The Nature Medicine paper came out first.
Manstein chose a Thursday night to put the paper online; that was the usual practice for academic journals—go online Thursday night, the news media follow up Friday morning, the weekend lets it ferment, and by Monday morning the whole world knows. He knew this rhythm inside out; this wasn't his first time publishing in a top-tier journal.
Yang Ping was jolted awake by his phone at two in the morning.
The nonstop notification chimes dragged him out of deep sleep. Half awake, he groped for his phone, squinted at the screen: forty-seven unread WeChat messages, twenty-three emails, and three missed calls.
"What's going on?" He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and tapped the top message.
It was from Tang Shun: "Professor Yang, Manstein's paper is online! Nature Medicine! Take a look!"
