Realizing from the three Geniuses' reactions that this snack's effect might be extraordinary, Caelus didn't hesitate and tossed his own portion into his mouth.
Biting into the cake, the silky-soft, sweet cream carried a distinctive bookish fragrance, flowing across the bridge of his tongue, piercing through his taste buds, blossoming richly in his throat.
In that instant, Caelus felt his brain undergo a violent reaction, as though a Big Bang had gone off along with it.
Like a re-creation of that classic video clip, formula after formula of calculations burst forth from the Big Bang singularity, his thoughts unprecedentedly lucid and nimble.
It was just like doing a math paper during an exam in his senior year of high school—from the very first multiple-choice question all the way to the final boss problem, he knew how to do every single one.
And then, you pick up your carbon-ink pen, and gods and demons scatter before you, a thousand armies no match for you, just like Zhao Zilong charging through the bloody fray at Changban Slope, taking out Cao Cao along the way and proclaiming himself emperor.
A hundred times more satisfying than slipping into fresh underwear on the first day of the New Year!
Taoism has a fitting phrase to describe this state.
Mystery upon mystery, the gateway to all wonders.
Caelus was certain that if he could have eaten a bite of this stuff during his university finals, he wouldn't have needed to review for the whole week before the exam—the knowledge lingering from ordinary study alone would have been enough to score him a hundred points!
Screwllum's blue-green electronic eyes flickered faintly.
The Big Herta puppet's amethyst-glass eyes lost their luster and focus—had Herta's main body disconnected its thought-link because of something?
Ruan Mei's lovely face, fair enough to be described as great, was bland and silent, yet her eyes were like a plum-blossom petal fallen into a garden pond, sending ripples spreading out.
Earlier she'd had a bit of inspiration, so she'd tried cultivating life on the space station; that cat-like-yet-pastry-like creature was the result of the experiment.
At this moment, Ruan Mei's inspiration swept across her consciousness like a starburst.
In a trance, she seemed to see the dazzling, multicolored splendor of life, gorgeous as a riot of blossoms bewildering the eye, magnificent and wondrous enough to stir the very soul.
In her mind, countless frameworks of life, gene-structure optimization schemes, and experimental plans were born all at once.
The instant Ruan Mei became aware of her own strange state, she instantly annihilated every last thought about the cat-cake in her mind, redirecting that explosive inspiration toward research on the Emanator of breeding.
To this day, her experiments had failed countless times, and the outcomes had always been within expectation.
In her own space station, Ruan Mei had made one final attempt to replicate a breeding Emanator; her best experimental record was making it exist for 32 seconds, and the test subject hadn't truly become an Emanator.
One of her purposes in coming to the Herta Space Station was to witness with her own eyes the entire course of Caelus testing the Simulated Universe's Swarm Disaster, to seize the data of the Swarm King and its offspring, replicate it, cultivate it, and thereby open up an entirely new branch of research.
But at this moment, the Swarm Disaster test hadn't yet begun, nor had any data been obtained.
Yet, supported by this explosive burst of inspiration, the countless past failed experiments and lines of thought turned into firewood blazing fiercely.
The firelight dispelled the unknown mist, melting away a corner of that iceberg which had felt so unfathomable to her.
Around Ruan Mei, immersed in her own world, countless luminescent molecular formulas floated up, spiraling around her arms and rising like spring plum-blossom petals; the virtual gene library took concrete form as a swirling current, twisting into a double-helix ribbon of light as she lightly raised her wrist and toyed with it.
Gene chains unwound, life groupings reconstructed, cell matrices reconstructed, ecological niches optimized...
No experiment needed—Ruan Mei had an inexplicable intuition that if she designed in this direction, the breeding Emanator would be able to exist for 40 seconds, 45 seconds, 50 seconds...
Don't dismiss it as just a single second—that was the most primitive, the most pure Emanator—breeding!
Every extra second meant she had walked that much further in a domain she had yet to comprehend.
"What's going on?"
