15: Chapter 15 Instantly Turning into Eighteen? This isn't medicine, it's a head transplant!

National Security Bureau, Level 4 Underground, Biological Laboratory.

The atmosphere here was tenser than the New York Stock Exchange at this very moment.

Dozens of expensive precision instruments were running at full capacity, their humming sounds converging into a heart-palpitating symphony.

All the spotlights were focused on the transparent petri dish in the center of the operating table.

Inside sat a crumb of the youth-retaining pill, which had been cut down to one-thousandth of its original size.

Professor Chen Shuhua, a world-renowned authority in biology, was currently sprawled ungracefully in front of an electron microscope.

Her protective suit was soaked with sweat, but she didn't even dare to wipe it off. In her clouded, aged eyes, a flame of near-madness was burning.

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"Incredible... This is simply incredible..."

Chen Shuhua muttered to herself, her voice trembling as if she had seen aliens landing.

"The Hayflick limit has been broken! The limit on the number of cell divisions is a joke in front of this thing!"

"Director, speak plain English."

Lei Keming stood to the side, clutching two fast-acting heart pills in his hand; those were prepared for Professor Chen.

Chen Shuhua suddenly lifted her head, ripped off her mask, her face flushed: "Director! This pill contains a high-energy biological enzyme we have never seen before! It acts like a master key, precisely unlocking the telomere repair mechanism in human genetic locks!"

She pointed to the wildly jumping cell division diagram on the big screen:

"Look! In normal cell division, telomeres shorten, and people age. But this thing is lengthening the telomeres! And it does so without compromising genetic stability! Do you know what this means?"

Lei Keming shook his head, but he heard the sound of gold coins falling into a bag.

"It means—reverse aging!"

Chen Shuhua nearly roared.

"It can make sixty-year-old skin cells return to the metabolic level of an eighteen-year-old in one hour! And not just skin; if we can overcome the difficulty of internal organ absorption, it could even make human organs return to youth! This is the prototype of an immortality pill!"

Immortality.

These four words exploded in the laboratory.

All the researchers' breathing stopped.

"Can it be replicated?" Lei Keming asked the most critical question.

"The original cannot be replicated." Chen Shuhua shook her head, pouring a bucket of cold water.

"The core ingredients inside require spiritual energy as a carrier, what is known as a spiritual energy structure. We don't have spiritual energy; we can't synthesize it."

Lei Keming's eyes dimmed.

"But!"

Chen Shuhua's tone shifted, a cunning smile curling the corners of her mouth.

"Although we can't make a nuclear bomb, we can make hand grenades! As long as we use the enlightenment cushion that Jiang Chen sent over..."

She pointed to the dirty cushion next to them that was being tightly occupied by a chemist.

"Old Liu was sitting on it just now, had a flash of inspiration, and came up with an alternative plan. We can use our existing plant extracts to simulate the outer shell structure of that biological enzyme."

"Although the effect is only one-ten-thousandth of the original, it cannot extend life, nor can it treat internal organs."

Chen Shuhua paused, her eyes becoming meaningful.

"But just acting on the epidermal layer... removing wrinkles, spots, and scars? That is simply dimensionality reduction! Isn't that what you want?"

Lei Keming froze for a second.

Afterward, he smiled.

There was no coldness of an NSB Director in that smile, only the aura of a shrewd businessman.

"One-ten-thousandth? Enough! More than enough!"

Lei Keming waved his hand.

"We only need this one-ten-thousandth! If we really made an immortality pill, a world war would break out tomorrow. But this anti-wrinkle cream..."

A sharp glint flashed in his eyes: "This is a divine artifact for harvesting the world's wealthy women."

...

Three hours later.

The first batch of experimental samples—a transparent liquid codenamed "Goddess's Tears"—was packed into one hundred crude test tubes.

No exquisite packaging, no expensive advertising, only a printed paper label stuck on them: [Xinhuo Bureau Biological Laboratory · Trial Model I].

"Who should we test the medicine on?" Chen Shuhua asked.

"Do we still need to look?"

