167: Chapter 167 Two titans were stunned: You call this your trump card?

After three rounds of drinks, the banquet didn't end too late.

On Beining City's side, they directly arranged for the two to stay in an independent small building at the very back of the guesthouse. The location was quiet with sufficient security, and opening the window even allowed them to see the Chengbei New District in the distance, which was still lit up.

In the room, Su Qingxue had just hung up her coat when she turned around to see Lu Li already throwing himself entirely into the sofa.

Like a salted fish that had completely lost its dreams.

"Tired?"

She walked over and asked, standing by his side.

"Meetings aren't tiring."

Lu Li closed his eyes, his tone half-dead. "Socializing is also fine."

"The most tiring part is that the things packed in my head right now are getting more and more dangerous."

Su Qingxue's movements paused slightly.

She looked down at him, her expression gradually becoming serious.

"Is it because of Nuclear Fusion?"

Lu Li opened his eyes and glanced at her.

"You guessed it, as expected."

Su Qingxue didn't reply to this. She just sat down next to him and kept her voice very soft.

"When you were looking at the materials these past two days, your state was different from before."

"And you don't really have a greedy personality."

"You keep trump cards, but if keeping something in your own hands does more harm than good, you'll instead want to hand it over as quickly as possible."

She paused here.

"So, the thing this time... is huge?"

Lu Li was silent for two seconds, but in the end, he nodded.

"Bigger than all the previous ones."

He leaned the back of his head against the sofa and stared at the ceiling, his tone carrying a rare touch of seriousness.

"Whether it's the 5nm Lithography Machine, the Robot, or the Virtual Helmet, in the end, they are all about strong technology, strong industries, and strong national power."

"But Nuclear Fusion isn't."

"That is the energy foundation."

"Once this technology truly matures, it won't just affect one company, one industry, or even a country's economy for a few years."

"It will directly rewrite civilization's energy ledger."

Su Qingxue listened quietly without interrupting.

She knew Lu Li rarely used such heavy words.

Once he did, it usually only meant one thing—

The weight of this thing was truly massive to a certain extent.

"Are you planning to hand it over?"

She asked.

"I have to."

Lu Li answered very decisively.

"Keeping this thing in my hands is actually bad."

"You could even say—the longer I keep it, the bigger the trouble."

As he said this, a faint coldness flashed in his eyes.

"I even suspect that if the news really leaks out, those people abroad will go crazy enough to flip the table directly."

Su Qingxue frowned slightly.

"And yet you still want to hand it over?"

"Precisely because they will go crazy, I have to hand it over even more."

Lu Li turned his head to look at her and smiled, though the smile wasn't lighthearted.

"Something like Nuclear Fusion is impossible for me to keep under wraps and work on privately alone."

"No matter how ridiculous I am on my own, it's impossible to conjure up an entire industrial chain and national-level resource mobilization out of thin air."

"Only by implementing it as quickly as possible and getting it into the state's hands as soon as possible will it be truly safe."

Su Qingxue listened, then fell silent for a long time.

Finally, she gently held his hand.

"Then what you're worried about isn't whether to hand it over."

"It's whether you can still continue to be as free as you are now after handing it over."

Lu Li looked at her and suddenly smiled.

"You really understand me best."

He said it lightly, but Su Qingxue couldn't smile at all.

Because this was indeed the most realistic problem.

Nuclear Fusion and those previous technologies were not on the same order of magnitude at all.

It was no longer a question of 'whether the state will value it'.

But rather 'how the state will value it'.

The room fell silent for a moment.

Su Qingxue suddenly said in a low voice:

"Do you trust Elder Wu and Elder Zhang?"

"Yes."

Lu Li didn't hesitate at all.

"Then that's enough."

Su Qingxue looked at him, her tone very light yet very steady.

"Leave the rest to them to balance."

Lu Li stared at her for two seconds, and finally let out a soft 'Mhm'.

"Alright then."

"Then we'll listen to President Su."

As he spoke, he seemed to recall something and suddenly sat up a bit straighter.

"By the way, there's something even more ridiculous than Nuclear Fusion."

Su Qingxue was startled.

"What?"

Lu Li glanced at her, his expression somewhat strange.

"Anti-gravity Personal Flying Vehicle."

Su Qingxue: "..."

She was silent for two seconds, confirming she hadn't misheard.

"Anti... gravity?"

"Yes."

Lu Li rubbed his temples, his tone carrying a hint of disbelief. "I originally thought that a personal flying vehicle would at most be the usual setup of propellers, vector thrust, and exoskeleton-assisted balance."

