A live stream of someone hand-making a giant white robot attracted the attention of the government,

"From now on, activate the Level 1 security protocol. Clear this building and establish three independent defense lines. All personnel and supplies entering and leaving the building will be subject to the highest level of screening."

The command was executed swiftly.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, above the dividing line between day and night, a storm is brewing.

London, on the banks of the Thames, the headquarters of the journal Nature.

Twenty-four hours—a timeframe that would be considered a fantasy in the traditional publishing industry.

But Sir Henry Dalton did it.

He used the double threat of dismissal and bonuses to force all departments—typesetting, printing, legal, and publicity—to work around the clock.

While it was still four in the morning in the capital of China, the sun was just rising in Great Britain, and the homepage of Nature's official website was completely dominated by a simple yet extremely impactful cover.

There were no extra pictures, only a pure black background and a huge, glaringly white title.

"A Model of Macroscopic Energy Conduction based on Controllable Quantum Tunneling Effect"

Below is a smaller line of author attribution.

Che, Bai. University of Science and Technology of China.

The moment the electronic link to this paper was posted, the whole world seemed to be muted, followed by a deafening roar.

The global academic community was instantly shaken.

Everyone thought Nature had gone mad.

"What is this? An April Fool's joke?"

"A Chinese name? Is Henry Dalton senile?"

"Controllable quantum tunneling? Why don't they write about perpetual motion machine theory?"

On MIT's physics forum, sarcastic posts garnered hundreds of replies within minutes.

Countless people flooded Nature's official Twitter account, using the harshest language to question the professionalism of this century-old journal.

However, when countless top lab directors, Nobel laureates, and professors, with a sense of schadenfreude, paid to download that mere twenty-page PDF, the situation became a different story.

The entire academic community fell into an eerie, chilling silence.

The previously noisy forum fell silent instantly.

The barrage of criticism on Twitter abruptly ceased.

It was as if an invisible hand had gripped the throats of all physicists in the world.

An office at Caltech filled with books.

Professor Albright, the theoretical physicist known for his rigor and acerbity, was staring intently at page five on the screen.

The harmonic field constraint equation, which he described as "incomprehensible as to why it holds true," has now been derived ten times on his draft paper.

Every simulation leads to the same conclusion.

Self-consistent, perfect, and flawless.

It was there, like a miracle, mocking all the theoretical systems he had built up over the past thirty years.

In Du Bois's laboratory at the University of Munich.

This authority on condensed matter physics, his hands trembling, was inputting the lattice model from page eleven of the paper into the supercomputing simulation program.

He applied the concept of topological insulators to polymer materials.

This idea was so wild as to be almost blasphemous.

But when the simulation results appeared on the big screen, all the researchers in the entire laboratory were collectively petrified.

On the screen, countless blue dots representing electrons flowed freely within a flexible polymer chain model. There were no collisions, no scattering, and not a trace of energy loss.

100% conduction efficiency.

"The devil... this is the devil's masterpiece..." a young postdoctoral researcher muttered to himself, then collapsed to the ground.

This eerie silence is more terrifying than any heated argument.

It spreads silently.

From North America to Europe, and then to East Asia.

All the physicists who downloaded the paper experienced a psychological upheaval, from "absurdity" to "shock," and then to "doubting life."

They found themselves like a group of accountants with abacuses, vehemently accusing someone using a supercomputer of "performing magic" and being "impractical."

Now, that person simply slapped the computer's design blueprints coldly in their faces.

The most embarrassed and ashamed person was Richard Stone.

His scathing article, published in Science, arguing that "Zero Boundary Technology" is a "commercial scam involving a violently endothermic chemical reaction," is still on the journal's front page.

Every word felt like a resounding slap across his old face.

Eagle Kingdom, Royal Academy of Sciences.

Richard Stone locked himself in his office and unplugged all the phone lines.

On the table in front of him were two printed papers.

One portion was for him.

The other one was white.

His face, usually well-maintained and exuding scholarly air, was now a deep purplish-red, streaked with blood from humiliation and rage.

He looked at the paper from China over and over again, trying to find the slightest flaw in the formulas and models he had never seen before.

But he couldn't find it.

The logic of that paper was as precise as the workings of celestial bodies. Every inference was built upon an irrefutable mathematical foundation. It neither refuted him nor even mentioned him.

It simply announced the arrival of a new era with an absolute and overwhelming attitude.

And he, Richard Stone, Nobel laureate in physics and a leading figure in contemporary physics, became the first and most ridiculous stepping stone of this new era.

"Ahhhhh!"

He finally broke down, letting out a suppressed roar like an enraged beast. He flailed his arms, sweeping everything on the table, including the expensive computer, onto the floor.

The sounds of shattering glass and scattered documents echoed throughout the office.

And at the heart of this storm.

For the first time, Bai Che's name, as a "theoretical physicist," entered the highest hall of world science, and was searched and discussed by countless people.

But he himself was completely unaware of this.

He was being "escorted" back to his dormitory by Li Jianguo's men.

The underground laboratory has been completely sealed off. As the CEO of "Zero Boundary Technology", Su Wanqing was required to stay and cooperate with the military's technical personnel to conduct a more detailed handover of data.

Before leaving, she looked at Bai Che, who was sandwiched between two plainclothes soldiers and looked utterly hopeless, and felt a mix of emotions.

This man, who had just single-handedly turned the entire Western academic world upside down, was now looking irritable because he couldn't go back to sleep right away.

She stepped forward, lowered her voice, and spoke quickly.

"I've already arranged leave for you, and your advisor won't give you any trouble."

"Also, be careful."

Bai Che lazily raised his eyelids and yawned.

"Understood, Steward Su."

He shuffled away, surrounded by a crowd.

As Su Wanqing watched his retreating figure, for some reason, the raging storm in her heart gradually subsided, leaving only a trace of helplessness, and a feeling of doting that she herself didn't even realize.

Dormitory Building 302 is now under complete lockdown.

When Bai Che returned to his messy doghouse, the first thing he did was throw himself onto the bed and cover his head with the blanket.

The world is in turmoil, but it has nothing to do with me.

Sleep is of paramount importance.

He slept soundly for a long time.

Unbeknownst to him, while he was sleeping, his counselor received a direct order from the principal's office to raise the security level of his file to the highest level.

Unbeknownst to him, his roommate Wang Tao was politely "invited" out of the dormitory by a group of people in black suits and moved into a five-star hotel, under the pretext of "temporarily requisitioning the dormitory to cooperate with an important national project."

He was completely unaware that countless physicists around the world were working day and night to study his paper, and that countless journalists were frantically digging for every bit of information about him.

The whole world is waiting for him to wake up.

After an unknown amount of time, the urge to urinate woke Bai Che from his deep sleep.

He groggily got out of bed, rubbed his eyes, slipped on his slippers, and headed towards the dormitory door, intending to go to the public toilet at the end of the corridor.

He turned the doorknob and pulled the door open.

Outside the door, the corridor lights were somewhat glaring.

Two soldiers, dressed in combat uniforms and standing tall and straight, stood like sculptures on either side of the door.

The moment Bai Che opened the door, the two of them snapped to attention at the same time, their movements so precise they could be described in a textbook.

Their eyes were sharp, staring straight ahead, and they exuded an aura that kept strangers at bay.

Bai Che froze.

He blinked, and his sleepiness vanished almost instantly.

He just wanted to go to the restroom.

He looked at the two door gods outside the door, then glanced at the direction of the toilet at the end of the corridor.

Bai Che fell silent.

He silently closed the door again.