Chapter 211: Rumors

When the black girl heard Zhang Lisheng’s words that indicated that he was a graduate student in the Biology Faculty, she raised her brows. After verifying the young man’s statement through LAN in the school, she looked at her dispirited colleague who was in a daze beside her before turning her head sideways to wink and whisper, “Hey, I like high IQ boys the most. In my opinion, great intelligence is more attractive than big muscles. Soon-to-be Dr. Zhang Lisheng, I can help you get ‘The Illustrated Handbook of Bio-anatomy and Chemical Reaction’ if you become my boyfriend tonight. However, if you don’t, I can only tell you which bookshelf it’s in and you’ll have to look for it yourself. The choice is up to you. What choice are you picking then?”

“What do you mean?” Zhang Lisheng failed to grasp her point and asked.

“Forget it, baby. Since you’re the most innocent boy at Stanford, I’ll make an exception to service you for ‘free’ this time! Wait a moment, I’ll get the book for you.” The girl was stunned for a moment as she looked at the confused young man. Suddenly, she clasped her mouth with a hand to chuckle before walking quickly to the bookshelf in the hall. Very soon, she returned to the front desk while holding a big book.

It only took her less than 20 seconds in total, but the black girl’s expression appeared to be much paler.

After she had settled the loaning procedure of the book ‘The Illustrated Handbook of Bio-anatomy and Chemical Reaction’ that had a black hard plastic cover vividly and realistically sketched with a half-skinned corpse lying on a rusty autopsy bed, she handed it to Zhang Lisheng. She could not help but comment, “The cover of this book really makes me feel uncomfortable.”

“Maybe.” After Zhang Lisheng took the book, he looked at the cover that was exactly identical on the one shown on the computer screen before flashing a smile and walking out of the library. Breathing in the fresh air at night, he rode back to his dormitory building on his bike.

As he walked into the dormitory while holding a book, the janitor who had a big square-shaped head and who had great physical strength recognized him at a glance and deliberately called out to him, “Young man, are you Zhang Lisheng from A011?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m Hammy Walter, the night janitor of this dormitory. I just received a notice from the Student Management Office that according to California law, you must return to the dormitory before 12 am on non-holiday days. If you exceed the time, you’ll have to report your whereabouts to me. You can just text me through my phone or Facebook. My number is…” Perhaps the janitor had received some warning when he received the notice from the Student Management Office, so the janitor who was usually rude appeared amiable to the young man.

The first-year Stanford students who came to the front of the student dormitory and who had never heard that they would have to report to the dormitory janitor when they go to the college could not help but slow down their footsteps. Perplexed, they looked at Zhang Lisheng who stood face to face with the janitor.

The young man could only flash a wry smile and nodded—”Alright, I got it, Mr. Hammy!”—before rapidly walking back to his dorm.

In the next few days, Zhang Lisheng laid down on the bed and read ‘The Illustrated Handbook of Bio-anatomy and Chemical Reaction’ to spend his time. On top of that, an outrageous rumor began to spread out in his dorm—that a fairly remarkable person that the California court directly monitored had resided in this dorm.

A wise man did not believe in rumors but the word ‘wise’ here did not refer to intelligence, but ‘wisdom’. Very soon, the rumor intensified among the immature first-year students. Meanwhile, the center of this new campus legend unknowingly went to his supervisor’s lab to report himself after he finished reading ‘The Illustrated Handbook of Bio-anatomy and Chemical Reaction’.

He had learned from the Internet that a giant scientific laboratory could accommodate hundreds of scientists that were divided into dozens of research groups which could solve scientific problems together at the same time. Zhang Lisheng had a premonition that Steven’s lab would not be big.

However, after he had finished his breakfast in the morning, he shuttled around Stanford’s vast campus with a group of college students who rushed to the class on a bicycle like racing under the pleasantly warm sunlight. After a while, he finally found the laboratory building. When he walked up to the third floor and entered the biological laboratory built around the two color-changing soft beetles he contributed, Zhang Lisheng was surprised to see that this laboratory would actually turn out to be so small.

It was a room of no more than three hundred square meters divided into three transparent and one opaque compartment at the four corners using special glasses. In the middle where the public area lied, other than a circle of sofas and coffee tables where the researchers could rest after a tiresome day, there were also several large unknown test instruments. That was it, that’s the laboratory.

Early in the morning, Steven had already made a cup of coffee while sitting on the sofa in the public area of ​​the lab. He did so while doing something on his tablet computer. As for the few glass rooms in the corner of the room, there were already people carrying out their experiments there.

