Quick Transmigration: The Pregnant Little Fairy is Pampered by the Heirless Boss

The moment the flash went out, Xu Weidong saw the cold smile on Karl's lips.

That expression was like an icicle, piercing straight into his spine.

Nobody paid them any attention.

Before the applause in the hall had subsided, three men in black suits had silently surrounded Professor Lederman.

"Professor, the FBI needs your assistance in investigating some matters."

The man in the lead flashed his badge, his voice loud enough for everyone around to hear.

The old professor raised his white eyebrows: "Investigate what? I'm eighty-two years old, how could I possibly threaten national security?"

"Just a routine inquiry." The man in black lifted the old man up without further ado, giving Xu Weidong a meaningful look before leaving.

Lin Zhiyuan's expression changed drastically, and he quickly walked to Xu Weidong's side: "Go back to the hotel immediately to pack your luggage and use the staff entrance."

His voice was very low. "I've prepared a gray Chevrolet at the back door."

"But……"

"No buts!" Professor Lin suddenly raised his voice and said in English, "Mr. Xu, we can discuss the situation of your country's steel industry in detail another day."

At the same time, he quickly wrote "GATE 4" in his palm.

Shen Hongying was the first to react, and she pulled Zhao Bo towards the exit.

Xu Weidong took one last look at Karl, who was surrounded by reporters. The blond man was talking to the camera, and the electronic screen behind him had changed to a slogan that read "Beware of Academic Spies."

In the hotel elevator, Zhao Bo was still trembling: "How could they do this? It was clearly us..."

"Shhh."

Shen Hongying held his wrist tightly, her eyes fixed on the elevator floor display.

When the "7" lit up, she suddenly pressed the "5":

"Let's go to the restaurant first."

Xu Weidong understood, and the three of them pretended to go to the wrong floor, walked through the noisy self-service restaurant, and went down to the underground parking lot through the freight elevator at the back door of the kitchen.

Under the dim lights, a gray sedan was parked quietly next to the water pipe repair shop.

“The license plate is wrong.” Shen Hongying suddenly grabbed Xu Weidong. “Professor Lin was talking about a license plate from State B, but this is from State N.”

Zhao Bo bent down, pretending to tie his shoelaces, his voice trembling: "At two o'clock, there's a black SUV, and there are people inside."

Xu Weidong's back was covered in cold sweat.

He remembered the note Ji Xiaosong had given him before he left, on which several phone numbers were written in pencil.

“Come with me.” He suddenly turned around and pushed open the emergency exit door.

The three of them wandered through the maze-like back alleys, and Xu Weidong's suit was torn open by barbed wire.

As they turned the third corner, Shen Hongying suddenly grabbed them: "Look!"

The television at the newsstand on the street corner was playing the midday news. Carl's face took up half the screen, and the scrolling text below read: "Chinese scholar's academic fraud exposed on the spot; MIT professor suspected of assisting espionage."

"Bullshit!" Zhao Bo slammed his fist against the wall, blood immediately seeping from his knuckles.

Xu Weidong took out a few coins and bought a copy of the "B City Global Daily".

The front-page photo showed him holding a lab notebook, but the caption read, "Red China Steals New Techniques."

"First, find a place to stay."

Xu Weidong crumpled the newspaper into a ball and glanced at the neon lights of the motel across the street.

The hotel room smelled musty.

Shen Hongying used a chair to block the door, while Zhao Bo checked whether the curtains were properly drawn.

Xu Weidong turned on the tap and let the cold water wash over his trembling hands.

The man in the mirror had bloodshot eyes and a crooked tie, looking exactly like those "reactionary academic authorities" he had seen before.

He suddenly remembered his father, the engineer who had returned from studying abroad. It was also on such a cold winter day that he was taken directly from the laboratory and returned delirious, only able to repeatedly mutter, "The gap is too big..."

"XCMG!" Shen Hongying's knocking interrupted his thoughts. "Come and see!"

A special report on materials science is playing on the small TV.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States announced a "revolutionary breakthrough" in the field of nanocrystal boundaries, with strength data ten times higher than that of Red Star Steel.

The blonde female reporter on the screen excitedly said, "This once again proves America's absolute technological leadership."

Zhao Bo suddenly slammed the desk lamp on the ground: "They stole our ideas! The yttrium oxide doping direction is exactly the same!"

"And then do even better," Shen Hongying added softly, tears silently rolling down her cheeks.

Xu Weidong stared at the experimental equipment flashing on the TV screen; those gleaming, high-end instruments were a configuration they could only dream of.

A deep sense of powerlessness washed over me, just like when I watched my father kneel in the snow and be forced to admit that "China's technology is at least a hundred years behind the West."

The sound of police sirens grew louder as they approached the window.

The three of them tensed up simultaneously until the siren gradually faded into the distance.

Zhao Bo slumped onto the bed, his voice hollow: "We'll never catch up, will we?"

Shen Hongying suddenly stood up and pulled out a Little Red Book from the bottom of her suitcase, inside which were several yellowed photos.

That was the scene when the first rolling mill at Hongxing Steel Plant went into operation. The workers were pulling heavy steel billets with ropes, but their faces were full of proud smiles.

"do you know?"

She pointed to a small, thin figure in the photo, “That’s my dad. At the time, foreign experts said that the rolling mill would only last for three months at most, but he and his apprentices repaired and patched it up, and it lasted for twelve years.”

Xu Weidong took the photos and ran his fingertips over the blurry smiling faces.

He recalled the night he successfully built his own spectrometer, and how the old factory director rushed into the warehouse carrying a bottle of liquor.

I remember Lin Xiaomei wiping away her tears with a handkerchief embroidered with a red star;

I remember the "amulet" the three children made from scrap wire...

"Pack your things," he suddenly said. "We're going to the Chinese consulate."

*

On the taxi radio, the host was making fun of the "farce of Chinese scholars".

Shen Hongying quietly grasped Zhao Bo's hand and found that his palm was covered in cold sweat.

Xu Weidong stared intently at the rearview mirror, fearing that a car was following them.

The area in front of the consulate was unusually quiet.

When Xu Weidong took out his passport, the guard's expression visibly relaxed: "Go in quickly, Counselor Wang is waiting for you."

In the reception room, a middle-aged man with slightly graying temples was speaking rapidly into the phone in his local dialect.

After hanging up, he breathed a sigh of relief: "Lin Zhiyuan has been taken away by the FBI, but his legal team at MIT has already intervened."

"What can we do?" Xu Weidong asked.

"Return to China alive."

Counselor Wang handed over three new passports, saying, "There's a diplomatic parcel plane tonight; you can blend in with the entourage."

He paused, then said, "Professor Lederman sent a message that the data doesn't lie, and time will tell."

Xu Weidong opened his new passport; the photo was taken when he applied for the visa, but the name had changed to "Zhang Jianguo".

An indescribable sense of humiliation welled up in my heart, just like when I was forced to watch my father change his name to "Xu Weidong," a name full of the imprint of the times.

"And this too." Counselor Wang took out the latest issue of Science magazine from the drawer. "It just came out this morning."

The cover article is a result of Oak Ridge Laboratory, and Carl's name is prominently printed in the author's column.

Shen Hongying quickly skimmed through the paper, then suddenly pointed to a chart: "This error range... impossible! Unless..."

"Unless they falsify the data."

Consul Wang sneered, "But who would believe that? A country that has to make its own spectrometers accusing a world-class laboratory of fabrication?"