3: Chapter 3: Energy comparable to nuclear fuel, yet you ask me if it can be used for skincare?

The air in the interrogation room was as thick and solid as if it had been filled with cement.

That phrase from earlier, "making a wick out of a soul," was still buzzing in everyone's minds.

Lei Keming didn't speak, simply and silently turning up the air conditioning by five degrees, but that bone-deep chill remained impossible to shake off.

This wasn't a threat; it was a notification from a higher-dimensional being.

"Director, the people from above have arrived."

The iron door was knocked upon, and the agent who had nearly been electrocuted by the phone earlier walked in. He had changed into a hazmat suit and was carrying a silver-white lead box, handling it with as much care as if he were cradling his own ancestors' ashes.

Lei Keming stubbed out his cigarette, his eyes instantly turning sharp. "Let them in. Tell everyone that they must sign a Level 1 confidentiality agreement before entering the room. If anyone dares to breathe a word of this, I'll send them to the Gobi Desert to plant poplar trees for the rest of their lives."

The door opened.

It wasn't the large entourage he had imagined; there were only three elderly people.

But the moment he saw these three people, Jiang Chen subconsciously shrank his neck.

Even though he was just a junior in college, he had often seen these faces on the news and in textbooks.

Walking at the very front, with messy hair and wearing a faded old undershirt, was the leading authority in China's high-energy physics, Academician Li Zhenbang.

Following behind was an elderly woman with thick-rimmed glasses and a stern expression; she was Professor Chen Shuhua, the founder of biological genetic engineering.

Bringing up the rear was a balding old man who kept staring at the tablet in his hands; he was Wang Jianguo, the chief expert in charge of the national energy strategy.

This was like playing Fight the Landlord and immediately throwing down two Jokers and four twos.

"Lei the Madman, you'd better have a good reason for dragging us old bones out of our beds in the middle of the night."

Li Zhenbang had a fiery temper and shouted as soon as he entered, "My particle collision experiment is at a critical stage. If this is just to catch some spy, I'll beat you to death with my cane."

"Academician Li, please calm down."

In front of this irritable old man, Lei Keming instantly lost his aura as a Director of the Ministry of State Security, acting instead like a schoolboy who had done something wrong.

He pointed to the lead box the agent had set down on the table, his expression grave.

"This time it's not a spy; it's a miracle... or rather, it's something that might overturn everything you've known about physics in your entire life."

Li Zhenbang sneered, "Overturn my understanding? Only if you tell me Newton was an alien."

He nonchalantly put on white gloves and opened the lead box.

Inside the box, there were no earth-shattering instruments, only a chunk of concrete cut from the Jinghua University male dormitory.

And in the center of that charred concrete, at the bottom of the burnt-out hole, remained a tiny red crystal about the size of a fingernail—this was the residue left after the "Foundation Establishment Spirit Liquid" had cooled.

"Just this?" Li Zhenbang frowned. "It looks like the product of some high-concentration strong acid corrosion. This is a chemistry matter; why are you coming to me?"

"Use your instrument to scan it." Lei Keming didn't explain, simply pushing a portable spectrometer over to him.

Muttering "mystifying," Li Zhenbang picked up the probe and waved it over the red crystal.

"Beep—!!!"

The instrument, which had been running smoothly, suddenly let out a shrill scream.

The waveform on the screen didn't fluctuate; it shot straight up into a vertical line, and the red alarm light flashed frantically, as if it were about to explode.

"What the hell?"

Li Zhenbang hadn't said many curse words in his life, but he couldn't help it this time.

He abruptly took off his reading glasses and stared intently at the data on the screen. "Energy level overflow? This is impossible! This is just a piece of cooled residue! How can its radiation value be higher than enriched uranium? And I've never seen this kind of waveform before! It's not releasing energy; it's breathing?"

"Breathing?"

Hearing this word, Professor Chen Shuhua's professional instincts kicked in, and she pushed Li Zhenbang aside. "Move, let me see too."

She took a miniature microscope from her carrying case, picked up a bit of the powder, and placed it on a slide.

Three seconds later.

