Because he was preparing to join the military expedition team, Zhou Changfeng did not stay in Jiujiang for too long. On February 24, he set off back to the capital.
Before leaving, Zhu Lingjing sent him a very delicate letter. She thought she had some secrets that needed to be told in writing, but...
"It's mysterious," Zhou Changfeng muttered as he opened the envelope in a cubicle in the train station toilet, "Didn't you say before that you have nothing to do with me recently? It's really..."
The muttering stopped abruptly, because here was not any letter paper at all, but two checks.
One piece is 90,000 yuan, the other is 9,000 yuan.
Grass!
If it had been Arabic numerals, Zhou Changfeng might have felt that he was being dazzled, but the Chinese characters on this check were clearly "Nine Thousand Yuanquan" and "Nine Thousand Yuanquan".
He immediately recalled what Zhu Lingjing said on the phone some time ago, "I have prepared a gift for you."
It's true that he means what he says, but this huge amount of money is really scary. Calculated based on purchasing power, it's equivalent to nine million yuan.
In comparison, the reward he received for his military exploits on the front line was only 10,000 yuan.
No wonder some people are willing to marry a rich woman. With this kind of treatment, I'm afraid not everyone is willing to marry into a wife.
Sighing at Zhu Lingjing's generosity, Zhou Changfeng carefully collected the two checks, then left the toilet as if nothing had happened, went to the platform and boarded the train bound for the capital.
When he was passing through Wuhan, he was still a little entangled, because his sister had invited him to go back to his hometown several times in letters, but he kept pushing her away. Now he can't stop when passing through Wuhan, so it should be considered as passing through the house without entering.
Since he was traveling for business, Zhou Changfeng took the first-class train, which was divided into multiple compartments and had spacious upper and lower berths. The fourteen-hour trip was not too difficult at all.
When the train stopped at Hanyang Railway Station, an unkempt young man carrying a handbag came to the compartment where he was. His hair was messy and just tied up casually. He was distracted all the time, as if he was thinking about something.
The tickets for the first-class train were more expensive, and the seats were not full. There were only two of them in the four-person compartment.
It wasn't until evening that the two finally struck up a conversation.
Zhou Changfeng learned that his name was Zhang Shilin, and he was a bachelor (PhD) student in the Chemistry Department of Imperial Gezhi University. Because the research he was engaged in was quite troublesome, he needed to travel back and forth between Beijing and Wuhan frequently.
"...That's it, then what kind of research do you do?"
"Nuclear transmutation is the transformation of one substance into another substance."
Hearing this, Zhou Changfeng, who was having dinner, almost choked on a mouthful of rice and quickly took a sip of soup.
Although transmutation is not as well-known as fission and fusion, he has still heard about it - it refers to the conversion of one element into another element, or the conversion between isotopes; transmutation can occur naturally or be induced artificially .
Just a few years ago, the Hungarian physicist Szilard proposed the conjecture about the chain reaction; Marie Curie's daughter Irena and her husband Joly also publicly announced that radioactivity could be artificially induced, which caused a great stir. This was a big sensation because until then, the scientific community generally believed that radioactivity was naturally occurring.
Ever since, this has aroused the interest of many scientists around the world and began to devote themselves to research in this area.
"The road to exploring the origin of things is full of unknowns and surprises," Zhang Shilin raised his fist and said with longing, "One day we can turn lead into gold!"
In Zhou Changfeng's eyes, his image is somewhat like Frankenstein's monster. The only discrepancy is that the lenses of his glasses are relatively thin, not the bottom of a wine bottle.
"By the way..." After thinking for a few seconds, Zhou Changfeng asked: "What are you using to bombard the nucleus now? Type A rays?"
Aha? There are actually officers who know this?
The surprised Zhang Shilin was stunned for a moment, and then replied: "The efficiency of Type A rays bombarding nitrogen, boron, and aluminum to trigger reactions is not high. Now we use neutrons instead, and the results are remarkable."
The so-called type A rays are alpha rays, and the three types of rays A, B, and C represent alpha, beta, and gamma rays respectively.
Alpha rays are essentially high-speed helium nuclei, composed of two neutrons and two protons. They carry two units of positive charge and have a large mass.
Because it is charged, it will be electrostatically repulsed when hitting the target nucleus, so it is not easy to hit and the efficiency is not high.
The neutron was discovered only a few years ago. It is an uncharged neutral particle. Its discovery seems to open a wider door?
Charged particles expend energy as they penetrate matter, but electrically neutral neutrons are completely different—neutrons are only affected by the strong interaction when in close contact with atomic nuclei.
Zhou Changfeng pretended to be casual and said: "That's it. Have you ever tried bombarding some special heavy elements? For example... uranium?"
"No," Zhang Shilin shook his head, feeling a little confused, "What are you using it for? What should you turn it into?"
By bombarding the atomic nucleus to change the number of protons, as long as element 79 can finally be obtained, artificial gold will be truly realized. That is the technology that will subvert the world!
However, everyone rightly believes that it is best to use elements with atomic numbers similar to element 79, such as element 78, platinum, element 80, mercury, and element 82, lead.
Zhou Changfeng couldn't help but regret this. He now had no control over the research topics of Imperial Gezhi University, and it was impossible to stop the ongoing scientific research projects at will.
But the good news is that, according to Zhang Shilin, Sunchon Polytechnic University has similar research, but the progress is not going well.
In the early morning of the next day, before dawn, the moon was dark and the stars were bright. The last quarter moon in the sky had already reached the west and was about to set.
Just after midnight, Zhou Changfeng took a ferry to Jiangnan. Finding that it was still early, he took a ride to the vicinity of Dingjia Lane on Chaotian Palace West Street.
He raised his hand and looked at his watch. It was around six o'clock, and there was a 90% chance that Xia Xiaoshi hadn't gone out yet.
This was indeed the case. Only half a quarter of an hour later, Zhou Changfeng, who was pacing in place, saw a figure pushing open the door.
"Huh?" After a brief surprise, she stepped forward and said happily: "Come back so soon? I thought I had to wait half a month."
"Because everything was handled smoothly."
"Oh, that's it...run, the car is coming!"
The two ran quickly for a while, and as soon as they reached the station, they saw a tram slowly approaching.
Ticket prices are divided into three classes, starting at two cents and rising to four cents depending on the distance.
We haven't seen each other for many days. Xia Xiaoshi talks more than Zhou Changfeng. It's hard to explain this and that.
Seeing how happy she was, the latter felt a little embarrassed to tell her the "bad news". After struggling for a few seconds, he said seriously: "I have something to tell you, um...I might have to tell you something in a few days." Went to Spain with the military expedition team.”
(End of chapter)
