Reality Programming Association

Chapter 97: Chapter 40: A Carnival of Anti-Intellectualism

Yu Xian barely dared to fall into a deep sleep that night. He curled up on the old sofa in the living room with a jacket draped over him, his phone placed by his pillow. The slightest sound from the bedroom would make his eyes snap open.

The first half of the night was relatively peaceful. But around two in the morning, his senior’s temperature seemed to be rising again. Not daring to be careless, Yu Xian boiled another kettle of water and had her drink a packet of instant cold medicine.

He was up for the entire restless night. It wasn’t until the sky began to show a gloomy, oppressive gray that Yu Xian, sitting in a chair by the bedroom bed, finally drifted into a groggy nap.

...

When he woke again on Thursday morning, he found that his senior was already awake.

She was lying on her side, the flush on her face having faded considerably. Her eyes were fixed on him, asleep in the chair.

”Senior, you’re awake?” Yu Xian rubbed his sore neck. His voice was hoarse from the lack of sleep.

”Mhm...” Yang Yiyi’s voice was very soft. ”Thank you, Yu Xian.”

”It was nothing.” On the contrary, Yu Xian felt only guilt. He picked up the thermometer and shook it.

”Here, let’s take your temperature again. I’ll go get you something to eat.”

Seeing Yang Yiyi take the thermometer, Yu Xian turned and went to the kitchen. He opened a packet of dried noodles, diced some ham, and cooked a steaming bowl of noodle soup with clear broth.

As he watched Yang Yiyi lean against the headboard, taking small bites of the noodles, Yu Xian finally checked the reading on the thermometer.

”37.5 degrees. Still a low-grade fever.”

The anxiety that had gripped Yu Xian all night finally eased a little. He mixed another packet of medicine and brought it to Yang Yiyi.

”Take your medicine and get some more sleep, Senior.”

”Okay,” Yang Yiyi replied quietly, finishing every last bit of the noodle soup.

Seeing that his senior’s condition had stabilized, Yu Xian went back to the living room and finished the rest of the noodles.

Only then did he have a moment to pick up his phone. The apartment’s reception was bad, but at least there was an internet connection.

He opened Weibo. The trending list was still dominated by topics related to the torrential rain.

But as Yu Xian’s eyes swept over one of the trending topics, his pupils contracted sharply.

”Exposed! These institutions are still conducting secret experiments!”

The topic was followed by a crimson ”Explosive” tag.

Pinned to the top was a long image post. Yu Xian noted that the poster was a new account with only a few hundred followers, but the retweets, comments, and likes were already over a hundred thousand.

The image took a moment to load. It was a series of satellite maps marked with red circles.

The caption was simple and direct, accusing these laboratories’ ”secret physics experiments” of causing the abnormal climate, and it included many detailed addresses.

Yu Xian looked closely and realized that the red circles marked various famous High Energy Physics Research Institutes and related laboratories. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Below were not just detailed addresses, but precise locations: which building, which floor, which room.

’Something’s not right.’

Yu Xian frowned. The whole thing was suspicious.

He analyzed the problems with the whole affair:

’While the locations of these institutes aren’t top secret, they shouldn’t be something that ordinary, emotional netizens could pinpoint so accurately.’

’This seems... more than just the simple spread of a rumor. It’s escalating.’

He checked the post’s timestamp. It had been up for nearly a day.

A post inciting such a large-scale online mob attack hadn’t been throttled; instead, it had been pushed to the top of the trending list in such an organized and methodical way.

’This is obviously... someone deliberately steering public opinion?’

’Could someone be intentionally exploiting this natural disaster to...’

’...get someone else to do their dirty work?’

The phrase flashed through his mind.

But that was immediately followed by an even bigger question:

’Why are they aiming their attacks at... those scientific research institutions?’

Yu Xian refreshed the comment section under the topic over and over, reading the nearly insane comments.

Meanwhile, the original poster was constantly updating with new ”evidence” and addresses.

’Why?’

Yu Xian couldn’t make sense of it.

