She pushed Levin Sawyer aside and walked toward the crowd. "I assume you don’t judge people based on their degrees."

"Of course not!"

Zachary Hale slapped his phone. "But with your level of ’skill,’ how can you expect us to be convinced?"

"If she becomes Chief Engineer, I quit!" Samuel Goldman was the first to take off his work uniform.

"I quit too!"

"We quit!"

"..."

The shouts of resignation rose and fell as a pile of discarded work uniforms grew on the floor.

Sophia Shaw just gave them a faint glance. "Before you quit, let’s talk about the thruster."

"What’s there to talk about!"

Samuel Goldman didn’t want to say another word to her and turned to leave.

The rest of the crowd followed him toward the exit.

Sophia Shaw didn’t say a single word to stop them. She walked to the table, picked up a marker, and began writing rapidly on the whiteboard in front of her.

Levin Sawyer didn’t try to stop them either. He just stood with his arms crossed, watching Sophia write, as if certain she was about to produce something earth-shattering.

Zachary Hale, walking at the very back, let out a scornful sneer.

He glanced at Sophia. "Everyone’s already left. Who are you putting on a show for with all that useless scribbling!"

His gaze drifted lazily over the whiteboard, but when he saw the string of formulas beneath the diagram she was drawing, he stopped dead in his tracks.

"This... isn’t this..."

"Zachary, are you coming or not!"

Zeke Hughes called out impatiently.

Zachary Hale grabbed Zeke Hughes abruptly. "Are my eyes playing tricks on me? Look at what she’s writing... isn’t that for the thruster..."

"What thruster? At her level, she probably doesn’t even get the basic principles of a rocket launch. How could she possibly understand the thruster?"

"Just get closer and look!"

Zachary Hale forcibly dragged him closer, and the two of them stopped behind Sophia Shaw.

The longer they looked, the wider their eyes grew.

Zeke Hughes’s mouth fell open, wide enough to fit an egg. "This thruster... isn’t this the one we’ve been working on for so long? She actually figured it out!"

Zeke Hughes’s voice was too loud, too excited. Combined with the fact that everyone had spent so much time on the thruster lately—even dreaming about how to improve it—they were all instantly on alert when they heard the word.

Samuel Goldman refused to believe it. "I’ll go see for myself!"

’Zeke Hughes and Zachary Hale were just assistants; they didn’t understand it as well as he did. If Sophia Shaw dares to put up some plausible-looking nonsense to try and fool everyone, I’ll expose her for the fraud she is!’

Samuel Goldman stormed over, glanced at the formulas, and his voice was as cold as crashing ice. "What is this garbage? What kind of ridiculous formulas are these? It’s a pile of trash!"

He’d said as much. How could a nobody like Sophia Shaw possibly come up with something that Lead Aerospace’s top engineers couldn’t figure out.

Samuel Goldman grabbed the eraser and started to wipe the board.

As he erased, his hand slowed down.

A few seconds later, it stopped completely.

A moment later, as if possessed, he snatched the marker back and quickly rewrote everything he had just erased.

While writing, he let out a series of low cries, "How is this possible? How is this possible? This..."

Samuel Goldman squatted down and began scribbling calculations on the floor.

The more he calculated, the more shocked he became!

Seeing Samuel Goldman’s state, everyone walked back and gathered around him.

They alternated between watching him calculate and watching Sophia write.

Just as Sophia Shaw finished her last stroke, Samuel Goldman collapsed, sitting hard on the floor.

"How did I not think of this!"

He grabbed his head forcefully. His already messy hair, which hadn’t been cut in months, was now mauled into a bird’s nest.

Sophia Shaw turned back, a confident smile gracing her gentle eyes.

She was as beautiful as a goddess!

Samuel Goldman was momentarily dazed by her smile, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

It felt like countless tiny men were beating war drums inside him!

He hadn’t been this excited in a very, very long time!

Almost without thinking, he dropped to his knees in front of Sophia Shaw and hugged her leg. "Master, I submit!"

The others, though they finished their own mental calculations a bit later, were all professionals. They understood, too.

They all stared at Sophia Shaw as if she were some kind of deity.

