NIP Chapter 1419 It's best not to hold back.
Chapter 1419 It's best not to hold back.
Chapter 1419 It's best not to hold back.
On the day Mannstein went to Stockholm, it rained lightly.
During the eleven-hour flight, Mannstein barely slept a wink. He went through his presentation slides three more times, making one or two minor revisions each time. Sitting next to him was a Swedish businessman who, seeing him constantly fiddling with his computer, couldn't help but ask, "Are you going to a conference in Stockholm?"
“I guess so!” Mainstein said.
"What meeting? Something related to the Nobel Prize?"
"Events during Nobel Prize Week".
The Swedish businessman's expression immediately changed. He looked at Mainstein, then at the dense charts on his screen, and hesitated for a moment: "You are... the winner?"
"No, I'm acting as someone else's substitute to give lectures."
"Act as an agent for someone else?" The Swedish businessman clearly didn't understand.
Mannstein smiled slightly. He offered no further explanation, and the Swedish businessman didn't ask any more questions. The plane pierced through the clouds, revealing an endless expanse of blue outside the window. Mannstein leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and his mind was filled with Yang Ping's words—"I don't need a third Nobel Prize; I need a third impossibility to become possible."
He wondered how many people in the world could say something like that after winning a second Nobel Prize? It wasn't feigned humility; it was genuine indifference. It wasn't posturing; it was a genuine feeling that there were more important things to do.
When the plane landed at Stockholm Arlanda Airport, it was 3 p.m. local time. In Scandinavia, it gets dark early in winter, and at 3 p.m. the sun was already hanging low on the western horizon, bathing the entire airport in a pale gold light.
Mannstein retrieved his luggage and walked out of the arrivals hall. Outside, someone was holding a sign that read "Mannstein." The person holding the sign was a young Swedish girl, wearing a black coat, with her blonde hair tied in a low ponytail.
“Professor Mannstein?” she asked in English.
"it's me!"
"I am a receptionist sent by the Nobel Prize Committee. Please come with me. The car is outside."
Mannstein followed her into a black minivan. The car was quiet, save for the low rumble of the engine and the hum of the heater. He looked out the window; the streets of Stockholm receded slowly past—ancient buildings, clear water, a clean sky. It was a city he had visited many times, but this time, it felt different.
In the past, he was the protagonist; this time, he is the agent.
The hotel is the oldest in Stockholm, located in the heart of the Old Town, with views of the Royal Palace and Lake Mälaren from its windows. Manstein stayed here in the year he received his Nobel Prize. That year, the hotel entrance was packed with reporters, and he could barely leave.
This time, there were no reporters at the door. He took the room key from the front desk, dragged his suitcase upstairs by himself, opened the door himself, and hung his clothes in the closet himself. Everything was quiet.
Mannstein placed his phone on the bedside table, walked to the window, and looked out at Lake Mälaren. The lake water shimmered in the winter sunlight, and several seagulls circled above the surface, occasionally letting out a clear cry.
He recalled the year he received the Nobel Prize, in the same season, in the same city, in the same hotel, standing in front of the same window.
Mannstein didn't adjust to the time difference. He took a shower, changed into clean clothes, and then sat down at his desk to go through the PowerPoint presentation again. This time, he didn't make any changes. Because Yang Ping had said that the first version was the final version.
He wondered why Yang Ping never revised his work. It wasn't because his writing was flawless, but because he had a strange intuition that told him when to stop. Most scientists would revise until the very last minute, right up to the second before the submit button was pressed. Yang Ping wouldn't. He would finish writing, read it once, revise it once, and then say, "That's enough. Revising it any further is just a waste of time."
Mannstein hadn't understood this kind of confidence before, but now he was beginning to. It wasn't confidence; it was a clear judgment of "what's important." The important things were already in the first draft; subsequent revisions were just patching things up. Instead of spending time fixing things, it was better to spend time doing the next thing.
The report was given on the afternoon of the third day of awards week.
