While Zhao Yi was fretting about how to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, Ni Hongyu set down the phone he had been speaking on with his superiors and fell into a state of 'disorientation' in the positron-electron collider experimental laboratory.
"A brand new neutron generator? A theoretical paper?"
"Zhao Yi..."
Ni Hongyu remembered how, during the holidays, when Zhao Yi had come to the High Energy Institute, he had taken Zhao Yi on a tour of the laboratories in the Institute. They discussed the neutron generator project for a while. At that time, Zhao Yi seemed to have asked a question. He had said, "What would happen if someone else made a neutron generator?" Ni Hongyu had thought about it and gave a few explanations, but later just forgot about it and even found it somewhat amusing in retrospect.
Someone else making a neutron generator? Was he joking?