"Bai Mo, we're heading out for dinner. Remember to put away the experimental materials and lock the lab door when you leave, okay?" A few young people from his lab called out before they departed.
"Mm." He casually replied.
Bai Mo, a student in the Department of Materials Physics at Tianhai University, much like his lab mates, primarily spent his time poring over literature and assisting his mentor with a variety of experimental tasks.
In their small laboratory, the few of them were all working under Professor Zhao Jia Sen, a seasoned veteran in materials science.
Professor Zhao, though nearly seventy, was still robust and energetic, frequently traveling the world for visits, exchanges, and inspections. On weekdays, he would only occasionally stop by the lab.
"Finally, they're all gone." Bai Mo breathed a sigh of relief.
While others saw him as someone who spent all day immersed in literature and the lab, he secretly harbored an unknown hobby: reading web novels.
Deeply engrossed in various fantasy and sci-fi novels featuring extraordinary power systems, he often imagined himself as the protagonist, pondering what would be the optimal course of action if he possessed the main character's abilities.
"This world without extraordinary abilities is so boring. Whether it's immortal cultivation, magic, or superpowers, why can't any of them appear in *this* world?!"
At an age where his thoughts ran wild, he often had impractical ideas, even once conceiving an elaborate power system spanning tens of thousands of words.
However, limited by his ability to write only straightforward academic papers and his complete lack of skill in portraying character emotions in novels, he had kept it hidden deep within his mind.
"I really want to cultivate... I wonder what it feels like to simultaneously control the four fundamental forces..."
In the advanced stages of "chūnibyō" (eighth-grade syndrome), he spent his days indulging in mysterious fantasies of power. Naturally, these thoughts were well-hidden, becoming something akin to an inner personality.
As for his outer persona, it was packaged as a mature, sensible, and diligent student, pursuing what the mainstream university student values, such as a higher GPA.
Bai Mo was actually very aware that only by wearing this mask could he gain the recognition of mainstream society and avoid being labeled an anomaly.
As an ordinary person, being perceived as an anomaly by society would be a truly tragic outcome.
"«Battle Through the Heavens Domination» has ten chapters today?!" «Battle Through the Heavens Domination» was a novel he'd been following daily. Whenever an update notification popped up, he'd immediately pull out his phone and open the app to read it.
It seemed the Qidian novel website was recently holding a mass-release reward event, causing many popular authors to overwork themselves, leading to astonishing update speeds.
Just as Bai Mo was engrossed in his novel, something strange occurred.
The experimental material in the heating pot, after being heated for some time, gradually began to emit an unknown, pale green gas. Bai Mo, angled sideways with his view obscured by the phone in his right hand, was completely absorbed in an exciting plot twist he had just read, utterly oblivious to this peculiar experimental phenomenon.
In his memory, this material, which his mentor had instructed him to process, only needed about ten more minutes of heating. Ten minutes was more than enough time for him to finish the two chapters of «Battle Through the Heavens Domination» that were typically released daily.
Anyone engrossed in web novels knows that when you reach a climactic part, practically no one stops halfway. Everyone wants to finish watching the protagonist's display of power, so a "divine cliffhanger" is a truly infuriating thing.
But Bai Mo forgot one crucial detail: a novel that usually took ten minutes to read two chapters had released *ten* chapters today! By the time he realized it, more than twenty minutes had already passed.
"What's that smell?" He suddenly felt something was amiss, quickly put down his phone, and turned his head to look at the sample in the heating pot.
The stone-like sample was slowly emitting a pale green gas. The gas drifted continuously in the air, its green hue gradually fading.
The simple protective equipment he was wearing was completely ineffective at stopping the green gas from spreading, and he had even unwittingly inhaled a significant amount of it. Bai Mo jolted, quickly switched off the heater with one hand, and hurried out of the lab.
The small fume hood next to the experimental bench was clearly inadequate.
After all, this was merely a low-to-mid-end laboratory where graduate students toiled away. Both the protective gear and ventilation systems, thanks to certain individuals' manipulations, were suspected of being substandard.
"According to the experimental requirements left by my mentor, this unknown material was supposed to be heated slowly and steadily to 50 degrees Celsius within 10 minutes. And because its chemical properties were unclear, water bath heating was not to be considered."
"Yet, over twenty minutes have passed, and the thermometer now reads 200 degrees Celsius. The originally black ore material has turned pale green, so the experiment is pretty much ruined."
"But what could that green gas be? The mentor's experimental manual didn't have this predicted outcome, and I can hardly recall any pale green gases, let alone one that matches this." Unintentionally, Bai Mo had inhaled quite a bit of this pale green gas, but there were no signs of poisoning. Instead, he felt considerably more energetic, so he decided to look up some literature later to see what it might be.
Standing outside the lab door, he turned on all the indoor ventilation systems for a while. Only after confirming that the gas had completely dissipated did Bai Mo re-enter. He began tidying the experimental equipment, then casually slipped a set of seemingly normal data into the experiment log sheet, pretending as if nothing untoward had happened.
He wasn't one to be overly scrupulous about experiments, so at this moment, he naturally chose to take it easy and "fish in troubled waters."
