14 It’s Alright As Long As I Can Learn

"The construction of Earth Age has consumed 2.07% of the entire population's GDP yearly. Over the years, the total construction cost had reached a shocking amount of 159 trillion federal dollars!"

That was an astronomical sum of money so as time passed, the general populace would obviously be unwilling to pay.

It had to be known that… there were still many people on Earth who were poor!

Li Zhen sighed once again. "The Deep Space Foundation has to at least prepare trillions of federal dollars to pave an optical path for the Earth Age."

"In the following 20 years, Jupiter's industrial base would have to collect large quantities of nuclear fuel for it to undergo fusion to be used to launch long-range lasers…

Zhang Yuan nodded and fell into deep thought.

Earth Age had adopted propulsion technology supported by nuclear fusion and light force.

Light force referred to using pressure from light to create a pushing force. When photons hit a smooth surface, there would be a change in the direction of motion similar to a ping-pong ball rebounding from the wall and providing the wall with the corresponding force to propel the spaceship.

However, only using light force from the sun was impossible to push a 10-million-ton giant spaceship to travel at fast speeds. Only with the addition of man-made light sources from the Moon and Jupiter, would it then produce enough pressure to propel the spaceship forward.

Even though the nuclear fuel on Jupiter was near inexhaustible, it still required labor costs.

Besides, the optical path had to be continuously activated for twenty years and there were hundreds of thousands of laser-emitting devices that needed to be continuously replaced, which was another large money drain.

It was hard to imagine how Profession Qi Yuanshan, the father of nuclear fusion, had been able to successfully persuade those shrewd businessmen and sophisticated politicians to give the green light for this project.

Truthfully, the super large-scale project of deep space colonization provided no real benefits at all.

Even after a century or thousands of years, it was impossible for any benefits to be generated. Therefore, it was very weird in that sense.

After they chatted for some time, Li Cheng also found it boring to talk about such a topic with the younger generation. "Having sufficient capital budget or not is a problem the top leaders have to resolve, so you don't have to worry about it. It's enough for you to do your own part."

He shook his head and suddenly seemed to have thought of something. He immediately stopped eating and stood up from the dining table, walked into his study room, and minded his own business as he pondered about some problems.

Even though Zhang Yuan was curious about the gossip concerning this topic, he could only give up when encountered with such a situation.

After they finished dinner, Zhang Yuan secretly commented, "Our dads are so similar. Both of them are workaholics. They would always suddenly have some inspiration and excuse themselves to quickly jot down their ideas. It would be like a landmine if we were to disturb them now. Even if we just slightly disturb them, they would either explode in anger or shout out a string of incomprehensible words."

"You are so right!"

Li Zhendong agreed with Zhang Yuan. "Do you remember when I asked my dad why was 1+1=2 as a child? Do you know what he responded with? He started talking to me about peano axioms! I was only in kindergarten at that time. I honestly suspect if he has any common sense."

"Has your sister encountered such a situation?"

"Yes, she has."

Li Zhendong said exaggeratedly, "There was one time when my sister asked him why to calculate the area of a rectangle we needed to multiply length by width. He started babbling on about some euclidean space, inner product, that sort of nonsense. Fortunately, my mom is a normal person. Otherwise, my little sister would have probably turned crazy by now."

Zhang Yuan laughed in response as he started to recall those weird situations he and his father used to get into.

There was one time when he was playing with a Rubik's cube on the sofa when his dad suddenly talked to him about group theory on a whim, he was an eight-year-old child at that time.

That's right, group theory. A theory that Evariste Galois spent an entire night to come up with.

"It's just math that was invented 500 years ago. It's very easy. If you can learn this, your friends around you would look up to you!"

At that time, Mini Zhang Yuan happily said, "I want to learn!"

"The group formed by all operations is called the Rubik's cube group and obviously, it is a non-abelian group. If we deconstruct it into products of simple subgroups and then construct the generator of each subgroup, we can prove its solvability. It has already been proven that all Rubik's cube can be solved within 20 steps."

During this process, Zhang Qiming had been truly enraptured as he fully enjoyed the pleasure of being a teacher.

But alas, he realized that his son seemed to be looking at him blankly. His son totally didn't understand what he was saying.

You don't understand?

Zhang Qiming suddenly uttered a rude remark at his son's reaction, "What an… an idiot!"

It was still unknown if he was referring to his son or himself.

Zhang Yuan released another sigh. He did not have any feelings of resentment when he recalled those previous memories, he instead missed them.

It had been around three years since his father had passed away.

Time really passed by in a flash and in the blink of an eye, three years had passed. The deceased was gone and the only thing that remained was memories.

When he noticed Zhang Yuan's gloomy mood, Li Zhendong turned on the television and changed to a kid's channel that was currently airing a cartoon—Wolves Appearing and Cutie Bear Turning into Sheep.

"Don't just think because I'm a little bear…"

It was a very childish cartoon, but the little girl next to them enjoyed it very much.

Zhang Yuan asked another question, "Won't your parents be sad if you leave?"

"Nope, don't I still have another sister?" He pointed to the ten-year-old little girl on his side and said heartlessly, "they can always give birth to a few more children in the future. Technology nowadays is very advanced so they can have as many as they like. We can afford it."

Li Zhendong continued and said, "Think about it, if I don't go on the spaceship and remain on the moon for work, I can only return home during the Spring Festival for three days every year. I would probably accompany them two hours a day and if we multiply it by 60 years, the total time I could accompany them is 360 hours…"

"Right now, I'm eating home every single day and accompanying them for around seven to eight hours a day. In a month, that would be over two hundred hours. That is more than half the amount of time I can accompany them for the rest of my life. What else is there to feel sad about?"

Zhang Yuan scratched his head at the nonsensical logic.

However, it also sounded somewhat reasonable at the same time.

Li Zhendong's mother smiled and cut some fruits for them as if she was already accustomed to her son's neurotic remarks. "Zhang Yuan, how about you don't go home for today? Come stay at our house and we have more than enough rooms here anyways."

"Sure." Zhang Yuan nodded in response and sighed deep down.

Both their situations were rather similar—the only difference was that Li Zhendong's family was still alive and that he had a perfect family.

However, Zhang Yuan himself was a test tube baby. The sperm was provided by his father and the egg was from an unknown female donor in a human gene bank. Even until now, he did not know who his biological mother was and there was also no need to know.

But who would dislike a kind and amicable mother?

When they were in university, their results were always close to each other. But Li Zhendong was a genius, he could easily get 90+ marks during exams even if he played around, while Zhang Yuan was only a studious top student. He had to fork out more time and hard work to score good results.

That was ultimately due to the difference between their IQs. However, it didn't matter anymore!

With that in mind, Zhang Yuan took out his phone and started using the Super Brain application. When he saw those mathematical symbols, a strange sense of happiness welled up inside him.

'There is no need to envy others. Learning makes me happy, and learning makes me grow!'

'As long as I can learn, I will eventually rule the whole world!'