About Me Poaching Talent, but Somehow Accidentally Taking the Whole House with It

By the time he returned to his lodgings, it was already late at night.

Mo Yuan closed the door, took out his Soul Guidance terminal, and directly created a flash drive out of thin air.

The [Analysis] Authority had remained active throughout his entire face-to-face conversation with Ling Zichen.

Strangely enough, his Analysis Authority should have had considerable difficulty analyzing living beings. Yet when it came to Ling Zichen, its analysis speed was unusually fast, as if she were a Soul Guidance machine.

He did not even need to touch her or use any additional medium. As long as Ling Zichen was within his perception range, he could continuously collect the energy information dissipating into the surrounding space.

Therefore, by the time she left, the special energy characteristics formed by the fusion of the Mecha and Ling Zichen's body had already been completely recorded during the collection process.

The amount of data was not small, but its contents were actually quite concentrated. They were exactly the same as the Single-Unit Positive Source Feedback Array System he had been working on recently.

Mo Yuan separated out the visual data and placed it on the main screen, going through it frame by frame.

A layer of extremely thin energy covered the surface of Ling Zichen's body. The way that energy operated was completely different from that of every Soul Master he had seen before.

For ordinary Soul Masters, Soul Power naturally circulated along the meridian system. Its paths could be traced, and its patterns followed.

But the energy field around Ling Zichen was more like a deliberately woven net. Those energy paths did not completely follow the body's meridians. Instead, they repeatedly converged and diverged along certain specific nodes, forming a circulation logic independent of the original Soul Power system.

Combined with his understanding of the original work, this was the physical manifestation of the Single-Unit Positive Source Feedback Array on her body.

This system had completely replaced her normal vital signs.

Mo Yuan extracted the topological structure of that energy pathway, marked the key convergence nodes and diversion routes, and then saved it in a newly created folder.

This structure might provide direct reference value for his subsequent research into adaptation arrays for humanoid robots.

Especially the design concept concerning how the energy output ports could efficiently connect with external devices.

He continued scrolling down and called up another set of data.

The source of that data differed from the energy pathways. It mainly involved structural information on the material level—in other words, the skeleton, joint structure, and energy transmission pipeline distribution of the special Mecha Ling Zichen had developed based on her own characteristics.

Her Mecha did not have the obvious modular assembly traces of conventional Mecha. It looked more like something that had grown from within an integral structure.

There was no obvious physical separation between the Mecha's skeleton and her own bones. The energy pipelines were embedded directly on the outside of her subcutaneous tissue, arranged parallel to her nerve bundles and sharing the same signal transmission channels.

However, he had not yet seen any structure representing the Single-Unit Positive Source Array on that Mecha. She probably had not researched it to that level yet.

Even so, that Mecha was already enough to rival a Black Mecha or even Three-Word Battle Armor.

Mo Yuan stared at the structural diagrams in silence for several seconds.

The energy pipelines were embedded beneath her skin with astonishing precision, avoiding all major blood vessels and organs. They ran almost directly along the surface of her bones.

Fusion to this degree could not have been completed in a day or two. It looked more like the result of long-term, meticulous adaptation.

No wonder this woman could later turn herself into a robot. What a lunatic...

He closed that set of data and labeled the folder: "Ling Zichen—Mecha Fusion Structure Reference."

Then he closed the terminal, leaned back in his chair, and shut his eyes for a while.

"But that's fine too. After all, a scientific female madman sounds right up my alley..."

Two days later, at the Radiant Tang Sect Soul Guidance Artillery Shell Research Center.

Ling Zichen entered the laboratory, still clutching the silver-gray data card in her hand.

Apart from eating and sleeping, she had spent almost all her time over the past two days reading the complete version of that paper.

After finishing it, she had dismantled the experimental plan all over again, confirmed every parameter node that needed adjustment, and immediately made the changes at the laboratory that morning.

After greeting the other researchers, she walked to the experimental table, inserted the data card into the control terminal, and called up the revised plan adjusted according to the paper's approach.

The parameters on the operation panel had not changed much from the original version. More precisely, there were not many altered parameters, but every adjusted position landed precisely on a node that had repeatedly caused problems in the previous experiments.

Ling Zichen pressed the start button.

The array's core area lit up with a familiar blue glow, but this time, the blue light was somewhat different.

