As Long as You Swing the Hoe Well, No Corner Is Too Tough to Dig Up

After seeing off Chen Xinjie, who had come looking for a handout, Mo Yuan returned to the workbench and sat there for a while.

He did not pick up his pen right away. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, his gaze falling on the sticky note. "Anti-Entropy," "Schicksal," and "World Serpent" lay there quietly, like three seeds that had yet to decide where they would be planted.

After thinking it over, he finally crossed out the latter two names.

Then he reached out, flipped the sticky note over, tucked it between the pages of his notebook, and activated his Soul-Guided terminal.

There were more and more things to do.

The Molecular Reconstruction plant was still under construction. Although the training had come to an end for now, the subsequent technical support could not stop. The prototype of the Miniature Spatial Energy Storage Core also had to be put on the agenda as soon as possible, since Chen Xinjie was still waiting to see the finished product. On top of that, there was the council-level push Fu Moxin had promised. Every item needed someone to follow up, coordinate, and implement.

He was only one person, and each day had only twenty-four hours.

It was time to find an assistant.

Mo Yuan's fingers paused over the terminal's projected keyboard for an instant before rapidly tapping away.

He bypassed the Federation's public database entirely, then entered the internal archive systems of several core research institutions.

It might have sounded impolite, but places like these were undoubtedly the best talent pools. After all, where could he find someone more readily than among people who had already been trained?

The Tang Sect, Shrek, the core laboratories of the Federation Academy of Sciences—getting through their firewalls only meant taking a few extra detours to him.

He flipped through the files marked with high-level authorization, his eyes quickly scanning each person's résumé and research fields.

Then he stopped.

A passport photo was attached to the upper-right corner of the file. The person in it looked to be in her twenties, with delicate features, but there was an indescribable sharpness in her eyes, as if she was constantly judging whether the things around her were worth a second glance.

The name field read "Ling Zichen," while the position field read "Senior Researcher at the Tang Sect Soul-Guided Cannon Shell Research Center."

The research field listed a long string of terms. One of them was circled separately: "Single-Unit Positive Source Feedback Array."

Mo Yuan narrowed his eyes slightly. This legendary figure who had appeared in the original work immediately caught his attention.

Ling Zichen, director of the Tang Sect Soul-Guided Cannon Shell Research Center, was known as "Frankenstein."

She had no Soul Power and could not become a Soul Master, yet by transforming herself into a Mecha warrior, she had gained combat power matching a Titled Douluo.

She later fused herself with the Eternal Heaven, underwent further mechanical modifications, and somehow lived for ten thousand years, arming herself with technology until she reached the level of a Second-Level God.

Mo Yuan shut down the terminal, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes for a while.

He had found the most suitable candidate. The only problem left was how to make her willing to come over.

But as the saying went, as long as you swung the hoe well, no corner was too tough to dig up.

He was best at dealing with people interested only in technology. Wasn't it just technology? He had plenty of it.

--

The next evening, at the Radiant Tang Sect Soul-Guided Cannon Shell Research Center.

Ling Zichen pushed open the door to her dormitory. She had spent nearly fourteen hours in the laboratory that day, and her entire body, from the tips of her hair to the soles of her shoes, carried the mixed scent of flux and rare-metal powder.

She took off her coat and draped it over the back of a chair. Just as she was about to wash her hands, the corner of her eye caught the Soul-Guided terminal on the desk. There was actually an anonymous email in it?

Her movement stopped for a moment.

This Soul-Guided terminal was connected to the Tang Sect's intranet, where every message had to be tied to a real name. In theory, anonymous emails were absolutely impossible.

She opened the email. There was only one line of text and a number inside.

Ling Zichen stared at the line for three seconds, then activated the Soul-Guided communications terminal on the desk and entered the string of numbers.

The terminal screen flickered and automatically switched to an encrypted page. A research paper appeared before her eyes.

The instant her gaze fell on the title, her brows twitched slightly.

By the second second, she had sat down.

By the third second, she was already sprawled over the desk, her eyes pressed close to the screen as if afraid of missing a single word.

The paper was about her field of research: the Single-Unit Positive Source Feedback Array.

But its approach was entirely different from every paper she had seen before.

It proposed a completely new approach to array construction. By adjusting the energy-feedback pathways of the core magic array, it could improve the overall stability of the array. In theory, it could raise the energy-conversion efficiency of existing arrays by at least thirty percent while avoiding the energy backflow interference commonly found in traditional configurations.

Most crucially, the paper also included a complete regional simulation. The ideas were clear and meticulous, the chain of logic watertight, and every step stayed within the bounds of practical implementation.

Ling Zichen was enthralled.

By the time she reached the fourth page, she had completely forgotten the passage of time. When she reached the seventh, she had even picked up a pen and followed along with part of the derivation on a sheet of scratch paper.

Her fingertips tapped lightly against the edge of the screen, and her lips moved faintly as if she were murmuring the conversion nodes of the energy formulas.

Then the eighth page turned, and the paper abruptly stopped.

There was only one line at the bottom of the screen: "To be continued."

Ling Zichen suddenly sat upright.

She flipped back and checked it again, then flipped forward and stared at those four words for a long time.

The feeling was like a pilot who was about to take off suddenly encountering a horror movie halfway through the training materials.

She took a deep breath, shut down the terminal, lay back on the bed, and closed her eyes. Her mind was filled with the derivations from earlier, spinning over and over.

She turned over once, then again. In the end, she simply sat up, turned the light back on, and read through the paper from beginning to end once more.

When she reached the end of the seventh page, she instinctively swiped downward. A prompt popped up on the screen: "End of file reached."

"Arghhh! Damn it—"

Ling Zichen threw the terminal beside her pillow.

Naturally, she did not sleep that night.

--

The next day.

Ling Zichen entered the laboratory with two obvious dark circles under her eyes. She looked as if something had sucked half the life out of her.

She spent the entire day distracted, repeatedly replaying the direction of the final derivation in the paper in her mind.

She tried continuing it herself, but halfway through, she felt something was wrong. She could not grasp the connection point in the reasoning, and the continuation felt completely off.

That evening, she returned to her dormitory once more.

When she opened the door, her steps were a little faster than usual.

Her Soul-Guided terminal had indeed received another anonymous email.

She picked it up and glanced at it, immediately feeling disappointed.

It was not the second half of the paper she had been longing for. There was only one line: "No. 17 Bluestone Street, Mingdu South District, seven tomorrow evening."

There was no signature below, no explanation, and no question asking whether she would come. It read like a notice from someone who had already made the decision for her.

Ling Zichen stared at the line for a long time.

Her first reaction was wariness.

An unknown source, a paper deliberately cut off halfway, and a designated time and place—she had seen this routine far too many times. Even if it was not a trap, it was at least a setup.

But her second reaction was the unbearable feeling from last night, of being cut off halfway through, surging back up. It was like a thorn lodged in her throat; until she pulled it out, she could neither swallow nor spit it out.

Ling Zichen set down the Soul-Guided terminal and went to wash her face.

As water streamed from the faucet over her hands, she lowered her head and stared at her fingertips in silence for a long time.

She herself could not become a Soul Master, but by transforming herself into a Mecha warrior, she had gained combat power sufficient to rival a Titled Douluo.

If it was a trap, she at least would not be completely helpless. If it was something else...

She turned off the faucet and looked up at her reflection in the mirror.

The person in the mirror had bluish eye sockets, but her eyes were far clearer than they had been that morning.

"Whew—Ling Zichen, what are you afraid of? At worst, I'll just blow up whoever's behind this!"