219: Chapter 220 Can Spirit Stones Be Used as Batteries? Lasting Ten Thousand Years?

The cold light of the laboratory shone on Academician Chen Shuyin's trembling hands.

She held her breath, pinching a pale cyan stone that emitted a faint, subtle glow.

That was the Spirit Stone just looted from the Qingyun Sect's treasure vault.

Jiang Chen stood behind her, holding a domestically produced smartphone that had been dismantled into pieces.

"Old Chen, don't just stand there dazed."

Jiang Chen pushed the opened battery slot toward her, "Hurry and test it. If this thing can conduct electricity, then whenever we go out in the future... we won't even need a power bank."

Academician Chen Shuyin took a deep breath.

She picked up a wire, extremely carefully connecting it to the edge of the Spirit Stone.

The other end was soldered directly onto the power input contact of the mobile phone motherboard.

"Detecting current."

Her voice was tense, her heart pounding wildly, "Without a voltage stabilizer, this energy might instantly fry the phone's baseband."

"It's fine, I have a cheat."

Jiang Chen tapped the screen.

The [Energy Conversion and Filtration Protocol] in the System Mall activated instantly.

That violent spiritual energy, the moment it entered the phone, was forcibly converted into stable, smooth direct current.

The screen lit up abruptly.

The display box, which originally only had 1% battery remaining, flickered twice before beginning to jump wildly.

10%... 50%... 99%...

Finally, the red battery bar turned into a dazzling gold, displaying a shocking number:

[Battery: 10000%]

[Estimated Standby Time: 500 years.]

"What the..." Jiang Chen leaned in, looking at the absurd number, and couldn't help but remark, "Did you turn this phone into a nuclear-powered device?"

Academician Chen Shuyin was already stunned.

Her fingers holding the measuring instrument froze in mid-air, her eyes fixed on the waveforms representing energy output, "It's not just the standby time. This is a continuous high-power output, and it... it shows absolutely no signs of decay."

"This isn't just some battery."

"This is clearly a miniaturized, inexhaustible atomic nucleus!"

Jiang Chen grinned, smiling like an unscrupulous merchant.

In the future, anyone who talks about range anxiety for electric vehicles will be a laughingstock.

Stick a Spirit Stone in, drive it until it's scrapped, or even drive it until he, Jiang Chen, is buried, and the car will probably still have more than half its charge left.

"How can this be just a Spirit Stone?"

Jiang Chen reached out and patted Academician Chen Shuyin on the shoulder, his tone full of the joy of finding a treasure:

"This is infinite energy!"

"In the future, our base, our spaceships, and even our 'luan bird'... we'll power them all with Spirit Stones!"

"What fusion reactor? What antimatter? In front of Spirit Stones, they're all little brothers!"

Academician Chen Shuyin forcibly pulled herself out of that academic shock.

She looked at the man in front of her, laughing so recklessly, and a strange, indescribable feeling suddenly welled up in her heart.

The poor student who used to worry about tuition fees of a few thousand yuan had now actually become the man who held the lifeline of the entire interstellar civilization?

"You guy." She shook her head helplessly and put down the phone, "I really don't know how you manage to get so many monstrous items."

"Do the cultivators on your side carry tons of these stones on them?"

"That's not the case." Jiang Chen thought about the old Daoist being blasted away and chuckled, "It's just that the Qingyun Sect is relatively wealthy; I guess they saved up a century or so of wealth, and it all ended up in my pocket."

"So what's our next plan?"

"Hollow out that planet." Jiang Chen pointed to the purple light spot on the star map, "Pack up all the Spirit Stone veins there; that will be our core energy reserve for the future."

The two were deep in discussion when the door to the command room was pushed open with a "bang."

Company Commander Zhao Gang was holding that special communication terminal, his face full of panic.

"Boss! Something bad happened!"

"What is it? Did the sweet potatoes at Mars Base rot?" Jiang Chen asked casually.

"It's not the sweet potatoes!"

Company Commander Zhao Gang took a deep breath and pointed at a string of cold data on the screen: "It's that... American astronaut hanging outside the ship."

"Headquarters sent a notice."

"We were measuring speed too aggressively in space just now, the orbit was pulled too high, plus those few violent maneuvers earlier..."

"That 'ticket-hanging' brother."

"It seems... he really has turned into a popsicle."

"I see his vital signs monitor has been flat for five minutes, and even the heartbeat sound connected to it is gone."

"..." The smile on Jiang Chen's face froze instantly.

He turned his head to look at the deep, cold starry sky outside the window, the twitching at the corner of his mouth unable to stop.

This 100 billion dollar ticket, did it buy a "high-speed space ice burial"?

If his family found out, they would probably bring a team of lawyers and trample the threshold of the base flat.

"Old Zhao." Jiang Chen held his forehead and sighed helplessly, "You hurry up and reply to them, just say..."

"Just say this is our 'human cryonics scientific experiment'."

"After all, they bought the standing ticket themselves."

"This is what you call... the after-sales service failing to keep up."

Company Commander Zhao Gang's mouth twitched, but he still quickly turned to execute the order, leaving Jiang Chen in the command room, worrying while facing the starry sky.

This job is really getting harder and harder to do.

It seems next time someone wants to hitch a ride, I'll have to make them sign a "Death Liability Waiver" first.

"Forget it." Jiang Chen fiddled with the phone, his expression uncertain.

"First, take care of this unlucky guy."

"After all, the next thing is what will really give people a headache."

He glanced at the dangerous signal flashing red, getting closer and closer to the edge of the star map, and muttered to himself:

"The real hunter... is about to take the stage."

"I hope these guys' stress resistance is better than that popsicle from just now."