"Before I quit, I did try to contact her every day, but I stopped afterward." Yu Wan thought about it. Fortunately, she had quit quickly. Otherwise, this kind of repetitive work would have worked her to death every day, making a call at a set time every day that nobody answered... How creepy.
"Uncle probably gave up too. She's been missing for so long. If you think about the worst possibility, something might have happened to her. Archaeology sounds like a high-risk profession too..."
Hearing even the great diviner say that, Luo Yu nodded. "True. Come to think of it, how did you contact her? By letter?"
"We tried every means of communication. Letters... Communication Conches... She published her frequency. Oh, it's also possible that both our conches were too low-level, and she was out of range? If she'd already left Alliance waters..."
Communication Conch...
Luo Yu went back to his room, took out a white conch, and said, "This?"
Yu Wan froze, rubbed her eyes, and said in disbelief, "How do you have one of those?!"
She couldn't even bear to buy one herself!
She used an official one, allocated to the director's office by the island!
Could it be... left behind by Researcher Luo Shui?
"July fished it up..." Luo Yu shrugged.
Yu Wan was bewildered. "What do you mean, fished it up? In other words, you just found it?"
"You could put it that way."
"???" Yu Wan wept with envy. Even after saving her wages from all those years of work, she couldn't afford a Communication Conch. In just two sentences, Luo Yu had dealt a huge critical hit to an office drone like her.
Her next pet beast... She absolutely had to find one that could fish too.
"What's that archaeologist's number? I'll try again." Luo Yu hadn't managed to get through to anyone since finding the conch, and now the whim had struck him again.
"315040203..." Yu Wan wearily searched her memory. After dialing it once a day, it was hard to forget.
Luo Yu tried tapping out the corresponding frequency.
Yu Wan shook her head at the sight, but the next moment, a "beep, beep-" sounded, and her mouth fell slightly open.
It went through? What the hell! How had Luo Yu gotten through on his first try?!
A moment later, a very young female voice came from the Communication Conch. No, young wasn't quite the word. It was childish, perhaps sounding less than ten years old, though that probably wasn't her actual age; her voice was simply unusual.
"Who is this?"
Luo Yu was surprised too. It went through? He quickly handed the conch to Yu Wan and let her do the talking.
"Are you Scholar An Yao, a graduate of Canglan Ocean University?" Yu Wan fumbled to take it.
"Yes, I am. Who is this?" the woman on the other end asked.
Yu Wan immediately introduced herself. "I'm Yu Wan, secretary to the director of the Mirror Moon Island Beast Management Bureau..."
Wait, how had she become a secretary again?
Yu Wan continued with a distant look in her eyes. "Here's the situation. An Ancient Grotto was unearthed on Mirror Moon Island, containing many traces of the dinosaur age. I read your interview in the Star Sea Times, and I was wondering whether you'd be interested in coming to Mirror Moon Island to investigate, Scholar An Yao?"
"I've been trying to contact you for the past few months, but I couldn't get through..."
On the other end of the Communication Conch, the biologist An Yao was silent for a moment. "Sorry. Some pirates kidnapped me a while ago. They wanted me to explore an undersea ruin, and I just escaped."
Yu Wan exclaimed, "What about the pirates?"
"The ruins were dangerous. They were all wiped out there. I noticed the danger ahead of time and escaped the disaster."
"..."
"Mirror Moon Island, right? I'll pack up and set out immediately."
"All right..." Yu Wan hadn't expected her to be so dedicated when she had just escaped death.
After they ended the call, Yu Wan looked at the conch in silence. "Somehow I've started working again. Do I have to handle the follow-up too? No, I have to pass it on to someone else."
Luo Yu had been listening beside her for quite a while. "From what she's been through, you can tell she's capable... We found the right person."
She could probably uncover more of the Ancient Grotto's secrets... As long as she didn't get everyone on Mirror Moon Island wiped out too.
"I suppose I've finally finished the job I couldn't get done before." Yu Wan sighed. She had to ask the bureau for overtime pay!
"Then why don't you go report to the director first?" Luo Yu said.
Yu Wan looked at the conch. "Don't we have a Communication Conch right here? Lend it to me again. I'll call his office directly, so I won't have to make the trip myself."
That made sense. Luo Yu had no answer to that.
The next moment, Yu Wan called Director Yu Lei's personal Communication Conch.
"Uncle, it's me."
