Chapter 101: Nobel Prize, With God!

In 1977, the news of the resumption of the college entrance examination exploded like spring thunder across the land that had been frozen for ten years.

Countless people were in ecstasy, in panic, desperately searching for dust-covered textbooks.

And she, standing on the threshold of that dilapidated small house in the cadre school, gazing at the surging tide of people on the distant mountain road, felt a strange peace in her heart.

Over the past seven years, in every dead of night when the north wind howled and all sounds were silent, under the guidance of "God," she had long quietly finished learning all the core undergraduate courses of biomedicine.

She had even dabbled in much content at the graduate and even doctoral stages, which belonged to top-secret files domestically and scientific research frontiers abroad at the time.

When she walked out of the crude examination room, she was so calm she didn't look like an examinee, but more like a student who had completed daily homework.

The results were announced, the red honor roll posted on the most conspicuous bulletin board in the county town.

Southwest Examination Zone, Science Top Scorer.

Two words, written with forceful strokes:

Qin Shuyi.

When filling out college applications, God's voice sounded for the last time in that small house, calm and certain:

"Go to Shanghai Medical University. There is the best basic medical laboratory in the whole country, and there are old gentlemen who have just resumed work and truly understand the profession. There, is your true starting point."

"Walk out and see the larger world. Your battlefield is not on the loess hills and rice paddies here, but under the microscope in the laboratory, on the chromosomes of the cell nucleus, in the base sequences of genes, in the future of saving the lives and health of millions of people."

She nodded forcefully. Tears swirled crazily in her eye rims, yet she stubbornly refused to let them fall.

"God... you... will you go with me? To Shanghai? To... farther places?"

The voice had no hesitation, still gentle:

"I will always accompany you."

"Until... you make the whole world remember your name."

In the early 1980s, she graduated from Shanghai Medical University with all A's.

Relying on her indisputably solid foundation and several "era-surpassing" papers that amazed even her mentors, she obtained the qualification to study abroad at public expense and went to Harvard Medical School for further studies.

On the other side of the ocean, Boston.

That was the starting point where her academic career truly began to break free from shackles and bloom with light that shocked the world.

In 1989, her doctoral dissertation "Study on the Correlation Between Telomerase Activity and Cardiomyocyte Senescence" was published in the journal "Nature," amazing the world with a single brilliant feat and shaking the international medical community.

That night, she sat alone in the cold and empty laboratory. Outside the window were the lights along the Charles River in Boston, brilliant like a pouring river of stars, bustling, yet cold.

Seven years.

From Shanghai to Boston, from the adobe house of the cadre school to the world's top laboratory.

God never left.

Still, in every late night, when she encountered bottlenecks, when she was confused, when she was lonely, sounding gently, giving the most crucial pointers and the most profound inspiration.

However, on that night when the paper was published and honors came pouring in, when she finally finished handling all subsequent matters, rechecked the last key data, and leaned back against the back of that lab chair that had accompanied her for countless days and nights, exhausted yet full of a massive sense of achievement, letting out a long breath—

That voice, familiar to the point of being carved into her soul, suddenly sounded again.

Only one sentence, as calm as stating a fact:

"Mhm... it seems, I have nothing left to teach you."

She blanked, her brain not yet switched over from extreme exhaustion and the excitement of success.

That voice continued, carrying a relief of having completed a mission, and a trace of... hard-to-catch reluctance to part?

"It's time for me to leave."

Boom—!

As if struck by lightning!

She abruptly bounced up from the chair. The movement was so large she knocked over the coffee cup still emitting hot steam by her hand.

The brown liquid spilled onto the smooth lab bench, but she was completely oblivious.

Her face instantly turned pale as paper.

"No! God! Don't go! I still have many questions! The frontiers are developing rapidly, changing too fast, I alone... I still have many places I don't understand! I need you! I beg you! Don't... don't go..."

"It is not a parting forever."

That voice gently interrupted her out-of-control pleading, carrying an all-seeing certainty that traversed a long period of time:

"We will..."

He paused, as if confirming a certain distant coordinate:

"...Twenty-six years later, at the end of Wu Xiuyun's life, reunite."

The voice disappeared.

As abruptly as when it appeared, as without warning.

Clean, neat, no farewell, no lingering attachment.

As if just a program that finished running, closing automatically.

Qin Shuyi stood blankly on the spot for a full ten minutes, motionless, like a solidified statue.

Then, scalding tears surged out like a flood opening its gates.

She slid down to sit on the cold floor, her back against the lab bench, covering her face and crying uncontrollably to the empty laboratory.

Like a child suddenly abandoned in an unfamiliar world.

...

In 1992, she declined dizzying sky-high annual salaries, tenured professorships, and the most generous scientific research resource support offered by multiple top scientific research institutions like MIT and Stanford, multinational pharmaceutical giants, and Ivy League schools.

