Courtyard House: Starting with a 28-inch motorcycle

All I could hear were my family's endless chatter: how much Dad cared for his family, how much he loved his wife and children, how he was afraid they would miss out on fatherly love during their childhood, how he would rather give up a top teaching position overseas to return to his alma mater as an ordinary lecturer, just to watch them grow up.

Xiao Yu harbored a deep-seated resentment towards Xiao Yao, a mixture of respect and bitterness. He secretly vowed that one day he would climb to a peak even higher than his father's, leaving his entire family with only one name—Xiao Yu!

On his birthday, his father was absent. He complained, but at night, as he flipped through the photo album, his fingertips repeatedly caressed the photo of Xiao Yao squatting in the yard teaching him to assemble a robotic arm—the man's shirt sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, his eyes were curved into crescents as he smiled, and behind him was a newly built solar-powered car, its wheels still turning slowly.

When I was little, my grandparents and maternal grandparents took turns taking care of me, playing with me and putting me to sleep; Xiao Yao, on the other hand, was like a breeze that would blow in from time to time—sometimes carrying a homemade voice-activated paper airplane, sometimes taking out a kaleidoscope that could project the starry sky, and occasionally building a dancing crab out of Lego.

In his memory, his mother always had a stern face, and when she raised her voice, even the sparrows outside the window would fall silent; Xiao Yao, on the other hand, was always like tea brewed in lukewarm water, speaking slowly and softly. Even if they spilled a whole bottle of ink and smeared their homework all over it, he would just squat down, pick up the scraps of paper one by one, and explain one by one "why they can't do that".

My mother would often grab a feather duster and chase them all over the house, saying, "A kind father and a strict mother are the foundation of a family." — These words sound respectable, but they sting like fire when they come down to you.

So he and his two older sisters were very close to Xiao Yao from a young age, like vines clinging to a tree. But on the night of his fourteenth birthday, the banquet hall was brightly lit, the cake candles burned out, but his father still didn't open the door.

The mother said casually, "Your dad went back to his old haunts."

He stood there, stunned, feeling for the first time that the words "the usual place" felt as cold as ice.

The mother then added, "When you become more capable than him, he will naturally come back."

At that moment, the boy clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms—not out of spite, but because he was serious: he was going to win his father back, to make him unload the heavy burden on his shoulders, and to grow old slowly on the balcony like his grandfather.

Now he stands by the window of the classroom where Xiao Yao once sat. Sunlight slants across the desk, illuminating a blurry chalk mark in the corner of the blackboard—supposedly a rough draft of a formula he scribbled down back then. After all of Xiao Yao's resume was unveiled, the school history museum updated its exhibits overnight. When the lecturers spoke of him, their tone was almost reverent: "Perfect score in calculus in freshman year, independently reproduced the von Neumann architecture in sophomore year, and his junior year thesis directly led to the establishment of a superconductivity laboratory project on campus..."

Xiao Lan and Xiao Han, on the other hand, had already taken a different path, plunging headlong into the financial industry. They both studied at top domestic finance universities, consistently ranking among the top two in academic performance, and their internship offers were thicker than their textbooks.

What Xiao Yu hated most was when people saw him receive an award and immediately chimed in with smiles, "No wonder he's Professor Xiao's son; his brain is practically built with an accelerator!"

He is of course Xiao Yao's son—but he was the one who revised the tenth version of the code at four in the morning, he was the one who spent seventy-two hours in the lab debugging the sensors, and he was the one who stayed up all night reading through twenty professional foreign language documents.

Those praises were like a layer of transparent cement, thickly plastered on his head, so that every time he looked up, all he saw was his father's back.

He remained silent, etching a sentence into his heart: One day, when people mention me, they won't first say "Xiao Yao's son," but rather—"Xiao Yu, the Xiao Yu who created the 'Enlightenment' robot."

He knew this goal was as heavy as a mountain—Xiao Yao's achievements had long been written into global science and technology history textbooks, and the "neuromonic chip" alone had reshaped the entire underlying logic of AI.

In the field of computer science alone, the international academic community has long regarded him as the "Prometheus of the digital age".

Want to truly surpass them? After much deliberation, Xiao Yu finally chose to follow in his father's footsteps: to get into the same university, to enter the legendary "gifted youth class" with an elimination rate of over 80%, and to measure the footprints left by his father's generation with his scores.

He set his sights on the physics department—not blindly following, but making a conscious choice: only by confronting the most fundamental rules of the universe could he be worthy of carrying on his father's unfinished mission.

His talent is truly astonishing: as soon as he enrolled in his freshman year, he and a few classmates tinkered with the first simple intelligent body - although it could only recognize three kinds of gestures, walk in a straight line, and avoid obstacles, the moment it was powered on, the mechanical arm rose slightly, like a newborn bird tentatively spreading its wings.

Four years passed in the blink of an eye, and he never saw his father again.

He didn't feel disappointed. After following his mentor into the low-temperature laboratory thirty meters underground, he truly understood what it meant to "sit on a cold bench for ten years." And a new thought quietly grew in his mind: when I also put on a white coat and goggles, I can stand side by side with him.

On graduation day, Xiao Yao actually came.

