Courtyard House: Starting with a 28-inch motorcycle

"A word once spoken is a word uttered." Xiao Yao's four words were like nails driven into the air.

After venting her frustrations, she relaxed her shoulders and immediately became more cheerful, rattling off a series of embarrassing stories from the past month and a half, including the new cafeteria window and the boy from the next class chasing a cat and falling into the bushes while climbing over the wall...

The next day, after the flag-raising ceremony, the campus instantly came alive as soon as the free activity bell rang. Some people went to stroll through the hutongs, some headed to the Western Hills to see the autumn leaves, and some clutched their train tickets and headed straight for the train station—anyway, today, they could go wherever they wanted.

Xiao Yao was led by Professor Chen into the old building of the Chemistry Department. Pushing open the frosted glass door on the third floor, Professor Guan Xin was bending over to adjust a spectrometer. Her silver hair was neatly tied up, but her eyes were surprisingly bright. She showed no signs of aging in her every move, only a heavy, sharp spirit.

From then on, Xiao Yao's life was split in two: attending lectures in the classroom during the day and tackling chemistry problems in the chemistry building at night.

"Host, a true scientist never relies on empty talk to establish himself." The system's voice was as calm as a bell in the virtual space. "Books are the skeleton, experiments are the flesh and blood. Only by personally melting, cooling, and reconstructing can knowledge grow teeth and bite into the forefront of the times."

Deep within his consciousness, Xiao Yao listened intently, those complex formulas and reaction mechanisms still shrouded in mist. But he knew that to move the giant wheel of technology, he had to move and lay every brick himself.

The road of science is long, and the further you go, the quieter, the wider, and the more endless it becomes.

Time suddenly became precious. As soon as the school bell rang, Xiao Yao no longer accompanied Su Man on her bicycle ride through the tree-lined path, but instead took a shortcut straight to the Chemistry Department—the wheels rolled over fallen leaves, and the wind was filled with the faint smell of ethanol wafting from the laboratory.

When you're focused, the days always fly by. One morning, I opened the window and the entire campus was enveloped in a pristine white snow. The treetops, eaves, and stone steps were all silently bathed in white.

Su Man, wrapped in a maroon coat, stood on tiptoe, peering out from below the dormitory building. This morning, winter break officially began.

"Mom and Dad sent all the winter clothes to my house." She took Xiao Yao's luggage bag as naturally as if she were taking her own schoolbag. "When they heard on the phone last time that you weren't coming home, they packed overnight, even stuffing three pairs of thick cotton socks in."

"You really don't need to make this trip; I can carry it myself."

"I want to move, is that okay?" She pouted, her eyelashes fluttering.

Xiao Yao immediately fell silent and obediently shut up.

Because his home is in Kyoto, he doesn't need to squeeze onto the Spring Festival train. He had just helped Wang Yutong and the others carry their luggage and see them off at the station the day before yesterday. Now the campus is so empty that only the sound of the wind can be heard. Two parallel tire tracks on the snow stretch all the way to the school gate.

……

Xiao Yao hopped on his bicycle and followed behind Su Man, the wheels crunching through the thin snow as they rode into her courtyard. Just as the dinner table was set, Professor Liu knocked on the gate.

After a brief conversation, Xiao Yao picked up his bag and got into Professor Liu's car—the other team had just overcome a key bottleneck and urgently needed his participation in the follow-up verification.

When I returned to the research institute's lounge in the evening, there were several boxes of food on the table. The aluminum foil lids were lifted, and the heat had long since dissipated, leaving only a lukewarm aftertaste.

The mess hall was closed, so these were extra meals secretly delivered by the soldiers on duty. The rough porcelain bowls contained home-style dishes, but it was unclear when they took their turns to rest. They would just knock on the door on time at mealtimes, leave the food, and then leave.

The rest room is well-heated, but open flames are strictly prohibited throughout the research institute—the consequences of an electrical leak, pipe burst, or smoke would be unimaginable.

Xiao Yao glanced around and saw that everyone had little appetite, so he only ate a few bites before putting down his chopsticks and going back to his dormitory to lie down.

Having been hungry all day, my stomach felt taut and empty, but I couldn't bear to disturb the peace and quiet of the soldiers on duty.

He returned to the lab alone. When he pushed open the door, Professor Liu and two other professors were engrossed in a deep simulation in front of the projection screen. When they saw him come in, they merely glanced up and nodded, without asking any further questions.

Xiao Yao's gaze swept over a pile of unused spring iron sheets in the corner of the lab bench, and he suddenly remembered the simple electric stove on the stove in his hometown when he was a child—a few coils of enameled wire were wrapped around the iron core, and batteries were connected to both ends. It could be heated red-hot in a few minutes.

He reached out and picked up a spring, his fingertips tracing the cool, metallic curve.

Xiao Yao rummaged through the lab and found several pieces of high-temperature alloy sheets, a few sections of nickel-chromium resistance wire, and a few mica insulating sheets. Back in the break room, he quickly soldered, wound, and wired the parts—in the blink of an eye, a dark, square furnace stood on the table. Plug it in, and the furnace surface instantly glowed with a dark red light, like a thoroughly heated charcoal blank, and waves of heat immediately hit you.

He quickly placed the lunchbox on the table, and just as the lid was closed tightly, the fluorescent light above his head exploded with a "pop," plunging the entire lounge into darkness.

A series of rapid thumping boots suddenly sounded outside the door, approaching from afar and clattering against the concrete floor of the corridor. In the blink of an eye, seven or eight fully armed soldiers had blocked the doorway, the beams of their tactical flashlights slicing through the darkness, sweeping across the walls, table corners, and ceiling.