Zhang Lisheng, who had changed into soft slippers and a white coat according to standard experimental procedures, walked quietly towards his supervisor’s back. “Professor, good morning. This is the lab you built with a quarter of the experimental budget of Stanford’s Biology Faculty? It looks different from what I imagined. ”

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“Oh, you’re here, Lisheng!” Steven replied without turning around. “How much do you think the experimental budget of Stanford’s Biology Faculty can get? Besides, this lab is not as simple as you think. Just these few machines beside me are already enough to attract three young scientists who have received a doctorate degree in science to sacrifice their temporary interests for postdoctoral research. Can’t you see? They’re in the glass rooms together with a group of graduate students who are equally ambitious but of little talent, vainly hoping to rely on the advanced experimental environment to produce amazing results and become famous afterwards…”

“Oh, Professor! You’re really tart and mean!” Zhang Lisheng went around to sit down with Steven. “How is the progress with the lab construction in the foreign world?”

“Well, they can’t hear us in the glass rooms anyway. About that, Maggette said that it’s a little difficult. If it’s Shrimp World No. 1, it could be directly implemented. Yet due to a lack of military strength, the government cannot guarantee the safety of the lab in Shrimp World No. 2…”

“Let’s just take the risk then if safety cannot be ensured! An undeveloped island with dense pristine jungles and a piece of land that has matured into civilization before that has been tossed and turned where one could remember everything like the back of their hands. As long as you’re not an idiot, any biologist would know where to go to build a laboratory.”

“You know what, Lisheng? Other than the fact that you’re lucky and you’re a millionaire, what I like most about you is your decisiveness and your daring spirit to sacrifice for science!” Steven put down the tablet from his hand and took a good look at Zhang Lisheng. As arrogance disappeared with a flash from his face, he said, “I also answered Maggette like that! Even though what we’re doing is not as sacred and clean as what the outsiders think. However, if we want to stand on the peak, we must dare to fight other than having luck!”

“Professor, you are a biologist, not a bank robber!” The young man said with a smile.

“If you’ve been in this field for a long time, you’d know that there’s almost no difference. One is to snatch the wisdom of others while the other one is to snatch someone else’s money.” Steven took a sip of coffee and stood up before shouting out loud, “Everyone, stop your experiments and come out. Let me introduce a new working partner to you guys.”

Upon hearing his shout, the people in the glass rooms soon came out in confusion.

“This is Zhang Lisheng! My former collaborator and a future genius biologist!” Steven first pointed at Zhang Lisheng as he introduced the young man to the others as his ‘collaborator’ instead of his graduate student. This, no doubt, greatly elevated the young man’s status in the laboratory.

After that, Steven pointed to a burly, ugly, and ferocious-looking fat man in his thirties who looked more like a butcher than a scientist, an ordinary-looking Caucasian young man in his twenties who had a long face, and a solemn-looking young woman wearing square-framed thick glasses. Steven then introduced all three of them to Zhang Lisheng. “Boyle, a doctor who graduated his Ph.D. last year. He’s now responsible for the study of the color-changing pigmentation of the beetle’s exoskeleton. Pamil, who graduated from his Ph.D. the same year as Boyle last year. He’s in charge of the study of the exoskeleton bone structure of the beetle’s soft body. Shalin, a doctor who just got her doctorate degree this year. She’s in charge of the study of the visceral compression resistance of soft beetles. They’re the heads in-charge of three different topics of our laboratory.”

As he was introducing the members of the laboratory, Zhang Lisheng nodded his head while greeting them continuously, “It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Boyle… Dr. Pamil… Dr. Shalin…”

Boyle, Pamil, and Shalin also appeared to be very polite towards Zhang Lisheng, particularly Pamil who even took the young man’s hand and shook it. “Mr. Zhang Lisheng. I’ve read about the paper on the soft beetle you and Professor Steven published in the Science journal before. It’s the foundation of the research work in our laboratory. I’m very happy to be able to work with you. ”

After seeing Zhang Lisheng acquainting himself with the laboratory’s topic heads, Steven then introduced the laboratory’s ‘research assistants’, also known as the graduate students who did all the ‘crappy jobs’, to the young man.

The supervisors of these graduate students put their name on Steven’s laboratory, which could be said as one of the ways to apply for research funding, but they rarely come to the lab. Instead, they were busy with their own research.

They would usually send their own students to deal with errands, so for this reason, these research assistants would rotate every few days. Even so, it would always be the same 20 or so people coming here every now and then.

Zhang Lisheng greeted these graduate students who were a few years older than him. With that, he had officially integrated into the laboratory and became one of them.

“Lisheng, my task in the laboratory is to summarize the research results obtained by Boyle, Pamil, and Shalin from the three research topics. Then, by experimenting on what we know, we could finally form a scientific conclusion. From now on, you’ll be my research assistant. Well, you have a strong ability in carrying out things by yourself, so if you want to do some small research of your interest, you can carry out the experiment independently when I’m not using the lab…”

“Professor, if you allow me to carry out my experiment independently, can I get a separate glass room?”

Steven sighed and shrugged. “I’ll ask Maggette. I think he’d most likely agree to it. However, you’d have to come up with the research assistant you need yourself when you’re carrying the experiment.”

“I’m fast and brisk, so I don’t usually need any assistant,” Seeing that his purpose had been achieved, Zhang Lisheng smiled.