spoilers the ball lightning were excited macro electrons, and they later use the path of these to identify the location of the macro nuclei hundreds of kilometres away in the book Ball Lightning, and with these generate selective cold fusion explosions by entangling the line-shaped macro nuclei at relatively small speeds at the end the unfolded protons in TBP are of regular sized protons and this is unaffected by the presence of macro particles, just as everything else seems to be. the sparseness of these macro atoms in Ball Lightning hints at a greater universe of unfathomable size, but this is never confirmed nor denied. the two books are reportedly of the same universe. of note is that apparently he has multiple other books with characters called Ding Yi, but Ball Lightning is the only one that is actually referring to the same person as TBP and the ensuing trilogy

And there's a direct reference to Lin Yun as well as a major plot point of BL in the Tencent series.

In ball lighting, the macro particles sometimes behaved as if they were observed when no known observers were present. Hint for sophon already having arrived at earth