Chapter 152
Chapter 152
The next morning, Wen Miao had barely gotten out of bed when she heard her roommates already discussing the day’s “headline news.”
She walked over and realized they were talking about Director Wu being taken away by the police.
“Director Wu got arrested? Seriously?”
“Seriously! Someone saw the police come into the school, put Director Wu in handcuffs, and take him away…”
“Do you know what it was for?”
“No idea, but there are a bunch of posts on the school forum guessing about it…”
“You can’t take that stuff as fact.”
“Who knows? This kind of thing counts as a scandal, right? The school will probably try to keep it quiet.”
Wen Miao didn’t join the conversation. She only listened for a bit, and once she was sure Cheng Jiamin hadn’t been dragged into it, she relaxed and went to Wen Tangtang’s dorm.
Wen Tangtang was curled up in her room, dabbing red antiseptic onto her forehead while looking in the mirror.
The moment she saw Wen Miao come in, she called out, “Perfect timing. Hurry up and help me with this!”
Wen Miao took the cotton swab from her hand, pushed her forehead back a little, and started applying the medicine.
With her eyes closed, Wen Tangtang asked, “I just got a message from Wen Xin. Out of nowhere, he asked me to contact a friend. He said he wants to do a paternity test?”
“Really?” Wen Miao was a little surprised by how quickly Wen Xin had moved. He had actually gotten Meng Ran’s biological sample already.
“Yeah.” Wen Tangtang opened her eyes and asked worriedly, “Who do you think he’s doing the test for? It can’t be for himself, can it?”
Wen Miao was just about to explain when Wen Tangtang huffed angrily and went on, “That Wen Xin. He looks so proper, but who would’ve thought he was secretly dating some girl outside and even had a kid…”
“Stop, stop, stop…” Wen Miao felt like something was very wrong with this line of thought. “Who had a kid? Wen Xin?”
“Yeah.” Wen Tangtang said it as if it were perfectly obvious. “Why else would he need a paternity test? He must have slept with someone, and now the girl came knocking. And he’s even suspicious the kid isn’t his…”
Wen Miao: “…”
“What’s with that look? Why are you staring at me like that? You can’t believe it either, can you?” As she spoke, Wen Tangtang reached for her phone on the desk. “I’ll show you the message he sent me.”
She had only just picked up her phone when Wen Miao suddenly burst out laughing. Then she laughed harder and harder, until she was doubled over.
Wen Tangtang stared at her in confusion. “What are you laughing at?”
Wen Miao laughed until her stomach hurt. She wiped the corners of her eyes, brushing away the tears of laughter, and explained, “You got it all wrong. Wen Xin isn’t doing a paternity test for himself. He’s helping me.”
Wen Miao thought that would clear things up. Instead, Wen Tangtang’s eyes went wide, and she shot up from her chair.
“What? You and Nan Mu have already gone that far?” The moment she said it, she immediately denied her own conclusion. “No, wait. You want a paternity test because you’re not sure whose child it is?”
Wen Tangtang sucked in a sharp breath and stared at Wen Miao in shock.
Wen Miao was struck speechless.
She turned in a circle in front of Wen Tangtang, then patted her own stomach. “Do I look like I have a baby in here?”
Wen Tangtang finally seemed to come back to her senses. Right. She and Wen Miao saw each other almost every day. If Wen Miao were pregnant, how could she not know?
Seeing the confusion in Wen Tangtang’s eyes, Wen Miao spread her hands helplessly. “I suspect something about my own background, so I want to do a paternity test.”
Wen Tangtang was even more shocked. “Huh? You found your family?”
When Wen Miao didn’t answer, she first murmured, “Congratulations,” then grew emotional. “After you find your family, are you going to go home with them?”
Wen Miao smiled faintly. “I just want to confirm whether I’m related to her by blood…”
Wen Miao knew what Wen Tangtang was worried about. She took her hand. “You, Wen Xin, and I will always be family. Didn’t we swear it? No giving up, no abandoning each other. Compared with something as vague and uncertain as blood ties, I’d much rather be with you.”
A bright, flower-like smile bloomed across Wen Tangtang’s face. She hugged Wen Miao back. “I knew it. You’d never leave us behind.”
