At that very moment, the scene inside the cultivation chamber was transmitted in real time to the observation floor outside.
Watching Xiao Jiguang levitating in midair, Feng Congzhi almost instinctively dropped his jaw into an O. He raised a hand and slapped his bald forehead with a loud smack, completely unaware that his reaction had been captured in its entirety by another camera on-site.
Many years later, when Huaxia’s first declassified documentary, *Qingping*, became a sensational hit upon release, enthusiastic netizens took screenshots of this exact moment and turned it into an iconic internet meme.
Of course, that belonged to the future.
At this moment, the prominent scientist had no idea he would one day experience cyber social death—or internet immortality. His mind was filled only with overwhelming shock and ecstatic disbelief.
"Holy hell... Xiao Jiguang... did he just break through?!"
Hearing this, Pan Yongnian snapped out of his daze as well. He jerked his head down and looked at another monitor.
There, on Xiao Jiguang’s biometric scan display, he saw eight deep-crimson regions, including the crown of his head.
At the same time, under the imaging contrast of the complex formed by germanate ions and spiritual energy, delicate threads of red traced along Xiao Jiguang’s torso like ribbons, linking the eight regions together and forming an internal human circuit shaped like the character 大.
Pan Yongnian shuddered.
Xiao Jiguang’s physical state and the circulation of spiritual energy through his body were identical to the phenomena Lin Yi had described for entering the realm!
In other words...
Just as Feng Congzhi had said, Xiao Jiguang had successfully achieved Awakening!
Although a successful Awakening brought him only into the initial stage of Qi Refining—still a complete nobody in the Tianling Realm—his breakthrough carried monumental weight for their home world!
On a smaller scale, it validated the hard work of the research teams led by Pan Yongnian, Ma Heng, Huang Rong, and the others.
On a larger scale, it proved that as long as conditions were right, cultivation could seamlessly take root in their home world!
The future of the entire Huaxia nation now held boundless possibilities.
This was truly a milestone worthy of being etched into the history of civilization!
In truth, Pan Yongnian and Feng Congzhi were far from the only ones.
After a brief moment of stunned silence, nearly every expert present came to their senses, and a massive cheer erupted across the floor, roaring as loud as the atomic blast over Hiroshima.
"He entered the realm! This is undeniably entering the realm!"
"Well done! It worked!"
"Magnificent!"
"Long live Huaxia! Long live!"
These leading scientists—whose lowest academic title was at least Distinguished Young Scholar, and whose average age exceeded fifty—cast aside all their usual stern professional dignity, jumping and dancing beside the control consoles like madmen.
The young scholar who had voiced amazement when Chen Zhengze led the team into the cultivation chambers threw his glasses straight into the air.
Beside him, ninety-one-year-old Huang Rong pumped his fist while being half-forced by Ma Yuan to swallow several heart pills. Barely two seconds after gulping them down, he was back to pumping his fists again, looking fired up enough to jump into an Octagon cage match with fellow physics luminary Xu Xiujie.
Everyone seemed decades younger in an instant.
Suddenly, Pan Yongnian felt a hand tighten on his right shoulder.
His initial thought was that Chen Zhengze was looking for him again, but he quickly noticed something amiss.
The hand exerting pressure this time felt frail and weak.
Puzzled, he turned his head. The moment he recognized the face, he froze, nearly leaping out of his skin in fright. "Sun Lao?!"
Indeed, the person resting a hand on Pan Yongnian’s shoulder was none other than Sun Lao himself!
Approaching a century in age, this venerable national hero had left his wheelchair behind. One hand gripped the edge of the desk, while the other rested on Pan Yongnian’s shoulder, keeping him barely upright.
Hearing Pan Yongnian’s cry of alarm, Ma Heng, who had been cheering with both arms raised nearby, quickly spun around. Stunned for half a second, he immediately stepped beside Sun Lao and gently supported his other arm.
"Sun Lao, how could you stand up all by yourself?! That’s far too dangerous! You should have told the two of us first!"
Fear lingered thick in Ma Heng’s voice.
Sun Lao was one of the Republic’s few surviving foundational scientific pioneers. Calling him a national treasure hardly scratched the surface of his importance. If he fell and injured himself, neither Ma Heng nor Pan Yongnian would ever forgive themselves for the rest of their lives.
