By nightfall, he pulled out that piece of sample rock which, by some strange impulse, he hadn't discarded, but had instead tucked into his pocket and taken with him.
Bai Mo, who usually enjoyed conducting small experiments to satisfy his wild ideas, kept a complete set of miniature equipment hidden in his dorm room. Though not as comprehensive as a full laboratory, it was more than enough to handle his own concepts.
To test the properties of the unknown gas it emitted under high temperatures, he took out a crucible from his equipment and heated the rock. Once the thermometer showed over 200 degrees Celsius, a small amount of extremely faint colored gas began to appear, and the rock once again turned pale green.
After collecting a bottle of the gas, he capped the alcohol lamp, extinguishing its flame.
Next, he divided this bottle of gas into five smaller ones, intending to have the purchased white mice scout the path for him.
Although he hadn't noticed any issues after accidentally inhaling some of it earlier, the sentiment of "rather a fellow Daoist die than I" is one everyone possesses. A pioneer, if careless, easily becomes a martyr.
He certainly wasn't willing to become a martyr, and human experimentation was out of the question. Even if it were an option, Bai Mo didn't want anyone else to know about such things, so he had no choice but to let the white mice take the plunge.
However, in the Spirit Qi environment, the white mice showed no signs of poisoning; instead, they seemed a bit more energetic than usual.
He then tried allowing other animals to absorb the green gas, and still found no problems.
A few days later, he noticed that the white mice still living in the Spirit Qi environment seemed to have grown slightly stronger; the food that was supposed to last for many days was completely gone. Similar to his own experience at the time, he began to suspect that this green gas might be beneficial to living organisms.
Finally, Bai Mo decided to try it himself. Otherwise, with him constantly thinking about cultivation, he wouldn't give up, so he prepared a bottle for himself.
"My eyesight, it seems to have improved a little?"
The next day, after inhaling the green gas, he woke up and the surroundings seemed a bit clearer. Of course, he also wondered if it was just a psychological placebo effect.
However, after testing with an eye chart, he confirmed his suspicion.
Thus, guided by the perceived, and probably real, benefits to his vision, Bai Mo began a daily routine of "Qi cultivation"—morning, noon, and night.
After a week of such cautious practice, he genuinely felt a significant improvement in his eyesight. From his previous moderate myopia, where faces a few meters away were blurry, he could now easily recognize people approaching from ten to twenty meters away.
Naturally, Bai Mo, deeply influenced by the concept of "a gem in one's possession attracting ill will" from novels, never spoke to anyone about the changes over the past half-month. Always indifferent, he harbored no thoughts of handing it over to the state; he simply continued this lifestyle in silent persistence every day.
His parents, who would have been most likely to care about his physical condition, had tragically died in a car accident when Bai Mo was twelve, leaving Bai Mo a house, enough insurance money to stay cooped up for half a lifetime, and an inheritance paid out monthly in trust.
From that year onward, he became increasingly reclusive, often lost in his own world, immersed in the world of novels; the world of imagination seemed more suitable for him to live in.
Though his inner self was somewhat twisted, he clearly knew how to feign normalcy, as Bai Mo understood he couldn't survive detached from society; he had to don a facade.
Thus, he consistently maintained excellent grades and the image of a good student, as high-achieving students undoubtedly faced far fewer troubles at school.
Bai Mo treated people with considerable politeness, but always kept a certain distance, allowing his deepest thoughts to remain hidden in the shadows.
...
During this period, Bai Mo did not cease his research on the "Spirit Stone."
After repeatedly illicitly using the lab equipment when no one was around, Bai Mo discovered that with repeated use, the "Spirit Stone" didn't turn to ash or even disappear entirely, as often described in fantasy novels.
At first, he thought his "cultivation base" was too weak to fully consume even one "Spirit Stone." But after precise measurements with lab instruments, he found that the rock showed almost no change in either volume or appearance; only the green color that appeared when heated grew progressively fainter.
He then began to hypothesize that the substance that manifested green at high temperatures was the true essence of "Spirit Qi."
However, when he sought to further explore the essence of "Spirit Qi," he realized that for him, a mere graduate student with somewhat rudimentary equipment, to attempt to unravel the nature of "Spirit Qi" was clearly overly ambitious.
The research yielded no clues whatsoever.
The fruitless exploration into the essence of "Spirit Qi" led him to shift his focus to his own changes.
Bai Mo found that as his Qi cultivation continued, his eyesight steadily improved; not only was his previous myopia gone, but the effective range of his naked eye observation grew, and the resolution significantly increased.
After half a month of Qi cultivation, he could now clearly discern faces 150 meters away, even differentiating their expressions. This clearly surpassed the limits of normal human vision.
Furthermore, over this half-month, he found that his physique had also slightly improved. From his previous sub-healthy, sedentary state, where a thousand-meter run left him gasping for a long time like a weakling, he had upgraded to the level of a normal person who could recover within a few minutes after a thousand-meter run.
