Scholar’s Advanced Technological System

“Meng Qi?”

When Chen Yushan saw that her cousin was here, her eyes lit up. She immediately walked over. “What a coincidence, you’re here as well?”

Han Mengqi nodded. “Yeah… I’m studying for a master’s degree under Lu Zhou, of course I’m here.”

Chen Yushan held her cousin’s hand and looked at her as she said with emotion, “Time really flies by quickly. It feels like you’re still in high school yesterday, but now you’re already a graduate student. Also, didn’t you like putting your hair in a double ponytail? Why did you change to a single ponytail?”

Han Mengqi touched her hair and said, “It looks more mature this way…”

Lu Zhou looked at the two sisters and coughed. “Why did you suddenly come here? You didn’t even tell me you were coming.”

“You’re too busy.” Chen Yushan rolled her eyes and said, “I’ve some business in Jiangsu for a few days, so I came here to visit you. Also, it’s so that I can report to you about the work I’ve been doing.”

Lu Zhou: “Report?”

Chen Yushan blinked and asked, “Did you forget?”

Lu Zhou said, “Forget about what?”

“It’s not appropriate to talk about it here. Since it’s such a rare occasion, let me buy you a drink?” Chen Yushan looked at her cousin and said, “Meng Qi, do you want to come?”

Han Mengqi immediately nodded. A moment later, she asked quietly, “You guys are going to talk about business, right? Won’t I bother you?”

Chen Yushan smiled and said, “It’s just not appropriate to talk about it in public, but there are no secrets… Of course, it depends if Professor Lu minds.”

“Of course I don’t mind.” Lu Zhou smiled and said nonchalantly, “You guys haven’t seen each other for a long time, right? Let’s all go together.”

At a commercial district near campus, inside a cafe.

It was still quite early in the day, plus it was a workday, so there weren’t a lot of people here.

Lu Zhou found a seat near a window to sit at. He then ordered a cup of hot mocha and leaned back against his chair. He looked at the decor inside the cafe.

He felt quite nostalgic since he accepted his first tutor job here. It had already been six years since then, and he went from being a student to a famous scholar. And yet, this place hadn’t changed a bit.

“An iced cappuccino and an iced americano.”

Chen Yushan helped order for her cousin and politely returned the menu to the waiter.

Lu Zhou watched the waiter bring their drinks over. He then took a sip of his mocha before looking at Chen Yushan and asked, “Can you tell me now?”

“It’s regarding the shares from East Asia Energy.”

When Lu Zhou heard the name “East Asia Energy”, he immediately remembered what the matter was.

“Oh, you already bought it?”

“Yeah, I’ve been busy with this over the past couple of days.”

Lu Zhou nodded and asked.

“How much did you buy?”

Chen Yushan said, “Just like you said, a billion USD.”

“Ptui!”

When Lu Zhou heard USD, he nearly spat his coffee out.

Chen Yushan looked at him choking and smirked as she continued to speak, “I have carefully studied the prospectus of East Asia Energy. The main purpose of this fundraising is for the construction of the cross-regional power grid in the southwest and the new fusion reactor project in Daya Bay. The expected capacity of the project will reach 100,000 MW. Within a year, the old fission reactors and other electric generators will gradually be replaced. East Asia Energy will supply power to Hong Kong, Macao, Guangdong, and other places.

“According to my experience, this kind of investment is high profit, low risk. You can rest assured! If that guy named Feng wasn’t so persistent, I would have found a bank to borrow hundreds of millions just to buy more shares.”

No shit, they have a monopoly, of course this is high profit, low risk!

Lu Zhou wiped the coffee off his chin and said, “A billion USD… That’s almost 7 billion yuan, isn’t it a bit too much?”

7 billion…

The total amount of public shares is only 20 billion yuan!

Lu Zhou ate a third of a pie just by himself. He was worried there might be a problem.

Chen Yushan blinked and asked, “Is it a lot?”

Lu Zhou: “…”

Seeing how Lu Zhou was speechless, Chen Yushan smiled and said, “Calm down, calm down. I know what you’re worried about. Before contacting East Asia Energy, I discussed it with my dad. He said that as long as the money is clean, there is no problem investing normally just like everyone else. Think about it, if there is a problem, Feng Shuqing wouldn’t approve of it.”

