Chapter 32: Room-Temperature Superconductivity

Half an hour later, at a Xiangxi-style restaurant.

Jiang Xingye’s face was flushed red from eating the stir-fried pork with chili peppers. Her lips were almost swollen, yet she showed no signs of putting down her chopsticks.

Lin Xu watched her with amusement and said, "I’m telling you, if you can’t handle spice, don’t eat it. Why must you torture yourself like this?"

"You don't understand." Jiang Xingye gasped for air, grabbed the coconut juice beside her, and took a long, desperate gulp. "Eating chili isn't torturing myself; it’s torturing you."

"?? What kind of wild talk is that??" Lin Xu was dumbfounded. "Are you implying that you can handle both spicy food and cold drinks today?"

"No, I mean my mouth is very hot."

"...... You really are shameless...... Where do you even pick up these lines??"

Jiang Xingye let out a long breath. "From the renowned graduates of the 'Borderline Content Influencer' school."

"Alright, I’m full. Let’s talk business. What are you planning to do about your friend’s situation?"

Seeing that Jiang Xingye had shifted to the main topic, Lin Xu stopped playing coy. He asked directly, "How did you all handle this in the past? The company has such a large annual business expense budget; theoretically, it’s impossible that every cent is actually spent on clients, right? Is it like a hidden rule that 'there’s no chef who doesn’t steal a taste'?"

"Calling it a hidden rule isn't quite right......" Jiang Xingye shook her head, pondered for a moment, and said, "To be honest, joking about embezzlement is one thing, but if you really want to skim off the company, the internal audit team isn't just there to look pretty. However, your situation is quite unique."

"The value you’re bringing is simply too immense. Once this matter is settled, the benefits will be so great that no one will care about these minor details. Furthermore, your role in this project is irreplaceable. Unless the internal auditors have lost their minds, they won’t make things difficult for you."

"So, just rest easy and keep this money. Spend it as you see fit. If you want to file for reimbursement, do it; even if you don't, as long as the job gets done, someone will find a way to justify it for you."

"Makes sense." Lin Xu nodded in agreement.

Although he was accustomed to navigating life-and-death situations, he was still far behind Jiang Xingye when it came to the intricate nuances of office politics. But as the saying goes: when you lack strength, you have to play by the rules of human relations; when you have sufficient strength, others have to play by your rules.

Lin Xu suddenly stopped worrying about how to spend that 200,000. He realized that this was merely a tiny, insignificant fraction of what he was about to acquire. Once both materials entered mass production, no one would care about such pocket change.

Nonsense. The entire Tianqiong Technology company would be his in the future—why on earth was he stressing over this?!

His mind felt suddenly enlightened. A satisfied smile appeared on Lin Xu’s face.

"Are you done? If you’re full, I’m going to pay the bill. It feels good to finally have a 'business meal'!"

"Wait!" Jiang Xingye stopped Lin Xu as he stood up. "They sell shaved ice here. Pack two boxes for me to go!"

...

The meal lasted nearly two hours. By the time they left the restaurant, the sun had completely set. Even so, for two night owls, it was still early.

The restaurant wasn't far from the Qinhuai River, so they decided to walk along the riverbank to help digest their meal. Walking through the streets of Jinling, Lin Xu couldn't help but recall the Jinling he had seen in the bracelet’s world: massive maglev light rails, omnipresent holographic projections, empty streets... It was truly nothing like the Jinling of today.

A sudden thought struck him, and he asked, "Tell me, have you ever imagined what Jinling will look like in twenty years?"

"No idea." Jiang Xingye kicked a pebble she had dug out from a flower bed and answered casually, "I’m not a local, so I don't have much emotional attachment to this city, and I certainly have no clue about the future."

"But honestly, the changes in this country over the last ten or twenty years have been massive. My hometown, a third-tier city, didn't even have a decent street twenty years ago. When I went back for the New Year this year, new energy vehicles were everywhere, and there were even driverless taxis. In another twenty years, who knows? We might even have flying cars."

"Flying cars?" Lin Xu paused. "Shouldn't it be large-scale public transport? Like maglev light rails?"

"Flying cars just don't seem to conform to the laws of reality, do they?"

Jiang Xingye couldn't help but laugh at his remark. "Oh boy, you have the nerve to say flying cars don't follow the laws of reality? Do you think maglev light rails do? While the technology might look simple, the construction costs are astronomical, and it's a classic example of low cost-to-benefit ratio technology. Why else would our country focus on high-speed rail instead?"

"Look at the maglev line in Pudong; that’s the true, complete form of maglev—high speed, quiet, stable. But the problem is, it uses low-temperature superconducting magnets. That technology alone locks the cost into an impossible range. If we really want to see large-scale maglev implementation, we probably have to wait until room-temperature superconducting materials are discovered..."

"I see..." Lin Xu nodded thoughtfully. He felt Jiang Xingye made a lot of sense. As urban transport, light rail was indeed quite lackluster—too noisy and not fast enough. Theoretically, it was a technology that should never have been adopted on a large scale; it would have been better to invest that effort into subways.

...However.

In the Jinling of twenty years later, light rail was the backbone of urban transport. Even near midnight, he had seen numerous light rail lines operating in the sky, with trains packed full of passengers. More importantly, just as Jiang Xingye had said, those aerial light rails were remarkably quiet.

Room-temperature superconductivity...

Could it be that in twenty years, humanity had solved the mystery of room-temperature superconductivity? This material was arguably the brightest jewel in the crown of materials science. Although people had claimed to have snatched it for decades, no one had actually come even a step closer.

And yet, twenty years from now... Could humanity really achieve it? Lin Xu found it hard to believe.

After a moment of silence, he asked again, "So, if humanity really could create room-temperature superconducting materials, how long do you think it would take?"

Jiang Xingye shrugged. "Who knows? You should ask your friend; he’s the materials expert. But... if you want my opinion, I do have a thought. Did you see the news? Not long ago, there were reports that the Zhurong Mars rover discovered special substances on Mars, allegedly suspected to be semi-metallic hydrogen. That’s not far from true metallic hydrogen—and it was found under the ambient pressure of Mars."

"If we ever get our act together and build a Mars lander with enough payload capacity, we might be able to send some scientists and equipment there. If we could develop stable metallic hydrogen using the semi-metallic hydrogen found on Mars, then room-temperature superconductivity would be a piece of cake, wouldn't it?"

Mars.

Lin Xu took a deep breath.

Mars again!!