901 Smart City?

Even though her mom warned her not to disturb her brother, when her parents were not watching, Xiao Tong secretly walked over there.

She gulped and pressed her ear on the door.

Hmm…

Why is it so quiet?

Isn’t it supposed to be very loud?

While Xiao Tong was still pondering, that door opened…

“Ouch!”

Xiao Tong took half a step back and covered her forehead.

Lu Zhou froze for a second and looked at his sister.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing…” Xiao Tong looked at Lu Zhou, then looked at Chen Yushan, and even though her forehead was hurting badly, she still curiously said, “Brother… You guys were in there for a while… What were you doing?”

“Discussing some stuff.”

Lu Zhou reached out and gently tapped on his sister’s forehead. He ignored her exaggerated reaction and looked at Chen Yushan instead.

“I’ll send you out.”

“Okay.” Chen Yushan smiled and nodded. She followed Lu Zhou and walked out of the room.

Mother Lu saw Lu Zhou and Chen Yushan walking toward the door, and she quickly came out of the kitchen.

She desperately wanted this pretty girl to stay here for longer, so she thought that her son must have screwed things up again.

“Oh, why are you leaving? Did my son offend you again, tell me what he did, I’ll punish him!”

Chen Yushan smiled and began explaining.

“Oh, nothing happened, auntie, I’m just here to talk about business with Lu Zhou. We’re done talking, so I won’t bother you guys.”

“You’re not bothering us at all! Speaking of which, you don’t have a place to stay in Jiangling, right? Why don’t you live in our house? After all, we have a spare bedroom.”

“That… isn’t the best idea.”

Chen Yushan twirled her fingers around her hair and tried to avoid eye contact.

Lu Zhou looked at his mother and couldn’t stand this anymore.

“Mom, stop giving her a hard time.”

Lu Zhou looked at Chen Yushan.

“Let’s go.”

“Okay…”

After Chen Yushan left the house, Lu Zhou finally sighed in relief.

Thank god he stepped in.

He didn’t know why, but he felt like Chen Yushan was a little unhappy when she left…

Did she have more things to discuss with me?

Who knows…

Lu Zhou watched Chen Yushan walk away and went back into his house. He wanted to continue his mathematics research.

However, when he walked past the sofa in the living room, Xiao Tong playfully kicked his leg.

“What? What do you want?”

“You’re so dumb!”

“…?”

“That’s for hitting my forehead…” Xiao Tong said. She stuck her tongue out and went back to playing her mobile game.

As Lu Zhou looked at this girl, he was baffled.

Makes no sense.

Whatever…

Who cares.

Lu Zhou ignored her and went back into his room.

…

Lu Zhou sat at his desk before he continued his research. He decided to read through Chen Yushan’s document.

This document was titled “Smart City”, and it contained a lot of potential research directions with good market potential.

Some of them were quite realistic, such as the holographic communication system, wireless charging technology, etc.

Some of them were completely ridiculous, like maglev cars.

The idea was that if the Yangtze River Delta city group had the power of a controllable fusion reactor, the population density in Shanghai and its surrounding suburbs would rise to a whole new level.

The resulting traffic couldn’t be solved just by building more highways and overpasses; they had to go from a two-dimensional transportation grid to a three-dimensional transportation grid.

That was, let the car fly in the air instead of driving on the road.

This sounded like something out of a science fiction movie. Flying cars moving between high-rise buildings while equipped with fully automated artificial intelligence driving…

Of course, that kind of technology wasn’t built in a day or two. However, it was definitely feasible. Star Sky Technology had world-leading research and development capabilities, they should preemptively begin research in these areas.

Just like how they were the first to capture the lithium-sulfur batteries market.

For every lithium-sulfur battery produced, Star Sky Technology took in a patent profit of no less than 10 USD.

If they could take the lead on inventing the technology that changed the way people lived their lives and begin registering patents, Star Sky Technology would become the most profitable company in the world…

However, what interested Lu Zhou wasn’t the profitability of the plan, but rather the technologies itself.

“Smart city…”

I guess it’s more like a future city.

Lu Zhou looked at the potential technologies in the plan and couldn’t help but feel emotional.

This was the first time he felt this kind of sensation outside of his laboratory.

What will the future of China look like?

Twenty years ago, people said it would look like what Japan and America were right now.

But now…

We can define our own future.

…

Fifteen days after Chinese New Year, two major events took place.

The first major event was that Star Sky Technology, as well as the two aerospace companies, won a NASA bidding project for Lunar Gateway, which was valued at a total of US$7 billion.

It also included US$3 billion worth of launch missions, as well as manufacturing for countless aerospace components.

Due to trade protection policies, most of the projects fell into the hands of American companies such as Blue Origin, Space-X, Boeing, etc. Thus, China being able to steal a piece of the pie shocked the Americans.

Something like this would have never happened for the Ares program.

This reminded a lot of people of the 1970s, when the Apollo and Soyuz cooperated in low-Earth orbit.

After a series of intense competition, these two superpowers shook their hands and reached a consensus.

The Americans were surprised to see this handshake happen again, with a different country.

The second major event also happened in the aerospace field.

16 days after Chinese New Year…

Lu Zhou received a call from Beijing and immediately flew to Beijing. He was going to attend a conference that was crucial for the Chinese aerospace and international physics industry…