After taking the advice, I became a top student.

That evening, in dormitory 304, Huang Qinghua, biting his pen cap, stared at a challenging function problem on the exam paper for a full twenty minutes.

He was at his wit's end, so he turned to look at Chen Mo, who was studying a bunch of symbols he couldn't understand.

"Old Chen, can you take a look at this question for me?"

Chen Mo glanced at the question without even frowning and blurted out, "This question is very simple; just use the Lagrange Mean Value Theorem."

Huang Qinghua's expectant expression froze instantly: "...I'm only in the first year of high school, I haven't even started advanced mathematics yet."

"oh."

Chen Mo paused for a moment, as if seriously considering the limitation, then took the draft paper and said, "Then I'll explain it to you using the high school method."

He wrote with lightning speed, first drawing a function graph on the paper, then listing a series of inequalities for scaling, while constantly uttering terms like constructing auxiliary functions, endpoint effects, and second derivative convexity preservation.

Huang Qinghua was able to keep up at first, but after two minutes his eyes began to glaze over, and after five minutes he completely gave up thinking, leaving only the mechanical action of nodding.

Ten minutes later, Chen Mo put down his pen and looked up at Huang Qinghua's eyes, which seemed to say, "Who am I? Where am I?"

There was a two-second silence.

"Or," Chen Mo patted his shoulder earnestly, "you should go study advanced mathematics; it'll be faster that way."

Huang Qinghua: "..."

"Old Chen, how did your English improve so quickly? Do you have any secrets? Teach your brother!"

Li Ze stood to the side with his English textbook, eager to find a shortcut.

He only scored 107 on his midterm English exam, so there's still a lot of room for improvement.

"Read the text a hundred times every morning, and if you stick to it for a semester, your English will improve by leaps and bounds!"

Chen Mo never imagined that he would one day be giving advice to others.

"How many?"

Li Ze's eyes widened, as if he had heard something absurd.

"A hundred times!"

"Don't even mention it a hundred times, I'd struggle to say it fifty times."

"Then twenty times."

"That's still too much..."

"So, what score do you want to get?"

Li Ze remained silent, then picked up his English textbook and quietly went to the balcony to read aloud.

While his roommates were all studying, Guo Chao was still playing video games.

As Li Ze went to the balcony, he glanced at him and said, "Brother Chao, aren't you going to learn something?"

"My motto in life is: as long as I don't try, no one can say that I've tried and it's not good enough."

Guo Chao stared at his phone screen and said something without turning his head.

"So what are your life goals?" Li Ze was a little worried about his roommate who was giving up.

Guo Chao: "Inheriting the family business."

The dormitory immediately fell silent.

Huang Qinghua rolled her eyes at Li Ze. Why did you provoke him?

But looking back at their textbooks, everyone became even more diligent.

……

Administration building and teachers' offices of Rongcheng No.1 Middle School

Although Deng Songyuan has good teaching ability and is a special-grade teacher at Rongcheng No. 1 Middle School, he is just an ordinary teacher and does not have a separate office.

His desk was piled with students' assignments, as well as journals such as the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, and Advanced Materials, which he would often browse through in his spare time.

"Old Deng, you're a high school teacher now, why are you still reading these things?" a colleague joked.

Deng Songyuan pushed up his glasses and replied casually, "It helps me fall asleep when I can't sleep."

Nobody knows why he gave up his university teaching position to teach at a high school.

Nobody cared.

As time went by, even Deng Songyuan himself stopped caring.

But now, he feels the flame in his heart reignite.

He still remembers that half a year ago, when his doctoral supervisor Zhou Mingyuan retired, he gave a report at the academic community's annual meeting. In the report, he mentioned that he had cultivated a large number of outstanding talents. The PPT listed the names of his outstanding students, and his junior brother Zhang Wei's name was ranked third, followed by professors and doctoral supervisors from Sichuan University.

Deng Songyuan's name did not appear.

Nobody cared.

When Deng Songyuan saw the news, he was grading the chemistry weekly exam papers for the second-year high school students.

He put down his red pen and stared at the playground outside the window for a long time.

Then I continued grading the papers.

In 2007, Deng Songyuan pursued his doctoral studies at the School of Chemistry, Sichuan University, under the tutelage of Zhou Mingyuan, a renowned professor in the field of materials chemistry in China.

