At eight in the morning, Gao Jian arrived at his workstation as usual. Replenishing the spirit stones had drained so much of his energy that he pulled a few Grain-Avoidance Pills from his pocket, stuffed them into his mouth, and chewed.
"Snickers? Doesn't eating those first thing in the morning get sickening?" Tao Qing asked curiously beside him.
Tao Qing was a young man in his twenties who had joined that year. He also worked in R&D and was a born-and-bred Beijing native.
His parents, well-off even by Beijing standards, had long since paved his path into the space industry. His girlfriend was his childhood sweetheart, whom he had started dating in high school, and she worked downstairs at the neighboring Bureau of National Defense Science, Technology and Industry. Their backgrounds matched perfectly; they were an ideal pair.
Gao Jian had long since grown used to it. Whether at the Space Administration or the industrial bureau, people from grassroots backgrounds like Song Yaozu were becoming rarer and rarer. Most were children of senior officials or wealthy families, like Tao Qing, clustered together...
He did not mean to criticize the phenomenon. After all, these people had earned their positions through the national civil service examination. Some had even started preparing for the aptitude and essay tests while still at university, checking every box: Youth League membership, outstanding graduate honors, class leadership positions, household registration, and so on. They met all the stringent eligibility requirements and passed the exam straight after graduation.
They also brought some genuine ability to their jobs. They were not complete incompetents.
Still, Gao Jian always felt there was something odd about it.
"They're fine. I don't get sick of them."
Gao Jian tossed him two "Grain-Avoidance Pills." He had at least ten thousand bars of the stuff in his Storage Bag.
Tao Qing politely declined. "Gao, I'd rather drink fermented mung bean milk than eat those first thing in the morning."
Remembering his first taste of fermented mung bean milk, Gao Jian's face twisted slightly.
He had no idea who had invented that drink with its overpowering fishy smell.
Since Tao Qing did not want any, Gao Jian did not insist. He simply kept eating them one after another.
Under Tao Qing's astonished gaze, Gao Jian ate more than a dozen Snickers bars. Just watching made Tao Qing's teeth feel sick of the sweetness, but Gao Jian did not care in the slightest and had already started working.
He kept three spirit stones in his pocket, slowly feeding spiritual energy into them through his skin. At this rate, they would be fully charged by around evening. High-calorie food like Snickers helped him enormously. Only by ensuring he had enough physical energy each day could he avoid disrupting his cultivation at night.
Gao Jian's work computer was a classified internal-network machine with no external internet connection. It held plenty of original data on the Long March 10, along with the material Gao Jian had compiled on the SLS rocket and Old Li's theoretical speculations about geomagnetic storms.
There was plenty of material, but Gao Jian's mind was elsewhere.
He was wondering what price he would have to pay to get the Moon Landing Program restarted.
He genuinely wanted to go and see the moon.
Or... should I steal the entire Long March 10?
The Long March 10 Rocket was ninety-two meters long, with a body diameter of five meters. His Mustard Seed Sumeru Bag was a top-tier spatial artifact capable of holding mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas. Fitting the Long March 10 inside would be easy, but the theft of a giant rocket would certainly prompt the state to investigate the supernatural.
Besides, even if he stole it, launching the rocket would be difficult without coordinated ground control.
And the recent Intercontinental Missile test launch had shown that all the major powers could easily intercept a large crewed rocket like this.
What if I stole the rocket, launched it in secret, and someone intercepted it?
Fly out and intercept the missile?
What if it carried a nuclear warhead?
"What a hassle. I'll keep stealing the rocket as a backup option."
Gao Jian was no rigid traditionalist. Apart from human lives, everything had to give way to immortal cultivation. His first choice was to persuade the state to restart the Moon Landing Program. His second was to turn to Elon Musk. Only as a last resort would he steal a rocket and leave on his own.
Just then, however, Gao Jian noticed an email notification pop up in the lower-right corner of his work computer.
"An email on the internal network?"
Only someone on the same internal network could have sent it to him.
"Hello, Engineer Gao. Do you remember me?"
The email account ID was completely unfamiliar, but the message was signed with a name.
[Wan Hu]
The man who claimed to be Tesla's vice president for China?
Before Gao Jian could react, the sender sent a second email.
"Because of the comrades at the State Security Bureau, we have not dared to contact you rashly. I asked a friend at the Space Administration to send you an email from his account. This is the only way we could think of to get around the State Security Bureau comrades' surveillance."
Gao Jian typed back, "What do you want?"
The reply came almost instantly.
"I'm very sorry we visited your residence without permission. My offer of five hundred thousand US dollars for a meeting still stands. My assistant is standing outside the door of your temporary residence. Could we meet you there? If not, I'll have our person leave."
