After exchanging hollow pleasantries with Qu Li, Yan Anqing warmly slung an arm around his shoulders. "Little Qu... time is of the essence. Let's go write the application now."
"Just so happens, I don't really understand the standard format either. Help me write it later, alright?"
"We're friends, after all. You help me, I help you, and we improve together, right?"
Qu Li nearly choked to death on a breath.
Friends...
Friend my ass!
I don't have a shameless friend like you!
With Academician Zhao Hongyun still nearby, Qu Li could only force a smile and do his best to maintain his image as an honest, dependable young man. "When I handle something, you can rest assured."
Watching the two interact, Academician Zhao Hongyun felt deeply comforted. He seemed to have been reminded of his younger days and sighed softly. "Young people's friendships really do form so quickly... You two carry on chatting. These old bones of mine won't intrude."
With that, he shook his head and left.
"I have other things to deal with too. Goodbye."
Yan Anqing shoved Qu Li away, his expression changing in an instant as he said with obvious distance, "Don't forget the application. I'm waiting to use the lab."
With that, he took Jiang Xinyue and left.
That look of turning his back on someone before even crossing the river, already preparing to tear down the bridge, gradually froze Qu Li's smile in place.
"Fuck me..."
Qu Li took a deep breath and, using every ounce of willpower he had, barely managed to chew up the curse that had reached his lips and swallow it back down.
Image!
Watch your image!
That bastard had nearly made him lose his mind.
In the lounge.
Yan Anqing looked at Jiang Xinyue and said seriously, "I owe you one."
If this junior hadn't helped him, there was a good chance he would have missed this opportunity.
According to his original plan, it would probably have taken him some time to obtain a dedicated laboratory.
So he would remember Jiang Xinyue's favor.
"You're being too polite!"
Jiang Xinyue stared at Yan Anqing with bright eyes. "Speaking of which, Senior, are you applying for a dedicated lab because you have a new project?"
"Yeah."
Yan Anqing had no intention of hiding it. He said calmly, "After the Blood Moon, it wasn't just humans who became Golden-Eyed Ones. By chance, I found a mutated white mouse before."
Beneath those casual words lay an opportunity that would drive countless scientists mad.
Jiang Xinyue was stunned for a moment. She looked at him thoughtfully, then said with a cheeky grin, "Thank you for trusting me, Senior!"
Yan Anqing shook his head. He knew perfectly well what she meant.
The academic world had always recognized results, not people.
For the sake of an experiment or first authorship on a paper, countless teachers and students had turned against one another, while friends had become mortal enemies.
Yan Anqing telling her this "little secret" had nothing to do with trust. He was simply confident that he had nothing to fear.
After his soul became bound to the game that could Modify reality, Yan Anqing had countless ways to quietly dispose of someone without anyone noticing.
Under normal circumstances, he did not like testing human nature.
His conversation with Jiang Xinyue could only be called... a matter of perfect timing.
"I said I owe you a favor."
Yan Anqing looked at Jiang Xinyue expressionlessly. "Once we produce results, you'll be the paper's second author."
Nowadays, scientific experiments in China were mostly team efforts.
When a result came out, it was standard practice to casually add four or five names to it. Even filling an entire page with authors was not unheard of.
It represented fame, prestige, and capability.
The scientific field did not value merely putting in time.
If someone could not produce results, then no matter how high their education, how senior their qualifications, or how lofty their title, they could not advance.
Where there were policies from above, there were countermeasures below.
Many scholars who were not good at practical work, and researchers without imagination or a spirit of inquiry, gradually began placing greater importance on personal connections.
When a new project appeared, they would offer the person in charge a certain amount of financial and material assistance in exchange for authorship.
Even being listed as the fourth author counted as an accumulation of achievements.
Jiang Xinyue understood all the twists and turns involved, but she had never participated in any of it.
From Yan Anqing's expression, it was clear that he intended to repay her earlier help with second authorship.
She was not some rigid, old-fashioned girl either. Otherwise, she would not have spoken up for Yan Anqing just now.
"Then I'll wait for your good news."
Jiang Xinyue smiled mischievously. "I'll keep your secret."
"Also, I want to ask: are we friends now?"
"Not the kind of plastic friendship you have with Qu Li. I mean the kind you have with that useless genius..."
Yan Anqing smiled. "You mean Xie Zhe? That guy may be childish, cowardly, paranoid, afflicted with Adolescent Delinquency, and neurotic, but he has plenty of strengths too. For example..."
His smile gradually turned awkward.
