Genius is just the threshold for me!

The next day, after finishing his project work, Lin Dong didn't go out for a stroll. Instead, he stayed at Xu Qingling's house and watched variety shows with her.

"Dongdong, this singer Xuanxuan is quite optimistic. Knowing she had no hope of winning, she sang an elimination background music song, which instantly won over the general public. I heard classmates talking about her several times at school a few months before the holidays..."

"It's alright."

The living room curtains were half-drawn, and the midday sunlight filtered in, casting a band of light on the floor.

Lin Dong nestled in the sofa cushions, opened his mouth to take the sunflower seeds Xu Qingling handed him, casually peeled a pistachio and handed it to her, chuckling, "Compared to the first season last year, the second season of The Voice is still a bit lacking."

"Uh-huh."

Xu Qingling leaned against Lin Dong, watching the replay of The Voice of China's championship night on the TV screen. She took the pistachio and nodded in agreement, saying, "I think many of the songs chosen in the second season were niche, which sounded too complicated. Plus, once the novelty wore off, the reputation declined."

When Xu Ziming returned home from get off work with his laptop, he saw the two of them huddled on the sofa watching a variety show, feeding each other sunflower seeds and pistachios. His face immediately darkened as he looked at Zhou Xiaoyan, who was preparing lunch in the dining room.

"Aren't you going to do anything about it?"

"What's it to you?"

Zhou Xiaoyan looked up and glanced at him, then laughed and said, "The two of them are just watching TV, what's the big deal... Xiao Dong came over early this morning, finished his work and is taking a break, and you still have a problem with that?"

"Is he busy?"

Xu Ziming gritted his teeth and whispered, "He's just trying to keep us busy, isn't he? We only get to work for one hour a day..."

"Xiao Dong is only fourteen years old. How many hours do you expect him to work?"

Zhou Xiaoyan rolled her eyes and couldn't help but say, "Xiao Dong works for one hour now, and you all have to work overtime. Do you really want him to work a full eight hours?"

"I--"

Xu Ziming stared wide-eyed, remaining silent for two seconds before still unable to respond to the question.

There's nothing they can do; they're all ordinary people and can't compare to a freakish genius, especially one who's still growing stronger.

Problems that would normally take them ages to figure out, this kid could solve with just a glance...

What's even more outrageous is that this guy is now like this across the entire process and across all his professions. Even if there are areas where he's lacking, he can become a monster after studying for a few days or half a month.

If Lin Dong were to work a full eight hours in this situation, they would at least need to master the skill of writing with ashes to tackle project challenges.

"Xiao Dong."

Thinking of this, Xu Ziming didn't continue talking to Zhou Xiaoyan and walked into the living room with his notebook.

"Uncle Xu, what's wrong?"

Lin Dong opened his mouth to take the melon seeds that Xu Qingling handed him, and looked up at her curiously.

"..."

Xu Ziming's eye twitched, but he composed himself and began to recount his conversation with Wang Xingguo in the office earlier that day about Wang Caichen. Finally, a hint of unease in his voice, he asked, "That biological report you produced a few years ago, can you really fool them?"

He was one of the people who knew about the small biological laboratory that Lin Dong set up a few years ago, which he later blew up himself.

At the time, he thought Lin Dong was just playing around, but he didn't expect him to actually develop something... However, the fact that he was now using this report to strategically deceive a major enemy power still made him somewhat worried.

After all, the enemy is industrialized, not scientifically minded. Whether the report has any real substance, whether it is false or true, can hardly be hidden from them.

"Uncle Xu, don't worry, it's a true report, there's no problem whatsoever, and their methods can also verify some of it..."

Lin Dong calmly replied that humanity's pursuit of life and its desire for longer lifespan have never ceased for thousands of years.

Modern research on life has been continuously invested in, and a series of achievements have been made.

Prior to this, the longevity factor foxo1 of cells is activated through mechanical vibration at a special frequency, allowing aging stem cells to regain vitality.

Certain drugs can enhance mitochondrial activity in neurons, improve cellular activity, and alleviate memory deficits, among other things.

Following that, in 2020, the Harvard team used gene programming to regenerate neurons and reverse vision loss in aged mice and glaucoma mice.

In 2024, the United States launched a clinical trial of stem cell exosome technology, which uses a special type of stem cell exosome to treat a variety of neurodegenerative diseases.

In 2026, the American company Lifebi successfully repaired retinal ganglion cells in glaucoma patients using gene reprogramming technology.