Lei Keming pointed to the corner of the laboratory.

There, a female researcher in her forties was staring blankly at a test tube.

She was one of the core members of this project. When she was young, due to a laboratory accident, a severe burn scar was left on half of her face. Even after a dozen skin graft surgeries, it remained shocking.

"Engineer Li." Lei Keming walked over, his voice gentle.

"Are you willing to be the first person to eat the crab for the sake of science?"

Engineer Li was stunned for a moment, subconsciously touching her own hideous face: "Director, this... is this really useful? My face, even top American plastic surgeons have sentenced it to death."

"Give it a try." Lei Keming handed her a test tube, "This is a greeting from another world."

Engineer Li received the test tube with trembling hands.

Under the gaze of dozens of eyes in the room, she carefully unscrewed the cap, dipped a cotton swab into the crystal-clear liquid, and gently applied it to the deepest dark red scar on her cheek.

One second.

Two seconds.

"Hiss—" Engineer Li gasped, "It's a bit hot, and a bit itchy."

"That's the cells dividing at high speed!" Chen Shuhua stared at the monitoring equipment, "Look! The tissue regeneration speed has increased five hundred times!"

A miracle visible to the naked eye occurred.

The ugly scar that had accompanied Engineer Li for over a decade, making her cry in the dead of night countless times, was actually fading and smoothing out at a terrifying speed.

The originally withered, necrotic skin tissue began to fall off like dead wood sprouting in spring, revealing the pink, fair, baby-like newborn skin underneath.

Ten minutes.

Just ten minutes.

When Engineer Li picked up the mirror with trembling hands, a collective gasp echoed throughout the laboratory.

In the mirror, that face still had the familiar features, but the half-disfigured cheek had now become smoother, more delicate, and rosier than the other side of her face that hadn't been injured!

If you ignored the wind-battered, middle-aged woman's face on the left, and just looked at the right, you would think this was an eighteen-year-old young girl!

"This..."

Engineer Li touched her own face, tears streaming down.

"It's gone... it's really gone... my face..."

"Snap!"

Lei Keming snapped his fingers, breaking everyone's shock.

"Seal the news! Everyone sign the highest confidentiality agreement!"

He turned to look at the consultant behind him who was responsible for economic warfare.

"Old Wang, if this thing is pushed to the market, what is a suitable price?"

Old Wang was a shrewd, bald man. At this moment, he was staring at Engineer Li's face, the beads of his abacus clicking rapidly in his mind.

"Pricing?"

Old Wang sneered.

"For this kind of miracle medicine, talking about money is too vulgar. We need to do hunger marketing! Use a quota system! If you want to buy a bottle of Goddess's Tears, you must first buy one thousand tons of our unsellable products!"

"And, only open the premium edition to the overseas market!"

Old Wang adjusted his glasses, a cold light flashing in his eyes as he prepared to harvest the whole world.

"One million dollars a bottle! Take it or leave it! Those Hollywood actresses, European royalty—for the sake of this face, let alone one million, even ten million, they'll pay it!"

"Good!"

Lei Keming nodded with satisfaction.

"Leave this to you. All the foreign exchange earned will be invested in the research and development of lithography machines and aircraft carriers! We will use their beauty expenses to build our trump cards!"

...

In the command room.

Jiang Chen watched Engineer Li, whose half-face had returned to being eighteen, on the big screen, his potato chips dropping from his mouth in shock.

"Good heavens..."

Jiang Chen swallowed hard.

"This bathwater... no, wait, is the power of the youth-retaining pill really this great? Is it this fierce even when diluted ten-thousand-fold?"

"This is the difference in civilization levels."

The psychologist next to him sighed.

"For the Taichu Realm, this might just be an entry-level pill, but for us, this is dimensionality reduction. Jiang Chen, your task is now heavier. You must stabilize that Goddess of Wealth, and never let her develop suspicions about us."

"Understood."

Jiang Chen took a deep breath and picked up his phone.

Two hours had passed since the last acne crisis.

Given Ji Linglong's irritable temperament, she should have finished drinking the mung bean soup by now.