Soul Returns to Hong Kong: From Tailor Shop to Richest Woman

At 8:50 a.m. the next day, Li Xiao appeared downstairs at Lin Ying's apartment building on time.

"Good morning, Comrade Li Hua." Li Xiao was carrying two cups of soy milk and handed one to him. "It's from the cafeteria, and it tastes alright."

The two walked together toward the main building; the new city was quiet in the morning, with only a few researchers in white coats occasionally coming out of the buildings next door.

"Let me take you to see Professor Meng first today," Li Xiao said as they walked. "Professor Meng Changming is 63 years old. He has dedicated his life to electrochemistry. He is currently leading a team to work on the battery part of your proposal."

"Has Professor Meng reviewed my proposal?"

"He not only read it, but after reading it, he felt that you were his soulmate, and many of your data resonated with him."

Lin Ying felt a little more at ease; the other party wasn't the kind of old scholar who was prejudiced against young people.

On the sixth floor of the main building is the D6 Institute's Communication Terminal Research Laboratory; as soon as the elevator doors open, all the lights in the corridor are on, and you can vaguely see the experimental tables and various instruments behind the glass doors.

Li Xiao pushed open the door to the innermost office: "Old Meng, the person has been brought."

An elderly man sat in the office, wearing reading glasses, with several hand-drawn circuit diagrams spread out in front of him.

"You're Li Hua?" Meng Changming stood up, looked him up and down, and said, "You're younger than I expected!"

Lin Ying greeted, "Hello, Professor Meng."

"Great, great, great!" Meng Changming emerged from behind the table. "I've read the plan three times! It's well-written! Especially the part about lithium-ion batteries—the choice of cathode material, the electrolyte ratio, and the cycle life prediction model… How did you come up with the idea of ​​using a layered oxide structure?"

Before Lin Ying could answer, Meng Changming had already turned around, grabbed the plan from the table, flipped to page seventeen, pointed to a formula, and asked, "Where did the parameters for this empirical formula for capacity decay come from? Have you done any experiments to verify it?"

Lin Ying glanced at it: "Theoretical derivation plus literature data fitting, the experiment hasn't been done yet."

"That's good! If you had done it all yourself, what would we be needed for? Come on, let's go see the person first!"

He pulled Lin Ying and walked out, while Li Xiao followed behind, shaking his head and smiling: "When Old Meng gets happy, he's even more energetic than a young man."

The research lab was at the end of the corridor. Pushing open the door, you entered a large open room with several rows of lab benches and worktables. About thirty people were scattered in various corners, some looking at data, some writing, and some discussing in front of an instrument.

Meng Changming clapped his hands twice: "Stop! They're here!"

"This is Comrade Li Hua." Meng Changming pushed Lin Ying forward. "From today onwards, she will join our team, specializing in terminal design. You've all heard me talk about her technical background and research approach before; we'll get to know her in more detail later."

Then he pointed to the row of tables on the left: "These fifteen people are the battery group, led by Lao Fan;" and then pointed to the right: "These fifteen people are the chip group, led by Xiao Zheng."

A man in his early forties stood up from the left and nodded to Lin Ying: "Fan Aiguo, just call me Lao Fan."

A tall, thin man in his mid-thirties on the right also stood up: "Zheng Weidong."

Lin Ying greeted them.

Then came the process of identifying each person; Lin Ying spent ten minutes matching the names and faces of the thirty people. The youngest was a woman named Wang Si, twenty-seven years old, a local university graduate assigned here; the oldest, besides Professor Meng, was a fifty-eight-year-old engineer surnamed Wu, who specialized in electrolyte formulations;

Lin Ying, at twenty-one, is the youngest in the group.

"How old is Comrade Li Hua this year?" a researcher from the battery group asked curiously.

"Twenty-one," Lin Ying replied.

Wang Si whispered to her colleague, "She's six years younger than me... I was in college when she was still in high school..."

After getting to know Lin Ying, Meng Changming called her into his office, closed the door, and showed her a progress chart.

"The current situation is that the battery pack is under a lot of pressure because the core bottleneck of terminal devices is the range; the lithium-ion battery you wrote in your plan does not yet have mature mass production technology in China; the cathode material, anode material, electrolyte, separator, each one has to be developed from scratch."

Lin Ying looked at the table: "What about the chipset side?"

"There's no rush with the chips," Meng Changming said. "The chip design cycle is long. You've already provided the theoretical framework, and they're pushing forward according to your plan. What's lacking now is process verification; we have to wait for the equipment to arrive before we can test it."

"So the battery is the tightest?"

"Yes! The higher-ups are pushing hard because it's not just our project that needs batteries; the neighboring D2 institute also needs them. I don't know what kind of portable thing they're working on, but they also lack high-energy-density batteries. So the progress on batteries directly affects several projects."

Lin Ying understood.

"Spend five days reviewing all the existing experimental data first. After you've finished, we'll discuss the next steps."

Lin Ying took the stack of experimental record books; there were fifteen of them, and each one was quite thick.

"Fif days to finish reading it? To digest it completely?" Lin Ying weighed the book in her hand.

"If you can't finish watching it, then it'll take a week," Meng Changming said.

Five days is enough.

Next, Lin Ying officially entered the work rhythm of D6 Institute; she originally thought that this kind of place would be the kind of overtime mode that involves working day and night, working until two or three in the morning every day; but when she got off work on the first day, she looked at her watch and it was 5:30.

The cafeteria has already started serving meals.

"Li Hua, let's go eat!" Fan Aiguo stood up from his workstation and stretched.

Lin Ying was a little confused: "They're... off work?"

"What else? We're not rushing a project. Scientific research can't be rushed. Using your brain too much can lead to mistakes."

Lin Ying went to the cafeteria for a meal, and when she returned to her apartment that night, she sat at her desk and reviewed her lab records until 10 p.m. No one urged her or cared what time she went to bed.

The same rhythm continued on the second, third, and fourth days: arriving at the lab at nine in the morning, having a one-hour lunch break, continuing in the afternoon, and leaving at five-thirty. Occasionally, someone would stay a little longer if they had a burst of inspiration, but most people left on time.

Wang Si explained to her, "Professor Meng's rule is that you can't stay up all night; he said that scientific research is not a physical job, but relies on a clear mind; nine times out of ten, the results produced by staying up all night will have to be redone."

Lin Ying thought this made a lot of sense.

Five days later, she had finished reading all fifteen experimental records and completed the necessary notes.

On the morning of the sixth day, she walked into Meng Changming's office, holding a notebook she had compiled.

"Professor Meng, I have a few ideas."

Meng Changming put down his pen: "Speak."

"We have tried seven different formulations for the cathode material in the battery pack. The best one is lithium cobalt oxide, but it is too expensive and the cycle life is not long enough. I suggest we try a different approach."

"How do I change it?"

Afterwards, Lin Ying told Professor Meng all her thoughts. Lin Ying had memories and foresight from two lifetimes, while Professor Meng had the most comprehensive data knowledge of this era. The two discussed for more than two hours.