301: How did he do that?

What was Li Mo thinking at the time?

Oh, right.

He thought Old Ghost was old and lacked ambition, content to muddle along with outdated technology, drawing a high salary with little output, making him a negative asset to the company.

Negative asset?

Li Mo wanted to slap himself again.

Look at this person before him.

Look at this madman who dared to charge at a “miracle,” who dared to bear the weight of two worlds.

This is a true talent!

A monster capable of changing an era, of ushering in a new epoch!

And he, for a mere bit of office politics and petty gains, had thrown him away.

Like a beggar who found a divine diamond uncomfortable in his hand and casually tossed it into a gutter.

A tremendous sense of absurdity and self-loathing completely engulfed Li Mo like a tide.

That slap didn't just bruise his face; it shattered all the pride and arrogance he had built up as a corporate manager over the past few decades.

Old Ghost, of course, knew what Li Mo's slap was about.

But in his heart, there wasn't a trace of satisfaction.

No pleasure of revenge.

To be frank, he even felt a bit of lingering fear.

If Li Mo hadn't driven him out of Qingyun back then, what would he be like now?

Probably still that accomplished old researcher, resting on his laurels, content to muddle along on his past achievements.

Drinking tea, reading the newspaper, guiding juniors, and then waiting for retirement every day.

He would have lost all his edges and claws.

He would have lost his most primal hunger for knowledge.

It was that period of destitution in Old Ghost Hall, that humiliation of being trampled underfoot and struggling for survival, that powerless resentment of wanting revenge, that reignited his long-dormant heart with immense passion for research.

Without that hellish past, he would not have the qualifications or the courage to stand here today and accept this new master's task.

In a sense, he should even... thank Li Mo.

This thought flashed through his mind, sending a shiver down Old Ghost's spine.

He dismissed all distractions and refocused his entire attention on the excessively young “boss” before him.

This person was the destined endpoint of his fate.

Lin Yu had no interest in the turbulent emotions of these people.

After giving his instructions, he prepared to leave.

To him, this was merely a starting point, a toolbox for paving the way to the future. He didn't need to spend too much time here.

He turned and stepped forward.

Wang Qingxuan, Feng Rui, and Li Mo immediately followed, making no sound throughout the entire process, as quiet as shadows.

"Boss, please wait."

A voice sounded from behind, carrying an uncontrollable, fervent tremor.

It was Old Ghost.

Lin Yu's steps halted, but he didn't turn around.

The atmosphere in the entire corridor instantly solidified once more.

Feng Rui and Li Mo's hearts almost leaped out of their throats.

Again?

What else did this old man want? Wasn't the “miracle” task enough? Did he want to raise the stakes?

Only Wang Qingxuan, on her tablet screen, silently brought up Old Ghost's personal file, a hint of inquiry flashing in her cool eyes.

Old Ghost caught up in a few steps. This time, his pace was much steadier, no longer the tottering figure from before.

He stood beside Lin Yu, bowed slightly, and presented a plain data tablet with both hands.

"Boss, the Research Institute's internal experimental framework was completely set up and debugged yesterday."

His voice wasn't loud, but it clearly reached everyone's ears.

"I took this opportunity to… casually refine some things I used to tinker with in the black market."

Old Ghost spoke casually, even with a touch of embarrassment, as if he had just done something insignificant.

Tinker with?

Casually refine?

Feng Rui and Li Mo were completely bewildered, not understanding what nonsense this old man was spouting.

Lin Yu took the data tablet.

His movement was calm, as if he were receiving a perfectly ordinary document.

Behind him, however, the breathing of the young researchers completely stopped at that moment.

Their minds were blank, with only Old Ghost's lighthearted phrases, “tinker with” and “casually refine,” repeatedly stirring up colossal waves in their heads.

Refine?

Casually?

They had personally witnessed the so-called “refinement” process.

From 3 PM yesterday, when the first Superconducting Mana Matrix was powered on.

Until the last second before Lin Yu arrived today.

A full twenty-plus hours.

This scrawny old man hadn't closed his eyes.

He was like a mad wolf, starved for hundreds of years, pouncing into a kitchen piled high with top-grade ingredients.

Countless problems that had plagued these prodigies for years, even a lifetime, were brutally dissected, crushed, and then reassembled into new, more perfect forms in the hands of this old man.

The decay formula for Psionic Conduction in specific mediums?

Old Ghost only looked for three minutes before striking out seventeen key nodes on their proud model, then rebuilt the underlying logic with a string of runes they couldn't understand at all.

As a result, the conduction efficiency surged by three hundred percent.

Rejection reaction between Transcendent Genes and Magic Potion Molecules?

Old Ghost didn't even use instruments; he just sniffed the semi-finished product and declared that their catalyst formula was fundamentally wrong.

Then, he casually wrote down a new formula.

A formula composed of thirty-seven plant roots and stems that didn't exist on Blue Star at all, only appearing in Abyss Domain legends.

They all thought the old man had gone mad at the time.

Until Wang Qingxuan's team actually delivered these legendary materials to them within half an hour.

When the final product displayed a 99.9% perfect fusion rate in the experimental chamber, they felt their worldview, along with everything they had learned in the past twenty years, had been stomped into the mud.

In these twenty-plus hours, they had experienced such shocks no less than a hundred times.

They had originally thought that this was the result of many years of research by the mysterious and powerful team behind Lin Yu.

Old Ghost was just an executor, a chief technical engineer pushed to the forefront.

This was reasonable.

After all, those theories, those concepts, had completely exceeded the scope of human intelligence.

It simply didn't seem like something a human could conceive.

Until just now.

Until Old Ghost said that these things were

Boom!

The most terrifying and absurd thought simultaneously exploded in the minds of all the young researchers.

Tinkering in the black market?

What kind of place was the black market?

No raw materials, no samples, no data, not even a decent analytical instrument.

In such a place, how... how did he conduct research?