Decades had passed since Li Feng had first stood before the scholars of the Celestial Inquiry Hall. Decades since he had been cast aside as a fool, his theory ridiculed as nothing more than the misguided ramblings of a young and naive student. Time had been unkind. His name had become synonymous with folly, a cautionary tale of what happens when one defies the grand order of knowledge upheld by the venerable Grandmaster Lao Ming. His mentor, Xian Wei, had not lived to see his theory vindicated. The weight of failure and old age had claimed him, leaving Li Feng alone in his pursuit of the truth.

  But he had not given up.

  Though the world scorned him, though his name was written in alchemical texts as an example of where unchecked ambition led, he had continued his studies in solitude. The nights were long, the resources sparse, but the fire in his heart never waned. He had stared at his own model for years, refining, testing, searching for the missing key—the undeniable flaw that prevented his theory from explaining the full reality of the atom. Something was missing. Something fundamental.

  And then, one day, he saw it.

  It was a passage in a long, arduous text—one that compiled the results of a hundred experiments on the spectral lines of alchemized substances. Each element, when subjected to the alchemical flames, emitted a unique pattern of light, a set of lines unlike any other. The phenomenon had been observed for centuries, yet no one had been able to explain why it occurred.

  Li Feng read the passage again. And again. His fingers trembled as he traced the carefully recorded values. A single formula had emerged from these experiments—an empirical equation that, when applied, accurately predicted the spectral lines of the simplest atom. It was a formula born purely from experimental results, but its implications struck Li Feng like a lightning bolt.

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  For years, his model had remained incomplete, lacking a guiding principle. But as he stared at the numbers, the symbols, the relationships laid bare before him, something within him clicked. The scattered fragments of knowledge, the lingering doubts, the unresolved inconsistencies—all of it coalesced in an instant of pure, unfiltered insight.

  The spectral lines were discrete.

  They were not continuous like a smeared painting but sharply defined, as if each transition occurred at fixed, quantized levels.

  His breath caught in his throat.

  Could it be that the motion of electrons around the nucleus was quantized? That they did not move in arbitrary orbits, but in specific, defined paths—discrete steps rather than a continuous slide? It was a radical assumption, one without precedent, and yet… the spectral lines. They fit.

  His mind raced. He grabbed his inkstone and brush, flipping open an empty scroll. If his hypothesis was correct, then by manipulating the empirical formula, he could trace it back to derive the fundamental principles governing the electron’s movement. Numbers were tweaked, assumptions restructured, calculations retried. He worked tirelessly, barely stopping to eat or sleep.

  And then—

  Everything fit.

  It was like magic. Like the pieces of a shattered mirror aligning to form an unbroken reflection. The spectral lines were not random, nor arbitrary. They were the echoes of a deeper truth: the energy of electrons was not continuous but quantized.

  Li Feng staggered back, his heart hammering against his ribs. This was it. The next step forward.

  He grabbed the scroll, his ink-stained fingers smudging the edges, and ran. He didn’t know where—only that he had to move, had to tell someone, had to show the world that the truth they had rejected was not folly, but the very foundation of the universe itself.

  The world had laughed at him before.

  But this time, he would not be so easily silenced.