Li Dong walked off the stage, smiling as he headed toward two familiar figures.
Li Yang was standing there, supporting his sister.
Li Qin was wearing a light blue jacket today, with a small, somewhat faded metal brooch pinned to her chest.
When Li Dong walked over, Li Qin saw him in his academic regalia, the new red tassel on his chest, and her tears immediately began to fall.
Li Yang reached out and supported her arm.
"Sis, this is a happy day."
Li Qin pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes, but it was no use.
"Oh, what’s wrong with me?"
Li Dong walked up to her, lowered his head, and called out, "Mom."
"Mom, I’m a professor now, why are you still crying?"
Li Qin nodded.
"I know, I know. I’m just happy."
"I’m not crying, I’m not crying."
She said she wouldn’t cry, but the tears kept flowing.
Li Dong held her arm.
He didn’t say much.
He just handed his degree certificate to Li Qin.
Li Qin clutched the certificate tightly to her chest.
Li Yang coughed lightly beside them and lowered his voice.
"Xiaodong, your mom didn’t sleep a wink last night."
"She was rummaging through all her chests and cabinets, looking for something to wear."
"She said she had to wear something decent today."
Li Dong glanced at the brooch on Li Qin’s chest.
It was a birthday gift he had bought for his mom at the Jiangcheng Department Store in third grade, using half a year’s worth of saved-up allowance.
He had almost forgotten about it himself.
But Li Qin was still wearing it.
Li Dong opened his mouth, but said nothing.
In the afternoon, there was an internal reception at Yan University, but Li Dong didn’t have his family tag along.
He arranged for them to wait at a quiet restaurant north of the campus.
At six in the evening, he arrived at the restaurant.
Li Qin had stopped crying.
Li Yang was looking through the menu.
During the meal, Li Yang brought up the recent situation at the factory.
"It’s called Yangdong Precision now."
"We’ve finished coordinating several lines with Huaxuan. They’ve sent three engineers to be permanently stationed at my site, and we’ve replaced the entire production line."
Li Dong listened and grunted in acknowledgment.
"How’s the profit?"
"Pretty good."
"In the first half of this year, we made more than all of last year."
Li Qin listened from the side without saying a word.
She held a bowl of soup, sipping it slowly.
As she drank, tears started falling again.
Li Yang couldn’t help but chuckle.
"Sis, don’t be like this. Xiaodong is watching."
Li Qin wiped the corners of her eyes and broke into a smile.
"I’m not crying."
"Our Xiaodong has made something of himself."
Li Dong didn’t say anything more.
At nine that night, he escorted Li Qin and Li Yang back to their hotel.
They had to return to Rongcheng early the next morning.
Li Dong stood at the hotel entrance, watching them enter the elevator before turning and walking toward Blue Banner Camp.
...
He hadn’t officially moved into the two-bedroom apartment in Blue Banner Camp yet.
The room only contained a desk, a chair, and a bed.
Outside the window, the sky had already darkened. In the distance, the streetlights of Tsinghua Garden lit up one by one.
Li Dong opened his laptop.
He pulled up the PDF of "Characterization of a Single Atom Using Synchrotron X-rays".
The entire paper—from sample preparation for single-atom characterization, to the comparison between the far-field and tunneling regimes of STM-XAS, the attribution of the six satellite peaks of the Fe ion in the NEXAFS spectrum, the physical model of X-ERT, and finally, the explanation of the 4f inner-shell shielding of the trivalent Tb ion.
He now understood it all completely.
Li Dong took a deep breath and opened the Cyan Dragon Study Group.
He dragged the PDF into the chat box.
[University Research]: @Mendeleev, @Maria Curie.
[University Research]: Esteemed members, this paper is the result of work I completed recently with two colleagues. I wonder if it might resolve your debate.
After the file was sent, a small circle started spinning in the center of the screen.
Sending...
One second, two seconds, five seconds...
As Li Dong understood it, this was the dimensional translator at work.
[Sent Successfully]
[Maria Sk?odowska-Curie]: Your Excellency, University Research!
[Maria Curie]: This manuscript is a masterpiece for the ages.
[Maria Curie]: The two curves that use peak position differences to resolve the valence state of iron ions, and the M-edge absorption of that single rare-earth yttrium-group atom, are truly beyond my expectations.