"For example..."
He gave up.
He really could not think of a single good quality that guy had.
The two stared at each other.
After a long silence, Yan Anqing finally said quietly, "He once saved my life."
When someone dodged the issue and changed the subject, the meaning was usually simple—an ugly rejection.
Jiang Xinyue was not ugly. In fact, she could be called quite beautiful. The only problem was that Yan Anqing's standards for choosing friends were somewhat unusual.
What was more, after completing the first stage of the Main Quest, aside from his golden finger's soul binding, the newly unlocked "Cross-Sectional Mapping" perspective had also deeply affected Yan Anqing.
Now, whenever he saw someone with decent looks, male or female, he would unconsciously use Cross-Sectional Mapping to observe the inside of their body.
Muscles, bones, nerves, internal organs, blood vessels, lymphatic tissue.
People said you could not judge someone by appearances alone, but Yan Anqing truly could see inner "beauty."
This was definitely not a good habit.
Unfortunately, under the tyranny of his obsessive-compulsive disorder, he had gradually developed this unhealthy habit...
After hearing Yan Anqing's words, Jiang Xinyue was slightly stunned for a while.
She took out a pen and a sticky note from her pocket, scribbled a few strokes, tore it off, stuffed it into Yan Anqing's hand, then skipped away.
Yan Anqing looked at the note in his hand. It had a tongue-sticking-out face drawn on it, along with three words.
"Bleh, bleh, bleh."
Yan Anqing could not help laughing.
That crazy girl...
She was really mischievous.
Qu Li believed that, bound by his promise to help Yan Anqing, he was like someone forced to eat a bowl of cilantro.
Should he pick out the cilantro stalk by stalk and chew each one carefully, or swallow it all in one gulp?
For someone who hated the stuff, it was not a question worth pondering.
Better a short pain than a long one.
The next day, Yan Anqing obtained permission to use a dedicated laboratory at Mojuke.
The so-called "golden-eyed white mouse" had not existed before today.
But Yan Anqing could casually alter one into existence.
It was merely a cover.
Its purpose was to introduce the Fuxi Cell he had previously modified, one with a "Superpower Cavity" structure.
This would be the first shot with which he announced his presence in the scientific world.
Working backward from the result was always the easiest thing.
Like detective novels and Werewolf games, if one knew the outcome in advance and then looked for the chain of evidence and reconstructed the logic, it could only be called manual labor. There was no need to kill too many brain cells.
Conducting experiments, writing papers.
Time flowed like water, and days passed like arrows.
In the blink of an eye, half a month had passed.
"Experimental Report Summary on Nonhuman Golden-Eyed Lifeforms and Fuxi Cells."
After reading this freshly published paper, Jiang Xinyue smacked her lips and looked at Yan Anqing as though she were looking at a monster.
"Among the nearly three hundred billion normal cells in this white mouse, you found those few that happened to mutate..."
What kind of persistence was that?
And what kind of luck!
Jiang Xinyue felt that Yan Anqing beside her was the Child of Destiny of this era.
What was a Child of Destiny?
Like Emperor Liu Xiu during the Han Dynasty, who brought about the Restoration of Emperor Guangwu.
Back then, Liu Xiu had only ten thousand soldiers against Wang Mang's four hundred thousand troops. Their training and morale were far inferior to the enemy's, and they were on the verge of total defeat and the collapse of their cause.
Then...
A meteor fell from the heavens and crashed directly into Wang Mang's camp.
Just look at the records from that time...
"There came great thunder and wind; roof tiles flew everywhere. Rain poured down in torrents, the Zhi River overflowed, tigers and leopards trembled in terror, and soldiers rushed about in panic. Tens of thousands drowned, and the water was so thick with bodies that it could not flow."
Tsk.
Lightning, hurricanes, meteors—they were all targeting Wang Mang. They practically forced Liu Xiu to win that battle that decided the fate of the realm. It had the distinct feeling of a victory ordained by heaven.
If Liu Xiu, whom even Heaven itself aided, was not a Child of Destiny, then what was he?
When Yan Anqing had made his promise to Jiang Xinyue earlier, she had not actually taken it too seriously.
After all, among the heinous death-row criminals, there were also several Golden-Eyed experimental subjects who had been permanently stripped of their human rights.
It had been a month since Golden Pupil Syndrome appeared, yet countries around the world had not produced even the slightest research result.
Many people even believed that apart from the change in eye color, Golden-Eyed Ones had no physical differences from ordinary people and held little research value.