Lu Zhou couldn’t help but say, “Who knows what Feng Shuqing will do…”

Chen Yushan said, “Technically, he’s your subordinate. Do you know anything about your subordinates?”

Lu Zhou: “I’m not interested.”

Even though Feng Shuqing was technically the second-in-command of the project team, he reported directly to the government officials. Therefore, he wasn’t technically Lu Zhou’s subordinate.

Lu Zhou did not care for administrative work.

Rather than delegating work to other people, he preferred to do experiments in his laboratory.

Seeing how Lu Zhou was disinterested, Chen Yushan sighed and said, “Being able to take on this role in his thirties and reorganize the demonstration reactor project team, this isn’t something that normal genius students from Shuimu University can do. This person has a bright career in front of him. He’s not going to put himself in a risky situation just to be friends with you. His approval is definitely backed by the higher-ups.”

“You really know a lot.”

“I don’t know that much. It’s mainly because my dad always talks about this kind of stuff at home, so I inevitably learn some of it.” Chen Yushan held the straw and stirred the ice cubes in her cup as she sighed and said, “That’s why I don’t want to work in the government, I can’t fully showcase my financial ability.”

Lu Zhou drank his coffee and pretended like he didn’t hear the second part.

A billion USD case isn’t enough to showcase your financial ability?

Lu Zhou didn’t know what to do with this chick.

Suddenly, Chen Yushan remembered something.

“Oh yeah, there’s one more thing you should pay attention to.”

Lu Zhou asked, “What thing?”

Chen Yushan: “Star Sky Technology has a laboratory in California?”

Lu Zhou nodded and said, “Yeah, but it’s mainly responsible for ordering me some more obscure reagents and to take on some projects from the Institute of Computational Materials… Is there a problem?”

Chen Yushan said, “If you transfer anyone here, try to transfer them now. If you can’t transfer them, it’d be better to find a way to get rid of them. When I was investigating the company’s business a few days ago, I noticed someone investigating your assets in North America… I talked to your CEO from the North American branch, and we agreed that there might be someone who’s trying to collect evidence.”

Lu Zhou frowned and said, “Investigating me? What is there to investigate?”

He had always been very careful.

When he returned to China, he donated all of his mathematics notes, and he didn’t bring a single piece of paper back.

If anyone was to investigate him, he didn’t think they would find anything.

“Please, you’re Chief Designer Lu. Because you went to the Germans to buy the WEGA stellarator, our country was kicked out of ITER. Now that the Pangu fusion reactor is in everyone’s face, of course they’re going to investigate you.”

“Who do you think it is?”

Chen Yushan rolled her eyes and said, “They’re obviously not going to announce their investigation, but surely you know who it is.”

Lu Zhou looked at his cup of coffee and went silent for a while. He suddenly smiled and shook his head.

“I didn’t think that a mathematician would be on the CIA’s list.”

Actually, he wasn’t completely surprised.

When he was doing the He-3 atom probe experiment at Princeton, he vaguely felt that someone might have noticed him. If he continued to conduct research, there was bound to be a problem.

However, at that time, controllable fusion was a futuristic field, and it did not receive a lot of attention. Countries never put their hopes of addressing climate warming and the energy crisis on fusion energy. It was not until the success of the STAR-1 device that everything was completely changed…

Chen Yushan’s slender chin rested on her fist as her delicate lips bit the straw. She smiled and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”

Lu Zhou looked at her slim shoulders and couldn’t feel any sense of security from her.

“Oh, thanks.”

Chen Yushan snorted and said, “What is that kind of reaction? Are you bored?”

Lu Zhou thought for a bit.

“Um… I’ll buy you dinner next time?”

Chen Yushan smiled and felt nostalgic. “You didn’t change at all.”

Lu Zhou paused for a second.

“I haven’t?”

He thought that compared to his twenty-year-old self, he had actually changed quite a bit.

As Han Mengqi watched these two talk, she kept her head down while using a spoon to mix the cream in her cappuccino.

She hadn’t said anything yet.

This wasn’t a big deal. After all, she didn’t have anything special to say.

She just felt like…

Sitting next to these two made her feel like a little kid.

She sighed and sat there feeling gloomy.

However, she didn’t know why she was feeling this way…