"But when I opened the blueprint to look—"

"It's not propulsion-based; it's Anti-gravity."

This time, even Su Qingxue was left speechless.

Because no matter how ridiculous Nuclear Fusion was, at least logically it could still fit into the framework of modern physics.

"But Anti-gravity..."

This thing already sounded a bit like fantasy.

"How is it achieved?"

She finally couldn't help but ask.

Lu Li pondered for a moment, trying his best to explain in a way she could quickly understand:

"To put it simply, it's not 'eliminating gravity out of thin air,' but rather constructing a local gravitational gradient shift through a high-frequency superconducting ring array."

"It will form an extremely short-range, extremely high-density field around the device."

"This field doesn't directly counteract Earth's gravity, but instead causes the effective gravity vector experienced by the vehicle to deflect and decay."

Su Qingxue blinked as she listened.

Seeing her expression, Lu Li knew she understood less than thirty percent of it, so he simply put it in more layman's terms:

"You can understand it as—"

"It's not 'pushing' a person into the sky."

"But rather, changing the concept of 'falling down'."

"It first makes you belong less to the ground, and then, combined with a micro-attitude propulsion and inertial stabilization system, sends you up."

Su Qingxue probably understood a bit this time, and a rare look of shock surfaced in her eyes.

"In other words, even in your previous life, you didn't touch upon this level?"

"Forget about touching upon it."

Lu Li twitched the corner of his mouth. "I didn't even see the door."

"If this thing is taken out and said to be technology from a hundred years in the future, I would believe it."

After saying this, he himself fell silent for a moment.

In the room, only the occasional low mechanical rumble from the distant construction site outside the window remained.

A few seconds later, Lu Li stood up.

"Forget it."

"Let's sleep first."

"Tomorrow we go back to Mingzhu, and after that, I still have to go meet Elder Wu and Elder Zhang."

"This time—"

He looked out the window, his eyes gradually darkening.

"I have to take out a portion of what is truly my secret weapon."

...

Three days later.

Jingzhou, a certain scientific research conference center with no house number.

The meeting room wasn't large, but the furnishings were minimalist to the extreme.

A long table, white walls, sealed windows—even the water cups were so uniform they looked as if they had been measured with a ruler.

Elder Wu and Elder Zhang were already sitting there.

Neither of the two elders was young; one had experienced true storms, while the other was almost like an anchor in China's scientific and technological system.

But today, their expressions were very serious.

Because Lu Li had taken the initiative to request a meeting and had explicitly stated—

The level of the thing he brought this time was higher than any time before.

The door opened.

Lu Li walked in, still with that lazy appearance, carrying a black briefcase in his hand, with No. 18 following behind him.

The moment Elder Wu saw him, his first reaction wasn't to speak, but to first sweep a glance at his chest.

That glance was full of deep meaning.

Lu Li didn't even need to guess to know what this old man was thinking.

Sure enough.

Before they had even exchanged a couple of pleasantries after taking their seats, Elder Wu spoke first:

"Little Lu."

"That Battle Armor of yours from last time... that thing on the chest, is it really a reactor?"

Elder Zhang was originally still drinking tea, but his hand paused slightly upon hearing this, and his gaze instantly lifted.

Lu Li: "..."

He knew it.

After that time on the bridge, this question was bound to come sooner or later.

"Strictly speaking, it's a high-density compact energy core."

Lu Li's tone was very calm. "If you insist on understanding it in the direction of fusion, it's not entirely wrong either."

As soon as those words fell,

Elder Wu and Elder Zhang fell silent at the same time.

In the meeting room, even the air seemed to quiet down for an instant.

Elder Zhang put down his cup first, staring at Lu Li for a few seconds, his voice deepening slightly:

"So, what you brought today—"

Lu Li nodded.

Without beating around the bush or teasing them,

he directly placed an encrypted storage drive on the table and pushed it over.

"The complete technological path for controllable Nuclear Fusion."

"The material system, magnetic confinement structure, core algorithm model, quantum control correction, and engineered reactor design are all inside."

This time, it was a literal dead silence across the entire room.

Elder Wu sat up straight.

Elder Zhang also sat up straight.

The two elders looked at the overly quiet storage drive on the table, their eyes even showing a moment of daze.

Nuclear Fusion.

Not a proof of concept.

Not a breakthrough in a certain link.

But—the complete set.

The weight behind these words was so heavy that it almost slowed down one's breathing.