"Luo Yu's penguin fished up the Communication Conch."
Yu Lei: ???
"Xiao Wan? I haven't even asked anything yet. How did you answer before I could?"
"But do I look senile to you? Someone can fish one of these things up?"
Yu Wan said, "That's not important. What matters is that I finally got in touch with the archaeology scholar who graduated from Canglan Ocean University, the one you asked me to contact."
"She expects to arrive on Mirror Moon Island in half a month, if nothing goes wrong."
After that matter was settled for the time being, Luo Yu waited for the island to capture an Earth Penguin test subject. Meanwhile, the Ink Fish with high-level talents that he had purchased from Wang Defa had mated, and after a month, they had finally laid their eggs.
The first pair... Danger Sense and Mental Overload. Seven eggs, no surprises.
The second pair... Dark Affinity and Gu King. No surprises.
Several pairs in a row produced no surprises. All their offspring were ordinary individuals.
Among all those pairs, the Mercy-and-Mercy pairs were inbred, and both parents had the same talent, so their bloodlines had been purified. They produced many offspring with the same healing talent, giving him something to show for the healing breeding project.
There was also a pair with Ice Element Affinity and Ice Element Affinity. Those two had no interest in sex, but had finally mated. However, they had been the slowest to mate and had yet to lay eggs.
Besides those, one pair Luo Yu had changed around was among the few that held a surprise.
The pair had originally been Mercy and Super Antibody. Later, however, the first Breeding Paragon produced offspring for the second time, including an individual with both Mercy and Breeding Paragon. Once the egg hatched, Luo Yu split up the original pair.
He paired Super Antibody with the dual-talent individual instead. With Breeding Paragon involved, they laid their eggs faster, at the same time as most of the others.
He had to admit, with Breeding Paragon involved, the quality was excellent.
Of twelve eggs, only five were ordinary. Seven had high-level talents.
Six of those had the Mercy talent, while the last had mutated a surprising new talent!
[Individual talent]: Antivirus Master (high-level talent. The user's special ability is tremendously lethal against virus-type mutated beasts!)
Clearly... this Ink Fish had mutated into one that was especially effective against zombies.
If he raised it, even Tidal Corpse Transformation would no longer be a threat...
Besides that, the "Infant Care Expert" produced through inbreeding by the double-Paragon pair had also grown up. That meant the Luo Yu Research Institute would soon see an explosive population boom among its Ink Fish.
He was only one step away from mass-producing an army of Water Devil Beasts.
However, before Luo Yu could test how much Infant Care Expert accelerated hatching, the director summoned him to his office again.
Besides the director, a one-armed man with withered hair was sitting in the office.
"Director, has the Earth Penguin been caught? So soon?"
In that case, he could conduct the Earth Penguin evolution experiment first...
"No," Director Yu Lei said. "Researcher Bai Dong mentioned Thousand Rock Island before, didn't she?"
"Oh, I remember." Luo Yu nodded. "She said there might be a way to develop rock-type talents on Thousand Rock Island, right?"
"Mm." The director said, "We've already contacted Thousand Rock Island. They do have ways, quite a few of them, in fact."
"Thousand Rock Island produces elemental ores in abundance. Among them is a kind of rock-element gemstone called the Heart of Rock, which can improve the wearer's rock-type affinity."
"Besides that, there's another method: beast milk."
"The Rock Goat was a creature that lived on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau before the apocalypse. It was also one of the few mutated creatures that weren't sea beasts to survive afterward. It didn't evolve a water attribute, but instead underwent an extreme evolution in the rock type."
"It's a rock-type Mid-Rank Ordinary Species. Rock Goat milk is what we're looking for. It can also greatly improve other creatures' rock-type affinity, making it one of the finest rock-type nutritional supplements in Alliance waters."
"Most importantly, I've heard that the Heart of Rock and a food like Rock Goat milk can be used together for a cumulative effect..."
"They've already agreed to sell us a few Hearts of Rock and a few Rock Goats..."
The director smiled. "I called you here this time because I actually want you to make a trip to Thousand Rock Island and take charge of selecting the Rock Goats..."
"Me?" Luo Yu was taken aback.
Even if buying Rock Goats required a breeder or researcher with a good eye to pick out healthy individuals, did it have to be him?
Luo Yu didn't want to go. The sea was so dangerous! He was still a noob!
Let Researcher Chen Zhuo go...