At that time, Deng Songyuan was the most promising student in the entire research group.

He's quick-witted, has strong practical skills, and a tenacious spirit. He can always find the reason why others can't do an experiment by staying up for several nights in a row.

His doctoral research topic was lithium-sulfur batteries.

In 2007, lithium-sulfur batteries were still a relatively niche field.

Commercialized lithium-ion batteries have only just become widespread, while ternary materials and lithium iron phosphate are still hot topics in academic circles.

Lithium-sulfur batteries?

The theoretical energy density is high, but the two major problems of shuttle effect and volume expansion are almost unsolvable, and most people think it is a dead end.

Deng Songyuan did not believe in superstition.

He spent two whole years, under the guidance of his mentor Zhou Mingyuan, designing a mesoporous carbon/sulfur composite material that uses physical confinement to suppress the shuttle of polysulfides.

The experimental results were surprisingly good, with an initial specific capacity exceeding 1200 mAh/g and a capacity retention rate of 62% after 50 cycles.

This was a rather impressive figure at the time.

Deng Songyuan was so excited that he couldn't sleep well for three days.

He organized the data, wrote the paper, and excitedly showed it to Zhou Mingyuan.

"Xiao Deng, this paper is well written."

Zhou Mingyuan flipped through the pages, a satisfied smile spreading across his face, before changing the subject, "However, I have an idea..."

"Xiao Zhang has also been working in a similar direction recently, but his data isn't ideal yet. Could you list him as a co-first author on your paper? That would benefit both of you."

Deng Songyuan was taken aback.

Xiao Zhang is Zhou Mingyuan's nephew.

"Teacher, this is an experiment I did all by myself, and I also got all the data by myself..." Deng Songyuan tried to persuade him.

"Xiao Deng, scientific research requires teamwork."

Zhou Mingyuan's smile faded. "The lab's resources, equipment, funding—which one wasn't secured by me? Xiao Zhang also participated in the discussions, so it's not unreasonable for him to be credited as a co-owner, is it?"

Deng Songyuan fell silent.

He ultimately did not agree.

I submitted my paper to Chemistry of Materials, but to my surprise, it was rejected three days later.

The rejection letter did not provide any clear academic reasons; it simply stated that the paper was not suitable for the journal.

Three months later, an almost identical paper was published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

Authors: Zhang Wei, Deng Songyuan (second author), Zhou Mingyuan (corresponding author).

The data is exactly the same, even the chart color scheme hasn't been changed.

Deng Songyuan went to confront Zhou Mingyuan.

Zhou Mingyuan said calmly, "Xiao Deng, please understand. Xiao Zhang needs a first-author paper to graduate. Your doctoral dissertation is already sufficient for graduation. Consider this paper as helping him out. I'll write a recommendation letter for you when you look for a job in the future."

Letter of recommendation?

Deng Songyuan clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms.

He agreed.

It wasn't because of forgiveness, but because of helplessness.

After graduating with his doctorate, a disheartened Deng Songyuan did not stay in academia.

He applied for teaching positions at more than a dozen universities, but all his applications were rejected.

A second-tier university in western China gave him an interview opportunity. During the interview, they asked, "You only have two papers as the first author? And one of them is in a Q2 journal?"

Deng Songyuan wanted to say that one of my papers in a top-tier journal had its first authorship stolen.

But he knew it would be useless to say anything.

He didn't get the position.

He later learned that Zhou Mingyuan had spoken to people in the industry, saying, "Xiao Deng isn't very good at teamwork."

Deng Songyuan eventually got a job in research and development at a chemical company in the provincial capital.

Corporate research and development lacks academic freedom; everything is profit-driven.

He worked there for three years, changed jobs twice, and found it increasingly meaningless.

In 2012, Rongcheng No.1 Middle School was recruiting a chemistry teacher. The requirements were a master's degree or above, and those with secondary school teaching experience would be given priority.

Deng Songyuan submitted his resume.

During the interview, the principal asked him, "You're a PhD from Sichuan University, what made you decide to teach high school?"

Deng Songyuan smiled and said, "Teaching high school students to do experiments is more interesting than making products in a big factory."

What he didn't say was that, anyway, nobody wants me to do scientific research anymore.