In 2030.
A private research institute called Tian Yuan suddenly appeared, claiming from the moment it emerged that it had broken through the limits of architecture.
In a so-called global livestream that fewer than a hundred people watched, the institute's debut structure, the Sky-Scraping Pillar, was said to be a hundred years ahead of Earth's architectural progress.
What drew the most attention was that the presenter throughout the conference was actually a vegetative patient who could only move his mouth—and he was also the institute's director! Several self-media creators happened to pass by and were ecstatic. Who cared whether it was true or not? They edited clips overnight and released the videos.
At first, the videos received little reaction. Everyone was already used to unscrupulous self-media outlets profiting from people's misery.
On Zhihu, large numbers of architectural experts appeared to flaunt their academic expertise while the topic was hot, and by the way, criticize this kind of celebrity-making behavior.
After all, a vegetative patient who had lain in a hospital bed for nearly ten years—could he really have unlocked his governing and conception vessels during that time and directly helped technology leap forward through the void? If that were true, everyone might as well become vegetative patients. Maybe Earth would become an interstellar civilization a hundred years later.
However, three days passed, and just as ordinary people were about to forget about the matter—
The trending searches exploded!
At eight in the morning, on a certain microblogging platform, an enormous blood-red "Explosive" label appeared beside a popularity figure whose digits were impossible to count, all of them nines.
"Vegetative Patient Genius"
"Vegetative Patient Breaks Through the Limits of Technology"
"Architecture Advances One Hundred Years Out of Thin Air"
"The Power of Thought Without Distraction"
"Possibly Humanity's First Vegetative Academician"
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