Destruction
It was still the same lab coat, washed pale and stained with unidentified grime and scorch marks. His hair stuck out in a disheveled mess, and unshaven stubble had spread across his chin after several days without a shave.
Xue the Madman's appearance had barely changed since he left, as if time had deliberately bypassed him, focusing solely on carving the never-extinguished, almost frenzied flame of thirst for knowledge in his eyes.
When Gao Gong appeared, there was no spatial fluctuation or flashy light effect. It was as if he had never left, merely walking from one end of the room to the other.
Inside the laboratory of that top-tier spacetime ship—
At that moment, Xue the Madman was bent over a workbench cobbled together from various discarded components, flickering holographic screens, and tubes filled with flowing, unidentified luminous liquid. In his hand, a delicate pair of energy forceps was trying to "pluck" something from a sizzling plasma mass that constantly shifted its form.
He did not look up. He did not even pause for 0.1 seconds at Gao Gong's arrival.
The energy forceps clamped down with precision, twisted, and pulled. A small piece of material resembling solidified lightning, yet also like liquid crystal, was peeled away and casually tossed into a nearby beaker bubbling with colorful foam.
Only then did he slowly straighten up and turn his head, looking at Gao Gong with a pair of bloodshot yet astonishingly bright eyes.
There was no excitement at being reunited with an old acquaintance, no surprise at the unexpected guest, and no deliberate show of calm.
It was a kind of... indescribable focus, as if Gao Gong were not an independent person but an extremely complex unknown variable that had suddenly appeared on his workbench.
His gaze was like the