The Mysterious Night of Beijing

Conclusion: She was faking sleep.

Chen Ziming felt that waking up a woman who was pretending to be asleep would cause a series of unpredictable troubles. The best solution was for him to leave and let her sleep there.

He pushed open the car door, and as soon as he took one leg out, his arm was grabbed tightly by a hand.

Lin Yuxin kept her eyes closed, muttering in her sleep.

"Don't go..."

Chen Ziming tried to pull his hand away, but couldn't. He didn't want to get into a physical altercation with her over such a small matter, causing unnecessary physical exertion.

He sighed, sat back down, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

Since we can't leave, let's sleep and earn points.

……

The next morning, just as dawn was breaking.

Cheng Yao didn't sleep well all night. She got up early to go to the cafeteria for breakfast and then go to the lab to organize the materials she brought back from the exhibition. As soon as she stepped out of the dormitory building, she saw the eye-catching red sports car parked downstairs.

She stopped in her tracks.

She saw that in the driver's seat, Chen Ziming was leaning back with his eyes closed, while Lin Yuxin in the passenger seat had her head tilted to the side, almost resting on Chen Ziming's shoulder, and was fast asleep.

Cheng Yao stood there, looking at the somewhat jarring scene inside the car, feeling a tightness in her chest and a bit of suffocation.

Just as Cheng Yao was in a daze, Chen Ziming in the car opened his eyes. He hadn't moved much all night, and his body was a little stiff. He glanced at Cheng Yao standing outside the window, and then at Lin Yuxin who was still fast asleep beside him.

[Ding! Host detected as being at the center of a potential social conflict. Please leave as soon as possible to avoid unnecessary point deduction.]

The system's prompts helped him make a decision.

He no longer hesitated and directly woke Lin Yuxin up.

"arrive."

Lin Yuxin rubbed her eyes, waking up groggily. When she saw Cheng Yao outside the window, she instantly became alert.

She deliberately stretched and yawned, then smiled at Chen Ziming.

Good morning.

The tone was very intimate.

She pushed open the car door and got out, bumping right into Cheng Yao.

"Engineer Cheng, so early!"

Lin Yuxin greeted them with a beaming smile, but her eyes held a hint of smugness.

"Ziming was too tired last night, so I let him sleep a little longer."

Cheng Yao looked at her, then at Chen Ziming who was getting out of the car. He was still wearing the same T-shirt as yesterday, wrinkled and covered in mud.

The pent-up anger in her heart intensified.

"Consultant Chen is a core talent of the group; his energy should be focused on scientific research."

Cheng Yao's tone was calm, but her words were barbed.

"Instead of wasting time on meaningless things."

"Oh? What do you mean by meaningless things?"

Lin Yuxin raised an eyebrow.

"How is it pointless for me to date Ziming?"

Upon hearing this, Chen Ziming frowned. He was about to correct the incorrect statement when he realized that the complexity of the conversation was increasing exponentially.

The optimal solution is to leave immediately.

"I'm going to the lab now."

He left after saying that, without even glancing at the two women.

Lin Yuxin and Cheng Yao were left standing there, staring at each other.

"Hmph, blockhead."

Lin Yuxin pouted.

Cheng Yao ignored her and turned to walk towards the laboratory building.

……

Chen Ziming plunged into the Zero Point Lab, ready to make up for the points he had missed in the previous two days.

But as soon as he sat down, Minister Wang came over with several people. Those people were all around fifty years old, with half-gray hair, wearing thick glasses, and had the air of scholars who had spent years in the laboratory.

They were the chief engineers of several traditional weapons projects in the group, and also among the people who were most dissatisfied with Chen Ziming.

"Ziming, let me introduce you. This is Chief Engineer Liu, who is in charge of our group's aero-engine project, and this is Chief Engineer Qian, who is in charge of the submarine navigation system..."

Minister Wang gave a warm introduction.

Chen Ziming didn't react much; he felt that Minister Wang had disturbed his efforts to earn points.

"Advisor Chen, you're young and promising!"

Chief Engineer Liu spoke, his smile forced and insincere.

"This trip to Geneva has truly brought honor to China's military industry."

"Yes, modifying a gun barrel with bare hands is unheard of, it's truly a miraculous skill."

Chief Engineer Qian echoed, his tone neither praising nor sarcastic.

They remained skeptical of Chen Ziming's metaphysical theories.

In their view, science is rigorous and built up through countless experiments and data, rather than through improvisation or resonance.

They felt that Chen Ziming might have just been lucky in some ways, or that he had used some gimmicks they were unaware of.

"Consultant Chen, we've come today to ask you about a technical problem."

Chief Engineer Liu took a sealed metal box from his assistant and placed it on the table.

When Minister Wang saw this, his heart skipped a beat. He knew that these old guys had come with ill intentions.

"Old Liu, what are you doing? Ziming just got back. Can't we talk about this tomorrow?"

Minister Wang tried to smooth things over.

"Minister Wang, this is a major issue concerning the heart of our latest generation of fighter jets, and it cannot be delayed."

Chief Engineer Liu opened the box.

Inside was an extremely complex turbine blade, no bigger than the palm of your hand, covered with tiny honeycomb-like pores, with a very strange shape.

"This is our latest single-crystal hollow turbine blade, a core component of aero engines."

Chief Engineer Liu explained,

"It needs to operate continuously for thousands of hours in environments with temperatures exceeding 1,700 degrees Celsius and accelerations tens of thousands of times greater than gravity."

"The problem we are facing now is that, no matter how high the precision of the machine tools we use during the manufacturing process, we cannot guarantee that the inner wall smoothness of these cooling vents meets the design requirements."

He pointed to the tiny holes on the leaf, which were finer than a hair.

"Even the slightest flaw can become a fatal weakness under high temperature and pressure, leading to blade breakage, engine failure, and loss of life."

"We assembled the best experts in the group and worked on it for three years, using the most advanced five-axis CNC machine tools, but the yield rate is still less than five percent."

Chief Engineer Liu looked at Chen Ziming with a challenging gaze.

"I've heard that you, Consultant Chen, are skilled in manual alterations; you're known as the 'Ghost Hand'."

"We want to see if your amazing skills can still create a miracle when faced with this problem that represents the pinnacle of modern industrial manufacturing."

These words were spoken very politely, but the meaning was clear: they simply did not believe that Chen Ziming could create something more precise than a top-of-the-line machine tool by hand, unlike low-end gadgets like rifles.

You might be able to fool people with some clever tricks, but the core components of an aircraft engine, every micrometer is a matter of life and death, and there is no room for falsehood.

Today, they want to expose Chen Ziming's true colors in front of Minister Wang!