The Smart Drug?

The Smart Drug?

"It's expensive..."

?!

Suddenly, when he heard the gentle music, Uncle's mouth fell open in surprise, wide enough to fit a pear. He seemed about to say something, but hurriedly swallowed the words.

He hadn't expected Zhang Yuan to actually fix the radio—and with such a simple method, too!

He stood stunned for a few seconds, then hurried over to inspect it carefully. Every screw had been tightened neatly, and there weren't any spare parts left over.

"How did you do it?"

After letting the radio cool down, he turned it on again. He repeated the test several times, and each time it played perfectly. He couldn't hide the smile on his face.

"You know how to fix radios?"

The flawed antique had become a perfect antique, increasing in value. His earlier doubts had long since vanished into thin air. It was as if they'd never happened.

Zhang Yuan thought for a moment, then answered honestly, "I've never studied it. I just read about it online once... If you think it through carefully, you can figure out what's wrong."

He went on to explain his entire line of reasoning.

"...So I figured the radio's previous owner might have taken out the vacuum tubes while cleaning out the dust. Then they put them back in the wrong order, which caused the problem."

Uncle listened, only half understanding, though it did sound reasonable.

In other words, his nephew had thought it over, fiddled with the radio a little, and really had managed to fix it.

Thought it over...

It sounded simple, but it couldn't have been easy.

He suppressed the urge to brag to his friends and said with a smile, "With the skill you just showed, you could open an antique repair shop and make hundreds of thousands a year!"

"Not really... I don't actually know much about it."

"I'm serious!"

What mattered wasn't his repair skills, but his ability to see past appearances and get to the heart of the matter.

The principle was easy to explain, but how many people would have figured it out in the first place?

"So, Qingqing, you still need to study hard. If you don't understand the principles and just fiddle around with things, you won't fix them."

Ye Qingqing, who'd been watching from the side, blinked. She realized she was being lectured again.

So annoying! He'd actually fixed it.

Other people's kids really were your lifelong, unbeatable rivals!

"Vacuum tubes," "radio-frequency circuits"—just hearing those terms made him sound knowledgeable and convincing. She felt utterly helpless and couldn't even find a chance to butt in.

She even...

felt a faint sense of admiration.

Just think about what was in her head: 50% of her energy went toward yearning for "love," such as the looks of the school heartthrob, the class heartthrob, and the superstar Cai Xukun; 30% went toward thinking about what to wear and eat that day, and whether she'd break out; the remaining 20% was divided among everything else, including novels, TV dramas, and... studying.

No wonder she couldn't learn anything properly.

Her head drooped.

Uncle kept thanking Zhang Yuan, even offering to pay him for the repair. Zhang Yuan felt rather embarrassed.

"If you'd taken it to a shop, the repair would've cost at least two or three thousand..."

"Uncle, how could I take money from you? Money isn't much use to me anyway." Zhang Yuan was at a loss.

Ye Qingqing just chuckled to herself from the side.

She suddenly felt that having a smart older cousin wasn't so bad after all.

She could brag about him to her friends, at least.

Maybe she could even drop the "cousin" part and just call him her brother. They'd grown up together, after all. And being an astronaut was a pretty valuable status...

Imagining the envy and jealousy on her friends' faces, Ye Qingqing felt more and more that this was awesome. Really awesome!

By the time he left his aunt's house, it was already three in the afternoon.

Before he left, his aunt had insisted on stuffing a big red envelope into his hands. It contained a full ten thousand Federal Credits!

Zhang Yuan wasn't short on money, and it wasn't particularly useful to him anyway.

But it was a heartfelt gift from family, so he accepted it. Besides, he couldn't refuse. They kept passing the envelope back and forth, and he really couldn't win against his elders.

As he walked down the bustling pedestrian street, Zhang Yuan thought back over how he'd done.

"99 points... I'm keeping the last point so I don't get conceited!"

A noisy antique radio—the sort he'd never even seen before. In the past, he would've been completely baffled.

The deep sense of satisfaction was like a rich cup of coffee, leaving him savoring it long after.

There was no doubt about it: his reasoning and thinking abilities had improved tremendously!

Before, even if he'd had this knowledge in his head, he might not have been able to deduce the answer. He wouldn't have been able to apply the same principles to other situations, either.

Knowing something and putting it to use were two entirely different challenges.

"But it's different now... Ha!"

This remarkable power left Zhang Yuan delighted.

And that wasn't all. It was as if he'd regained a child's curiosity, a strong desire to explore everything around him.

Children had the strongest curiosity and imagination, but as they grew older and received more education, both gradually dwindled. It was the price of growing up.

Kids could play with boring toys for ages and had an endless desire to explore the world. But when they grew up, they couldn't do that anymore. They got tired of things, grew to hate studying and using their brains.

In other words, he'd regained the innocence of a child!

Put simply... he wanted to learn. Math, physics, anything—exploring the world brought him a powerful sense of accomplishment.

Things that had once seemed incredibly dull now felt fascinating.

"I really want to go back and study nonstop... Have I turned into some kind of mad scientist?"

Zhang Yuan was curious about the strange drug's ingredients. How could it change a person's level of thinking and even their interests?

"Does Earth really have this kind of high-tech stuff?"

"Smart drugs?"

He casually looked it up on his phone and was startled to find that such drugs really existed!

???

Some stimulant medications, including Ritalin and modafinil, were known as "smart drugs." Many students preparing for college entrance exams, university students, and corporate managers took stimulant-like drugs to temporarily improve their memory and make their thinking more agile.

But these drugs were stimulants and could be addictive. Long-term use could lead to dependence. They could even cause side effects such as insomnia.

Zhang Yuan calmed himself. "This is ridiculous... These drugs are just stimulants. You have to take them every day, and they can't possibly be this effective."

"Dad wouldn't give me anything with side effects, either."

So what was it, then?