Chapter 63: A Welcome Gift, A Database from the Future
Faced with this foundational crisis, there was not the slightest trace of panic on He Yu’s face.
Within the virtual meeting room, the air was so heavy it practically congealed into a solid mass. Nearly two thousand small video windows formed a silent wall woven from countless pairs of eyes. Every single pair of eyes mirrored the exact same emotions—apprehension, guilt, inner turmoil, and an undisguised hint of exhaustion.
They were the elite of the domestic academic circle, the pinnacles of their respective fields. Yet at this moment, they resembled a group of travelers driven to the edge of a precipice. Ahead of them lay a bottomless abyss; behind them was the entire world they could not bear to betray.
He Yu’s gaze swept calmly across the screen.
He could clearly perceive the pressure transmitting through the cold data cables.
In the face of reality’s crushing wheels, any verbal promise appeared pale and feeble. Passionate, stirring speeches would only intensify their guilt and plunge them into deeper torment.
What he needed to provide was not comfort.
What he needed to provide was a "truth" powerful enough to bridge the chasm with a path to the heavens.
It was an irresistible future compelling enough to make them ignore the entire world behind them and willingly take a leap of faith.
"Respected professors."
He spoke, his voice clearly transmitting through the microphones into everyone’s earphones. Neither hurried nor slow, he possessed a composure entirely uncharacteristic of a young man caught at the epicenter of a storm.
"Thank you all for attending this meeting."
"I completely understand your concerns, and I fully respect everyone's choice."
He Yu leaned forward slightly, his gaze seeming to pierce through the screen to lock eyes with every single person present.
"Before you make your final decision, please allow me to offer you all a belated 'welcome gift'."
The moment his voice fell, he gave no one a chance to ask questions or react.
His right index finger pressed gently on the mouse.
A crisp click echoed through the quiet study.
Simultaneously, a cold, mechanical chime reverberated within his mind. His system’s reputation balance plummeted like a cascading waterfall.
[Ding!]
[You are redeeming and temporarily granting the specified target authorization to use the "All-Discipline Cutting-Edge Scientific Research Database (Junior Edition)"...]
[This redemption requires a reputation cost of: 30,000 points.]
[Do you confirm?]
Deep within He Yu’s eyes, there was not a shred of hesitation.
"Confirm!"
Thirty thousand reputation points.
This was by far his largest single consumption to date. It was enough to redeem several epoch-making production lines or multiple standalone technologies capable of reshaping an entire industrial landscape.
Yet He Yu understood that the foundation of all this was people.
It was the nearly two thousand brains before him, representing the future of Chinese scientific research.
This database was one of the most expensive items in the system mall. It was not a specific piece of technology, but rather an aggregate of knowledge.
It cataloged cutting-edge theories across all disciplines, core technological trajectories, critical experimental data, and research achievements lying dormant and unpublished in future laboratories—all at least two decades ahead of the current era.
It inherently represented the future.
Scarcely a second after He Yu pressed the confirmation key, the encrypted email inboxes of all attendees emitted a crisp notification chime.
A new email.
Sender: He Yu.
Subject: [Longhai University’s Welcome Gift]
Within the virtual meeting room, nearly two thousand scholars and experts almost instinctively switched out of the conference interface and opened their inboxes.
They saw the email.
They saw the massive attachment bearing a padlock icon.
A sense of absurdity welled up in their hearts.
An email? A data packet?
Was this the trump card he pulled out to counter the joint annihilation campaign waged by the entire academic circle?
The gazes of many shifted from inner struggle to disappointment, and even a bitter, self-deprecating irony. Perhaps they had harbored unrealistic fantasies about this young man from the very beginning.
Yet, their hands still moved uncontrollably to click on it.
Download.
The progress bar began to creep forward slowly.
The file was large.
Extremely large.
Tens of gigabytes of data were nothing to these scholars who frequently handled large experimental files, but as a "welcome gift," this volume felt extraordinarily sincere, and all the more... bizarre.
During the dozens of seconds, or perhaps minutes, of downloading, the online meeting room plunged into a dead silence.
No one spoke.
One could only hear the increasingly heavy, suppressed breathing and the rapid clicking of mouse scrolls leaking from certain video windows.
Finally, on the first person's computer, the progress bar reached the end.
[Download Complete]
Decompress.
Entering the long, complex dynamic password attached to the email.