Because of their pursuit of life, every time this technology is unveiled, the self-media will hype it up, and Lin Dong also remembers these.

Of course, there has been some progress in China, but it is still far behind that of the United States.

The data in his report now only gradually reveals a sense of systematization in what was originally scattered research on life.

American biotechnologists, upon seeing the data above, even though it only involves extracellular biotechnology and doesn't involve intracellular processes that could extend lifespan, wouldn't be overly excited or crazy, but they would certainly be shouting that it was God's doing.

"Won't this actually allow them to develop some technology...?" Xu Ziming asked seriously.

"The probability is very small."

Lin Dong smiled and said, "Although their research in the field of biomedicine is absolutely ahead of ours."

However, relying solely on this data to conduct research would require at least several decades, unless it involves large-scale live animal studies.

Just as China's industrial manufacturing scale is absolutely leading the world, the United States' biomedical field is also absolutely leading the world.

Of course, the reasons for this leading position are obvious to everyone.

After all, that population black hole that lasted for decades is an objective statistical fact.

"It doesn't involve extending lifespan, right?"

Xu Ziming nodded, then looked at Lin Dong and asked solemnly, "If it involves extending lifespan, they wouldn't mind using some drastic methods..."

"Extracellular technology cannot change the lifespan limit of cells themselves."

Lin Dong shook his head speechlessly and said, "My small biological lab a few years ago couldn't even see the DNA clearly, how could it possibly have developed lifespan technology?"

"That's good……"

Xu Ziming visibly breathed a sigh of relief and earnestly instructed, "Before you grow up and before all our core equipment is perfected, do not touch this field of research. If you really want to conduct research, report it to your superiors in advance."

Biotechnology is not highly dependent on industry.

Without the constraints of industry, he had no doubt about Lin Dong's abilities.

After all, in just half a month, he could go from being an electronic warfare novice to a top-notch electronic warfare R&D expert through self-study, directly upgrading Shenyang Aircraft Corporation's plans and developing an electronic warfare aircraft that could take on six opponents at once...

Xu Ziming believes that with such learning and research capabilities, no technology, within the limits of the current theoretical framework, can stop Lin Dong's progress.

But it was precisely because he had too much faith in the research and development capabilities that he became even more worried.

Because many technologies, especially those that significantly extend lifespan, are not compatible with current social systems and global circumstances.

Without sufficient buffer space and adjustment time, a breakthrough would be more of a disaster than a blessing.

While lifespan technology may seem to allow more people to live longer, in reality, it will only lead to more people living shorter lives.

"Don't worry, Uncle Xu, I know what I'm doing."

Lin Dong smiled. As a reborn person, he could see the advantages and disadvantages of lifespan technology. It was not only an external issue, but also an internal one.

Productive forces determine relations of production, which in turn determine social formations.

In theory, as long as productivity improves, production relations and social structure will also improve.

However, if productivity develops too quickly and the changes in production relations cannot keep up, this stagnation in production relations will inevitably lead to confusion and suffering for countless people, and may even trigger a vigorous movement to rebuild the entire production relations.

Ten years later in the previous life, a sudden surge in productivity caused by the explosion of AI technology caused countless people to wail in despair.

Lin Dong didn't even dare to imagine how terrifying the scene would be if it were an even more violent life-sustaining event.

"Uncle Xu, you didn't call me just to talk about this, did you?"

Lin Dong didn't discuss the matter in detail. Looking at the notebook in Xu Ziming's hand, he asked curiously.

"You've got the combustion chamber for that rotating detonation engine sorted out, and Detonation Test 624 is also done according to your plan..."

Without saying a word, Xu Ziming moved the sunflower seed shells and pistachio shells on the coffee table aside, placed the laptop on the coffee table, opened the screen, entered the password, and clicked on a video.

This is a closed testing workshop where you can see a device about the size of a basketball.

The whole thing looks like a round casserole dish with a cone-shaped container for cooking hot pot fixed in the middle, and it lies and is fixed on the test table.

Several carbon fiber pipes are connected to the outside of this device, and there are also blower and exhaust pipes built with a high-power axial flow fan at the front and back.

Di-

Ten seconds into the video, the device suddenly emitted a ball of blue flame.

The next second, the flames instantly turned into a beam of blue light.

Rumbling--

Deep, rumbling explosions continued to come.

The entire device trembled incessantly, as if trying to break free from its fixed constraints, and the test stand, weighing over ten tons and rigidly connected to the foundation, also trembled continuously.