Samuel Goldman, the deputy director of Lead Aerospace, kneeling and hugging the leg of a girl younger than him—it was a bizarre sight no matter how you looked at it.

Yet, not a single person found his actions out of place. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Their own knees felt weak; they also wanted to bow down and worship this goddess!

Levin Sawyer’s admiring gaze passed through the crowd and landed on Sophia Shaw.

The pain in his heart transformed into excitement, and his eyes welled up with tears.

He hadn’t expected Sophia Shaw to actually solve the thruster problem either. He had thought that, at most, the formulas she was writing would provide a new direction or line of thought for the team.

But the formulas before him blazed a new trail and were utterly perfect. It was a path that not only Samuel Goldman had never considered, but one that he, too, had never even thought to explore.

’When it comes to tough rocketry problems, you really do have to rely on Sophia!’

Levin Sawyer walked over and freed Sophia Shaw from Samuel Goldman’s iron grip. "Alright now, don’t scare her."

Of course, Sophia Shaw wasn’t scared by Samuel Goldman.

She was a tech person herself; she understood better than anyone the feeling of conquering a difficult problem.

Looking around at all the submissive eyes, Sophia Shaw smiled lightly. "Don’t look at me like that. We’ll be working together from now on."

"So, any objections to Sophia Shaw being the Chief Engineer?"

"None."

Everyone nodded in unison.

"Sophia, where on earth did you come from?"

The confusion on everyone’s faces lingered.

A person this brilliant should have been famous long ago.

Levin Sawyer looked at Sophia Shaw with a hint of pride. "She didn’t descend from anywhere. She was already a leader in this industry. The very rocket detection system you’re all using now? That was her creation!"

"Oh my god!"

Hearing Levin Sawyer say this, everyone was astonished but quickly accepted it.

She alone had solved a problem their entire team couldn’t crack. It would be a crime against nature if she wasn’t that legendary creator.

Since she was the one who designed it, it was her prerogative whether to let Joanna Sherman use it or not.

No one mentioned that matter again.

Instead, more people became focused on another question. "How can you be so young?"

"Everyone thought the person who created that system must be in their seventies or eighties!"

"Or at least someone on the level of NASA’s chief scientist!"

"We originally thought Miss Sherman was amazing enough, but I never expected..."

"If girls these days are this ridiculously brilliant, is there even a path left for the rest of us?"

Samuel Goldman, having calmed down, said hurriedly, "I’ll go turn down Miss Sherman right now!"

Joanna Sherman’s skills, while high, were really only on par with the top engineers here. She was no match for Sophia Shaw.

He couldn’t risk hurting this master’s feelings by failing to properly reject Joanna Sherman.

In the heart of a tech guy, there is only technology. Whoever is the strongest technically is the one they’ll recognize as their leader.

He was fully committed to Sophia Shaw as Chief Engineer.

’He would follow her for life!’

"Sophia, you’re truly incredible."

When it was just the two of them, Levin Sawyer sighed with genuine admiration.

Sophia Shaw gave a faint smile. "I can’t hide behind you forever. If I’m going to be the Chief Engineer, I have to win them over completely."

"Actually, they would have accepted you if I had just told them you were the developer of the rocket detection system. Sophia, you’re terrifyingly intense."

Solving a problem by herself that dozens of senior engineers couldn’t solve in months... even knowing it was Sophia, Levin Sawyer still found it unimaginable.

"Isn’t it better that I’m a little intense?" Sophia Shaw said, half-joking.

Levin Sawyer nodded. "It is."

"It’s just... doing things this way is exhausting for you."

"You never get tired of doing what you love."

"On the contrary, I enjoy it immensely."

Levin Sawyer gazed at her. The young woman’s eyes were sparkling, and the smile on her lips was gentle and happy.

Sophia Shaw’s ability to focus had always been excellent, which contributed to her tranquil disposition.

When she was silent, the beauty mark near her eye glistened, and her features, hazy and gentle, were like a meticulous gongbi painting crafted by a master artist.

She didn’t look like an engineering student in the slightest.

Levin Sawyer’s heart skipped a beat. He suddenly thought of something,