Six hours after the battle ended, Xiang Qian boarded a flight home. When he had come here, he'd taken a military transport plane to save time by avoiding much of the airspace-clearance process. Now there was no rush, and Xiang Qian didn't want to endure the absolutely miserable experience of flying in a transport plane again. He'd rather wait another two hours for his private jet to arrive.
By Xiang Qian's own reckoning, he actually didn't want to return home so soon. Temugin had been captured, and although the Spear Bureau had caught him, it had happened on Tajikistan's soil, which meant the proper handover process had to be followed. After all, the Spear Bureau wasn't S.H.I.E.L.D. across the Pacific, let alone the CIA. It did things by the book, with propriety and courtesy; it wasn't capable of the sort of rotten behavior that came from acting as if no one else mattered. Xiang Qian had wanted to wait until the handover was finalized before returning, but the Weather Witch had forcibly hustled him onto the flight home.
"I'll personally keep an eye on Temugin's case. No matter what, I'll bring him back," the Weather Witch said, leaving Xiang Qian no chance to argue. "Get your ass home, now. Headquarters already knows you took part in the fighting here in person. The director's too scared to even answer the phone. If you don't come back soon, he's going to jump out a window."
Xiang Qian wanted to say that, given the director's temperament, even if he really did jump, he'd surely have secretly arranged for an air cushion to be waiting below. But after hesitating for a long while, he ultimately didn't dare provoke her. He obediently boarded the plane. At least when it came to Temugin and Mandarin, Xiang Qian could trust the Weather Witch to keep her promise.
Vector, who handled comprehensive intelligence analysis for the Special Task Force, was also heading home. She needed to submit a preliminary mission report. A few other Special Task Force members who had suffered minor injuries in the battle were on board as well. The two teams that had fought at the command center, including Saber and Vector, were completely unharmed, and the civilian staff and intelligence personnel had all been well protected. But several of the Special Task Force members who had gone with the Weather Witch to reinforce the allied forces were injured while rescuing people. Fortunately, none of them were seriously hurt.
The cabin was quiet. Those few injured team members had been brave and fearless on the battlefield, but this was their first time aboard a private jet. Seeing the cabin's understated luxury made them feel like country bumpkins in the big city, awkward and out of place. When several sweet, alluring flight attendants brought them food and drinks, the men grew even more stiff and uncomfortable. Their pathetic behavior made Vector, the only female passenger and their comrade, roll her eyes.
Xiang Qian lay on the long sofa in the small bar, eyes closed as he pretended to sleep. The instant he shut his eyes, his consciousness once again merged with the cosmic void deep in his mind.
This time, Xiang Qian didn't absorb energy or go to the Memory Planet. Instead, he appeared in an asteroid belt. It slowly revolved around a red dwarf, its asteroids varied in shape. From their surface colors, it was clear that the elements making up each celestial body differed as well.
Xiang Qian surveyed the entire asteroid belt, silently narrowing down his options. At last, he chose an asteroid with a crystalline sheen and descended onto it. Before long, at the prompting of his thoughts, the asteroid's surface began to tremble and break apart. The uneven ground reshaped itself, loose soil gradually compacted, and sharp-edged rocks were smoothed by an invisible force.
When everything finally came to a stop, the asteroid, whose primary structure was crystal, had been transformed into a capsule-like shape resembling a short cylinder.
Xiang Qian began carving lines into the ground. They were cut deeply into the surface; by human standards, they were no smaller in width and depth than tunnels for roads and railways. But compared to the asteroid's size, they were incredibly fine.
The lines gradually multiplied and grew increasingly complex, spreading across more and more of the celestial body's surface. When the entire surface was covered, Xiang Qian flew away from the asteroid and looked down from above. Countless intersecting lines formed an intricate, abstruse pattern.
