Chapter 17: Chapter 7: Zhang Qiang’s Race
7:30 AM.
At the entrance of Yu Hong Primary School.
The small shop at the school gate was always the clamorous center of the universe.
The aroma of deep-fried radish cakes, the SIZZLE of grilled sausages, the overpowering scent of spicy gluten sticks—all mixed with the chattering of hundreds of primary schoolers to paint a vivid, nostalgic scene.
Chen Zhuo, a huge backpack on his shoulders, passed through the crowd expressionlessly, clutching a one-yuan carton of Baili pure milk.
He was not feeling well right now.
The aftereffects of his morning run were starting to show.
His thigh muscles ached as if he’d been beaten up, forcing him to grimace with every step. On top of that, his low blood sugar made black spots dance in his vision.
"Move it, move it! Get out of the way!"
A rush of hurried footsteps came from behind, followed by a heavy backpack slamming hard into Chen Zhuo’s shoulder.
The impact sent Chen Zhuo staggering, and he nearly squeezed the milk out of its carton.
He adjusted his glasses and looked back.
A chubby figure, like a small tank, was charging into the classroom.
It was Zhang Qiang.
He was Chen Zhuo’s deskmate, the sports committee member of Class 3, Grade 4, and the class’s well-known rich kid.
Right now, Zhang Qiang had none of his usual arrogance.
He was drenched in sweat, his school uniform collar was askew, and he was clutching a colorful box for dear life. His face was a mask of anxiety and urgency.
Chen Zhuo glanced at the box.
It featured two extravagantly designed race cars, along with the four-character title stamped in large gold foil: *Four Brothers*.
It was the nuke that Auldey Double Diamond had dropped this spring.
As the anime became a hit, Mini 4WD cars swept through the nation’s primary schools overnight.
This wasn’t just a toy.
For boys in the year 2000, it was a creed, a totem, the one true measure of friendship and status.
If you owned an authentic Cyclone Magnum or a Ray Stinger, you were the king of the class.
If you could also deck it out with front and rear stays, sponge tires, and the legendary gold-plated Hyper-Dash motor, then you were a god.
Zhang Qiang clearly wanted to be a god.
But his current expression was more like that of a gambler on the verge of bankruptcy.
Chen Zhuo walked into the classroom. As soon as he sat down, he saw Zhang Qiang shove his backpack into his desk cubby, then impatiently tear open the box and pour out a pile of colorful plastic parts.
It was a Giant.
The car of a major villain in the anime, it was famous for its front-mounted motor and heavyweight offensive power, capable of crushing rival cars.
It was a perfect match for Zhang Qiang’s aesthetic:
Big, beefy, and intimidating at a glance.
"Zhang Qiang, you bought a new car?"
The boy at the desk in front turned his head, his face full of envy.
"That must’ve cost over twenty yuan, right?"
"Twenty-five!"
Zhang Qiang replied without looking up, fumbling clumsily with the assembly.
"And that’s not all. See this?"
He mysteriously pulled a shiny motor from his pocket.
The motor’s endbell was red.
"Atomic Fission?" the boy in front exclaimed.
"One of these costs thirty yuan! Are you crazy?"
"Tch. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."
Zhang Qiang snorted, a desperate, all-or-nothing glint in his eyes on his chubby face.
"During the long recess today, I’m having a showdown with Zhao Lei from Class 2, Grade 6. I lost to him last time because my Triangle Arrow’s motor sucked. This time, I’ve got the Giant with an Atomic Fission. I refuse to believe I can’t smash him to bits!"
Chen Zhuo silently sipped his milk nearby.
He glanced at the so-called Atomic Fission motor.
The workmanship was crude, the cooling vents were huge, and while the coil was wound tightly, the copper wire had a dull sheen—a clear sign of a low-quality alloy with low copper content.
A classic case of ’brute force over finesse’.
The RPM was probably high, but the power consumption would be astronomical.
Chen Zhuo averted his gaze and pulled a book titled *An Introduction to Auxiliary Lines in Geometry* from his bag.
He had no interest in such childish plastic toys.
His mind was completely occupied with how to use triangle congruence proofs to solve a geometry problem he couldn’t figure out last night.
Ever since he gave up on physics experiments and turned to pure mathematics, he found the world had become much quieter.
’Math is so much better.’