===
Everything was slowly moving toward clarity.
On an early winter afternoon, sunlight and tree shadows drifted and intertwined in sparse, shifting patterns, spreading a layer of brilliance across the ground. From the silent earth, the vibrant breath of life quietly overflowed.
“Wen Miao, I just heard from our advisor that the new element you discovered can be used in instruments operating at high rotational speeds?”
Wen Miao had just set down her safety goggles when one of her senior labmates poked his head over and asked curiously.
Wen Miao smiled faintly. “Yes. We ran the experiment this afternoon. The element is extremely stable. Even after being synthesized, it doesn’t decay into other elements with smaller atomic masses within an extremely short period of time.”
“That’s amazing,” the senior said with an admiring sigh. “What an incredible discovery.”
“Of course it is. Senior Brother, did you think discovering a new element was easy?” another junior in the lab teased with a laugh. “This is the first new element discovered in nearly twenty years.”
“I know it’s not easy,” the senior said, waving a hand. “What I mean is, the new element Wen Miao discovered is far more impressive than any of you realize.”
The junior came over, eyes bright with excitement. “What is it? Senior Sister Wen Miao, what’s so special about this new element? Does it have huge practical value?”
Only a few short months had passed since the new element’s discovery.
Although they all worked in the same laboratory, everyone had their own assignments. Their understanding of the new element still mostly came from the paper Wen Miao had published in World Science.
Wen Miao smiled modestly. “I’m still studying it. Its actual practical value is still up for debate.”
The junior was puzzled. “Then Senior Brother is this happy today just because it’s stable?”
“Isn’t that worth being happy about?” The senior tapped the junior on the forehead. “Since the mid-twentieth century, after nuclear physicists developed the nuclear shell model, they predicted that atomic nuclei with magic numbers of protons or neutrons would be especially stable. You know that much, right?”
The junior nodded. “I do. The theory predicts that nuclei near the ‘doubly magic nucleus’ with 114 protons and 184 neutrons would have relatively high stability. Around it, there might exist an ‘island of stability’ composed of hundreds of superheavy element nuclei. Those nuclei are called superheavy nuclei.”
“But in reality, ever since the theory of superheavy elements was proposed in the mid-sixties, we’ve gone nearly half a century without finding a single superheavy element.” The senior tapped Wen Miao’s desk. “I think no one could have imagined that a century-old problem like this would be solved so miraculously in a lab like ours, by a method like this.”
The junior froze for a moment. The disbelief on his face gradually turned into wild joy. “ZJ is a superheavy element? Senior Sister Wen Miao, you found a superheavy element?!”
Wen Miao waved a hand. “We still can’t say with one hundred percent certainty whether it’s a superheavy element. But it is the only element that, after being synthesized, doesn’t decay into an element with a smaller atomic mass within an extremely short period of time.”
The delight on the junior’s face stiffened slightly.
Amused, the senior turned back to Wen Miao. “Your Senior Sister Wen Miao is just too cautious. It’s not like we’re writing a paper right now. Why be so precise? In my opinion, there’s a ninety-nine point nine percent chance it’s definitely a superheavy element.”
“Isn’t caution exactly what experimentalists need?” Wen Miao laughed as well. “There are still several experiments left to confirm it. We can celebrate once we’re sure, can’t we?”
The smile finally returned to the junior’s face. He knew Wen Miao well. Before an experiment was finished, even if there was already a 99.9 percent chance, as long as that remaining 0.1 percent was missing, she would never draw a conclusion.
“Congratulations, Senior Sister! When you publish the paper, can you put my name at the very end? Let me share a little of the glory.”
The senior smacked him lightly on the head with a laugh. “All you think about is riding coattails!”
“Senior Sister…” The junior clasped his hands together, acting cute.
Wen Miao couldn’t help laughing. “If it really is a superheavy element, everyone in the lab will be listed on it when the time comes.”
“Whoa-” The laboratory instantly erupted. “Long live Senior Sister Wen Miao!”
While Wen Miao was surrounded by people talking to her, her phone suddenly rang.
She squeezed out of the crowd and answered the call. When she heard the voice on the other end, she froze.
“What? Zhaodi was taken away?!”