly indicating that it was very old.

It is still hung in such a prominent position, which probably has a story behind it.

Chen Guang reached out to take it off for a closer look, but Lin Yun grabbed his wrist. The female officer's hand was slender and fair, yet surprisingly strong. However, after pressing his hand down, the strength quickly disappeared, leaving only the softness and warmth that made the young doctor's heart flutter.

But this softness was quickly shattered by Lin Yun's clear voice, "This is a landmine."

Chen Guang stared in disbelief, eliciting a burst of laughter from the audience.

Military scientist Lin Yun explained in detail: "An anti-personnel mine has a very simple structure: the bottom section contains explosives, and the top section contains the trigger fuse. The fuse is actually just a small, flexible firing pin and a rubber band. When the bamboo is stepped on, it deforms, and the firing pin bounces off."

"Where did this come from?"

"It was captured on the front lines in Guangxi Province in the 1980s. It was a classic creation. The cost was as low as a firecracker, but the destructive power was great."

"Because the metal part is very small, ordinary mine detectors generally cannot detect it, which is a big headache for the engineers. The shape is concealed, and it does not need to be buried when it is deployed. It can be scattered on the ground. At that time, the Vietnamese army scattered tens of thousands of mines at a time."

Chen Guang was relatively unfamiliar with weapons and was somewhat astonished: "Can something so small really kill people?"

"They might not kill you, but they could easily blow off half a foot or a leg. These kinds of wounded soldiers are even better than casualties."

And so, along the way, Chen Guang listened to this girl who had stirred his heart, as she kept talking about bloodshed and death, just like his peers talking about cosmetics.

The landmine hanging in her car was even in the detonation state; it wasn't just a simple souvenir.

In Lin Yun's words...

She liked the feeling of danger.

Upon arriving at the base, Lin Yun, who had officially become a weapons fanatic in Chen Guang's eyes, was still eager to learn more. After signing a confidentiality agreement, he introduced the lightning weapons that the military was researching.

For example, by using superconducting batteries, a helicopter could release lightning from the air to strike a target, causing oil drums to burst into flames. However, due to the short discharge range, energy limitations, and the requirement that the target be charged, this project is just a deceptive magic trick.

Lin Yun then showed him an atmospheric lightning model, which simulated lightning strikes in an open warehouse, completely shattering a model airplane traveling through it.

However, this project also failed, as the uncontrollable nature of the real atmospheric environment led to the death of a pilot due to the floating electric field.

The gleaming lightning, the burning oil drums, the fallen pilots—by the end of the day's visit, Chen Guang was completely overwhelmed by an uncontrollable sense of resistance, a hatred of weapons and killing.

He longed to find the secret of the ball flash in order to understand this unknown thing beyond nature, but everything Lin Yun had been selling and introducing to him since the car ride reminded Chen Guang of his deceased parents.

The parents were killed by ball lightning.

“These systems are all failures, so we need a completely new mathematical and physical model.” Lin Yun didn’t notice anything amiss. “So, are you interested in collaborating with us? I heard from Gao Bo that you’ve had a lot of new insights lately.”

"Ball lightning! I think it could be a completely new type of lightning weapon, given the current situation in our country..."

Lin Yun hesitated, but still didn't reveal any news from the front lines. In this fictional world, for the first time, the audience was given a concrete picture of the war and survival crisis in the outside world, introducing a new main storyline.

"Have you ever seen ball lightning kill someone?" Chen Guang murmured. "I have, and I've told you about it."

He looked at the girl he had developed feelings for with complicated emotions, "I never expected you to use it to gain such inspiration, to use it to harvest more lives."

Lin Yun, played by Zhou Xun, was taken aback, but she skillfully concealed her helplessness and confusion, and solemnly apologized to Chen Guang.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you."

"I don't know if saying this will lessen your aversion to lightning weapons." Lin Yun looked at the mathematician and ball lightning researcher with earnestness. "When you think about lightning weapons, the first thing that comes to mind is killing people, or in our words, eliminating the enemy's manpower. But if you think about it carefully, you will find that even if lightning weapons are completely successfully manufactured, their ability in this respect is no stronger than that of conventional weapons."

"If it attacks a large metal target, it will create a Faraday cage effect, which will shield the lightning and partially or completely eliminate the lethality to the people inside. So, for life, lightning weapons are not as cruel as they seem. On the contrary, it may be a weapon system that achieves victory with minimal loss of enemy lives."

Lin Yun was clearly a very good persuader; otherwise, how could she have convinced herself, a girl, to become such a weapons fanatic?

"Furthermore, when the intensity of the electromagnetic pulse caused by lightning exceeds tens of thousands of gauss, integrated circuits will suffer permanent damage. Even when the intensity exceeds 100 gauss, it will interfere with the operation of microcomputers. This is the intended use of lightning weapons."

"Modern warfare is all about technology and electronic warfare. You should be able to imagine such bloodless applications."

The female military scientist concluded: "All the major scientific advances of this century, such as aerospace, nuclear energy, and computers, are the result of scientists and military personnel, two groups of people who are different from each other, bringing together the common ground of their respective goals."

