It was less than thirty meters from the conference room to the lab.
Normally, everyone walked this path either with their heads down, discussing data, or in a great hurry.
But today, those thirty meters felt exceptionally quiet, and exceptionally long.
Alchemist walked at the very front, the extinguished cigarette still pinched between his fingers.
Zhang Yuan followed close behind Alchemist, tightly clutching the sheet of scratch paper torn from Chen Zhuo’s notebook. His strides were long, his breathing a little heavy.
Lin Fang and the guy with the glasses followed them. They exchanged a look without a word, but their eyes revealed a complex mix of emotions—the desperation of trying a last-ditch, hopeless solution.
Chen Zhuo walked at the very back.
He held the dark blue, hardcover notebook, his expression calm.
They pushed open the two heavy wooden doors of the lab.
"WHIRRR—"
The rusty industrial fan in the corner was still roaring tirelessly, its powerful gusts sending scrap paper on the tables fluttering loudly.
The two Pentium microcomputers, their case side panels removed, were still running. Their screens were still frozen on the same, hopeless blue screen of death.
Zhang Yuan strode over to the main control computer.
He pulled out the chair and plopped down. Without any hesitation, he pressed the reboot button on the tower’s front panel.
The computer case let out a low hum. The screen flickered and began to reload the system.
Alchemist walked over and stood behind Zhang Yuan, his hands clasped behind his back, not saying a word.
Lin Fang and the guy with the glasses gathered around as well, flanking either side.
Chen Zhuo didn’t crowd around the computer.
He walked back to his own remote workstation by the door. He placed his backpack on the chair, opened the notebook in his hands, laid it flat on the desk, then twisted open his water bottle and took a sip.
"Get into the low-level codebase."
Alchemist said, his eyes fixed on the screen.
Zhang Yuan nodded and placed his hands on the keyboard, which was already worn shiny in places.
The sound of keystrokes rang out over the fan’s roar—a rapid-fire CLACK-CLACK-CLACK. Zhang Yuan pulled up the core computation module that had stumped them for a solid half-month.
The screen filled with green English letters and complex partial differential equation code, like an airtight wall pressing down on everyone’s chests.
This was the fruit of over half a month of their painstaking work, and it was also the very thing that had driven them to a dead end.
Zhang Yuan took a deep breath.
He moved the mouse, positioning the cursor at the initial position of time step t=0.
Then, he pressed and held the left mouse button, dragging it all the way down.
One line, ten lines, a hundred lines, two hundred lines...
The entire block of continuity equation code—representing the fluid being violently compressed inside the tunnel and the microscopic motion of air molecules—was highlighted.
Zhang Yuan’s finger hovered over the delete key, the tip trembling slightly.
The moment he pressed it, the physical process they had spent half a month deriving day and night would be gone in a puff of smoke.
"Delete it."
Alchemist’s voice came from behind him, without a trace of hesitation.
Zhang Yuan gritted his teeth and slammed his finger down.
The screen abruptly jumped up.
Those hundreds of lines of complex code vanished in an instant, leaving only an empty cursor blinking forlornly between two lines of code.
Zhang Yuan turned his head, smoothed out the piece of scratch paper he had been clutching, and pressed it flat beside the keyboard.
The paper was a bit crumpled from his grip.
Zhang Yuan stared at the neatly arranged rows of the discrete algebraic matrix on the paper, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
He turned his head to look at Chen Zhuo, who was sitting in the corner.
"Xiaozhuo." Zhang Yuan shouted over the sound of the fan.
"Do I just plug it in right after the initial kinetic energy output?"
Chen Zhuo put down his water bottle and turned his head.
"Yes."
Chen Zhuo’s voice wasn’t loud, but his enunciation was clear.
"Don’t change the preconditions. Keep the initial velocity of the train entering the tunnel and the air density. Starting from line 402, just type the matrix in directly. Connect the output to the pressure peak variable."
Zhang Yuan retracted his gaze and placed his hands on the keyboard again.
This time, the sound of his typing was slow and heavy.
For every parenthesis, every algebraic term, every non-linear compensation constant, Zhang Yuan double-checked it before typing it into the computer.
It took less than five minutes.
A few short lines of code were now embedded, isolated, within the originally vast and complex low-level program.
It looked far too flimsy.
It was like forcibly damming a raging river and laying down an absurd-looking iron plate in its place.
"It’s done."
Zhang Yuan stopped, looked at the screen, then turned to look at Alchemist.
Alchemist wasn’t wearing his reading glasses; he just stared intently at the newly added lines of code.
"Save."
Alchemist’s throat moved up and down.
"Compile. Run."
Zhang Yuan hit save.
Then, the mouse moved to the triangular run button at the top of the screen.
His index finger pressed down hard on the left button.
In that instant, the atmosphere in the entire lab solidified.
The guy with the glasses subconsciously took half a step back and held his breath. Lin Fang clutched the hem of her clothes, her eyes glued to the monitor.
The screen flickered.
A black command prompt window popped up.
A white progress bar appeared in the center of the screen, with the current simulation time node ticking beside it.
Time: 0.001s...OK
Time: 0.002s...OK
The hard drive in the case emitted a faint CLICK, and the indicator lights on the motherboard began to flash rapidly.
Time: 0.005s...OK
The progress bar crawled forward quickly.
But everyone’s heart was in their throat.
As the progress bar advanced, the speed of the CPU cooling fans in the two open-cased towers began to noticeably increase.

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