Marrying My Bestie's Ferocious Brother - He Calls Me His Baby!-Chapter 186: This Isn’t Babysitting—It’s a Pilgrimage!
The sky was just beginning to brighten.
The door of the Gu Family Courtyard was knocked on.
The knocking was neither hurried nor slow, yet it carried an air of determination.
Gu Lan yawned as she went to open the door.
"Who is it, so early..."
The latch was just pulled open.
The remaining half of Gu Lan’s yawn got stuck in her throat.
Outside the door.
A crowd of people stood there, dark and dense.
They weren’t hooligans looking for trouble.
Nor were they the neighbor borrowing onions.
Uniformly dressed in Zhongshan suits, uniformly gray-haired, uniformly thick-rimmed glasses.
Each had a small school badge pinned on their chest.
From Peking University.
And next door, Qing University.
And the Science Academy...
Gu Lan’s knees went weak, she almost knelt down.
These faces, she had seen in the school’s bulletin boards!
The one on the far left was Elder Liu from the Physics Department!
The one in the middle was Mr. Chen, the "living abacus" from the Mathematics Department!
And the one with hands behind his back was Old Sun from the Mechanical Engineering Department!
This wasn’t a casual visit!
This was like people stepping down from textbooks!
"Prof... Professor Wang?"
Gu Lan stammered as she looked at the leader.
Professor Wang had specially donned a straight Zhongshan suit today, hair slick and shining.
He puffed out his chest like a tour guide about to showcase a rare treasure.
"Xiao Gu, don’t be afraid."
Professor Wang cheerfully waved his hand.
"These are my bunch of old pals with nothing better to do, heard there’s a genius in your family, insisted on coming to take a look."
Behind him.
The crowd, each capable of causing tremors in the academic world with a stomp, craned their necks to peer into the courtyard.
In their hands were not malted milk or canned fruits.
But rather nets filled with odd shapes.
Containing Nine Linked Rings, Lu Ban Locks, precise gear models, and even a thick stack of blueprints.
Gu Lan stepped aside, still dazed.
"Please... come in."
Professor Wang waved his big hand.
"Let’s go! Old pals, prepare to be amazed!"
A crowd poured in one after another.
Gu Yanshen was sitting in the living room, wiping his son’s hands.
Seeing the house full of distinguished guests, his brow twitched abruptly.
Professor Wang couldn’t bother with pleasantries.
He headed straight for the carpet.
There, Gu An had just woken up and rebuilt the blocks disrupted last night.
It was still that bizarre, anti-gravity structure.
"It’s this!"
Professor Wang shouted.
"Old Sun! Quick, have a look!"
Professor Sun, specializing in mechanics, was over sixty this year with poor legs.
But now, like a leopard spotting prey, he dashed forward.
Then.
In the astonished gaze of everyone.
Professor Sun "thud" fell directly to the ground.
Face pressed against the carpet, his magnifying glass nearly touching the blocks.
"This angle..."
"This force point..."
Professor Sun muttered.
"Marvelous! Truly marvelous!"
He suddenly raised his head, his gray beard trembling with excitement.
"It’s not glued! Fully relying on friction and torque balance!"
"I’ve calculated, these small wooden blocks can theoretically hold five kilograms!"
"This structure is even more perfect than the models our laboratory graduate students built!"
The room fell silent.
Only the heavy breathing of Professor Sun.
Lin Wan Yi carried freshly brewed tea from the kitchen.
Then she stopped.
Her living room now resembled a large pilgrimage site.
The country’s top scientists formed a circle, some squatting, some kneeling, some lying down.
In the center was her son who still had a bottle in his mouth.
This scene, no matter how you looked at it, was bizarre.
"Dear teachers, have some tea."
Lin Wan Yi put down the tea tray.
No one paid attention to her.
All eyes were gleaming as they fixed on Gu An.
Professor Liu from the Physics Department jostled through the crowd.
"What’s the use of just looking? We need to test it!"
He took out a black object from his pocket. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶
It was a Lu Ban Lock.
But this lock was different.
It’s made of iron, quite aged, with a rusty surface, and the structure seemed extremely complex.
