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

Kunlun base main control room.

Bai Che's words, "I only used one day," exploded like a silent bomb in Li Jianguo's mind through the encrypted connection.

On the other end of the phone, Li Jianguo remained silent for a full five seconds.

Immediately following was a series of suppressed, heavy breathing sounds.

"Stand by! I'm connecting to the Tian Shu system right now. I want those old bastards to see this for themselves!"

Inside the control room, the elderly academicians with their white hair finally recovered from the immense shock.

Qin Bing was the first to rush to the sample stage. Through the isolation shield, she looked at it as if it were a miracle, muttering to herself, "Perfect... a perfect single-atom-layer structure... how is this possible... this doesn't conform to the law of conservation of energy..."

"Old Qin," Bai Che's voice came from behind, "Energy is conserved, but its utilization efficiency is not."

He pointed to the thin graphene sheet: "We just found a sharper knife and pried open the atomic barrier with minimal force."

At that moment, the giant screen, about the size of a basketball court, directly in front of the main control room suddenly lit up.

Snowflakes flashed by, and the screen was divided into more than a dozen small squares.

One of the screens displays live footage from the S1 laboratory. In the other screens, one by one, imposing faces—faces that could grace the cover of any academic journal—light up.

They are the leading figures in the fields of materials science, high-energy physics, and nuclear engineering in China.

And in the very center of the screen, with the most serious expression, is Academician Yang Weiguo of the China Academy of Sciences.

"Comrade Jianguo, is it a major accident at the Kunlun base that the Tian Shu system is being used so late?" Yang Weiguo asked first.

He didn't even glance at Bai Che in the corner of the screen, as if he were just an insignificant intern.

Li Jianguo stood in front of the camera, his back ramrod straight, his face showing an unprecedented grimness.

"Academician Yang, I am requesting to convene this emergency meeting not to report on the accident, but to ask everyone to witness a... miracle."

"A miracle?" Yang Weiguo frowned, displeased. "Comrade Jianguo, watch your words! We are scientists; we don't believe in miracles, only in data and patterns! That 'all-carbon-based' project—I've already submitted a joint report with several senior comrades—is pure fantasy, a waste of the nation's precious strategic resources. The seven-day deadline given by the higher-ups is to allow you to finish this gracefully; stop this nonsense!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the academicians in the cubicles next to him echoed his sentiments.

"Xiao Li, listen to Old Yang's advice: it's good for young people to have ideas, but they shouldn't be too ambitious."

"To halt our mature fourth-generation fission reactor project for the fantasy of a twenty-year-old is putting the cart before the horse!"

The tone of the meeting was tense from the very beginning.

Bai Che didn't say a word from beginning to end, just watched quietly. He even pulled up a chair, sat down next to Su Wanqing, and poured himself a glass of water.

That nonchalant, "it's none of my business" attitude made Yang Weiguo's eyes twitch on the other side of the screen.

[This brat, even facing certain death, still dares to be so arrogant?]

Su Wanqing sensed Bai Che's calmness, but her hands, resting on her knees, clenched tightly.

Under the table, her other hand held a phone, the screen displaying an encrypted file that Wang Tao had just sent.

"Nonsense?" Li Jianguo sneered. "Academician Yang, is this what you consider nonsense?"

He turned to the side, revealing the graphene film suspended in an electrostatic field on the sample stage behind him.

Through close-up shots from an ultra-high-definition camera, the perfect, iridescent hexagonal lattice is clearly displayed on everyone's screen.

"This is..." Yang Weiguo's pupils suddenly contracted.

"Graphene?" another academician exclaimed. "Where did you get the samples? The latest results from the Johns Hopkins lab?"

"No," Qin Bing stepped forward, her voice trembling slightly with excitement, "This isn't a sample, this is... a product. It was freshly produced just an hour ago in the S1 lab, using what you call a 'nonsense' solution."

The entire Tian Shu system fell into an instant silence.

Yang Weiguo stared intently at the thin film on the screen, the color draining from his face little by little.

"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!" he roared, losing his composure. "Single-layer, macroscopic dimensions, zero defect rate! This kind of thing only exists in theory! What process did you use? Chemical vapor deposition? Redox? Show me the raw data!"

"As you wish."

Bai Che finally spoke.

He didn't even stand up; he just lazily tapped the control panel in front of him a few times.

The next second, all the experimental records from the S1 lab over the past two weeks, the parameters from 1,364 failed experiments, and the complete data stream and energy waveform of the last successful experiment flooded everyone's screens like a waterfall.