This elderly biology professor, who wouldn't change her expression even if Mount Tai collapsed before her, nearly dropped the microscope in her hand.

"It's alive... This thing is alive!"

Chen Shuhua's voice trembled like a wheezing bellows.

"This is absolutely not an inorganic substance! It's a highly active biological enzyme! It's trying to consume the bacteria on the slide, and... and it's rewriting the bacteria's DNA strands! It's eliminating those inferior genes and forcibly evolving the bacteria!"

"What?" Wang Jianguo also leaned in. "Evolving bacteria? Evolving into what? Superbugs?"

"No... it's evolving into a more perfect life form."

Chen Shuhua looked up, her face full of horror.

"If this thing were applied to the human body, even if diluted ten thousand times... it could repair telomeres, activate mitochondria, and raise human physical capabilities to a terrifying level. This isn't a chemical reagent; this is God's creation!"

In the interrogation room, three top scientists with a combined age of over two hundred years were going crazy over that little pinch of red residue.

"This isn't scientific! This violates the second law of thermodynamics!"

Li Zhenbang grabbed his hair.

"Energy cannot be created out of thin air. Where on earth is it drawing energy from to maintain such high activity?"

"Who cares where it comes from! Old Li, you must give me a sample of this stuff! I have a premonition that this can cure cancer!"

"Give it to you? In your dreams! This is the Holy Grail of the energy sector! I'm taking it back to conduct fusion ignition experiments!"

Watching these normally prestigious big shots almost coming to blows over a bit of residue, Jiang Chen, who had been squatting in the corner, weakly raised his hand.

"Um... Grandpas and Grandmas, could you please listen to me for a second?"

The room went silent.

Several gazes that could see right through a person instantly focused on Jiang Chen.

Lei Keming coughed and walked over, patting Jiang Chen on the shoulder. "Let me introduce you to the Academicians; this is student Jiang Chen. He is the owner of this thing."

"Owner?"

Li Zhenbang strode over and grabbed Jiang Chen's shoulders, shaking him violently. "Young comrade! Where did you get this thing? Did you discover some prehistoric relic? Or the wreckage of an alien spaceship? Speak quickly! This is too important for the country!"

Jiang Chen was shaken until he was dizzy and felt like he was going to throw up his breakfast. "No... it's not a relic. My girlfriend gave it to me."

"Girlfriend?" The three old scientists looked at each other.

"Yes." Jiang Chen said with a bitter face, pointing to the broken phone on the table.

"An online girlfriend. She said this was a gift for our first meeting, called 'Foundation Establishment Spirit Liquid.' She said she was afraid my body was too weak and that I would be killed by her during our wedding night... ahem, when we meet in the future, so she told me to soak in it to strengthen myself first."

"Foundation Establishment Spirit Liquid?"

Li Zhenbang was stunned.

As a staunch materialist, these four words were full of feudal superstition to him.

But the data in front of him couldn't be fake.

"Are you saying that this thing, which can rewrite human genes and has an energy density comparable to nuclear fuel, is something your girlfriend gave you to use for a bath?"

Professor Chen Shuhua felt like her high blood pressure was about to flare up.

"Yeah."

Jiang Chen swallowed hard and decided to drop the bombshell; since things were already like this, he might as well come clean completely.

"And she even apologized to me."

"Apologized?"

Lei Keming keenly captured the keyword.

"Yeah."

Jiang Chen glanced at Lei Keming and then at the few Academicians, saying cautiously.

"She said my body was weak and needed some nourishment. This bottle of [Scarlet Blood Powder] is what the outer sect servants use in her sect; the quality is relatively poor, it has many impurities, and it has large side effects. But since we don't have spiritual energy here, I can't use the really good stuff, and this one will just have to do. She said she couldn't think of any other way for the time being."

Dead silence.

Absolute dead silence.

The detector in Li Zhenbang's hand dropped to the floor with a "clatter."

Chen Shuhua held onto the table, gasping for air, seemingly trying to digest the information in that sentence.

Outer sect servant?

Poor quality?

Just have to do?

This damn thing could trigger a technological revolution on Earth!

In that so-called sect, it's used by the servants to soak their feet?