But while cleaning up the experimental waste, Bai Mo, as if possessed, inexplicably slipped the sample – which had cooled down and returned to its original color – into his pocket, instead of discarding it in the experimental waste disposal area.
After tidying the experimental equipment, he went to the sterilization room to wash his hands, then locked the lab door.
As he walked, he was still pondering what that green gas had been, but his thoughts were interrupted by his protesting stomach.
Following his usual habit, he bought a plate of food from the cafeteria window, but in just a few bites, it was all shoveled into his mouth.
At first, Bai Mo thought the cafeteria auntie had given him too little rice today; he still felt hungry after finishing the entire plate. So, he got back in line and bought another plate.
But after finishing the second plate, he finally realized something was off—he was *still* a little hungry!
Soon, the third plate went down, then the fourth, and only then did he finally feel full.
Since he had been sitting in the same spot the whole time, the few people nearby had witnessed the birth of this "big eater" from start to finish. Looking at Bai Mo's somewhat slender physique, they suddenly felt that this world was truly unfair—why did *they* gain weight even from drinking cold water!
Surrounded by gazes tinged with envy, jealousy, and resentment, he then realized that his unusually large appetite today had attracted the attention of those around him.
As someone who lacked confidence in his appearance and was accustomed to living unnoticed by others, he decisively chose to gather his tableware and make a quick escape.
Especially since he had just committed a "theft," he couldn't help but feel a little guilty, making him even more sensitive to the gazes of others.
After returning to his single graduate student dorm provided by the school, Bai Mo, lying on his bed, bored and ready to continue reading his novel, thought about his abnormal appetite from today. He suddenly connected it to plotlines he had read in novels.
It seemed many of those books featured something like "bone-cleansing and marrow-purifying," "refining essence into qi," or a "period of gluttony" after initiating an evolutionary path, where one needed to consume vast amounts of energy to meet their demands.
As someone more devoted to web novels than academic papers, his first reaction was naturally related to immortal cultivation, rather than unknown gas poisoning...
"Could it be that I've also encountered such a miraculous event? After all, this abnormal appetite is truly difficult to explain. I didn't do any strenuous physical activity, and even if I had, one person wouldn't easily eat four people's worth of food. The only strange thing that happened today was probably inhaling a few breaths of the gas produced by the experimental reaction." He, whose appetite was usually that of a normal person, began to ponder today's anomaly.
"If that pale green gas was Spirit Qi, then it makes sense that my bones and marrow were cleansed." As he was already planning to read his novel, this thought naturally surfaced in his mind.
"Inhaling Spirit Qi felt pretty good. So, that stone that can release Spirit Qi... could it be a Spirit Stone?"
He no longer considered the realistic implications, instead following the logic of web novels all the way down the rabbit hole.
People are always prone to exaggerating tiny chances of luck, just as reason tells them it's throwing money away, yet they can't resist buying a scratch-off lottery ticket. Bai Mo also hoped he had truly stumbled upon a great fortune, encountering an opportunity for immortal cultivation.
"Then, do I count as a legendary protagonist? Just coincidentally picking up a treasure and even accidentally stumbling upon how to use it—could this be my 'cheat'? But using a single Spirit Stone as a cheat... that seems too shabby, no matter how I look at it. At the very least, it should be a magic artifact that can release infinite Spirit Qi to match my protagonist halo."
He picked up the sample resting on his desk and idly fiddled with it.
Just as Bai Mo's thoughts spiraled further and further down the path of flawed logic, almost completing a modern cultivation novel with himself as the protagonist, his alarm suddenly rang, reminding him it was time for his afternoon nap.
As for why the alarm was set to remind him to sleep rather than wake up? It was because he knew that if he started reading a novel on his phone in bed, he could easily keep going past his bedtime. So, he specifically set this alarm to remind himself of his nap time, to avoid affecting his alertness in the afternoon.
In the afternoon, Zhao Jia Sen arrived at the lab as usual. Seeing Bai Mo diligently poring over the instructions for new equipment, he walked over, patted his shoulder, and asked, "How did the morning's experiment go? Have you recorded all the physical and chemical property parameters of the sample?"
Having messed up the experiment, he was startled, his guilt evident, but he quickly composed himself.
"Good afternoon, Mentor. The morning's experiment went quite smoothly, and the remaining waste from the sample testing has also been processed. Let me get you the data records."
With that, he went to fetch his laptop, opened the database, and presented the data to Zhao Jia Sen.
"Mm, the data is quite detailed. Keep up the good work. Does this ore have any special properties?" Zhao Jia Sen casually glanced over the data.
"Mentor, do you have any questions about this?"
"I picked up this ore during my inspection trip to Hawaii, near the volcano. I felt like I hadn't encountered this material before. You see, I've dealt with all sorts of materials my entire life, so when I see something I can't immediately identify, my first instinct is to take a sample and test its properties. It's become an occupational hazard."
"Preliminary chemical analysis shows it's just ordinary volcanic rock, nothing special. Mentor, I actually have some questions about that literature you asked me to read last time..." He quickly changed the subject.