“Xing Chen, do you have any blood pressure medication?”
Back on Earth, Theresa unceremoniously flopped onto the bed.
Xing Chen didn't say much. Talulah's words might have been unintentional, but they truly hurt the young girl's heart.
He got the medicine, poured a glass of water, and brought it to Theresa.
“Why would you have this kind of medicine at home?” Theresa seemed to have forgotten she was the one who asked for it, asking in great surprise.
“Because sometimes when I play competitive games or get stuck writing articles, I also get half-dead with anger,” Xing Chen explained indifferently.
“Then don’t make yourself so angry in the future, okay?”
Theresa placed her hands on his shoulders, caring for him in a very earnest tone.
Xing Chen stared into her eyes and nodded solemnly.
“Are you still taking that medicine?”
“No need. You… lie with me for a while.”
---
After concluding their discussion with the three Reunion Movement members, Xing Chen and Theresa followed their usual routine: Patriot moved Xing Chen's respawn point, while Xing Chen and Theresa returned to Earth.
At this time, Friston had just completed the testing of the Imperial Guard protective suit, proving that it indeed had certain effects against load, nuclear threats, and Originium Arts.
After Theresa fell asleep, Xing Chen left the bed, intending to share the results with someone.
His own research group was out of the question; everyone in that lab, except for him, was focused on rocks.
So, he'd better find Yu Bo. He wondered if he had any new progress during this time.
Arriving in the living room, Xing Chen closed the bedroom door and dialed the number Yu Bo had given him.
“Hello, who is this?”
An unfamiliar female voice came through. Xing Chen checked the phone number and found he hadn't made a mistake.
“I'm looking for Yu Bo.”
“Yu Bo?”
“?”
Then, Xing Chen heard noise coming from the other end of the phone.
“...Enough, it has nothing to do with you. Go do your own thing. Give me the phone... Hello, is that Xing Chen?” Yu Bo's voice was full of exhaustion and resentment.
“It's me... It's okay, don't be angry, maybe my accent is a bit strong, and she didn't understand...”
“I don't like others touching my communication devices... Xing Chen, do you have something important to call me about? If not, I'm hanging up; I have some things to deal with here.”
“What happened on your end?” Xing Chen felt that Yu Bo, being able to take them around the military control zone, must have a high status. What could be bothering him so much?
“The experiment blew up and injured someone,” Yu Bo laughed awkwardly twice. “I calculated the energy release of the new explosives with added Originium, using new data obtained from experiments. At that distance, the protective suit should have completely blocked it.”
“No, that's not the problem, is it? Why did you think of using real people for this kind of experiment?”
“Because previous animal experiments had no problems. Otherwise, how would I have derived the formula?”
“But you still can't use people,” Xing Chen knew that human experiments were basically necessary to obtain accurate data for drug trials, but was weapon development also done this way?
“Alright, alright, I won't do it next time. Do you have anything else? If not, I need to go write some materials. You definitely haven't written the kind of reports and self-criticisms we have here.”
“Oh, it's like this. I designed a protective suit based on Originium materials, and I'd like to ask you to test it.”
“Why don't you ask your supervisor, or your school's lab?”
“We're just miners, and I want to test projects like load-bearing or bulletproofing, which the school doesn't have the facilities for.”
The biggest problem was actually that Xing Chen couldn't produce a physical object.
How could it be tested without a physical object?
“...” The other end of the phone suddenly fell silent.
“Can you provide materials like the design concept, basic theoretical support, and technical validation experiments?”
“I think it should be quite sturdy, and it would also feel much more comfortable when riding a roller coaster down a steep slope.”
“You mean you didn't do any experiments at all?” Yu Bo's voice was quite shocked. “No preliminary verification and no post-development testing?”
“That's how it is. I don't have projects or funding,” Xing Chen, following his academic logic, felt that what he was doing was quite reasonable. “Don't let the experimental process influence the experimental conclusions. That's how we operate here.”
Then, there was no sound from the other end of the phone.
After some time, he received a private message from Yu Bo—a facepalm emoji, along with a string of addresses and contact information.
So, Xing Chen quickly sent over the manufacturing method provided by Friston.
At this moment, Theresa also woke up and asked him what he had just been doing.
Xing Chen shared Yu Bo's situation with Theresa, but she suddenly discovered a blind spot.
“You mean, the weapons he manufactured increase damage to human targets to +?”
Xing Chen initially thought it was just an experimental accident or a miscalculation, never expecting there to be such a line of reasoning.
Just as he was about to contact the other party again, Theresa stopped him and suggested checking their Originium distribution status first.
She suspected that the source of the Originium the other party was using might be problematic.
From her perspective as a Terran, the Originium handled by Xing Chen, apart from its somewhat “excessively slow” growth rate, was almost a perfect energy and material mineral.
Because it and its proliferated material had no activity whatsoever, combined with her new understanding of the Internalized Universe, this Originium's Internalized Universe might be “dead,” unable to assimilate the outside world.
“If Terra had only this kind of Originium, perhaps there wouldn't be Oripathy.”
“But you would also lose the civilization built upon Originium Arts.”
“That's true. Without Originium, the Sarkaz might not exist, and the two of us would never have met again.”
In Terran theory, this kind of Originium is difficult to use for casting spells, and there shouldn't be an increase in damage to specific targets that only occurs with Originium Arts.
It is certain that Originium has a damage bonus against Terrans.
“Let's go.”
The two rushed to the laboratory and asked their two senior brothers for the distribution records of Originium samples.
The materials applied for by Yu Bo's team could be traced back to the end of their visit to the military control zone, and they hadn't requested any from their lab since then.
Moreover, their experimental projects did not include explosives; they were basically the development of ordinary materials, such as drive shafts and building materials.
“Could it be that they discovered new Originium?” Xing Chen said incredulously.
“Xing Chen, didn't you tell me that Earth has no Originium?”
“At that time, I really didn't know Earth had Originium,” Xing Chen explained helplessly. He was just a student; how could he have access to state secrets?
“However, it's not necessarily that they found new Originium. Perhaps, through some means, they obtained active Originium from other countries?”