"I brought this back during an early exchange in the Soviet Union, the structure is special, my PhD students couldn’t solve it after a week."
Professor Liu handed over the hunk of iron to Gu An.
"Little one, give it a try?"
Gu An let go of the bottle.
He glanced at the dirty lump of iron.
His little brow furrowed with disdain.
He didn’t respond.
He extended a chubby finger and poked at a connection point on the iron lock.
There was a noticeable reddish-brown rust stain there.
Professor Liu laughed.
"Little one, that’s rusted shut. Forcing it won’t work; you need to find the mechanism..."
Barely had he finished speaking.
Gu An’s little finger suddenly exerted force.
It wasn’t a solution.
It was picking.
His fingernail accurately wedged into the edge of the rust stain and gave a strong flick.
"Click."
What appeared to be rust was actually a small metal piece disguised as a crucial clasp, pried off by sheer force.
The next moment.
"Clatter——"
The complex Lu Ban Lock that had puzzled graduate students for a week.
Instantly fell apart.
Turning into a scattered pile of parts, dropping onto the carpet.
Professor Liu’s smile froze on his face.
Mouth agape wide enough to fit an egg inside.
The room fell into a dead silence.
Only Gu An disinterestedly wiped his hands on his clothes.
Then calmly picked up his bottle and took a sip of milk.
As if saying: Is that all?
Professor Liu trembled, holding the parts.
"This... this..."
"This wasn’t solving..."
Professor Sun slapped his thigh vigorously on the side.
"This is the art of brute force!"
"This child saw through all the stress points of the structure with one glance, and recognized that weakest point of rust!"
"He doesn’t need to understand the mechanism; he directly attacked the structural flaw!"
"Genius! This is an engineering genius!"
The room’s atmosphere instantly boiled over.
On the other side.
Professor Qian from the foreign language department was unwilling to be left out.
Unable to squeeze next to Gu An, he turned his attention to Gu Ning who was playing with a stuffed doll.
"Since that one is mechanical material, this little girl is so beautiful, must take after her mom, and has linguistic talent!"
Professor Qian approached with a smile.
"Hello, little girl?"
With a perfect London accent.
Gu Ning looked up.
Her big eyes curved into crescent moons.
She extended her little hand, elegantly waving, displaying a ladylike reserved smile.
Like a true little gentleman.
Professor Qian’s eyes lit up.
His face changed, instantaneously switching to a high-pitched, intense Russian tone, full of fighting spirit.
"Davaarish!"
Gu Ning’s little face turned immediately serious.
She threw away the doll in her hand.
Her small fist clenched tightly, fiercely waving it in the air.
Brows furrowed, lips pressed into a straight line.
Her demeanor was exactly like a young soldier at a Red Square parade.
"Good!"
Professor Qian was so excited he almost spat out his dentures.
He switched again.
This time to French, soft and tender in tone.
Gu Ning’s expression instantly relaxed.
She pouted her pink lips.
In an elegant move, she blew a flawless kiss toward Professor Qian.
Her eyes filled with mischief and charm.
"Amazing! Truly amazing!"
Professor Qian grabbed Lin Wan Yi’s hand, too excited to speak coherently.
"Mr. Lin! This child doesn’t understand foreign languages, but she understands context!"
"This is language synesthesia! A rarer-than-rare gift!"
"Neither of these children can be missed! They must be nurtured intensively!"
The small living room.
Cheers and exclamations echoed.
This group of usually aloof luminaries, at this moment, resembled a group of fervent fans encountering idols.
Gu Yanshen stood in the corner.
His face as dark as the bottom of a pot.
That’s his wife!
That’s his son and daughter!
Do these old men have any sense of boundaries?
He was just about to step forward and chase them away.
But at that moment.
"Bang!"
A loud noise came from outside the courtyard gate.
Following it.
A piercing sound of metal scraping and a woman’s sharp cursing.
"Got blind or what! You think you can afford to damage my cabinet?"
"What kind of lousy courtyard is this, the road’s so narrow not even a truck can come through!"
The voice was loud.
Like a rusty saw instantly cutting through the heated academic atmosphere inside.
The professors halted their actions.
Gu An furrowed his brow.
Gu Yanshen’s gaze suddenly turned icy.