“I know you’ve spent your life exploring the mysteries of ball flare. How about this? You take charge of solving the fundamental mathematical and physical modeling problems, and the rest can be left to the military.”

By this point, most viewers would realize that the true protagonist of the film is this short but elegant and dangerous female officer.

Dr. Chen Guang, who introduced the ball flash, is more like a tool to connect the clues.

Therefore, the following film segments increasingly focus on the character of Lin Yun, the weapons expert played by Zhou Xun.

The indecisive Chen Guang remained silent and followed Lin Yun to the base canteen. It was a dimly lit restaurant with few people, and a piano was being played softly.

"I agree. I admire your eloquence." After a silent lunch, Chen Guang finally couldn't resist his desire to explore the mysteries of the sphere flash.

He stared at Lin Yun, who was wearing a gentle smile, but in his eyes, that smile inexplicably carried a cold-blooded and obsessive meaning.

Lin Yun saw him looking at her brooch, the only piece of jewelry she wore. It was shaped like a sword about the length of a matchstick, with a pair of small wings on the hilt.

She took it down and handed it to the man in front of her. "Dr. Chen, you can try it. Carefully hold the hilt and use it to cut the knife and fork in your hand."

"what?"

Lin Yun smiled and demonstrated, picking up the knife and fork at the table. To everyone's astonishment, the metal handles of the spoon and fork were cleanly cut in the middle, as if they were made of wax.

"This is a silicon material produced using molecular arrangement technology. Its edge is only a few molecules thick, making it the sharpest sword in the world."

crazy……

These were Dr. Chen's final thoughts as he was about to work with Lin Yun.

"You like weapons, so do you like war?"

Lin Yun's expression immediately turned solemn. A soldier's duty did not allow her to reveal the current situation, but her tone was by no means relaxed: "Judging from the current situation, war is no longer a matter of whether we like it or not."

……

The director's portrayal of Lin Yun, played by Zhou Xun, begins with the landmine that is already in the detonation state when she gets into the vehicle.

After Chen Guang agreed to join the mine-point weapon program, the two sides began close cooperation, and he continued to broaden his understanding of this female soldier.

For example, her father seemed to have a very important background, but no one dared to say a word about it;
For example, she actually has a boyfriend who is currently the captain of the aircraft carrier Everest, and his name seems to be Jiang Xingchen;

For example, her madness and "lack of bottom line" even exceeded Chen Guang's understanding.

The issue arose after Dr. Chen developed a mathematical model that could represent all the known characteristics of ball lightning, only to find that the model was too computationally intensive, requiring approximately 500,000 hours to complete a single simulation on a single existing microcomputer.

This is over fifty years ago, are you kidding me?
Zhou Xun's character, Lin Yun, appears calm. After failing to obtain resources from the organization, she decisively hacks into a foreign website called "setiho," an acronym for "Search for foreign civilizations in your home."

The purpose of this website is to utilize the idle capabilities of thousands of computers connected to the Internet to search for extraterrestrial civilizations. Participants will receive "data packets" distributed by the University of California research base.

All users around the world need to do is download and install a special screensaver from the project's website.

This way, when people finish work and take a break, the screensaver starts running and provides computing power.

The audience may be confused right now, but this is similar to voluntarily providing computers to host machines for cryptocurrency mining in later generations, thus providing computing power.

To Dr. Chen's dismay, Lin Yun hacked into the research website, replaced the computational data and tasks of the ball flash model he had created, and "stole" thousands of machines to work for him.

It turns out that moral constraints are so powerless when you crave something.

Initially, things went smoothly, but Lin Yun wasn't the only smart person in the world, nor was he the only expert in computer science or military science.

Two weeks later, Dr. Chen came to his office one afternoon, turned on his computer, and discovered that his plan had been exposed and the calculation results had been stopped from being transmitted back.

What followed was a short email:

I know what you're talking about, BL.

Don't waste your life, come find me.

No. 561, Building 106, 24th Street, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russian Federation.

Dr. Chen and Lin Yun, who rushed over upon hearing the news, were both stunned. BL is short for Ball Flash, and their extremely complex and ingenious mathematical model was cracked in an instant by the email sender in front of them.

Clearly, he or they are also researchers of spherical flash.

To go or not to go?
Chen Guang might hesitate for a while, but for Lin Yun, it wasn't even worth thinking about for more than a second.

Thus, Dr. Chen, who came from humble beginnings, witnessed for the first time the formidable background that Lin Yun had never mentioned. Taking advantage of a military exchange about the domestic assembly of the Su-30, she legally and legitimately went to Russia with the delegation.

One night in Moscow, she asked her commander for leave to visit a so-called weapons research expert who was also her teacher. When she returned, her eyes were red and she cried for a long time, which was rare for her.

Chen Guang should know her personality quite well, but he couldn't imagine what could have caused Lin Yun such sadness.

Lin Yun didn't say anything, leaving the audience in suspense. After finishing their business, the two embarked on a journey to visit the mysterious sphere flash researcher.

This was also the beginning of their true understanding of ball lightning.

(End of this chapter)