The location was the Karolinska Institute's main auditorium, the place where the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is announced annually. When Mannstein entered the auditorium, about two hundred people were already seated. He glanced around and saw many familiar faces: Nobel laureates, institute professors, scientists from various countries, and editors from several top journals.
He found his seat in the first row. A note was pasted on the back of the seat: "Prof. Mannstein, representing Prof. Yang Ping."
"Representing Professor Yang Ping."
As Mannstein looked at those words, a strange feeling welled up inside him. He wasn't Yang Ping; he could never replace Yang Ping. Yet he sat in this seat, wearing a suit Yang Ping had never worn, delivering a report Yang Ping had never personally presented. He had to do his best, not for himself, but to avoid disappointing that person thousands of miles away.
The host's voice interrupted his thoughts.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nobel Prize Award Week series of events. This afternoon's keynote speech is entitled 'From Theory to Practice: The Application of Three-Dimensional Guided Genes in Spinal Cord Injury Repair.' The speaker is Professor Mannstein, on behalf of Academician Yang Ping."
Let's give them a round of applause!
Mannstein stood up and walked to the podium. He stood in the spot where countless scientific giants had stood, looking at the more than two hundred faces below. At that moment, he suddenly understood why Yang Ping hadn't come.
It wasn't because Professor Yang was busy, but because he genuinely disliked such lively scenes and felt they were a waste of time.
"Good afternoon, everyone." Mainstein began, his voice steady, his English with a slight German accent echoing in the auditorium. "I am Mainstein, and today I am here on behalf of Professor Yang Ping to give this report. He is not here, not because he does not value it, but because he simply does not enjoy crowds."
Some people in the audience laughed, not in a polite way, but in a genuine way because they were amused.
Mannstein pressed the page-turner, and the first slide of the PowerPoint presentation appeared on the screen, containing only one line of text:
Spinal cord injury repair: From impossible to possible!
He pressed the page turner.
A photo of the M7 standing appeared on the screen.
The auditorium fell silent.
"This is M7, a rhesus monkey with a complete spinal cord injury. This photo was taken 20 weeks after surgery. Before that, the monkey had no motor function in its hind limbs at all. After that, it learned to walk. Not as a compensation, not as a dragging motion, but a real, neurally driven walking movement."
He pressed the page turner. A burst of photos of the M7 walking appeared on the screen—six photos in total—along with a video recording each stage of a complete gait cycle.
"This result has been published in Nature Medicine and the journal Medicine edited by Professor Yang Ping. Reviewers from both journals gave almost identical evaluations—this work may change the landscape of the field of spinal cord injury repair."
Mannstein paused, looking down at the audience. “But I’m not here today to present results. The results are already in the paper, anyone can read them. I’m here today to answer a question: Why Professor Yang? Why is a Chinese surgeon able to do something that no one else in the world has been able to do?”
Some people in the audience sat up straight.
“The answer is simple,” Mainstein said, “because Professor Yang Ping thinks about problems differently. When most people think about ‘how to repair the spinal cord,’ they think about what drugs to use and what materials to use. Professor Yang Ping thinks about whether the cells themselves know how to repair themselves. If they don’t know, what mechanism is shut down? Can it be turned on again? In the process of human evolution, why can bone tissue repair itself, but the spinal cord cannot? What is the reason? Is it because it is not evolved to a high enough level? Or is it intentional for some purpose?”
He pressed the page turner.
The core schematic diagram of the three-dimensional guided gene theory appeared on the screen.
"When this theory was first proposed, it was considered pseudoscience by the mainstream academic community. Professor Yang Ping did not stop. It was not because he was not afraid of failure, but because he had only one purpose in doing scientific research: to explore the unknown. He enjoyed the process and had no other requirements than whether he succeeded."
Mannstein's voice became somewhat low.
"Professor Yang Ping faced various forms of suppression, not just questioning, but outright persecution, whether he proposed the three-dimensional guided gene theory or the K therapy. Everyone probably still remembers that time vividly, and some of you here may even have been involved. But he didn't care. He didn't care about reputation, interests, or prejudice at all... And the various forces in the world that suppressed him were all motivated by reputation, interests, and prejudice... I don't know when science became like this?"
