Chapter 39: Beautiful

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

After taking out the trash, Ling PingAn returned to the bookstore.

He looked at the time and saw that it was only slightly past 8:00 o’clock in the morning.

He pulled out his phone. The game that he had downloaded the day before opened its servers in a few hours.

“I’m so bored…” He grumbled to himself as he sat back down at the counter.

He was stuck in a rut.

He had just finished a book.

And he couldn’t think of anything to write about for a new book.

If his past experiences were anything to go by, he probably wouldn’t be able to think of anything for at least ten days to two weeks.

Then, once he started writing, he’d drag out the process for another two months or so before uploading it.

Oh, well.

Life was just so boring.

“Maybe I should go online to read some news and get some inspiration…” He opened the web and began to scroll through news reports on various web sites.

It was a pity that ever since the world had moved into the Internet era, the sort of content that the media put out had dropped in quality by quite a bit.

In order to increase output, increase the attention it garnered, and, of course, to increase the amount of money they made, many major web sites and news platforms had completely erased any of the boundaries that they used to maintain.

WeChat Read had originally become famous as a web site that behaved as a government watchdog and kept track of any illegal activities or unethical actions.

But now, as WeChat Read had gone after an increasing number of young, newsworthy celebrities, everyone who posted was just churning out post after post.

There would be a few international news topics or major social commentaries that would make it onto the list of trending topics every day.

But the large majority of trending topics were dedicated to young, newsworthy celebrities.

The stories were either as ridiculous as what kind of makeup someone was wearing or sometimes one of them would put up a post on WeChat Read themselves.

Then their fans would go to war with one another, proudly plastering the post all over the platform.

But, seriously, who on earth really wanted to know about who was wearing what makeup or who was still working even when they were running a high fever?

Never mind all the the ridiculous, idiotic wars between the various fans.

When he thought about all this cr*p, Ling PingAn made a face and sighed out loud.

Then, just at this moment, he spotted a trending topic that interested him, and his eyes lit up.

The topic was labelled The Quarrelsome Big Sisters.

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He clicked on it and immediately became excited when he saw what it was all about.

“When are they airing this?”

“They’d better air this as soon as possible!”

“I just love watching these pretty older ladies try to outsmart each other with their words and exchange poisonous remarks!”

“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

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…

While Ling PingAn was focusing on reading about the new program that was getting a lot of attention online, a sanitation vehicle had quietly appeared in front of his store.

A few men wearing garbagemen clothing got out of the vehicle. They were behaving like suspicious thieves as they peered around cautiously before quickly carrying the trashcan that sat outside Ling PingAn’s store and dumping it into the vehicle.

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Then they swiftly climbed back into the vehicle, stepped on the accelerator, and disappeared into the distance.

After several miles, some police cars appeared from several directions and escorted this sanitation vehicle as it drove to the Federal Armed Forces Laboratory on the outskirts of Jiangcheng City.

The Federal Armed Forces Laboratory was heavily guarded on all sides.

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Armed soldiers surrounded the entire place both inside and outside to make certain that nobody was able to enter.

The sanitation vehicle entered the compound and proceeded all the way to the deepest part of the laboratory.

After that, Situ He led a group of the Blackguards to take charge of the situation.

Blackguard Major-General Situ He proceeded to hop into the back of the sanitation vehicle and open that trashcan.

He pulled out the entire trash bag from the can. It was filled to the brim with all sorts of takeout boxes. The food that had remained inside the boxes had already started to smell bad.

He checked the color, size, and shape of this trash bag a few times.

Then Situ He passed the bag to a man in a white lab coat.

“Scholar Zeng, I’ll have to trouble you,” he requested very politely. “I hope we can get results as soon as possible!”

The man wearing a white lab coat was the person in charge of this laboratory, as well as a top scholar, Zeng Jing.

When it came to the analysis of and research about psionic power, Zeng Jing was definitely one of the best scholars in the Federal Empire.

The moment Zeng Jing took the plastic bag from Situ He, he frowned.

As luck would have it, the person giving the bag to him was Situ He, a Blackguard Major-General of the Federal Empire.

Otherwise, Zeng Jing would have suspected that someone was trying to prank him.