Xiang Qian gave a slight wave of his hand, and one of the bubbles commonly found on the Memory Planet appeared in his palm. It held only one thing: the gemstone ring confiscated from Temugin. Unlike the gemstone ring in reality, this replica on the Memory Planet was luminous. The energy lines Xiang Qian had once glimpsed inside the gem were clearly visible, and they corresponded exactly to the lines carved into the asteroid.
The energy field inside the gem had been perfectly replicated on the asteroid.
After confirming everything was in order, Xiang Qian waved his hand. The asteroid suddenly broke away from the belt and flew toward the distant red dwarf. He kept it in orbit close to the red dwarf's surface, while protecting its structure from being torn apart by the star's gravity. A dense storm of stellar radiation surged toward the asteroid. As the violent energy struck its surface, a powerful field appeared from nowhere, directing every form of energy into the lines carved into the ground.
Seeing the empty lines begin to glow fiery red, as if magma were flowing through them, Xiang Qian knew his guess had been right. The lines inside the gem did indeed form a special energy field. The red dwarf's radiation gave the field its initial impetus and set it in motion. Once it was running, the field absorbed and stored the radiation, ready to be activated at any time.
That was how the gemstone worked: it used energy in a way entirely different from Earth's technological systems.
The red gemstone blazed with light, becoming dazzling in a very short time. Then, as Xiang Qian watched, it exploded from the inside out, scattering into a pile of fragments. But Xiang Qian knew his experiment had succeeded. There was nothing wrong with the replicated energy field. The explosion had happened because the asteroid's material differed from the ruby's. Perhaps it couldn't withstand so much energy, or perhaps the ruby itself had been designed with overload protection.
This method of absorbing and storing energy already present in nature, then releasing it when needed, was far more efficient than the solar, wind, and tidal power currently in use. There was no shortage of things that could theoretically rival such a field. Xiang Qian thought of a famous theoretical design in human technological history: the Dyson Sphere. The gemstone's energy field, however, was simpler and more practical.
Perhaps I can conduct further tests in the laboratory. Finding a suitable material to hold the field should actually be easy. Studying the underlying principles is the hard part, Xiang Qian thought silently.
This Soul Universe had formed when Xiang Qian was six. Even now, he still couldn't figure out what kind of thing it was. Although it existed within his soul, it followed the same laws of nature as the real world. But one thing had been clear to Xiang Qian ever since the day he first encountered natural science: when it came to scientific research, this universe would be an incredibly powerful cheat.
Absorbing and converting Cosmic Energy to strengthen himself? Building the Memory Planet to gain extraordinary memory? If he limited himself to such superficial uses, he might as well be wasting a priceless treasure. To Xiang Qian, the greatest practical value of this universe was that it was a testing ground without any restrictions.
No restrictions on time, materials, or energy. He didn't even have to worry about safety regulations!
Take the field of new materials, which had yielded the Five Elements Laboratory's most prolific research results. Every new material that had been perfected and put to use in the modern world required an extremely complicated manufacturing process. There could be dozens or even hundreds of steps, each with hundreds of variables. A slightly higher or lower temperature, or slightly more or less pressure inside the reaction vessel, could directly affect the material's properties. Developing any new material inevitably required tens of thousands of repeated tests, consuming vast resources without any guarantee of the expected results.
But what did resource consumption matter here? Would the resources of an entire planet be enough for your experiments?
Need high temperatures and pressures? I could put you in a gas giant's core. Would that be hot enough, with enough pressure?
By adjusting the planetary environment, Xiang Qian could perfectly reproduce any experimental conditions found in reality—there was no point in creating conditions that couldn't be achieved in the real world. At the same time, he could design thousands of experiments under different conditions for the same material. Researchers in the real world could only wait for their results in tedious suspense, but in the world of his soul, Xiang Qian needed only a thought to fast-forward an experiment to its conclusion.
Outsiders were always amazed by the Five Elements Laboratory's efficiency and productivity in research, but no one knew that when many of its results were actually being developed in the lab, most of the experiments had already been completed in Xiang Qian's soul world. All he had to do was guide the experiments toward the one correct path at the right moment.