030—Superpowers or Black Tech?

At last, it had worked...

Chen Chen stared blankly at the thing he had dreamed of for so long in his hand.

There had been plenty of twists and turns along the way, but in the end, he had finally achieved his goal.

Looking at the Permanent Immunity Serum in his hand, Chen Chen fell into a daze for the first time since taking NZT-48.

Only half a year had passed since he obtained the USB Drive, yet to Chen Chen, it had felt incomparably long—so long that it almost seemed unreal.

"But from today onward, I've finally gotten rid of the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head..."

Chen Chen muttered softly as he gently twisted off the safety cap and pressed the needleless injector against the vein in his neck.

To hell with toxicology tests and animal experiments.

Hiss!

Without the slightest hesitation, the needleless injector blasted the drug through Chen Chen's skin under high pressure and into his vein.

A wave of icy coolness spread from Chen Chen's neck, flowing with his blood into his heart, then from his heart to his brain...

The instant that cool current entered his brain, Chen Chen felt his mind clear. The faint, persistent pain in his head vanished at once.

"Phew!"

Chen Chen tilted his head back and let out a breath. He could clearly feel that the serum had seemingly unfolded a barrier within his brain, protecting it from further erosion by the drug.

In other words, from this moment onward, Chen Chen would no longer wake every morning with a splitting headache from the side effects. He would no longer suffer toxic reactions from the aftereffects, or even one day go into shock and die.

Chen Chen had completely freed himself from the drug's shackles. NZT-48 was no longer a double-edged sword that harmed its wielder before harming the enemy, but a divine weapon capable of carving through all obstacles!

Suppressing the wild joy in his heart, Chen Chen looked at the USB Drive again, only to find that it had merely grown much older. It had not become utterly dilapidated as before.

"It can still materialize something once more?"

Chen Chen's eyes lit up.

This time, he truly needed to choose carefully.

With that thought, Chen Chen silently pondered for a while.

He remembered reading a report called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in middle school. It divided human needs into five levels, from lowest to highest: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.

Applied to Chen Chen, before obtaining the immunity serum, he had actually remained at the second level: safety needs.

But now that his safety needs had been resolved, Chen Chen's needs had naturally advanced to the level of esteem and self-actualization.

In other words, he had begun to care about things like money, status, dreams, and so on.

Of course, superpowers were also a pretty good option. Although he could not use them to show off, they would still be useful for self-defense.

Chen Chen was particularly fond of an old saying from the Central Continent Region:

"With the art of killing in one's grasp, one carries fierce resolve in one's breast."

However, judging from the USB Drive's condition, he had at most one more chance to materialize something.

And the smart approach, naturally, was to turn this one opportunity into ten or even a hundred opportunities in the future.

With that in mind, Chen Chen took out a notebook and wrote down two choices.

"Chronicle, Ready Player One."

These were two films, as well as Chen Chen's two possible choices for his next step.

Chronicle was set entirely in the real world. Aside from its three protagonists, there were no supernatural powers anywhere in that world.

However, just as Chen Chen had worried before, he did not know whether his body would break down from crystal radiation after gaining superpowers, nor did he know whether his mind would be affected as his powers grew.

After all, the very word "Chronicle" carried an air of ominousness.

That was the risk.

The benefit, however, was that Chen Chen could go to Macau or even Las Vegas. With superpowers, he could win millions or tens of millions in a single night. Even if he could not go often, it would still be an extremely fast way to make money.

Many people believed that if you won too much money at a casino, the mafia would arrange for someone to intercept and kill you on the way back. This idea was not entirely wrong, but neither was it entirely right.

In truth, casinos were not all that different from ordinary businesses. They also had reputations to uphold. Beneath the dazzling lights, large numbers of gamblers won money every night, and there was no shortage of people who became rich overnight. These things were themselves a form of advertising for the casino.

If everyone who won tens of millions at a casino were robbed or even murdered on their way home, that casino would not last long.

But as mentioned above, winning once, twice, or even two or three times was fine. If you could win tens of millions every single night, then it would be a different matter.

The sewers beneath the slums of Las Vegas never lacked rotting, stinking corpses.

The other choice was one Chen Chen had considered for a long time.

Ready Player One was a 2018 film—

In 2040, the real world had been left devastated and hopeless by the Third World War, with human civilization reduced to a semi-wasteland state, until a genius named James Halliday appeared.

He created a virtual reality game called OASIS. As long as people put on VR equipment, they could enter this virtual world that stood in stark contrast to reality.

In that virtual world, there were bustling cities and players of every imaginable appearance. Even if you were a failure struggling in the slums in real life, you could still become a hero in OASIS, and even the most distant dreams would be within reach.

That was the basic premise of Ready Player One.

Simply put, it was a story about the future form of video games—the cinematic equivalent of an online-game novel from the Central Continent Region.

By wearing a pair of VR glasses, one could roam this virtual world without limits.

What would happen if Chen Chen could materialize that game's equipment in reality?

First of all, the Holographic Imaging Technology in the movie used retinal projection, creating three-dimensional images by projecting light directly onto the human retina.

Moreover, its dynamic rendering, particle rendering, bloom effects, real-time computation, and a whole series of visual technologies had reached a level indistinguishable from reality.

And judging from how it was presented in the movie, although that world was more than twenty years ahead of reality, technological progress had not advanced very far because of the world war.

That also meant that the technological level contained within OASIS was not too far removed from reality.

For example, the movie had no mind-control technology. Playing games still required haptic devices and motion-capture equipment.

In Chen Chen's view, the technological level of OASIS was probably only one generation ahead of reality.

That gap was not particularly vast, which also meant it would not be difficult for Chen Chen to thoroughly master the technology within it.

There were probably still ten to fifteen years before a game like this would appear in the real world. What would happen if Chen Chen released a VR game of the same caliber ahead of time?

It was foreseeable that this would inevitably trigger a massive reshuffling among global technology companies and major game studios.

At the same time, it represented an enormous fortune worth hundreds of billions.

Of course, directly releasing the complete game and its technology was unrealistic. It would only invite a great deal of unnecessary trouble.

However, Chen Chen could first release some of its code, algorithms, or even minor peripheral elements as groundwork. Then, after three to five years, he could unveil the finished game.

As it happened, Chen Chen already had a similar piece of groundwork in hand—his half-developed real-time translation app.

If he could equip the app he had designed with OASIS's artificial intelligence, would it produce some kind of revolutionary change?

At that thought, Chen Chen had already made his choice.

Just as he had conducted experiments before taking NZT-48, Chen Chen would test this first.

Although superpowers were more tempting to Chen Chen, if he could first obtain enough money to build a laboratory and then study the safety issues surrounding superpowers, wouldn't that be the more reliable approach?