Its color was more even, and its edges no longer flickered from slight energy dissipation. The entire array took only about three seconds to go from activation to stabilization.

The data lines on the monitoring screen began to jump. The input value remained fairly stable, while the output value began to rise steadily after a brief fluctuation, stopping only after reaching a figure it had never achieved before.

Ling Zichen stared at that number on the screen for a long time.

The energy output efficiency had increased by a full thirty percent compared to the previous experiment.

She had not yet fully processed the result when someone came up behind her.

The first to approach was the laboratory's deputy director. He stuck his head over to glance at the screen, froze for two seconds, then abruptly turned to Ling Zichen. "Holy crap! Zichen, how did you do that?"

Then came the second, third, and fourth people. In less than half a minute, a circle of people had formed behind her.

Some repeatedly checked the data on the screen, while others bent down to inspect the temperature readings at the ends of the several energy output pipelines in the array's core area.

The silence lasted about three seconds before someone said quietly, "Wait, is there really nothing wrong with this data?"

"Of course not," Ling Zichen said. "I readjusted the plan."

"You adjusted it?" The laboratory director was clearly somewhat disbelieving.

Ling Zichen thought for a moment, then took the data card from her pocket and held it up for them to see.

"I didn't come up with it. This is a paper someone else wrote. I only made the modifications according to its approach."

She had never considered claiming the research as her own. In her view, if you knew something, you knew it, and if you did not, you did not. There was no need to fake anything.

One of the researchers took the data card and flipped through it. When he saw the title and author's name on the cover, his hand paused.

"Mo Yuan... Why does that name sound familiar?"

"You idiot! Wasn't he on the news before? The Level-9 Soul Engineer." Someone beside him chimed in. "The youngest Level-9 Soul Engineer in Federation history. He was probably unprecedented, and there probably won't be anyone who surpasses him either."

"That's him," Ling Zichen said. "He wrote this."

"Comparison really is infuriating..." one researcher suddenly muttered dejectedly, lowering his head.

The laboratory fell silent for several seconds. Some people lowered their heads to look at the data card, while others exchanged glances.

In the end, Director Li was the first to speak. "Wait a second. Why would he give something like this to you?"

"He invited me to meet him and wanted me to join him in working on a project," Ling Zichen said in a perfectly ordinary tone, without the slightest attempt to hide it. "I plan to accept."

Director Li fell silent for a while. Then he reached out and took the data card from his colleague, flipped to the contents page, skimmed two lines, and closed it again.

He raised his head and looked at Ling Zichen, his expression extremely complicated—surprise, hesitation, and a faint impulse that had been gently nudged by something and could no longer avoid facing it.

When he spoke, his tone was lower than usual. "Um, Zichen... could you ask Mr. Mo Yuan whether he still needs people over there?"

Ling Zichen froze.

"Wait... You're the director, and you're following me when I change jobs?"

Director Li's expression was completely open and unembarrassed.

"You've read what he wrote too, so you know what level he's at. I think those of us in research should have some ambition..."

Ling Zichen opened and closed her mouth, unable to find a suitable response for the moment.

What happened next was far more outrageous than she had expected.

The news spread throughout the entire laboratory in roughly ten minutes.

By the time Ling Zichen came out from the experimental table and prepared to go to the adjacent room for a new record sheet, three or four people were already standing in the corridor.

One of her colleagues saw her approaching and opened with, "Zichen, if you change jobs, can you take me with you?"

The moment those words left his mouth, people behind him crowded over one after another.

Some asked more tactfully, while others simply said, "Director Li is going, so why aren't you taking us with you?"

Ling Zichen stood in the middle of the corridor, surrounded by people, still clutching the record sheet in her hand. Her expression changed from stunned, to helpless, and finally to something that made it impossible to tell whether she wanted to laugh or sigh.

Seriously, none of you are even trying to hide it?

This counts as betrayal, doesn't it?

She raised her head and glanced at the Soul Guidance lamp on the ceiling, then gently exhaled.

Then she took out the Soul Guidance Communicator, found the number she had written down earlier, and pressed the call button.

The ringing sounded three times in the receiver before the other side picked up.

"Um, Mo Yuan..." she said. "Do you still need people over there? Something... seems to have... happened here?"