Facing her mentor Professor Robert's bitterly disappointed retention, facing her colleagues' assertions that "you will ruin the golden period of your academic career," and even facing implicit but highly pressured dissuasion from certain quarters, she only answered calmly in fluent and elegant English:

"My knowledge took root in an ancient land. It should go back to nourish that soil."

She disbanded the internationalized research team initially established at Harvard, bringing only a few young Chinese scholars who also harbored feelings for their homeland and were inspired by her ideals and sentiments, as well as several large boxes full of frontier literature, and stepped onto the flight returning to her home country.

For decades to come, she was like a silent and resilient seed, taking root again in the soil of her homeland.

Starting from almost zero, building laboratories, forming teams, applying for funding, and under countless gazes of doubt and scrutiny, challenging international medical difficulties deemed "impossible" one after another.

In 2022, the team she led achieved a series of breakthrough results in fields such as targeted gene editing, programmed cell regeneration, and precise delivery of targeted anti-cancer drugs.

Multiple core technical indicators reached or even led the world level.

In the same year, due to "foundational and systematic contributions in the application of targeted telomere repair and functional elongation technology to the field of human somatic cell anti-aging," the Karolinska Institute in Sweden announced that this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine would be awarded to—

Great Xia, Qin Shuyi.

The news spread back domestically, and the whole nation rejoiced.

...

Stockholm, Blue Concert Hall.

The long guns and short cannons of global media converged into a dazzling ocean of flashbulbs, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra played the solemn and magnificent "Kungssången" (The Royal Anthem).

Wearing a purplish-red velvet evening gown specially custom-made by an old master craftsman domestically, which perfectly integrated the stand-up collar and frog buttons of a Mao suit, she slowly walked onto that podium dreamed of by countless scientists.

Her head of silver hair was combed meticulously, flashing with the luster of wisdom under the light.

Her face was thin and clear; the years had left carved marks, yet added composure and majesty.

Her eyes were calm and wise, her back perfectly straight, just like her spine that was never crushed in the severe winter of the cadre school back then.

She delivered her acceptance speech in fluent, elegant English with a slight British accent, thanking her team members for their hard work, thanking her family for their silent support, and thanking her homeland for years of nurturing and uplifting.

Her logic was clear, her wording appropriate, her bearing elegant, perfectly displaying the demeanor of a leader who had reached the summit of world science.

Finally, in that subtle gap when the speech was about to end and applause was preparing to sound.

Her gaze seemed to pass over the countless familiar or unfamiliar faces looking up from below the stage, pass over the brilliant crystal chandeliers, and cast into the higher, farther void.

There, it was completely empty.

Yet she seemed to have seen something.

Then, she switched languages.

Used Chinese.

Her mother tongue.

That language which carried her initial despair and ultimate miracle.

Her voice was very light, yet through the exquisite microphone, it spread incomparably clearly to every corner of the magnificent concert hall, and also spread to every corner of the world through satellite signals:

"Actually, the one I should thank the most..."

She paused.

That address called out tens of millions of times at the bottom of her heart, yet not spoken aloud for decades, was spat out on the Nobel Prize podium at this moment, still carrying the weight spanning nearly half a century of time and an uncooling temperature:

"...Is the one who, at the most desperate, darkest valley of my life, descended like a star, lit up the path of my whole life, taught me knowledge, gave me hope, and shaped me with a soul..."

The whole venue was silent.

Most international guests, royal family members, political dignitaries, and media reporters blinked in confusion, unable to understand this suddenly appearing Eastern language with a strange melody.

Only through the simultaneous interpretation headphones came the interpreter's slightly rushed translation attempting to catch the essence:

"...to a guiding star that appeared at the darkest moment of my life..."

In the front row of the VIP seats, was Lin Ruoxuan who specially came from the other end of the earth, just to attend this highest honor award ceremony for the Chief Advisor of the "Wallbreaker Plan."

The instant Academician Qin Shuyi gently spat out that word "God" in Chinese, her body shook violently imperceptibly.

She raised her head, looking at that old academician on stage who was radiantly shining, yet revealing an almost fragile piety at this moment.

In those eyes that had long been calm as a deep pool after rising and falling in the sea of commerce and seeing all worldly affairs, a layer of crystal, scalding tears instantly spread uncontrollably.

Those were not tears of being moved.

That was... resonance.

It was the shock of "I understand you."

It was the realization of "So you are too."

It was the tremor of destinies intertwining... spanning across different fields, different eras, different circumstances, yet ultimately pointing to the same person, the same unbelievable fate.

Qin Shuyi's final gaze, and Lin Ruoxuan's tear-sparkling gaze below the stage, amidst countless uncomprehending lines of sight and roaring applause, met distantly and briefly for an instant.

Damn, this author really loves his long paragraphs...