But even so, Zeng Jing remained rather displeased when he saw the contents of the trash bag. “Major, are you trying to insult me?”

When he’d looked into the trash bag he was holding, he’d seen that it was full of leftover food, some empty drink bottles, takeout boxes, and disposable cutlery.

Most important, all of these things were giving off a smell that made him feel like puking.

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It only took one whiff to know that this bag had garbage that was days old.

“I really can’t explain things to you right now.” Situ He knew that he was being rather disrespectful, but there was nothing he could do about it. He tried his best to explain the relevance of the bag and the importance of his request. “There may be secrets hiding inside this bag. I sincerely hope that you could help me to analyze everything inside to see if there’s anything of interest hidden in there.”

Zeng Jing looked at Situ He’s expression and finally nodded his head, but he didn’t seem to be taking this whole thing very seriously. “In that case, Major, please wait an hour for me to check it out.”

With that, he carried the trash bag toward the elevator of the laboratory.

He got into the elevator and went straight down to Basement 10.

Once the doors opened on Basement 10, he passed the trash bag to one of his lab staff and instructed him, “This is the item that Major Situ wants an analysis of, so please quickly analyze and test everything inside. Then you need to write up a report for him.”

As an expert in the study of psionic power in the Federal Empire, Zeng Jing had way too many things to attend to.

Because of the high volume of his work, he would pass work that wasn’t as important to the lab staff working for him.

He focused his own energy and attention on the most important piece of technology in the field of psionic power in the Federal Empire: the practical use of psionic weapons.

He wanted to harness the wild and difficult psionic power so that it could be used by humans.

And so Zeng Jing just gave instructions to his staff about the garbage bag and didn’t think about it anymore. He went back to his own part of the lab.

After about 30 minutes had passed, just as Zeng Jing had become completely focused on observing a sample under his microscope, the phone started ringing very urgently.

He frowned slightly and rejected the call immediately.

That was because his experiment had reached a very important stage.

Its success or failure depended on the next sample of psionic power he cultivated.

But before he could sit back down, the phone started ringing again.

This time, Zeng Jing got really angry. He picked up the phone and asked, “What is the matter? Don’t you know that I’m in the midst of an experiment?”

A nervous but excited voice came over the phone, “Scholar Zeng, you’d better come and have a look!

“I think…

“I think I might have discovered a Fire Maker with psionic powers among the things that you brought into the lab earlier…”

Zeng Jing’s eyes suddenly grew wide when he heard these words.

A Fire Maker!

That was the name that the field of psionic power research called the bottleneck between psionic powers and making items with Spirit Aura useful.

During ancient times, people were ignorant until the first Fire Maker made fire by drilling wood. That truly kicked off the start of human civilization.

So the researchers decided to call the key to breaking through this bottleneck a Fire Maker.

This was both a tribute to the first Fire Maker and a hope for their work to come.

They hoped that a Fire Maker of their generation would appear in their lifetime to help human civilization advance once more.

And that was why Zeng Jing immediately flung the phone aside and ran out of his lab in a great hurry.

“Where is it?” he asked anxiously.

“Scholar Zeng, over here!” One of the lab staff waved him over to where he stood in front of an apparatus.

Zeng Jing immediately ran over to the apparatus and said, “Let me take a look…”

He stood in front of the apparatus and looked at the sample.

After just taking one look, Zeng Jing found it difficult to tear his eyes away.

It was as if the first girlfriend he’d ever yearned after day and night was in that apparatus, as if the item inside was the most important thing he’d ever seen in his life.

“Beautiful!”

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“It’s simply too beautiful!”

Zeng Jing was completely awestruck by what he saw.

That beautiful substance, those elegant moves, and that exceptionally lively undulation…

All of this was enough to prove that this was what all the psionic power researchers, in not just the Federal Empire, but the entire world, had been yearning for throughout many days and nights.

It was the key to opening the door to being able to use and control psionic power.

Suddenly, Zeng Jing thought of something.

He immediately lifted his head and said to the other researchers in the lab who had crowded around, “Come, let’s go and look for Situ He!”

“We must not let him escape!”

This was very important in defining who would be given the highest prestige in the field of psionic power research.