[Maria Curie]: I had always believed that an element’s fingerprint could only be obtained from radiation or absorption intensity curves through the statistical average of a large number of atoms.
[Maria Curie]: But you... you placed that needle directly above a single atom.
[Maria Curie]: And from that one atom, you individually read its elemental identity.
[Maria Curie]: That is something I would never have dared to even imagine.
Then, a message also arrived from Mendeleev.
[Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev]: Your Excellency, University Research!
[Mendeleev]: Please, first allow me to express my shock. This is nothing short of a miracle!
[Mendeleev]: The point Maria just made is the exact opposite of what I wanted to say.
[Mendeleev]: I have always maintained that an element is an indivisible position on the ladder of atomic weight. That position is its family pedigree, its immovable square on my table.
[Mendeleev]: This was the very point of contention between Maria and me.
[Mendeleev]: After reading Your Excellency’s manuscript today, I must apologize to Maria.
[Mendeleev]: Your Excellency, your method of reading an element’s identity from a single atom... the fact that moving the needle above different atoms produces different curves, and that these differences correspond precisely to the positions on my table... this pushes the identity of an element one step further down, below the atom itself.
[Mendeleev]: You have used an incredible instrument to tell me that Maria was right.
[Mendeleev]: Each square on my table is indeed not the final destination.
[Maria Curie]: Your Excellency Mendeleev, you do not need to apologize to me.
[Maria Curie]: Your table was the beginning of all this.
[Maria Curie]: If not for your table, the tiny amount of substance I isolated from pitchblende would never have been named a new element.
[Maria Curie]: This manuscript from His Excellency University Research proves both what I said and what you said.
[Maria Curie]: It says that elements are real, and what lies beneath the elements is also real.
The two titans had now reconciled in the group chat.
Li Dong stared at their messages, silent for a few seconds.
He knew that what he had sent out today was not just a paper on single-atom characterization.
It was a collision of centuries at the frontier of human knowledge—a clash between the classical chemistry of the late 19th century and the modern physics of the early 20th.
It was the fundamental nature of matter that two scientific giants had spent their entire lives—and even time and space itself—struggling to find.
And this ultimate question, which had echoed across a hundred years...
...had finally received its answer from a synchrotron radiation source in the 21st century.
[Mendeleev]: Your Excellency, may I take a copy of this manuscript?
[Maria Curie]: And I as well.
[Mendeleev]: I intend to use it to re-examine the bottom-right corner of my table.
[Maria Curie]: I intend to use it to see which specific atoms in my little sample of "polonium" are constantly "speaking."
Li Dong was stunned for a moment, then he smiled.
[University Research]: Please, feel free.
[University Research]: This manuscript was originally intended to settle your dispute.
Just as the message sent, Li Dong noticed the experience bar around his profile picture was skyrocketing.
In less than three seconds, the experience bar was completely full.
[Group Announcement: Group Leader Li Dong has earned the respect of group member Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev.]
[Group Announcement: Group Leader Li Dong has earned the respect of group member Maria Sk?odowska-Curie.]
[Experience bar is full. Group Leader title has been changed to—Wise Man.]
[ID changed to Professor Li Dong.]
Below his profile picture, the original [Group Leader] had become [Wise Man].
Li Dong looked at the two words and rolled his eyes.
’Wise Man... sounds like wise-ass.’
Then, another message popped up in the group.
[Due to Group Leader "Wise Li Dong" earning the respect of group members, permissions have been upgraded again.]
[Obtained special item—Atomic Material Origin Fragment.]
Li Dong’s heart suddenly skipped a beat.
’Here it is, the third Origin Fragment.’
[Current Origin Fragment Progress—3/3]
[The three Origin Fragments have been automatically synthesized. Complete item obtained—Origin Crystal Stone].
[Item Description: Sealed within this crystal are the furthest endpoints human civilization ever reached on three separate technology trees.]
[Current Effect: The Origin allows you to fully replicate one of the following three epoch-making technology tree branches.]
[Please choose carefully. Once consumed, the Origin cannot be reset.]
Beneath the line of announcements in the group chat, three options slowly materialized.
[Option 1: Third Industrial Revolution Technology Tree.]
[Option 2: Life Science Technology Tree.]
[Option 3: Atomic Material Technology Tree.]
[Aging, scarring, fibrosis, and ischemia are no longer medically irreversible sentences. A heart, a lung, a nerve—all can be rewritten.]

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