Ruan Mei's sudden, unguarded movement earned an extra glance from Haxxor Bunny, who then turned her head to look at the other three, frozen like statues with a pause button pressed, and lowered her gaze to the cake in her hand.
"Don't tell me this time it's a buff that forbids speaking and moving? Or did everyone trigger some kind of hidden quest?"
Snarking like this, Haxxor Bunny strode over to Caelus's side, grabbed his arm and shook it gently:
"Caelus, you okay? Wake up! Hey hey hey, one-two-three, hey hey hey, three-two-one?"
The familiar lines, made jarring by the unfamiliar voice, woke Caelus from his 'enlightenment'-like state—though that had nothing to do with Haxxor Bunny's shouting and shaking; the cake's effect had simply ended.
"I'm fine, just a little high, and I've also suddenly got the urge to do advanced math problems."
Caelus rubbed his temples.
"Huh?"
Haxxor Bunny's eyes went wide, her expression aghast:
"Hold on, you're in this state and you're still saying you're fine?"
What normal person would suddenly want to do advanced math problems?
Let alone Caelus!
"Here you go."
Haxxor Bunny hesitated for two seconds, then immediately used a web-crawler on the Herta Space Station's network to scrape a few rolls of exam questions, presenting them before Caelus as a projection:
"Want to give it a try?"
"Thank you, benefactor, but I no longer have such worldly urges now."
Glancing twice at the papers covered in densely-packed symbols, Caelus mercilessly pressed his palms together.
"So, this thing's special effect is making people feel the urge to do advanced math problems?"
Haxxor Bunny glanced at the cake in her hand and tilted her head, joking.
"In that case, I'd definitely stuff Stelle to death."
Caelus casually picked up the pastry from the exquisite round dish on the table's edge in front of Ruan Mei.
"As for the effect, it's roughly raising your Inspiration and Wisdom stats by 50% and entering a burst state, lasting a certain amount of time."
"So the three of them critically failed an Inspiration check? Their SAN dropped to zero and they lost their minds?"
Haxxor Bunny gazed at the pastry Caelus was holding out; she'd meant to decline, but Bronie thought it looked rather appetizing and wanted to give it a taste.
Haxxor Bunny, helpless, a flicker of bashful embarrassment flashing across her little face and vanishing in an instant, finally parted her lips after all and took a tiny bite right where Caelus's bite marks remained.
Bronie had lent her nearly half the time the use of her body; facing the person she liked, how could she possibly refuse such a tiny little request?
Besides, she and Caelus were good bros and teacher-and-student—eating a piece of cake wasn't going too far, was it?
Could bro-bond and teacher-student bond ever turn sour?
"No, I figure they're just too excited."
"An inspiration burst, huh, no wonder..."
Feeling the silky-soft sweetness mingling and interweaving with the plum-blossom flavor on the tip of her tongue, Miss Haxxor Bunny could fully appreciate the food's wonderfulness, but suddenly thinking of something, she raised an eyebrow.
"Wait, 50%?"
"Mm, 50%."
Caelus nodded in confirmation.
The Book Cake's effect was a fixed percentage system, which meant the effect it exerted on different individuals differed.
Caelus definitely couldn't compare to the Geniuses, which was why he, who'd eaten the Book Cake last, was the first to wake up.
If his Inspiration and Wisdom were 100, and the Geniuses' were 1000, then after the explosive boost it would be 300 and 3000; Herta, Ruan Mei, and Screwllum were still immersed in thought-leaps and inspiration bursts.
Considering the cost, this stuff had extremely poor cost-performance for ordinary people, but if given to a Genius, then that was...
No wonder there were only six pieces.
"Remark: Unbelievable!"
In a voice almost devoid of any mechanical quality, wrapped with lingering resonance, Screwllum's pupil-cores once again rippled with elegant light:
"My chemical-transmitter pathways show no abnormality whatsoever, yet this cake can actually act directly on the mental level, triggering a resonance in the cognitive matrix, capable of putting even me, an intelligent machine, into a state where thoughts gush like a spring."
"If one analyzes its underlying mechanism, it might be possible to rewrite the very cornerstone of intelligent-machine mind-evolution theory."