’You don’t need to spend money on motors or compete with others. All you need is a pen and a piece of paper to construct a perfect world.’
’In this world, there is no friction, no air resistance, no damn gravity. Everything is ideal and eternal.’
CRACK.
With a sharp snap, Zhang Qiang used too much force and broke one of the clips on the Giant’s chassis.
"Fuck!"
Zhang Qiang swore, his face flushing red with anxiety as he immediately pulled out a tube of 502 Super Glue and started slathering it on.
The acrid smell of the glue wafted over, breaking Chen Zhuo’s train of thought.
Chen Zhuo frowned and scooted over a little.
"Prodigy, move it. Don’t get in the way."
Zhang Qiang jabbed him with his elbow, pushing Chen Zhuo into the corner.
"This race today is crucial for me. If I lose, my whole month’s allowance is gone."
Chen Zhuo sighed.
"You’re going to lose if you build it like that," Chen Zhuo said abruptly.
Zhang Qiang froze, nearly getting the glue on his hands.
He stared at Chen Zhuo with his round eyes.
"What did you say? Are you jinxing me?"
"I’m not jinxing you."
Chen Zhuo adjusted his glasses, pointed at the freshly glued chassis, and then at the bright red motor.
"Your car’s center of gravity is too high, and the chassis is too rigid. The Atomic Fission’s RPM is too fast, and its starting torque is immense."
"It’ll fly off the track before it even goes three meters."
"What the hell do you know!"
Zhang Qiang flew into a rage out of embarrassment.
"Have you ever even touched a Mini 4WD, you nerd? This is the Giant! It has a front-mounted motor! I bought it specifically because it’s stable! In the anime..."
"The anime is fake," Chen Zhuo interrupted him calmly.
"Physics is real."
"Get lost, go read your books."
Zhang Qiang couldn’t be bothered with him and went back to his frantic work.
He piled on every accessory he could buy: aluminum front stays, double-layer rear stays, plus those deathly heavy metal guide wheels.
He figured that as long as he built his car like a tank, he was guaranteed to win.
Chen Zhuo shook his head and said no more.
...
Ten in the morning. The long recess.
In a corner of the playground, a concrete ping-pong table was surrounded by a thick, impenetrable crowd, three layers deep.
This was the "underground racetrack" of Yu Hong Primary School.
Though it lacked expensive, professional tracks, the children always had novel ideas and a unique brand of ingenuity.
They pieced together long wooden planks for the straightaways and used old plastic pipes, cut in half, for the curves. It was crude, but it was enough to get a Mini 4WD car running.
In the center of the crowd, the atmosphere was fraught with tension.
Zhang Qiang squatted on the ground, drenched in sweat, his Giant BUZZING in his hands.
Opposite him was a tall boy in a sixth-grade uniform, Zhao Lei.
Zhao Lei was holding a Vanishing-Gazer.
But this car had clearly been heavily modified.
Large sections of the body had been hollowed out, the tires were sanded thin, and a few inconspicuous pieces of tape were stuck to the chassis.
"Ready, fatty?"
Zhao Lei said with a sneer.
"If you lose this time, that *Dragon Ball* manga set of yours is mine."
"Less talk! Let’s go!"
Zhang Qiang gritted his teeth and flipped the switch.
WHIIIRRR—!!!
The Atomic Fission motor let out a terrifying scream—the violent release of thirty thousand revolutions per minute.
In comparison, Zhao Lei’s car sounded much higher-pitched and thinner, like a mosquito’s buzz.
"3, 2, 1, go!"
Two hands released at the same time.
WHOOSH!
Zhang Qiang’s Giant shot forward like a mad bull.
It had to be said, the Atomic Fission motor was truly ferocious.
On the first two meters of the straightaway, it used its brute force to pull ahead by half a car length.
The fourth-graders watching erupted in cheers.
"Brother Qiang is awesome!"
A look of ecstasy spread across Zhang Qiang’s face.
However, at the end of the straightaway was a sharp 90-degree turn.
It was a curve made from a spliced-together half of a PVC pipe, with no buffer and an extremely low friction coefficient.
’It’s over,’ Chen Zhuo, who had been dragged along to cheer, thought to himself from the edge of the crowd.
The next second,
The unstoppable Giant showed no signs of slowing down or gripping the track as it entered the curve.
It maintained its linear inertia.
