A nation's industrial development begins with junior engineers.

Chapter 756 The Addictive Drug

The research institute was so quiet in the dead of night that only the sound of the wind outside the window could be heard, swirling the remaining snow and pattering against the glass.

After Jiang Xia finished gnawing on a paw that was as big as his head, he rubbed his stomach and headed towards Teacher Shunshou's office.

This giant claw was naturally a special treat sent by Xiong Huoyan, his senior uncle, to reward his beloved junior nephew. According to his description, that claw was a treasure. He wouldn't have taken it out if Jiang Xia hadn't promised to give him some LED lights in advance to replace the old instrument lights on the J-6 fighter jet.

Jiang Xia watched as his senior uncle, Xiong, hurriedly put away the bone he had just finished gnawing on, and knew that what his senior uncle had said was true...

But none of that matters!

Right now, Jiang Xia just wants to work himself to the bone!

Before dinner, Old Wang dragged Squad Leader Ru along to investigate Liu Shicai's background. When the two returned to report, they discovered that this so-called "Section Chief Liu" was entirely self-proclaimed!

Just a week ago, he was just an ordinary staff member in the security department of Factory 615. After dragging the factory director out for a public parade, he took advantage of the chaos to give himself the title of "acting department head".

This was completely different from the information given by the "investigation team" earlier. Old Wang immediately curled his lip: "Those people in the investigation team have been investigating for half a month and they still haven't figured out the person's position...!"

Old Wang, who has spent years working on the front lines and dealing with all sorts of monsters and demons, was quite disdainful of the investigation team's methodical, even somewhat sluggish, approach to work.

Trusting his intuition and methods, he decided to conduct a "reconnaissance mission" with Squad Leader Ru to find out Liu Shicai's background and recent movements from the outside.

In his words, "They go their own way, we'll go into our own forest—let's see who gets the real stuff first!"

Don't be fooled by Lao Wang's silliness when he follows Jiang Xia around like a husky. If you really think that way, then you're the real idiot!

However, Jiang Xia was not interested in Lao Wang's investigative methods at all.

He couldn't be bothered with the specifics of the investigation; arresting people and solving cases was Old Wang's specialty. His goal was very clear: find the gold!

This guy who believes in deus ex machina loves nothing more than overcoming ten skills with sheer force!

Instead of spending a lot of energy tracking down a cunning suspect, it's better to pinpoint the location of the gold directly, leaving no room for any conspiracy to hide!

The key to achieving this goal lies in that modified radar that can "look down".

But Jiang Xia was still unsure about how to modify it to transform it from detecting geological structures to relatively accurately locating high-density metals.

Radar systems were not his main business, after all.

But it doesn't matter. People often say that to get by in the world, you need connections, a background, money, ruthlessness, and good luck.

Jiang Xia felt that he met all these criteria. So without saying a word, he made a phone call directly to Teacher Zhongyi, who was conducting the "Four-in-One Therapy".

"Teacher Zhongyi, how have you been feeling lately?" Jiang Xia asked warmly, holding the receiver.

The encrypted channel of the digital radio station connected quickly. Teacher Zhongyi's voice, hoarse like that of a tuberculosis patient, was full of complaints: "It's Xiao Jiang... Ugh, don't even mention it! That Dr. Fangzhou prescribed me a bunch of medicine, saying it was some kind of... quadruple therapy. Good heavens, I have to take medicine every day like it's a meal, without missing a single one. Now even my burps taste like medicine, I feel so full!"

Quadruple therapy does require taking a lot of medication, but taking as much as you want is a bit of an exaggeration.

However, Jiang Xia still had some doubts about taking medicine as much as he wanted.

What kind of medicine did you take?

"There are some to chew, some to be taken with hot water, and some small round pieces to be held under the tongue..."

"Hey, not only is the way to take that medicine weird, but it also tastes a bit spicy..." Teacher Zhongyi's voice suddenly lowered, as if he were whispering.

"After sucking it in, I felt dizzy, my face burned, and my forehead throbbed. I felt lightheaded, like I'd drunk two ounces of water..." Teacher Zhongyi muttered. "You know what, it's pretty intoxicating. It's been so long since I've had two ounces..."

As Jiang Xia listened, a bead of cold sweat silently slid down his forehead.

Small pills, sublingual administration, dizziness, facial flushing, and palpitations—this is clearly nitroglycerin! That's a medication for angina, and has absolutely nothing to do with tuberculosis!

