Chapter 239
Ji Zhiyuan stood right beside Wen Yan.
He subconsciously reached out and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Her long hair brushed against the tip of his nose. With a quick turn, she propped herself against the wall and stood up straight, avoiding falling into his embrace.
Feeling a bit awkward, Wen Yan said, "Thank you, Mr. Ji."
Ji Zhiyuan reached out and picked up a sparkling hair clip from the stall. "How about this one?"
Wen Yan nodded. "It is quite nice. It should look very pretty on Duoduo."
The two strolled around for a while, buying a whole pile of things that little girls liked. Before they knew it, it was already past ten o'clock at night.
Wen Yan felt a little startled.
She actually instinctively resisted Ji Zhiyuan.
But when they were actually spending time together, she did not seem to mind it. Moreover, there was always a faint sense of familiarity.
Where exactly did this sense of familiarity come from?
Day broke, and a light rain began to fall over the harbor city. The weather was a bit chilly. Rong Yu reminded her youngest son to wear thicker clothes and instructed Ji Zhiyuan, "When your grandfather is injected with the medicine, you must accompany him the entire time. If anything happens, contact me immediately."
Ji Zhiyuan nodded. "I understand, Great-grandmother."
Rong Yu was going to participate in the finals of the Global Physics Competition.
Out of the more than forty countries that initially participated in the preliminaries, only twelve remained for the final battle.
As Rong Yu led her team members into the arena, they bumped right into Jackson from the Lighthouse Country team and Sato from the Sakura Country team.
The moment Jackson saw her, his face instantly darkened. However, he kept his lips tightly sealed, forcefully swallowing the mockery that had reached the tip of his tongue, as the memory of being left speechless by her retorts the day before yesterday was still fresh in his mind.
Sato, on the other hand, gave a slight nod and managed to squeeze out a stiff smile. However, his eyes were darting around, clearly indicating that he did not dare to speak up easily either.
The corners of Rong Yu's lips curled up slightly. She cast a fleeting glance at them and walked straight toward the experimental station of the Huaxia team.
"Captain," Su Ronghua looked up, "I will completely follow your arrangements."
Rong Yu raised her eyebrows, somewhat surprised.
Ever since being slapped in the face during the preliminaries, Su Ronghua had been reticent, keeping a very low profile. She did not expect him to take the initiative to express his stance right before the finals.
Naturally, she would not reject a capable team member, so she nodded.
After all the national team members were in position, the big screen displayed the topic for the finals: "Micro-satellite Orbit Correction Experiment Based on Hall Thrusters."
Countdown: eight hours.
Rong Yu's brain immediately began to work.
Sheng Ciyuan said, "First, we need to simulate the space environment to determine the thrust efficiency of the plasma plume..."
Song Huai picked up a pen and said, "We must build an optimization model to complete the experiment within eight hours..."
Rong Yu spoke up, "Su Ronghua, you are in charge of calibrating the vacuum chamber pressure. Sheng Ciyuan, you are responsible for regulating the current parameters. Song Huai, you will collect the plasma data. Ding Zhe, you..."
The team members had fully recognized her abilities and plunged into the experiment without another word.
Rong Yu needed to model in real-time to calculate the optimal thrust angle.
The judges' seats were also quite lively.
The top figures in this field from various countries were conversing in low voices.
"The Lighthouse Country's Hall thruster scheme is very mature. Someone won an award using a similar model last year."
"The Sakura Country team's new ion source design also has its highlights, and Germany has adopted an innovative model. This batch of students really has fantastic ideas."
"The Huaxia team achieved impressive results in the preliminaries, making their finals worth looking forward to... Wait a minute, what is going on with their model..."
"This is too innovative; it completely ignores the space environment."
"The Huaxia team probably got carried away by winning first place in the preliminaries. This captain is too eager to win an award, which has instead led to a mistake. They messed up right from the first step..."
Time ticked by, minute by minute, second by second.
Rong Yu's group was making very fast progress.
However, after the experiment had been running for more than three hours, Su Ronghua suddenly cried out in alarm, "The pressure value has dropped to zero!"
The vacuum chamber pressure plummeted, the plasma plume instantly became chaotic, and the experimental data fluctuated wildly.
Sheng Ciyuan shoved him aside and quickly checked, "Rong Yu, the vacuum pump has failed! The pressure cannot be maintained!"
Several judges on the panel revealed expressions that said they knew this would happen.
"This is the consequence of being too reckless."
"We are halfway through the competition; it is clearly too late to start over."
"What a pity..."
Among the judges, a professor from Huaxia said coldly, "Indeed, there is still half of the competition left. Isn't it a bit too early to jump to conclusions right now?"
In the Huaxia zone, Rong Yu had forcefully opened the equipment panel. Her pupils shrank abruptly—the screws on the pressure sensor interface had been deliberately loosened by three turns.
Her gaze swept coldly over the several team members.
Sheng Ciyuan was in a panic, Song Huai was frantically calculating data, Su Ronghua looked deeply remorseful, and Ding Zhe along with another team member were trying to figure out how to tighten the screws.
"The Lighthouse Country must have come in early and tampered with it!" Ding Zhe cursed. "This is deliberate retaliation!"
Song Huai spoke up, "It could also be the Sakura Country."
Sheng Ciyuan gnashed his teeth, "I am going to report this to the organizing committee..."
"With only four hours left, reporting it will affect the progress of the experiment," Su Ronghua said. "We might as well build the model using the traditional method, but it seems it is too late for that too."
"Listen up," Rong Yu spoke. "Sheng Ciyuan, use the acoustic ranging method to estimate the actual pressure. Song Huai, reduce the ion source power to 20%. Su Ronghua, preserve the evidence first. Ding Zhe, prepare for manual overclocking..."
Her voice carried a certain magic. Everyone instantly found their backbone and quickly got busy.
The more critical the moment, the faster time seemed to fly.
Only the sounds of submissions could be heard echoing through the hall—
"Lighthouse Team: Submission successful. Time taken: 7 hours and 01 minute."
Jackson looked at the big screen. Only seven hours had passed, and their Lighthouse Country had already submitted their data. On the finals stage, the Huaxia Country was being ruthlessly trampled under his feet.
Next, the other countries submitted their data one after another.
"Germany Team: Submission successful. Time taken: 7 hours and 19 minutes."
"Russia Team: Submission successful. Time taken: 7 hours and 24 minutes."
"Baka!" Someone from the Sakura Country team suddenly cursed loudly. "What is going on? It is smoking! Why is it smoking!"
With only half an hour left until the end of the competition, an equipment failure was like a heavy blow to the head.
Sato stared blankly at the big screen, murmuring, "It is over, it is over, everything is ruined... How could we be so unlucky?"
Meanwhile.
Rong Yu checked the data one last time and was just about to submit it.
Su Ronghua spoke up, "The final results are too important. Let each of us check it over to avoid any omissions. Anyway, we still have half an hour, so there is no rush."
Rong Yu said indifferently, "It is precisely because it is so important that I do not feel at ease letting you all check it."
Before Su Ronghua could even retort, her hand swiftly pressed the Enter key. The data was successfully submitted.
"Huaxia Team: Submission successful. Time taken: 7 hours and 32 minutes."