Did You Destroy the World Today?
Chapter 32: Room Temperature Superconductivity

Half an hour later, inside the Xiangxi Restaurant.  

Jiang Xingye’s face was flushed bright red from eating the spicy stir-fried pork with chili peppers; her lips were almost swollen, but she still didn’t stop using her chopsticks.  

Lin Xu watched her with amusement and said,  

“I told you if you can’t handle spicy food, don’t eat it. Why torture yourself like this?”  

“You don’t understand.”  

Jiang Xingye was gasping and wheezing, grabbing a coconut juice nearby and gulping it down.  

“I’m not torturing myself by eating chili peppers; I’m torturing you.”  

“??? What kind of wolfish words are those??”  

Lin Xu was stunned.  

“So you mean you can eat spicy food and also eat ice today?”  

“No, I mean my mouth is burning.”  

“...You really have no bottom line... where did you get so many jokes like that??”  

Jiang Xingye exhaled deeply.  

“I’m a well-known graduate of borderline short video creators.”  

“All right, I’m full now. Let’s talk about business.”  

“About your friend’s side, what do you plan to do?”  

Seeing Jiang Xingye get serious, Lin Xu didn’t hold back either.  

He asked directly,  

“How did you guys usually handle this before? The company spends so much on annual business expenses; theoretically, it’s impossible that every penny is really spent on clients, right?”  

“There’s no chef who doesn’t steal some ingredients; it seems this is some kind of unspoken rule?”  

“Calling it an unspoken rule isn’t quite right...”  

Jiang Xingye shook her head and pondered for a moment before saying,  

“To be honest, the idea of pocketing money is fine as a joke, but if someone really wants to siphon off company funds, the internal audit team isn’t useless.”  

“However, your situation is rather special.”  

“The benefits you bring are just too huge.”  

“Once this matter is done, the profit will be so enormous that no one will care about these trivial details.”  

“Moreover, your role in this matter is actually irreplaceable.”  

“Unless the internal audit team is brain-dead, they won’t make things difficult for you.”  

“So, just rest assured and keep this money.”  

“Spend it as needed. If you want to claim reimbursements, go ahead. Even if you don’t, as long as the job is done, someone will find a way to cover for you.”  

“Reasonable.”  

Lin Xu nodded in agreement.  

Although he was always rolling in the thick of battle every day, when it came to the twists and turns of workplace politics, he was still far behind Jiang Xingye.  

But how does the saying go?  

When your strength isn’t enough, you have to play by others’ social rules.  

When your strength is sufficient, others have to play by your rules.  

Lin Xu suddenly stopped worrying about how to spend the 200,000 yuan.  

Because he realized this was just a very, very small part of what he was about to gain.  

When the two materials truly entered mass production, no one would care about such a small amount of money anymore.  

Nonsense.  

In the future, this entire Tianqiong Technology company will belong to me. Why the hell should I care about this?  

A clear heart!  

A satisfied smile appeared on Lin Xu’s face.  

“Are you full? If so, I’ll go pay.”  

“We’re having business meals now. Nice and comfortable!”  

“Wait!”  

Jiang Xingye stopped Lin Xu as he was about to get up.  

“They sell ice jelly here. Pack me two boxes to go!”  

.......  

This meal lasted nearly two hours. When they left the restaurant, the sun had completely set.  

But even so, for two night owls, it was still very early.  

The place they ate was not far from the Qinhuai River, so they simply decided to take a walk by the river to help digest.  

Walking on the streets of Jinling City, Lin Xu couldn’t help but think about the Jinling City he saw in Bracelet World.  

Huge light rail, holographic projections everywhere, empty streets...  

It was really nothing like the current Jinling City.  

Suddenly feeling a certain emotion, he asked,  

“By the way, have you ever thought about what Jinling City will be like twenty years from now?”  

“I don’t know.”  

Jiang Xingye kicked a small stone that she had pulled out from some flower bed and answered casually,  

“I’m not even a local of Jinling, so I don’t have much attachment to this city. If you ask about the future, I have even less idea.”  

“But to be honest, in the past ten or twenty years, the changes in the country have been huge.”  

“My hometown is a small city ranked eighteenth tier. Twenty years ago, it didn’t even have a proper street.”  

“But when I went back during this year’s Spring Festival, new energy vehicles were everywhere, and there were even driverless taxis.”  

“If another twenty years pass, maybe flying cars will exist.”  

“Flying cars?”  

Lin Xu was stunned for a moment.  

“Shouldn’t it be large-scale public transportation? Like maglev light rail or something?”  

“Flying cars just don’t fit reality, do they?”  

After Lin Xu said this, Jiang Xingye couldn’t help but laugh.  

“Oh man, you still have the nerve to say flying cars don’t fit reality? Does maglev light rail fit reality then?”  

“Though it looks like the technology isn’t complicated, the construction costs are extremely high, and it’s a typical technology with a low return on investment.”  

“Otherwise, why doesn’t our country develop it vigorously, but instead settle for ordinary high-speed rail?”  

“Look at the maglev line in Pudong—that’s a true complete maglev.”  

“Fast, quiet, stable.”  

“But the problem is, it uses low-temperature superconducting maglev.”  

“Just this technology alone kills the cost.”  

“To truly achieve large-scale maglev, it probably has to wait until room temperature superconducting materials come out...”  

“Is that so...”  

Lin Xu nodded thoughtfully.  

He felt Jiang Xingye made a lot of sense.  

After all, as urban transportation, light rail really is too marginal.  

Its noise is too loud, and the speed isn’t that fast.  

Theoretically, it’s a technology that would never be adopted on a large scale.  

It would be better to focus more effort on subways for three-dimensional urban transit.  

—But.  

In the Jinling City twenty years from now, light rail really is the mainstay of urban transport.  

Even near midnight, Lin Xu still saw many light rail lines running in the air, and the trains were full of passengers.  

More importantly, as Jiang Xingye said, those aerial light rails were very quiet.  

Room temperature superconductivity...  

Could it be that in twenty years, humanity has already cracked the mystery of room temperature superconductors?  

This material can be said to be the brightest jewel on the crown of materials science. Although many have claimed to have achieved it in the past decade or so, in reality, no one has even come close.  

And twenty years later...  

Can humanity really do it?  

Lin Xu found it hard to believe.  

After a brief silence, he asked again,  

“So what do you think, if humanity can really develop room temperature superconducting materials, how long would it take?”  

“Who knows?”  

Jiang Xingye shrugged.  

“You should ask your friend; after all, he’s the materials science expert.”  

“But if you want me to answer, I do have something to say.”  

“Have you seen the news?”  

“Not long ago, there was a report saying the Zhurong rover detected a special substance on Mars, suspected to be semi-metallic hydrogen.”  

“This thing isn’t far from true metallic hydrogen—and it was found under Mars’s normal atmospheric pressure.”  

“If one day we’re capable of building a Mars lander with enough payload capacity, maybe we could send some scientists and equipment to Mars.”  

“If we can use the semi-metallic hydrogen on Mars to produce stable metallic hydrogen, then room temperature superconductivity wouldn’t be far off at all.”  

Mars.  

Lin Xu took a deep breath.  

Mars again!!