’How could so many netizens lose all reason?’

’And why was no one taking these posts down or controlling the spread of these rumors?’

’It just doesn’t make sense...’

’If these rumors were meant to cover something up, the cost is far too high.’

If it were business competition, hiring an army of trolls to slander a rival was a common sight in modern society.

But the exposed research institutes were mostly engaged in basic physics research, which had nothing to do with commercial interests.

’What kind of enemies could the front lines of basic science possibly have?’

Yu Xian thought of the tug-of-war over the ”collider” project, but he immediately shook his head, dismissing the idea.

’Even if there are disagreements and ideological disputes in academia, they’re all discussions within the framework of science.’

This level of chaos would be a heavy blow to all sides.

’Then who could it be?’

’Who would want these cutting-edge physics experiments to be forced to a halt?’

’And who could possibly benefit from all this chaos?’

Yu Xian’s thoughts followed one another like links in a chain, but he still couldn’t come up with any leads.

’It couldn’t be that the Three-Body Star People are about to invade Earth and some ”Earth Traitor” is causing trouble, could it?’

Yu Xian’s gaze slid over the shocking photos on his phone screen.

Rain washed over the chaotic scenes, blurring the camera lens and blurring the very bottom line of civilization.

In one photo, a once tidy and solemn building was in complete disarray, shattered glass mixed with rainwater covering the ground.

The Einstein statue by the entrance, with its inscription of truth, was now completely defaced.

Another photo, which looked like it was taken inside an institution, showed several people in raincoats pushing what looked like a piece of precision equipment to the ground.

Expensive lens fragments were scattered everywhere, like pools of shattered diamonds.

There was another one, probably of a data storage area. White documents flew through the air, and sheets of paper on the ground were trampled into the rainwater and soaked through.

The dense formulas and charts on them had turned into unrecognizable clumps of pulp, stuck together.

Looking at the photos, Yu Xian felt a heavy weight pressing on his chest, as if a giant rock were crushing him.

Science was supposed to be humanity’s sharpest weapon against the unknown, against disaster.

But now, that weapon was being broken by humanity’s own hands.

The vast majority of comments were cheers of approval. The few rational voices of doubt were quickly drowned in a tide of opposition. Yu Xian couldn’t stop himself from posting a comment:

”That’s a research facility. What does basic science have to do with the rain?”

His comment was quickly buried under a flood of accusations and curses:

”Easy for you to say, huh? Is it because the rain isn’t flooding your house?”

”People are dead! Who gives a damn about the future!”

Although there were people on site trying to maintain order, with the entire city hit by disaster, they were clearly overwhelmed.

In the face of a catastrophic flood, the primary task for rescue teams was disaster relief and evacuating trapped citizens.

The mastermind behind all this, choosing this exact moment to stir up conflict, had calculated everything perfectly.

Natural disaster, rumors, a run on resources, fermenting panic.

If their goal was truly to bring these research institutes to a complete halt, then they were already halfway there.

’But why?’

Yu Xian’s gaze returned to that question.

He looked at the addresses of the exposed labs, at the photos that had been circulated.

He tapped on one of the photos and zoomed in.

Yu Xian tried to discern a common thread from the shattered signs.

”Quantum Gravity Laboratory,” ”Microscopic Ion State Superposition Research Center,” ”High-dimensional Space Topology Research Group.”

These prime targets, though belonging to different institutions with different research directions, all seemed to have one thing in common.

The research these institutions were engaged in was all at the most cutting-edge, most abstract frontiers of physics.

And these fields were the crown jewels of physics, representing the very boundaries of human knowledge.

Quantum gravity is the discipline that attempts to unify macroscopic relativity and microscopic quantum mechanics.

Ion superposition states explore another possible state of matter’s existence.

High-dimensional topology constructs the shape of the universe on a mathematical level.

All of it was pure theoretical research—extremely expensive, with absolutely no short-term commercial returns in sight.

”Why these ones specifically?” Yu Xian muttered to himself.

”Is this... just a frenzy of anti-intellectualism?”