When they saw the simple, crude, and almost primitive "pulse stripping method" and the insane "cascade amplification" model, all the academicians on the other side of the screen were collectively speechless.

An academician wearing reading glasses trembled as he adjusted his glasses, his mouth agape enough to fit an egg.

"Using...using carbon nanotube arrays for energy buffering and focusing...this...this is an idea only God could come up with..."

"Asymmetric cosine waves... He... He actually suppressed energy resonance in this way... My God, physics textbooks need to be rewritten..."

Yang Weiguo's mind went blank.

He lost.

They were utterly humiliated.

This is not a technological gap, it's a civilizational gap.

However, Bai Che had no intention of ending it there.

He raised his eyes and met Yang Weiguo's gaze in the center of the screen for the first time. His eyes were calm as water, yet sharp as a knife.

"Academician Yang, you just said that we have wasted the country's strategic resources?"

Bai Che paused for a moment and then pulled up another set of data.

"This is the budget for your 'fourth-generation nuclear fission' project. The 'special corrosion-resistant alloy' alone requires the import of patented materials worth 3.7 billion from overseas every year."

"And the raw material cost for my 'all-carbon-based' solution to manufacture this graphene..."

Bai Che extended two fingers.

"Two yuan. Just a high-purity carbon rod."

"Three billion, that's two dollars."

Bai Che smiled, a smile tinged with amusement.

"Now tell me, who is wasting the country's money?"

"puff--"

An elderly academician standing next to Yang Weiguo suddenly caught his breath and began coughing violently, clutching his chest.

Yang Weiguo's face had turned from white to green, then from green to purple, and his lips were trembling, but he couldn't utter a single word.

He wanted to refute, but found that every word the other party said was based on irrefutable facts.

Just then, Su Wanqing, who had been silent all along, suddenly stood up.

She walked in front of the camera, without looking at anyone, and simply projected the content of her phone screen onto the main screen of the Tian Shu system.

It was a company equity structure diagram and a few inconspicuous cross-border fund transfer records.

"Academician Yang," Su Wanqing's voice was as cold as ice, yet it clearly reached everyone's ears, "Just when the Kunlun base was racking its brains over palladium materials, your son's company, 'New Dimension Materials Technology,' registered in the United States, happened to receive venture capital from the 'Bavarian Future Fund.'"

"Coincidentally, they just announced a 'breakthrough' breakthrough in the synthesis of palladium catalysts."

boom!

If Bai Che's technique is to destroy Yang Weiguo's academic authority...

Therefore, the evidence that Su Wanqing is throwing out now is a...heart attack on his entire character and even his stance!

Yang Weiguo was jolted, as if struck by lightning, and collapsed into his chair, his eyes instantly losing all their light.

He's finished.

Li Jianguo stepped forward, looked around at everyone on the screen, and announced the final verdict in a calm and powerful voice.

"With the approval of the Central Committee, the 'National Carbon-Based Materials Strategic Development Committee' shall be established immediately, with Comrade Bai Che serving as the chief scientist of the committee, fully responsible for all research and development, production and application planning in the field of carbon-based materials in our country."

"All other related projects are to be immediately sealed off, pending further integration by the committee."

Power was transferred at that moment.

One by one, the video conference signals went dark.

Finally, only Yang Weiguo's ashen face remained frozen on the screen.

The control room was filled with jubilation.

The senior researchers were so excited they were like children, hugging each other, laughing and crying.

Bai Che simply stretched, as if he had done something insignificant.

"Let's go, President Su," Bai Che stood up, "It's time to deliver on the hot pot from the celebration banquet."

"Okay." Su Wanqing nodded with a smile.

Just as the two were about to leave, Bai Che suddenly stopped.

He turned around, glanced at the "God's building blocks" that were quietly floating on the sample table, and a mysterious smile appeared on his lips.

Qin Bing noticed his gaze and asked curiously, "Bai Gong, with this, the Ark Reactor can be mass-produced. Next, shouldn't we fully launch an energy revolution?"

"Energy revolution?"

Bai Che shook his head and smiled.

"The vision is too narrow."

"The reactor is just a power bank."

"With unlimited electricity, we're bound to do some cooler things."

Su Wanqing's heart skipped a beat, and she pressed for an answer: "For example?"

Bai Che turned his head, looked at her, and said, word by word:

"For example, building an elevator."

"An elevator that can take you directly from the ground to space."