What do you mean, your assistant is right outside my door?
A blue-green gleam flashed in Gao Jian's eyes. He activated his divine sense, sending it surging toward the old residential compound two kilometers away. It quickly located Unit 2 of Building 7, wound upward, and reached his doorstep in an instant.
He saw "Wan Hu's assistant."
She was a young girl wearing a yellow-and-black work uniform, a delivery rider for Taobao Flash Delivery. In her hand was a document pouch containing a small USB drive.
Some assistant. He'd clearly just hired a delivery rider to bring over a USB drive.
His divine sense continued spreading in all directions, covering the entire area within a ten-kilometer radius of his residence. The daily activities of hundreds of thousands of people lay before him, but there was not a single suspicious person.
As Gao Jian hesitated over whether to head home, the door suddenly opened. Song Yaozu, frantic because he thought he was late, rushed out and collided head-on with her.
Song Yaozu's kangaroo helmet slammed into her head. Sparks flew as the two delivery helmets collided. Almost simultaneously, they grunted and staggered back several steps.
Seeing this, Gao Jian typed a reply. "Have your assistant wait a little."
The sender replied in some alarm, "Please hurry. Something seems to have happened to my assistant. She isn't replying to my messages."
It was indeed difficult to reply to messages while unconscious.
Fifteen minutes later.
Gao Jian pedaled a shared bicycle back to the foot of his apartment building and hurried upstairs. He immediately saw a Meituan Rider kneeling in the corridor, performing CPR compressions on a Hummingbird Rider. His technique was not particularly correct, but he was using plenty of force.
"Wake up, wake up! I'll file an insurance claim for you. It's all my fault, all my fault..." Hearing footsteps, he looked up and saw Gao Jian, nearly bursting into tears. "Engineer Gao, I really didn't mean to! I didn't see anyone when I came out..."
"Stop pressing. Keep that up and she'll start foaming at the mouth." Gao Jian stopped the Meituan Rider's rescue efforts.
"Huh?" Song Yaozu looked up in shock and immediately stopped.
"Go to work. Leave her to me."
"But I'm the one who knocked her unconscious." Song Yaozu was panicking.
"I ordered the delivery. This has nothing to do with you." Gao Jian crouched and gently patted the unconscious Hummingbird delivery rider twice, healing her concussion. She slowly came around.
After Gao Jian urged him repeatedly, the Meituan Rider finally left the corridor and went to work, burdened with guilt. Gao Jian was in no hurry either, waiting while the Hummingbird Rider leaned against the corner and recovered for a while.
"Sorry about that. My friend didn't mean to. Is that my delivery?"
Gao Jian pointed to the bag in the Hummingbird Rider's hand.
She rubbed her helmet, feeling as though Li Yuanji's hammer had struck her earlier. Even the people in front of her looked blurry. Only after resting for quite a while did her vision finally focus enough to make out Gao Jian's face.
"You're Mr. Gao, right?"
"Yes."
After confirming Gao Jian's identity, the Hummingbird Rider suppressed all her emotions and immediately handed over the delivery pouch.
"Is there a payment due on delivery? Or should I give you some compensation?" Gao Jian took the pouch, already prepared to scan a code and pay.
"No, the client has already paid." The Hummingbird Rider shook her head. She seemed a little uneasy about having accepted a high-paying private job outside the platform and was very afraid of further complications.
After giving Gao Jian the USB drive, she added, "The USB drive is only one part. There's something else on my delivery scooter downstairs. It's too heavy for me to carry up. Could you go down and collect it?"
"Sure."
Gao Jian's divine sense had already noticed the unusual object in her delivery box. It was a full-coverage helmet that filled the entire box and weighed dozens of pounds.
Three minutes later, Gao Jian carried the enormous helmet back upstairs. The Hummingbird Rider, meanwhile, had ridden away on her electric scooter.
Once inside, Gao Jian set the huge helmet on the table with a dull thud.
Since he did not recognize it, he could only take a photo and search for it.
"This is actually a noninvasive electrical-signal virtual brain-computer helmet?"
Also known as a multisensory neural simulation helmet, it was a technological product that had only emerged in the last two years. Essentially an upgraded Full-Coverage VR Headset, it had originally been designed to provide entertainment for patients with ALS or paraplegia, allowing them to experience the "real world."
It was not even sold domestically. It was an American product that had yet to enter mass production, and it cost a fortune, with the projected price exceeding two hundred thousand US dollars per helmet.
"They really spared no expense..."
Looking at the super-heavy virtual brain-computer helmet before him, Gao Jian fell into thought.
A USB drive and a noninvasive helmet. Did they want to meet me in a virtual online world?
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