Good heavens, is Dr. Fang Zhou seizing the opportunity to jump straight into human trials? Since he can't find any monkeys in Beijing, he's using Professor Zhongyi as his experimental subject!

No, I have to contact Dr. Fang right away. Nitroglycerin can't be taken like this as a daily medication; rapid tolerance can be fatal. Luckily, sildenafil isn't available yet, otherwise, if Professor Zhongyi were taking these two medications together, he'd definitely be in serious trouble…

"Ahem... Dr. Fang's medications are always a bit 'strong.' I'll remind him to be careful in a bit!" Jiang Xia said dryly, quickly getting to the point.

"Professor Zhongyi, I have a technical question I'd like to ask you. We've encountered an urgent task..."

We have a piece of equipment on hand, a modified old radar used by Institute 607. It was originally intended for geological exploration; it can emit ultra-low frequency pulses to detect underground structures…”

Jiang Xia briefly introduced the equipment's condition and the difficulties it faced. At the same time, out of consideration for Teacher Zhongyi, Jiang Xia thoughtfully replaced the missing gold with "minerals".

Hehe, I know you're dizzy and can't read after taking nitroglycerin, so let's be careful not to let the badge warriors cause you trouble.

Jiang Xia gave herself a thumbs up for being so thoughtful, then picked up her pen with anticipation, ready to start taking notes.

“Minerals? Hmm… Minerals do have unique properties in reflecting electromagnetic waves… but it’s difficult to find them underground using radar.”

Teacher Zhongyi paused, seemingly in thought, his voice broken yet clear:

"Radar waves attenuate significantly when penetrating the ground, and there are too many jumbled echoes... so they can't be seen directly. However... perhaps we can try a different approach."

"Don't try to 'look' at gold itself, but rather 'look' at the anomalies caused by its existence."

“The density of various minerals is different, and the geological structure of the burial site is usually slightly different... It may be denser? Or it may be accompanied by other minerals? This will cause extremely subtle differences in the propagation speed, reflection intensity and waveform of radar waves when they pass through.”

"You need to find a way... to enhance the radar's downward-looking penetration mode, adjust the wavelength to be longer, sacrifice some resolution for increased penetration. Then, most importantly... you need a very sophisticated signal analysis method, not looking at strong echoes, but extracting those extremely weak but abnormal anomalous signal points from the clutter..."

Teacher Zhongyi took a breath and concluded, "Theoretically... there's a slight possibility. But in reality, it requires hardware modifications and a completely new analysis algorithm... This workload, Xiao Jiang, is no easier than finding a needle in a haystack. You... really want to do it?"

“We have to do it! But it sounds really troublesome. I have an idea for signal analysis…” Jiang Xia’s voice was filled with excitement, “You don’t know yet, but our chip has already rolled off the production line! 10mm line width! I think we can put everything else aside for now and just focus on finding the missing gold.”

"Oh...oh...oh! You were in charge of this project too, Xiao Jiang? Oh dear, this is really..." Teacher Zhongyi exclaimed repeatedly on the other end of the phone, then changed the subject: "The missing gold? You mean the 615 factory incident? Didn't the newspaper say the culprit has been found?"

"Well, you can't believe everything you read in the newspapers," Jiang Xia mumbled, not wanting to delve into the case's oddities on the phone, and quickly steered the conversation back to the technical aspects. "The key now is to find the evidence. Professor Zhongyi, I understand the approach you just mentioned—to 'squeeze' anomalies out of the noise. But specifically for a highly conductive metal like gold, is there a more... more targeted method?"

"Uh...that's baseless. I don't have a deep understanding of the electromagnetic properties of metals..."

"However, gold has extremely high conductivity, so the electromagnetic waves it emits will decay much faster than those emitted by the surrounding medium..."

"There's a book by the Russians, I think it's called 'Electromagnetic Response Characteristics of Metallic Minerals,' which mentions some relevant parameters... but I only read the cover..."

Okay, there's an older gentleman who seems to be doing karst landform research near you. I'll contact him and get back to you. He's an expert in this field.

"You should first explore the path of 'capturing the secondary field phase anomaly caused by the 'eddy current effect'!

"Okay! Thank you!"

"By the way, next time Dr. Fangzhou tries to put a pill in your mouth, you have to refuse. Just say I told you to!"

"Huh? No way, I actually quite like that dizzy feeling..."

"..."

"Absolutely forbidden!"