Generating Electricity

"Si Qin, stand guard at the door!" Li Shiming said to Si Qin, who stood nearby with curiosity written all over her face.

The parts could be explained as his hobby, but actually assembling them into a generator would truly be impossible to explain.

So even though Si Qin was clearly curious, he could not possibly let her watch from the side.

Though curious, Si Qin still obeyed his order and left the study.

Following his own design, Li Shiming began assembling the generator.

An hour later, a strange box sat on the desk. It looked like a case with a hand crank, with three copper wires extending from the other side. Nothing else about it appeared unusual.

The main body of the generator was wrapped inside a wooden case. Even if outsiders saw it, they would not pay it much attention.

Li Shiming tried turning the crank and found that he had overestimated this body's strength.

To raise the voltage, the generator's rotor needed to spin faster. He had designed it with a large gear driving a small gear. While this increased the rotor's speed, it also required greater force to turn the crank.

He had nearly called Mo Yan over to help turn it, but after some thought, he decided against it.

He cranked the handle with all his strength. Though his lack of strength kept him from increasing the speed, when he saw sparks flash from the copper wires, he knew he had succeeded.

Once he had obtained suitable parts, he had known that making a simple generator would not fail.

This thing had never been particularly complicated. Once one knew the principles, it was easy to replicate—not to mention that he was practically a professional.

However, Li Shiming's biggest problem now was how to keep the rotor spinning steadily at a constant speed, and how to feed the generated current into the Server Room's Uninterruptible Power Supply.

He looked at the crude generator and thought of storing it inside the Server Room.

The desk suddenly became empty. The generator vanished and appeared inside the Server Room.

He tried using his consciousness to make the generator's rotor turn. The inspiration came from how, after storing objects in the Server Room, he could manipulate them at will.

He had a feeling that he possessed extraordinary control over everything inside the Server Room.

This was utterly unscientific, but transmigration had already happened, and transmigrating with an entire server room was something science could never explain in the first place.

Under the control of his consciousness, the generator's rotor began to spin, growing faster and faster.

Because of the era's backward technology, the bearing section of the generator's rotor used two pieces of tanned cowhide wrapped around it, with grease added between them.

At excessively high speeds, this technique generated heat.

When designing it, he had never considered the possibility of such extreme rotational speeds, because achieving them in this era was simply impossible.

Yet he had not expected that after placing the generator in the Server Room, turning the rotor with his consciousness would quickly send its speed to the design limit.

Fortunately, the generator was inside the Server Room. His senses remained focused on it at all times, allowing him to monitor every change.

Li Shiming controlled the speed and kept it within the design limit.

He used a tool to measure the output. Since his consciousness was driving the generator's rotor, the generator produced two hundred and thirty volts.

For an IBMz15 Mainframe, that little power was absolutely a drop in the bucket.

But these were the conditions he had. He was not planning to use the generator to start the IBMz15 Mainframe directly, but to feed power into the Uninterruptible Power Supply.

He connected the three copper wires to the input terminal of the Uninterruptible Power Supply. Keeping his consciousness focused on controlling the generator, he made it continuously feed current into the Uninterruptible Power Supply.

When he saw the Uninterruptible Power Supply's indicator light turn green, he knew the first step had succeeded.

The Uninterruptible Power Supply began operating. Though the incoming current was limited, as long as it remained within the Uninterruptible Power Supply's allowance, no matter how small it was, it would pass through the current conversion unit and be stored in the Uninterruptible Power Supply's battery at the rated standard.

As the Uninterruptible Power Supply began working, he discovered that he could control it entirely through his consciousness. He did not even need to turn on its display panel.

Li Shiming controlled the generator's rotor with his consciousness for half an hour, then felt a swelling pain in his head.

He hurriedly stopped controlling the generator. It seemed that using his consciousness to control the generator inside the Server Room was not without cost.

The operations he had previously performed in the Server Room had been too brief, so he had not realized that they consumed something from himself.

He could not tell exactly what was being depleted, but it was probably something like mental energy.

I can't generate electricity during the day anymore! he thought, enduring the throbbing pain in his head.

"Young Master, what happened to you?" When Li Shiming pushed open the study door, Si Qin saw him swaying with a pale face and cried out in a tearful voice.

"Si Qin, don't alarm anyone else. Help me rest for a while!" Li Shiming ordered, forcing a reassuring smile.

"Young Master, we should still call a doctor. Your health is what matters!" Si Qin stepped forward to support him, urging him as she helped him toward the bedroom.

"It's nothing. I just overtaxed my mind a little," Li Shiming said, knowing his own condition.

Although he had expended a great deal of mental energy, the Uninterruptible Power Supply had stored some electricity, leaving his mind in an excited state once more.

Lying on the bed, he sent his mind into the Server Room. His heart was far from calm.

He did not know whether the IBMz15 Mainframe could be powered on, or whether he could obtain the vast sea of information stored within it. Everything remained unknown.

This IBMz15 Mainframe had been donated to the university in his previous life by several distinguished alumni, and it was worth over a hundred million.

The mainframe was not used solely by the library. Some research projects also used it for computation by submitting applications; it was merely housed in the library's server room.

The IBMz15 Mainframe was top-of-the-line, equipped with 190 CPUs and as much as 40T of memory. It integrated 12.2 billion transistors and was a pinnacle of technology from his previous life.

The various books, documents, and materials he knew were stored on this mainframe alone amounted to more than ten million electronic books. They covered thirteen disciplines—philosophy, economics, law, education, literature, history, science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, management, art, and military science—along with ninety-two university subject categories and 506 university majors.

Beyond those, it also contained publicly released domestic and foreign Research Results, as well as materials from the university's ongoing projects.

With such a mainframe in hand, he could completely raise this world to the level of his previous life.

Whether the mainframe could be powered on would determine two utterly different ways for him to survive in this world. If he could not start the mainframe, then he would have only one road to take.

That was the official career path his father, Li Wenyuan, had laid out for him: passing the imperial examinations step by step, entering officialdom, and becoming an official like Li Wenyuan.

With the Server Room Space's storage ability and the ability to inspect its contents at any time, Li Shiming would have an extremely easy time taking the imperial examination path.