A black sedan stood quietly outside the school gate. He, dressed in a sharply tailored navy blue suit, walked slowly into the auditorium. During his speech, he spoke at a measured pace, his gaze sweeping over every young face in the audience: "There are no shortcuts in scientific research, but every solid step you take paves the way for the future. This era will ultimately belong to you."

As security personnel escorted him away, he suddenly stopped, turned around at the end of the steps, and looked at Xiao Yu in the crowd—his lips slightly upturned, his right hand slowly raised, thumb pointing to the sky, standing firmly upright.

Then he opened the car door and disappeared into the shadows of the plane trees.

Clutching the gold-embossed certificate, Xiao Yu rushed out of the auditorium, his steps so light he almost flew. His father, whom he hadn't seen for nearly five years, was sitting on the sofa in his living room, talking to his mother. On the coffee table was a half-finished cup of goji berry and chrysanthemum tea.

"Dad." His voice was strained, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

"Did you receive the notification?" Xiao Yao looked up and smiled, the fine lines at the corners of his eyes smoothing out.

Xiao Yu nodded vigorously, his heart pounding—joining Ji Fengnan's team was like stepping into the most cutting-edge research hub in China. The door that ordinary PhD students would fight tooth and nail to open was opened for him ahead of time. It turned out that back when he submitted his first robot control code in his freshman year, Ji Fengnan and his wife had secretly reviewed all his course reports; after observing him for a full year, they unanimously concluded: "This child, the light in his bones is exactly the same as Xiao Yao's back then."—So they submitted their advisor application first, just to plant a tree that might grow taller than a ginkgo tree before anyone else.

……

Less than two days after graduation, Xiao Yao drove him straight to the research institute. Ji Fengnan was already waiting at the entrance.

The mentor who will accompany him on the start of his academic career is none other than his father's former classmate and partner who has worked alongside his wife, Lin Siyue, for thirty years.

From his two mentors, Xiao Yu heard for the first time those stories buried by time: the tent laboratory in the Gobi Desert, the insistence on calibrating the laser array despite hands cracking from the cold at minus thirty degrees Celsius, and the original design drawings that were once classified as top secret but later gave birth to three generations of domestically produced supercomputers...

It turns out that behind every key technological breakthrough the country has made over the years, there has been the image of Xiao Yao working late into the night.

Xiao Yao's mother once jokingly called him a "cross-disciplinary spark," a nickname that later spread by word of mouth in academic circles and grew brighter with each passing word.

A group of top scientists bluntly stated that Xiao Yao's breakthrough has pushed human technological progress forward by twenty years.

When Xiao Yu heard these words, his chest felt as if it had been scorched by fire—it was an almost burning reverence, mixed with the pride in his blood, and an irrepressible, eager energy.

Han Chunming sat in his top-floor office at the Shanghai Group, a glass of red wine in hand, his gaze fixed silently on the Huangpu River. A river breeze brushed his face, and suddenly he understood: his good brother, always smiling and quiet, had been carrying a thunderbolt in his sleeve, silently cleaving open an era. No wonder he hadn't given him a single word back then.

Today, Han Chunming spans several sectors including real estate, semiconductors, and new energy, and his net worth has already exceeded 100 billion yuan, firmly placing him among the top richest people in China.

Cai Xiaoli runs her old tailor shop in Kyoto, which has been open for more than ten years. Business is slow but steady, and life is peaceful and prosperous. Although she occasionally looks back at Han Chunming, her heart is still stirred by a slight ripple, but she is content for now—she has a son and a daughter, a kind and considerate husband, and her life is stable and comforting.

Xiao Lan and Xiao Han inherited the half of the shares that Xiao Yao transferred to Han Chunming. Now they are stationed at the group headquarters, gaining experience by Han Chunming's side. The two sisters are quick-witted and shrewd, and have broken through the encirclement in ten years. They are known in the industry as the "Twin Pillars of the Business World" and have both made it onto the Forbes Young Leaders list. The story has only just begun.

After Xiao Yao retired, Xiao Yu's responsibilities became even heavier. He knew that China's technological strength had reached the pinnacle of the world, but his gaze had long been set on the distant depths of space. He took the torch of scientific research from his father, just so that Xiao Yao could spend more time with his family—some moments, once missed, can never be made up for.

One afternoon, as he looked at the new gray in Xiao Yao's temples, his heart suddenly tightened: his father, who had always stood tall and straight, had truly grown old. It was time for him to rest.

He solemnly grasped his father's hand: "Dad, from now on, I will protect the future of science and technology."

"I will definitely take up your baton, forge a new path, and live up to your expectations."

He truly did it. In the three major fields of physics, biology, and chemistry, he single-handedly broke through key bottlenecks for another twenty years.

Under the old locust tree in the courtyard, Xiao Yao looked at his son, who was engrossed in writing his thesis, and just smiled and shook his head, leaving all the childcare to Xiao Yu—he wouldn't compete for it.

Shortly after Xiao Yu took over his team independently, he settled down and started a family. His wife, Hu Ying, was an ancient book restorer. The two met at a Dunhuang document exhibition, found common interests, and got married less than six months into their relationship. The day Xiao Yao and Su Man received the news of their marriage, Xiao Yu happened to be home with his wife and children, having taken leave from work. Upon hearing the news, Su Man burst out laughing: "This kid, he hid it better than a safe! You really can't fathom the minds of young people these days!"