The audience was completely silent. Mannstein hadn't wanted to say these things, but he had been keeping them bottled up inside, and today he took this opportunity to finally speak his mind.
Mannstein paused for a moment.
"Later, I used his theory to get results. I called him and said I wanted to give him the naming rights. He said, 'Just use Mannstein, my name doesn't matter.' I said I had to include his name, and he said, 'You decide.' That was the second thing he said."
"Professor Yang Ping's theory is the foundation of all my work. Without his theory, I would still be stuck in a dead end. Without his theory, M7 could not have stood up. Without his theory, I have nothing to say today."
He pressed the page-turner, and the last slide appeared. It wasn't data, it wasn't charts, it just contained one sentence:
"Professor Yang Ping showed me what science and scientists are really like, and made me believe in science again!"
Mannstein read the sentence aloud, his voice not loud, but every word was clear.
There was a few seconds of silence in the auditorium. Then applause broke out. It was genuine, heartfelt applause, born from genuine emotion. Some people stood up, some followed suit, and finally everyone stood up.
Mannstein stood on the podium and bowed slightly.
He recalled Yang Ping's words: "When you stand on the stage, you are not representing yourself, but representing science!" He now understood the meaning of those words.
The applause lasted for a long time.
As Mannstein walked back to his seat, an elderly man with white hair stood up and shook his hand.
“Professor Mannstein,” the old man said, “I am a member of the judging panel. I have listened to your report, and I would say that Professor Yang Ping was right not to come.”
Mannstein paused for a moment.
"why?"
“Because if he came himself, he wouldn’t say the things you’re saying. Some things can only be said by a second person. You talk about his theories, his convictions, how he was treated with prejudice, his saying ‘My name doesn’t matter’… These are things he himself can’t say, but the world needs to hear them.”
The old man let go of her hand, turned around, and left.
Mannstein stood there, watching the old man's figure disappear through the auditorium doors. He looked down at his own hand—the hand that had just been shaken. That hand had undergone countless surgeries, written countless papers, and won the Nobel Prize medal. But at this moment, it was just a hand, a hand held in gratitude.
He took out his phone and sent Yang Ping a message: "The report is finished, and the results are good."
Yang Ping's reply was a simple thumbs-up.
Mainstein looked up at the auditorium ceiling. Ancient murals painted the high dome, depicting angels and saints watching over everything below from the clouds. Mainstein wasn't a believer, but at that moment, he felt that the people in those murals might be watching the M7 in Yang Ping's laboratory, watching it step by step move towards a freedom they could never imagine.
He stood up and walked out of the auditorium. It was already dark in Stockholm, the streetlights were on, and snowflakes began to fall. He stood at the entrance of the Karolinska Institute, watching the snowflakes dance in the lamplight, each one like countless tiny, descending hopes.
My phone vibrated again. It wasn't Yang Ping, it was August.
"How's the report?"
"Great! Many people stood up and applauded."
"Where is Professor Yang? What is he doing?"
“Watching M7 walk, twenty-two steps.”
August was silent for a few seconds, then said something that made Mainstein's nose sting: "Mainstein, do you know, Professor Yang is the most boring scientist I've ever met."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because he made greatness boring. He made greatness a daily routine of doing the same things: watching monkeys, doing experiments, writing papers, eating, and sleeping. He didn't think he was great, and he didn't let others think he was great. He was just someone doing his own thing."
Mannstein did not answer.
He knew August was right: greatness was a posture for others, but for Yang Ping it was an everyday occurrence. He didn't need to stand on Karolinska's platform, because he was doing something more important than standing on a platform: watching a monkey take twenty-two steps at a time.
Mannstein put his phone in his pocket and walked into the snow.
The snow in Stockholm was heavy, settling on his hair, shoulders, and coat. He didn't use an umbrella, nor did he quicken his pace. He just walked slowly, letting the snow cover him completely.