A power outage in the research dormitory? This is no small matter. Last time, the institute next door lost a data floppy disk, which alarmed the military region's inspection team. At this moment, everyone is on edge—could there really be a mole trying to sneak in and steal data under the cover of darkness?

Alert was immediately heightened. The electricians rushed into the electrical room with multimeters and insulated pliers, measuring current section by section, checking for short circuits, and removing wires from the cable trays; patrolling sentries paced back and forth in the corridors with guns at their feet, even opening and checking the trash cans twice.

Xiao Yao didn't care about anything else. He grabbed his chopsticks and shoveled down two mouthfuls of still-hot rice, the soup still bubbling. In this awful weather, food frosted over in just three minutes. If he waited any longer, he'd probably have to bang his chopsticks on the bowl.

Fortunately, the research institute has a strong security system, and the fault was located in less than twenty minutes: the main line overload tripped, and the source was traced to the socket circuit in the rest room. Power was quickly restored, and the white light "whooshed" back into the room.

Before the light had even fully illuminated, an officer with gleaming epaulets led his men through the door. His gaze, sharp as a knife, swept across Xiao Yao's face before fixing on the still-glowing stove on the table.

Xiao Yao's heart skipped a beat, and he subconsciously looked up at the crack in the ceiling, as if a cosmic storm was being broadcast live from there.

The officer recognized him—Dean Li had specifically called him to his office the day before yesterday, pointing to Xiao Yao's file and saying, "Don't treat this kid like an ordinary student." His tone softened slightly then: "What were you busy with just now?"

"Heat your food." Xiao Yao pointed, "This is it."

Is it illegal to eat hot food? You can't just label someone as disrupting scientific research just because they're hungry, can you?

The officer paced halfway around the table, his fingertip gesturing towards the stove: "With this? It can trip the power for the entire building?"

Xiao Yao immediately wilted, his ears burning, as if he had just inserted a dud into the circuit.

"It really wasn't intentional... I built it myself, and I didn't calculate the power consumption correctly. I also didn't expect the dormitory wiring to be so 'delicate.'" He scratched the back of his neck and muttered to himself, "I thought that in a research institute, the wires would be thicker than high-speed rail tracks..."

The officer squinted, staring at the unassuming iron behemoth: a dark gray cast iron pot with a knob, several coils of bluish-green spring wire wrapped around its bottom, and a worn-out electrical wire trailing behind it.

But no matter how small the matter, he dared not make a decision, only nodding behind him. Two soldiers stepped forward, lifted the furnace, and placed it in an anti-static box—confiscated and sent for inspection. As for Xiao Yao himself, his name was only noted down, and no further action was taken until the technical team issued a report.

Once the person left, Xiao Yao breathed a sigh of relief and lowered his head to continue eating. The ticket hadn't been printed yet, and the food couldn't wait for him to get cold.

Meanwhile, the duty team quickly found Professor Chen and Dean Li, and reported the whole story of the power outage. The stove was solemnly handed to Dean Li, who pushed up his reading glasses and twirled the edge of the stove halfway around with his fingers: "Did Xiao make this? Don't turn it on yet, have Old Chen take a look with the oscilloscope."

Xiao Yao was personally approved to move in by them. If something goes wrong, who would dare to make a judgment without first consulting the big boss?

Several professors stood around the stove, like they were surrounding a newly unearthed bronze cauldron. Someone reached out to turn on the switch, then pulled back: "Wait, let's turn off the spectrum analyzer number three and the temperature control unit number six first—we don't want to go dark again."

Professor Chen smiled and waved his hand: "Old Li, turn off those 'power-guzzling monsters,' let's see what kind of rare thing this kid has come up with."

The equipment stopped, and the furnace was powered on. A dark red halo gradually rose, deepening in intensity, finally condensing into a blazing crimson. Even half a meter away, the hairs on one's body curled slightly. Dean Li rubbed his hands and laughed, "Incredible! For a hot meal, they practically 'stewed' an induction cooker! I heard the US and Japan have already put it on supermarket shelves, while we're still stuck in piles of blueprints... Hey, they've already got it on the table!"

Professor Wang, standing nearby, nodded in agreement: "He also proposed the remote-controlled model aircraft idea. His thinking is as wild as a mountain stream, turning corners without any hesitation. He's only been learning for a year, and he can already build a furnace with his hands. In the next ten years, he'll probably tear the roof off the lab."

Professor Chen had already gotten up and was walking out: "I need to go see this child, see if he's terrified? And while I'm at it, ask him how many untapped ideas he has in his head."

After hearing the whole story, the officer was both amused and exasperated—it turned out to be a misunderstanding, and the protagonist was just a greenhorn. However, before leaving, he still asked Professor Chen to pass on a message: In the future, if you want to work on anything new, be sure to inform the security department in advance, so as not to set off the alarms throughout the entire institute in the middle of the night.

When Professor Chen knocked lightly on the door and came in, Xiao Yao stood up abruptly, the chair legs scraping against the cement floor with a long, grating sound.

"Sit down, sit down." Professor Chen waved his hand, a smile playing on his lips. "I'm not here to lecture you. I just want to hear how you came up with this furnace."

"I saw the schematic diagram in the book. Today the food got cold too quickly, so I took apart some scrap materials from the lab and soldered them... and ended up causing such a commotion." Xiao Yao looked down at the tips of his shoes, his voice growing softer and softer.

"You figured it out yourself? You did it all yourself?" Professor Chen's eyes lit up, and his smile deepened. "Your brain is like a bottomless mine; who knows, the next shovel might just unearth a gold mine."

……

Before even graduating, remote-controlled airplanes, simple spectrum filters, and now even civilian-grade induction cookers have appeared one after another.