YPSSS Chapter 19

Chen Rongxin and the others pestered him for a long time but couldn’t find out what the gift was. When they wanted to take a look, he wouldn’t let them. Xie Ji tossed out “It’s useless for you to see it” and ignored them after that.

Meanwhile, Xia Shiruan had already composed himself and tidied up. With a new dose of medical suppressant, he was clear-headed and calm as he dove back into his studies and work.

After turning on Do Not Disturb, the group messages cleaned up considerably. He put his phone aside and didn’t open it again.

From dusk until late at night, Xia Shiruan’s eyes and hands never left the computer until Gao Qiuyun came upstairs to remind him it was time for bed. Only then did he let out a breath, stand up to stretch, and turn off his computer.

Although Xia Shiruan had always taken his work seriously, the first assignment of the semester was a huge investment project that both the academy and military department valued highly, so he had to be extra careful.

The four sub-topics of the project were highly independent, with separate content blocks that would be tested individually in the future.

With only days left until the kick-off meeting, everyone was pressed for time just writing the feasibility study for their own section, making it impossible to discuss and exchange ideas with others.

It was time for the weekly progress report again, with everyone in the lab gathered together.

The lower-year students went first. Since their research wasn’t very complex, their presentations were usually under ten slides and went by quickly.

Professor Lu gave guidance to each of them before moving on to the doctoral students’ reports.

The doctoral presentations were always the highlight of the weekly meetings. Not only did they have more practical work and content to present, but the supervisor paid special attention, and the lower-year students could learn quite a bit from them.

Similarly, if a doctoral student’s report was unsatisfactory, the supervisor would be even angrier.

Huang Yun went first, naturally reporting on the ongoing project.

His PowerPoint was extensive with over fifty slides, neatly formatted with each page packed full, as if trying to include every little detail of what he’d done.

Halfway through, Professor Lu knocked on the table and interrupted, “Get to the point.”

Huang Yun froze with an “Ah,” and Professor Lu continued, “Several other students still need to report. Skip the literature you’ve read and go straight to the results.”

“Okay.” Huang Yun paused, skipped several slides, and jumped straight to the feasibility study.

The feasibility study would be reported directly to the client at the later kick-off meeting. Professor Lu listened intently, occasionally raising questions. Huang Yun stumbled occasionally but managed to answer most of them.

When Huang Yun got to the proposed implementation plan, Professor Lu made a pause gesture and asked, “How was the compensation capacity Q-value determined here?”

Huang Yun answered, “Since we haven’t done similar experiments before, the Q-value was hard to determine. I looked through the literature and used test values from nano-equipment with the same voltage level.”

Professor Lu paused for a moment, then asked, “Did you calculate the Q-value for the nano-equipment yourself? What formula did you use?”

Huang Yun froze.

Professor Lu’s brows furrowed slightly.

Quiet discussions started from below the podium.

Xia Shiruan lowered his eyes, flipped through several pages of his book, and stopped at a particular page.

If anyone had paid attention to the content of his book at that moment, they would have found the exact formula Huang Yun needed.

This was content from an elective course, which was not something mandatory to master.

But as a key executor of such an important project, simply using previous experimental values without researching and cross-checking the calculations was downright lazy.

Professor Lu remained silent, Huang Yun stood dumbfounded on stage, and the atmosphere in the conference room gradually became tense.

Huang Yun was naturally the most embarrassed. Standing on stage under Professor Lu’s questioning gaze, he stuttered several “uh”s without finding an explanation. He cast a pleading look at Luo Zhou, probably hoping he would help look it up and write it down for him to see.

But Luo Zhou completely misread his eye signals and just stared back with wide eyes.

Huang Yun mentally rolled his eyes dramatically and could only clear his throat, forcing himself to say, “I haven’t calculated this because it’s just the feasibility study now, not yet time for the actual experiment. Later I will—”

“Let’s do this,” Professor Lu said. “Polish up this part of the feasibility study, and present it to me again next time.”

Huang Yun didn’t dare object and quickly agreed.

Everyone else below also breathed a sigh of relief.

Although Professor Lu was kind and humorous, he was extremely rigorous about academics and strict with students’ research.

During past weekly meetings, what presenting students feared most was being unable to answer Professor Lu’s on-the-spot questions. Now that Professor Lu allowed him to go back and supplement his work, at least it gave him some breathing room.

Next up were Luo Zhou and Shen Chuan. They didn’t have much content on their PowerPoint, but they explained to Professor Lu at the start that they were focusing on the apparatus, which Professor Lu understood.

Soon it was Xia Shiruan’s turn.

He was the last to present, and it was almost noon. Many below were drowsy or starving, just wanting to end quickly and go eat.

But when Xia Shiruan walked up with his notebook, the conference room fell silent in unison, with all eyes turning to him.

As the only Beta in the lab, Xia Shiruan was long used to such stares.

Xia Shiruan opened PowerPoint, moved the mouse, and prepared to begin his report.

The PowerPoint was still in Xia Shiruan’s typical style. It was very concise with no excess decoration or lengthy descriptive text. Each page basically just had a few figures and a simple line of indicative text.

This meant Xia Shiruan would need to explain everything himself.

People who made PowerPoints like this were either purely lazy or confident enough in themselves. Xia Shiruan was clearly not the former.

When presenting, Xia Shiruan used terminology that was simple and clear, at a level even first-year graduate students could understand.

Gradually, those dozing off in the back rows sat up straight and started listening attentively to his report.

Five minutes into the presentation, Professor Lu said, “Let me interrupt. Xiao Xia, demonstrate the solution process you just mentioned on the whiteboard.”

Xia Shiruan did as asked.

As the laser pen wrote out line after line of formulas on the whiteboard, quiet discussions started up again below the stage.

Anyone who had been listening carefully to the report realized that Xia Shiruan’s calculations included exactly what Huang Yun had been questioned about earlier.

And that was just a small part of it.

Because Xia Shiruan’s calculations were far more detailed and complex than Huang Yun’s, yet he wrote out these complicated formulas purely from memory without checking any books, not missing even a single decimal point.

The contrast between the two was brutal.

Xia Shiruan put down the laser pen and briefly described the calculation logic.

An eerie silence fell over the entire conference room.

After two seconds, Professor Lu broke the silence.

He smiled and said, “Very good.” Then turned to Huang Yun, pointed at the whiteboard, and said, “Did you see that, Xiao Huang? If there’s anything you still don’t understand, you can ask Xiao Xia for guidance after this.”

A wave of stirring gradually spread through the audience below, with some drama-seeking onlookers secretly observing Huang Yun’s expression.

And Huang Yun’s face was shifting between red and green like the PowerPoint still being projected, looking extremely ugly.