"How can something so small have such a violent power source?"

Xu Qingling leaned over and rested her head against Lin Dong's side, looking at the screen with her hair naturally falling down and covering Lin Dong's arm.

"Hydrogen detonation?"

Lin Dong gathered Xu Qingling's hair to one side, looked at the blue beam of light that shot out more than ten meters high, but was sometimes long and sometimes short, and sometimes even scattered, and asked with a slight twitch of his eyebrows.

"right."

Xu Ziming nodded: "According to your plan, hydrogen is so unstable. If kerosene is used, 624 doesn't know how to create detonation combustion."

"This is just a preliminary concept. We can improve it with more data. We can already do a detonation combustion experiment with hydrogen..." Lin Dong wasn't too disappointed.

As they were talking, the detonation and combustion experiment in the video stopped after about half a minute.

It wasn't that there wasn't enough hydrogen; rather, the part of the nickel-based high-temperature test bench below that was in contact with the exhaust flame had melted.

"Xiao Dong...can this thing really be tamed?"

Xu Ziming watched the video stop, and then took a deep breath and asked about the test bench with a clear melting trajectory at the rear of the combustion chamber.

"The heat flow is more than ten times that of a rocket, and there is a continuous bombardment impact... plus this thrust-to-weight ratio, it must be at least in the tens."

"It's just a combustion chamber. The thrust-to-weight ratio reached a maximum of 70 in the unstable state, but the combustion chamber is just a component. The actual thrust-to-weight ratio of the whole engine is about 18 to 24."

Lin Dong nodded: "It's still possible."

"A thrust-to-weight ratio of 18 to 24, is that just okay?" Xu Ziming really didn't know what to say.

It's important to know that for low-bypass turbofan engines used in fighter jets, a thrust-to-weight ratio exceeding 9 is considered world-class, with the maximum possible thrust-to-weight ratio being 11.

But now Lin Dong is doubling the power; the same weight engine can move twice the weight...

When that time comes, even "pulling up onions from dry land" won't be enough to describe the violence involved.

"Technology and limits are improved little by little. A hundred years ago, jet engines had not yet been invented."

Lin Dong pointed to Xu Ziming's computer and said with a smile, "Uncle Xu, send me the video later, and also send me all the experimental data."

The rotating detonation engine has an average thrust-to-weight ratio of 20, which is more than double the thrust-to-weight ratio of his current variable ramjet cycle engine of more than 9.

This means that while the required thrust remains the same, the engine weight can be reduced by more than half.

The weight saved in this part is the weight space he used to deploy space laser weapons on the Hot Star to attack satellites.

"With the current industrial base, can it really be researched and developed?" Xu Ziming was still somewhat skeptical.

Although detonation engines are only engines operating within the atmosphere, their actual complexity is many levels higher than that of rocket engines used in space exploration.

It wasn't that he didn't believe Lin Dong could research it, but rather that he didn't believe the current industrial base was capable of producing it.

"Small engines don't require that much industrial capability; current industries can manage to produce them."

Of course, there were many difficulties, because I was the first person in the world to make a detonation combustion chamber device, and every step after that was uncharted territory in terms of technology.

Now that the core combustion chamber design has been approved, we'll tackle the challenges step by step...

Looking at Xu Ziming's nervous eyes, Lin Dong carefully assessed the situation and nodded, saying, "12 months, I guess. Given 624's current level of cooperation, it won't exceed 14 months."

If it were more than ten years later, the US, Europe, and China, after more than ten years of research on knock engines, would all have successively produced prototypes and completed hot-fire tests.

At that time, there were a large number of papers to refer to and a large number of solutions to learn from, so the engine could be designed in less than half a month.

But it's still 2014.

Research on detonation engines worldwide is still in its early stages, moving from theory to experiment, and he had to explore it alone.

"...No more than 14 months?"

Xu Ziming looked at Lin Dong's serious and calm demeanor, then at the way his daughter's eyes shone as she looked at him. His face twitched, and without saying a word, he picked up his notebook and turned to leave.

When Lin Dong said that every step forward would be in uncharted territory, he thought it would be extremely difficult and couldn't help but worry that this project might dampen the boy's confidence.

But unexpectedly, the next moment, this kid suddenly appeared with a time limit of no more than 14 months.

The entire process of developing a rotating detonation engine was completed in 14 months... Go back to your planet, humanity is not worthy of you, don't stay on Earth and make things difficult for us humans.