A brand-new folder generated on the desktop.
The folder's name matched the email subject.
[Longhai University’s Welcome Gift]
An elderly professor with white hair adjusted his reading glasses and, with a final glimmer of curiosity, trembling slightly, double-clicked it.
The folder expanded.
There was no welcome speech, no images, no videos.
Only rows upon rows of densely packed subfolders named after various academic categories.
[Theoretical Physics]
[Materials Science]
[Bionics and Architectural Structures]
[Artificial Intelligence]
[Quantum Information Technology]
[Gene Engineering]
[Energy Science]
...
The old professor’s heart skipped a beat.
His primary field of research was materials science.
Almost instinctively, he moved his mouse to the folder labeled [Materials Science] and double-clicked.
Another row of subfolders appeared.
[Superconducting Materials]
[Biomimetic Composites]
[High-Entropy Alloys]
[Topological Insulators]
[Photonic Crystals]
...
His breathing began to grow ragged involuntarily.
He clicked on [Superconducting Materials].
On the screen, a document title branded itself into his retina like a red-hot iron.
[Synthesis Pathway and Complete Phase Diagram of Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconducting Materials of the Y-Ba-Cu-O System Based on Copper Oxide Layered Perovskite Structures]
"Buzz—!"
It felt as though a thunderclap had exploded inside the old professor’s head.
He froze completely, his hand gripping the mouse beginning to tremble violently.
Room-temperature... ambient-pressure... superconductivity?
This... How was this possible?! This was the Holy Grail that the global physics and materials science communities had chased for nearly a century!
Like a madman, he opened the document.
There were no flowery phrases, only cold, spine-chillingly rigorous molecular formulas, lattice models, synthesis steps, experimental data, and detailed performance curves under varying temperatures and pressures.
Every piece of data struck precisely at the theoretical barriers of his lifelong learning.
Every model subverted his understanding of existing theories.
This was no fantasy.
This was no theoretical deduction.
This was a... a complete "answer" that could be taken directly into the laboratory for replication!
Simultaneously, in another window of the online meeting room.
A top female PhD researcher in China's artificial intelligence sector stared fixedly at her screen.
Deep within the [Artificial Intelligence] folder, she found a file titled [Underlying Algorithm Architecture for Strong AI Emotional Logic Generation Module V3.0].
She had exhausted half her life and consumed hundreds of millions in state funding, yet she had only just grazed the thin layer of window paper separating "weak AI" from the metamorphosis into "strong AI."
Yet within this document before her eyes, those lines of unprecedented yet perfectly self-consistent code, those exquisitely ingenious algorithmic models...
That was not a window paper.
That was a door already swung wide open for her, leading to a new world!
A physicist beheld a brand-new magnetic confinement model for "controlled nuclear fusion."
A biologist beheld the introductory key to "gene programming," capable of curing multiple genetic diseases.
A water conservancy expert beheld a complete technical scheme for "real-time lossless water quality monitoring based on the quantum tunneling effect."
...
At first, only one person's breathing grew heavy.
Then came a second, a third...
Soon, the online meeting room was filled with the rising and falling sounds of rapid, incredulous panting.
Some elderly scholars stood up in agitation, their bodies swaying slightly from excessive excitement.
Some middle-aged experts tightly covered their mouths, their eye sockets instantly turning red as tears flashed in their vision.
As for the young PhDs and researchers, they looked like devout believers witnessing a miracle, their faces written over with fanaticism and adoration.
What was it they pursued throughout their lives?
Fame? Wealth?
No.
For this group of people truly standing at the pyramid's apex, those were mere byproducts.
Their lifelong pursuit was simply to advance exploration in their beloved field by even the tiniest step! To leave their own insignificant footprints at the boundaries of human knowledge!
And now, what He Yu had given them was not a step.
It was an entire grand avenue leading toward the future, paved with the brilliance of truth!
All hesitation, all concerns, all weighing of pros and cons appeared so petty and laughable at this moment.
Compared to these "divine oracles" shining with the light of civilization, what did so-called "academic blockades" or the "traditional academic circle" even matter?
The meeting room remained dead silent.
Yet this silence was utterly different from a few minutes prior.
It was the silence of the entire world holding its breath before a storm.
The moment the data packet was opened, the moment they laid eyes on those titles shining with the brilliance of truth within the folders—
Everyone's breathing stopped in that very instant.