"Ah, I’m fine, I’m fine."
Sun Guozhu shook his head stubbornly upon hearing the reprimand, though after a moment of hesitation, he allowed Ma Heng to steady his arm.
"Xiao Ma, I’m just so happy. In my excitement, my body stood up on its own."
With that, Sun Guozhu gestured with his chin toward the monitor and said to them, "Come, Xiao Ma, Xiao Pan, help me get a bit closer."
Pan Yongnian and Ma Heng exchanged a glance, then carefully supported him as he took two steps forward.
Arriving before the display, Sun Guozhu breathed softly, gazing at Xiao Jiguang, who remained suspended in midair with his eyes closed. For a long time, the elder did not speak.
The three of them stood in quiet contemplation.
"Yongnian, Xiao Ma,"
Sun Guozhu suddenly broke the silence after nearly half a minute.
"Don’t laugh at me, but back when I was working at the Fifth Academy on reverse-engineering the Soviet P-2 missile, I actually fantasized about ordinary flesh-and-blood people flying into the sky."
"Back then, Old Huang from the Second Branch—Academician Huang Peikang—and I teamed up to calculate how much physical strength a human body would need to fly a hundred meters in the air. Oh, and whether a human could ride an F missile for an airborne drop."
"Later, word of it reached Comrade Yaoping, and he wrote a letter scolding us for having too much time on our hands... ha!"
As he spoke, Sun Guozhu chuckled softly.
This was a charming anecdote from Huaxia’s aerospace history.
In his youth, Sun Guozhu had been sent by the state to study at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in the Soviet Union due to his outstanding academic performance. During his stay, he happened to read Tsiolkovsky’s *Beyond the Planet Earth*.
From then on, he became fascinated by science fiction rooted in rigorous scientific principles.
Later, he completed his studies and returned home to work at the Fifth Academy, where he became good friends with Academician Huang Peikang, who was also fluent in Russian.
After the successful test launches of the P-2 and the F-1, the two men had no active projects toward the end of that year. They pooled their quotas to secure a week’s worth of time on the mechanical pinwheel calculators, offering two packages of Soviet chocolates as payment to recruit someone to calculate the theoretical parameters required for an unassisted human body to fly.
The final result, of course, proved entirely impossible.
When word reached Old Wang, Comrade Wang Yaoping, he wrote a letter teasing them mercilessly about it.
Incidentally, among the recruited helpers who had been coaxed by chocolate into running calculations was a young fellow named Yu, who had just returned to the capital to settle down and await assignment after an internal restructuring at Division Two of the Institute of Atomic Energy...
"..."
Having finished reminiscing about those youthful days, Sun Guozhu leaned forward slightly, his tone shifting from lighthearted to deeply wistful.
"Last winter, Old Huang passed away. Early last month, Comrade Yaoping went ahead of us as well. Both lived long, fulfilling lives."
"Neither of them could have imagined that the wild fantasy we dreamed up in our boredom would truly come to fruition one day."
Ma Heng showed concern. "Sun Lao..."
"I’m fine, no need to worry," Sun Guozhu cut in before he could finish, continuing softly:
"To tell the truth, had this been before I arrived at the base, I probably would have felt a deep regret for Old Huang and Comrade Yaoping. After all, they missed this moment by just the narrowest sliver of time."
"But after reading that report on the anti-sigma-minus hyperon last time, that knot in my chest completely dissolved."
"What does it matter if people pass on? Everyone’s soul remains tied to this soil. What happens here that they wouldn’t know?"
"For all we know, those two old fellows are sitting with Old Yu and Comrade Wang Jing right now, nibbling on chocolates and watching us with big grins on their faces."
As he spoke, Sun Guozhu looked up and softly murmured:
"*Fluttering, dancing light and high,*
*Year after year the seasons fly;*
*An age-old dream of flight on high,*
*When shall we scale the vaulted sky...*"
"An age-old dream of flight, today ascending the highest heavens... today ascending the highest heavens..."
Pan Yongnian looked over and realized that without anyone noticing, tears had welled up in the eyes of this elderly man who had dedicated his entire life to the Republic.
Chapter 55