Su Wan withdrew her gaze and turned to go up to the third floor.
When she entered the Meeting Room, she found Chen Shijie curled up on the sofa, wrapped in a thick quilt.
His glasses were placed on the table next to him. He was huddled in a ball, still shivering slightly.
His complexion had improved significantly, but his lips were still dark, and his fingertips had an abnormal bluish-purple tint—early symptoms of frostbite.
Su Wan walked to the side and took a vial of pale red liquid from her system space, holding it out to him. “Drink this.”
Chen Shijie squinted at the liquid, took it, and pulled out the stopper. A wave of warmth immediately brushed against his face.
Without hesitation, he tilted his head back and drained it in one gulp.
The moment the liquid hit his throat, a surge of warmth spread from his stomach to his entire body.
His frozen, stiff fingers began to regain sensation, the dark blue on his lips gradually faded, and his body stopped trembling.
Chen Shijie let out a long breath, his voice raspy. “What kind of medicine is this?”
“It dispels the cold.” Su Wan sat down nearby. “Fifty thousand Star Coins a vial. It will be deducted from your future remuneration.”
Chen Shijie’s lips twitched. He wanted to say fifty thousand was far too expensive, but he swallowed the words before they could leave his mouth.
He was now her subordinate, eating her food and living under her roof. He even owed her his life. He had no right to haggle.
Su Wan waited until his complexion returned to normal before speaking. “With the data you brought out, can you manufacture the Awakening Potion?”
Hearing this, Chen Shijie immediately sat up, his eyes shining with a terrifying intensity.
He reached into his clothes and pulled out the palm-sized silver storage device, clutching it tightly in his hand.
“It’s all in here.” His voice carried a sense of suppressed excitement. “Over twenty years of my life’s work—all of it.”
“The gene chimerism technology, the full cultivation protocols for Super Gene-Modified Organisms, the Awakening Potion formula and manufacturing process, the source code for the Collar Control System… Every piece of core data is here, not a single bit was left out.”
Su Wan’s gaze fell on the small storage device, her tone calm. “Does the Deep Blue Research Institute still have backups?”
“No.” Chen Shijie shook his head, a smug smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I wiped every database inside the institute and destroyed all the backups myself.”
“That data now only exists in this storage device.”
“And in my head.”
Su Wan looked at his “praise me” expression but didn't take the bait. She simply nodded.
“Follow me.”
Watching Su Wan walk out of the room, Chen Shijie was confused but obediently followed.
The two of them walked through the corridor, down to the first floor, turned into the stairwell, and headed all the way down.
Terminal Station building, basement.
Chen Shijie followed behind Su Wan, his gaze scanning the walls on both sides.
Everything here was brand new.
The walls were smooth concrete, the floors were laid with non-slip grey tiles, and the emergency lights overhead emitted a soft white glow.
The corridor was long, stretching beyond his line of sight, with closed alloy doors every few meters.
The further Chen Shijie walked, the more alarmed he became.
He hadn't expected such a massive space to exist beneath this grand building.
Su Wan stopped at the end of the corridor and pressed her finger against the fingerprint lock of a silver-white alloy door.
Click—
The door slowly slid open.
A faint scent of disinfectant wafted out from inside.
Chen Shijie’s nose twitched, and his pupils constricted slightly.
He was all too familiar with this scent.
A laboratory.
This was the smell of a laboratory!
Su Wan was the first to enter. Chen Shijie followed, his gaze sweeping across the spacious room, which was at least a hundred square meters. His mouth hung open wider and wider.
Several large pieces of equipment he couldn't name were neatly lined up against the wall.
They had silver-white casings, pale blue indicator lights, and precision control panels.
The microscopic imaging system, gene sequence analyzer, cell culture equipment, low-temperature storage equipment, and basic potion preparation device…
Every single piece of equipment was something he was intimately familiar with.
“This…” Chen Shijie rushed over to a gene sequence analyzer, his fingers trembling as he lightly brushed against the cold casing. “How is this possible? This equipment… where did it all come from?”
Su Wan leaned against the doorframe, her tone indifferent. “You don’t need to worry about where it came from. You just need to tell me: is this equipment enough?”
Chen Shijie turned around, his gaze sweeping the entire laboratory. His expression shifted from shock to ecstasy, and then from ecstasy to a near-manic state of excitement.
“Enough… It’s more than enough…” His voice shook. “This equipment is even more advanced than what we had at the Deep Blue Research Institute!”
“The resolution of the microscopic imaging system is an entire order of magnitude higher than the one I used!”
“The processing speed of the gene sequence analyzer is at least three times faster!”
“The temperature control precision of the cell culture equipment reaches zero point zero one degrees!”
He grew more agitated as he spoke, gesturing wildly with his hands, not even bothering to adjust his glasses as they slipped to the tip of his nose.
“Where did this equipment come from? A top-tier research institute of the Dawn Federation? Or was it excavated from an Old Era ruin?”
Su Wan didn't answer his question. “Now that you have the venue and the equipment, how long will it take you to research the Awakening Potion?”
Chen Shijie took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
His gaze slowly swept across the laboratory as he made rapid mental calculations.
“One month.” Chen Shijie held up a finger, his voice carrying an unprecedented level of certainty.
“Give me one month, and I can produce the first batch of Awakening Potions.”
Su Wan’s brow twitched slightly. “And the success rate?”
Chen Shijie pushed up his glasses. “Around fifteen percent. If I can get more experimental data from high-level Ability Users to optimize the formula parameters, the success rate could potentially rise above twenty percent.”
Su Wan was silent for a moment, then nodded.
“If you need anything, communicate directly with the robots and Black Rat.”
“They will cooperate with any of your experiments.”
Chen Shijie’s eyes shone with terrifying brightness.
“However—” Su Wan’s tone suddenly turned cold. “If you dare use the tenants of the Terminal Station as test subjects—”
She didn't finish the sentence, but the chill in her voice made Chen Shijie shudder.
“I won't, I won't!” Chen Shijie waved his hands repeatedly, his voice tinged with a hint of grievance. “The test subjects I used at the Deep Blue Research Institute were all provided by the higher-ups.”
“They were vagrants caught by the City Defense Force, disobedient commoners, prisoners sentenced to death for heavy crimes, and some… people whose backgrounds were completely unknown.”
“Those people would have died even if I hadn't experimented on them.”
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