"Cognitive catalysis? An inspiration burst... how was it done?"
Ruan Mei's fingertips swept across the gene-regulation formulas floating in the void; those life-blueprints that had once grown wild in her thoughts converged into her palm like fireflies returning to the nest, condensing into a double-helix chain of light.
Her slender, fair hand gently smoothed it, and it was compressed and stored away.
She was now confident she could make the breeding Emanator replica exist for over three minutes; if she added the data obtained after testing the Simulated Universe, perhaps it really might be possible...
"This thing is truly divine!"
The Big Herta puppet stood straight up.
In scientific research there was no stimulant that raised inspiration; although there did exist some contraband with severe side effects that could indeed produce a similar effect, for Geniuses they were utterly useless.
"Every time you always manage to whip up some new trick, and you really know your stuff~ Caelus, hurry and make me some more!"
Herta grabbed Caelus's arm, urging him.
Just a few short minutes of the inspiration-burst state—after the effect ended, certain wondrous ideas vanished along with it, but a considerable portion still remained; these few minutes had saved her several months, even more than a year of time!
A Genius's time is so very precious!
"There's no more."
"I'm begging you, make me some, Daddy!"
Herta pleaded.
"There really is none of this. Everything the Synthesizer makes is truly random—even if you put in the exact same ingredients, it won't produce the same thing."
Caelus shrugged: "Every single one is one-of-a-kind."
"Tsk."
Herta's face changed in a second, though her expression grew even more high-spirited.
Judging just by the cake, this ugly-looking Universal Synthesizer had, in some respect, already exceeded her cognition.
"But still, six pieces were produced in total, and there are two left now."
Caelus, with the hand wearing the spatial ring, pointed at the cake in Haxxor Bunny's hand.
As his words fell, the gazes of Herta, Ruan Mei, and Screwllum solidified somewhat at almost the same instant, their lines of sight locking on.
To feed something with such miraculous effects to an ordinary person would absolutely be a reckless waste of heaven's bounty!
Even with Ruan Mei's cool, aloof personality, she would have such a thought!
"What do you say?"
Stared at by the three, Haxxor Bunny gave a shrug of her shoulders and stood at Caelus's side.
This cake had been divided up by Caelus in the first place, and now all three Geniuses wanted it.
"Us eating it really is too low a utilization rate."
Caelus spoke plainly; aside from experiencing the thrill of correctly cranking out advanced math problems like mad, the 'Bronie' side of her had gained quite a bit in terms of hacker knowledge, but it definitely couldn't compare to what the Geniuses would gain.
"This piece, which belongs to Bronie, I'll give to you all to research."
Caelus placed the Book Cake from Haxxor Bunny's hand onto the table.
"Herta, no problem giving her the Punklorde Mentality, right?"
"Take it, by all means."
Herta waved her hand without a care.
That was just an ordinary Curio, with only a tiny bit of collection value—not even any research value; in her eyes it was far inferior to a piece of cake!
"Screwllum, how about you teach her some knowledge about hacking?"
Caelus taught her via Silver Wolf, and then had the Geniuses teach her; possessing talent equal to Silver Wolf's, Little Haxxor Bunny could grow up in the shortest possible time.
"Affirmative: Miss Bronie may come to me to discuss any questions she has."
"As for Ruan Mei... let's just count it as Tingyun's treatment fee."
"That works."
Ruan Mei slowly nodded.
And so, everyone felt they'd come out ahead—a genuine win-win-win all around.
Next, the three Geniuses even postponed their discussion of the Simulated Universe's Swarm Disaster, and together began studying the Universal Synthesizer.
Only, as the research went on, all three Geniuses fell somewhat silent.
How to put it?
It was probably like, on the way as the Three-Body fleet headed to Earth, the Sophon, relying on technological superiority, observed Earth, only for a cultivator to suddenly pop out and slice the Sophon apart with one sword stroke!
Then, the Trisolarans, in a tone suppressing their grief, said:
"Physics—it no longer exists."
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 30 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