The immense centrifugal force instantly overcame what little grip it had.
CRACK!
With a sharp crack, the Giant didn’t turn. Instead, like a cannonball, it smashed right through the bricks serving as a guardrail and flew off the track.
It tumbled twice in the air before crashing heavily onto the concrete ground.
Parts scattered everywhere.
The batteries rolled out, the freshly glued chassis broke again, and the pride-and-joy Atomic Fission motor let out a wisp of blue smoke.
The entire crowd fell dead silent.
Only Zhao Lei’s Vanishing-Gazer, like a nimble snake, hugged the inner wall of the curve, slid through with a ZING, and then smoothly raced to the finish line.
"Hahahaha! Is that your Giant? It’s more like a catapult!"
Zhao Lei’s unrestrained laughter echoed across the playground.
Zhang Qiang stood there dumbfounded, staring at the wreckage on the ground, his face turned the color of liver.
His lips trembled and tears welled up in his eyes, but he stubbornly held them back.
He had lost.
He hadn’t just lost his manga and his allowance. More importantly, he had lost face in front of so many people from the whole school.
For a ten-year-old boy, it was a devastating blow.
The crowd gradually dispersed.
Everyone looked at Zhang Qiang with a mixture of pity and a hint of schadenfreude.
"Let’s go, let’s go. That fatty’s just a rich idiot."
"Some Atomic Fission. It’s not even as good as the five-yuan knockoff I bought."
Zhang Qiang squatted down and silently began to pick up the broken pieces.
His hands were shaking. Because he was chubby, the flesh on his belly bunched up as he squatted, making him look particularly pathetic.
A small, thin hand reached over and helped him pick up the two gold-plated Hyper-Dash batteries that had rolled away.
Zhang Qiang looked up and saw Chen Zhuo.
"Come to laugh at me?"
Zhang Qiang sniffled, his voice thick with tears.
"Get lost."
Chen Zhuo didn’t get lost.
He wiped the batteries on his school uniform and handed them to Zhang Qiang.
"Do you still want to race?" Chen Zhuo asked.
"Race my ass! The car’s smashed to pieces!"
Zhang Qiang threw the wreckage in his hands to the ground and finally burst into tears.
"I’m done! This piece of crap is a total rip-off! I’m going home to tell my mom!"
"A broken car can be fixed."
Chen Zhuo squatted next to him, his voice calm, even a little cold.
"But if you don’t know why you lost, you’ll still fly off the track next time, no matter how expensive a motor you buy."
Zhang Qiang froze, staring at Chen Zhuo with a runny nose.
"You know why?"
Chen Zhuo picked up the broken chassis from the ground, along with a small piece of lead counterweight that Zhao Lei had left behind.
"That sixth-grader... his car is lighter than yours, his motor is slower, but he won."
Holding the chassis, Chen Zhuo drew a shape in the dust on the concrete ground.
It wasn’t a circuit diagram.
It was an inverted triangle.
"This is your car."
Chen Zhuo pointed at the inverted triangle.
"Wide on top, narrow on the bottom. The center of gravity is too high."
He then drew a flat, isosceles trapezoid.
"This is his car. The center of gravity is close to the ground."
"Also, you used the wrong gear ratio."
Chen Zhuo pointed at the still-smoking motor.
"You used a 3.5:1 high-speed gear with a high-RPM motor. That’s like insisting on using the highest gear on a bicycle when going uphill. You get a lot of power, but you have no control."
Zhang Qiang was completely bewildered.
’Center of gravity? Gear ratio? Aren’t those just words from a textbook? What do they have to do with racing cars?’
"So... so what do I do?"
Zhang Qiang asked subconsciously.
Chen Zhuo stood up and dusted off his hands.
He couldn’t fix the car with his own hands right now, but he had his brain.
He could be the machine’s brain.
"Do you want to win it back?"
Chen Zhuo looked down at Zhang Qiang.
Zhang Qiang nodded fiercely.
"Yes! More than anything!"
"Then do what I say."
Chen Zhuo pushed up his glasses, the lenses reflecting a sharp glint in the sunlight.
"Go to the school shop. Buy a file, a roll of tape, and... two cartons of milk."
"Milk?" Zhang Qiang was baffled.
"Mhm."
Chen Zhuo rubbed his own thigh muscles, which were still faintly aching.
"That’s my consultation fee."
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