The perspective from the video differed slightly from Du Ke's own perspective when he explored the New World. Now, he paid closer attention to the surrounding environment. At the time, all his attention had been on the Bomb Caterpillars, and he had failed to notice a strange climbing plant that could actually move, deliberately avoiding him.
It was also a blue plant, climbing around the blue tree. Without careful observation, it was impossible to distinguish it.
Whenever Du Ke approached, the climbing plant quietly moved its vines and hid behind the tree, which was why Du Ke had never noticed it.
"Plants can move... Could it be conscious?" Du Ke raised an eyebrow, having discovered another interesting fact. "Mimosa plants close their leaves, but that's merely a stimulus response. Venus flytraps are the same, but this is different. It has subjective awareness!"
He had not seen the climbing plant bloom, so Du Ke temporarily named it Shy Vine. He also named the blue tree Blue Maple.
Its leaves were split in shape, somewhat resembling maple leaves.
There were actually quite a few other plants, but they had no remarkable characteristics. Du Ke was no professional scholar, so he could not be bothered to name them all. He mainly watched the video to see whether he had missed anything, until he reached the end and saw that ferocious giant bird.
He had been shaking at the time, so the video angle was poor, but he could still make out the giant bird that had seized him. It was exceedingly strange.
It had roughly thirty to forty percent of an eagle's features, but its body was bulkier, more like a predatory beast that ran on the ground. Its belly in particular had no feathers, exposing powerful muscles. The strangest part was its head: it had an eagle-like head, yet two rows of fine teeth grew along the edges of its beak.
Moreover, it had a pair of goat-like horns on top of its head, lending its ferocity a peculiar hint of evil.
"Really strange. I'll just call you Horned Roc."
At the end of the video, during the part where he fell, a red halo emerged around the Horned Roc's body. Everywhere it swept across, the ropes snapped, and the Nano Armor cracked apart.
"Definitely magic. Shield Crow can cast a magic shield, while what the Horned Roc cast... should have been Fire Resistance Ring. No, there was no fire, so it must have been Resistance Aura." Du Ke recalled a game he had played, in which mages could use a spell called Fire Resistance Ring to push away people and monsters.
A New World with magic.
After some thought, Du Ke decided to name this world the Fantasy World.
It was a fantasy planet with two suns. The sun on the left was smaller and could be called Lesser Yang, while the sun on the right was larger and could be called Greater Yang. Traditional Chinese medicine spoke of meridians such as the Hand Taiyang Small Intestine Meridian and the Hand Shaoyang Triple Burner Meridian. Lesser Yang, Taiyang, then add Greater Yang—done.
The video was finished. What Du Ke needed to worry about next was how to handle the samples he had brought back.
Over the past half year, he had considered this issue countless times. The best method would naturally be to consult professionals and dump the analysis and research work on experts. But that was destined to be unrealistic, since the risk of exposing his secret was too great. After thinking it over, he could only research and analyze them himself.
Thus, he had spent quite a bit of money building good relationships with researchers at an institute.
Aside from replicating some precision instruments and equipment, it was also to make it easier for him to conduct research in a laboratory later on. Still, he could only carry out basic, small-scale research. He had heard researchers mention things like DNA sequencing and protein localization, but even after hearing them explain, he remained utterly confused.
"I can't study them in the villa. It'll be troublesome if a virus leaks out. I still need to find an uninhabited place in the countryside." Du Ke acted as soon as he decided.
That afternoon, he rode his motorcycle around and found a house in a rural area near the suburbs. The house had already been abandoned, with neither water nor electricity. But that did not matter. Du Ke only needed a place to shelter from the wind and rain. After giving the house a simple cleaning, he began conducting experiments there.
With the Mind Armor supplying energy, he directly created an experiment table, then created an optical microscope.
Next, he carefully removed a Long-Haired Bomb from a test tube. Only after thoroughly disinfecting it with ultraviolet light did he dare expose it to Earth's air.
"If only I had a sterile laboratory."
Unfortunately, he did not, so he could only make do. He was already skilled at operating microscopes, and quickly adjusted the focus to see the structure of the Long-Haired Bomb.
"Mm, very interesting. This structure is somewhat like a chain, a special structure formed from cells that binds a certain substance inside... What is this substance? It should be something explosive, right? It seems like two substances are separated by a Cell Chain. Would they explode once mixed together?"
He recorded the structure of the Long-Haired Bomb that he observed. Most of it consisted of special chain-like structures that separated two substances. One substance was round, the other square, and for the moment he did not know their composition.
At the front end of the Long-Haired Bomb—the part that could be detonated through forceful contact—Du Ke discovered another special structure. "It looks like a lock, joined to the Cell Chain. Let me try opening this lock and see what chain reaction occurs." He began the next step.
A high-speed camera had already been installed on the optical microscope, recording the observation process at all times.
He manifested a tiny long needle and carefully pierced the trigger structure at the tip of the Long-Haired Bomb, intending to record the instant of the explosion.
Yet the entire process only produced a soft pop from the Long-Haired Bomb. There was no explosion as he had imagined.
When he looked through the lens again, the Long-Haired Bomb had already shattered into powder. The Cell Chain had vanished, and the two substances had mixed together, releasing an enormous amount of heat that turned the glass lens on the objective red-hot. Part of the stage had melted, the slide clip had burned out, and the glass holding down the Long-Haired Bomb had melted into liquid.
"How strange."
Du Ke examined the pulverized Long-Haired Bomb, then quickly brought up the earlier recording. By playing it in slow motion, he finally spotted the clue. When he triggered the tip with the long needle, it caused a chain reaction like falling dominoes. Every Cell Chain structure opened, releasing the two substances to mix.
After they mixed, a flash of intense light appeared and vanished. Then the massive heat melted the glass and iron plate. There had indeed been no explosion throughout the process.
"Did I stimulate it incorrectly?" Du Ke wondered. He took out another Long-Haired Bomb and forcefully stabbed it into the glass. With a soft pop, this Long-Haired Bomb also failed to explode. "That's strange. I could throw them in the Fantasy World and make them explode, so why won't they work on Earth?"
He threw out five in succession. Every one of them gave a soft pop, released a fleeting flash of light, and then melted the glass. There was no sign of an explosion.
"Either the Bomb Caterpillar lost its activity because it had been dead for too long, or Earth's air lacks some substance that can cause the Long-Haired Bombs to explode." Du Ke could not determine which was the cause in such a short time, because the live "hairless" Bomb Caterpillar he had collected had already died from "oxygen deprivation."
"However."
Du Ke keenly noticed another point worth investigating. "This single Long-Haired Bomb releases a tremendous amount of heat. If this thing were as large as an AAA battery, wouldn't the heat it released melt glaciers?" A Long-Haired Bomb thinner than a hair and less than half a fingernail in length contained so much energy.
One could imagine how much energy there would be if they were gathered into something the size of an AAA battery.
"Good heavens, could this be even more powerful than nuclear fission?"
Before you continue