But soon, a new problem arose.
He found that while the "Spirit Stone" showed no change in mass or appearance, gradually, with each heating, less and less "Spirit Qi" emerged. He needed to start looking for a substitute.
He immediately set his sights on Professor Zhao Jia Sen; after all, he was the original source of the rock.
Bai Mo, well-versed in all sorts of fantasy novels, his first reaction was actually to kill for treasure—"Heavenly materials and earthly treasures belong to the capable"...
Of course, he immediately rejected this rotten idea thought up by his inner personality. Only a lunatic would do such a thing.
Then his inner personality thought of stealing. But after careful analysis, Bai Mo realized that at his current level, he probably couldn't even beat a community security guard, let alone lacking the experience and skills for thievery. Even with better eyesight, it would be useless.
"How can I get Professor Zhao to give me the 'Spirit Stone' in his possession without arousing his suspicion? After all, he's an old professor of materials science; his sensitivity to material properties is unusually keen."
"If I let slip even a hint, he could easily connect it to the material's special nature. The unique properties of 'Spirit Qi' could easily be discovered by him. After all, heating isn't some obscure method of treatment. It wasn't discovered before only because Professor Zhao initially opted for the most conservative approach when he acquired the new material."
"Professor Zhao isn't short on money, so buying it from him is definitely out of the question. And it would likewise arouse his suspicion—buying a random rock for no reason, a rock that isn't even pretty or a gem, would be practically confessing everything."
"I can only claim that there's still a small lingering question from the last experiment and ask him for another sample. Next, I need to come up with a rather convincing reason."
...
After much deliberation, Bai Mo finally devised a plan that seemed to have no logical flaws.
He had never considered making his discovery public. As a mere ordinary person—or rather, someone who was superficially ordinary but in reality suffered from 'chuunibyou'—he was incapable of such a grand feat as revealing everything to accelerate humanity's progress.
Without peerless power or a formidable 'cheat' as a backing, an idealist who sought to change the world would almost certainly come to a bad end, because this world was cruel and realistic, and idealists had to contend with the entire world.
"Hello, Professor. Regarding the sample you asked me to examine last time, I feel that due to the small sample size and some uncompleted destructive tests, we might not have uncovered its special properties. So, I'd like to request another experiment." Bai Mo picked up his phone and sent a WeChat message to Zhao Jia Sen.
Zhao Jia Sen replied quickly.
"Xiao Mo, I'll have my assistant, Yue Hai, bring you another sample in the next couple of days. You can use that one for your tests; I'm quite busy right now. If that's still not enough, just contact Yue Hai directly; he'll do his best to help. And of course, if you find anything unusual, let me know immediately so I can arrange further tests."
Zhao Jia Sen always felt that this material must possess some special properties; otherwise, he wouldn't have, by some strange impulse, collected those utterly unremarkable rocks from the foot of the volcano. It was just that the material's unique properties likely only manifested under specific conditions.
He had a premonition that if he could uncover these properties and publish them in a prestigious journal, his academic standing in the field would undoubtedly rise to the international cutting-edge level, bringing renown to the nation's research in materials science.
After all, at his advanced age, he lacked nothing, save perhaps an elixir of immortality.
Without eternal life, his sole remaining pursuit was fame. Of course, if he knew what the special properties of the "Spirit Stone" truly were, he would probably never publish them. But in this world, there are no 'ifs.'
"Unfortunately, I'm currently collaborating with the National Materials Research Institute to develop GX-5, a material for building new engine cores. I simply don't have much spare time to investigate the properties of that new material."
"After all, researching the properties of new materials isn't a one-or-two-day affair; it requires a broad, exhaustive search. Since one of my graduate students is interested in doing this grunt work, I'll let him do some preliminary scouting. Anyway, if there's any breakthrough, my name will be listed as the first author."
The next day, Zhao Jia Sen's assistant, Yue Hai, brought the material to Bai Mo's usual laboratory.
"Junior Brother Bai Mo, this is the experimental material Professor Zhao asked me to bring you. Keep up the good work." Yue Hai said, patting Bai Mo on the shoulder.
"You're too kind, Senior Brother. We are all striving for the advancement of materials science. And thank you for making a special trip to bring the material this time."
"It's no trouble at all. The Professor also said if you have any further issues, just contact me, Yue Hai."
...
After some tedious pleasantries, Bai Mo saw Yue Hai off from the laboratory.
Back in the lab, his classmates, all from the same lab, gathered around him, grinning, and asked: "Old Mo, when did you get in good with Senior Brother Yue Hai? He's Professor Zhao's most trusted assistant, you know."
"Just continuing the last new material performance test." Bai Mo said expressionlessly.
Hearing "new material performance test," everyone around immediately lost interest and returned to their workstations.
They all knew that experiments like new material performance tests were the most tedious, involving endless repetition and trying different reaction conditions—purely mechanical work that relied on sheer luck.
He didn't say anything more. After all, he knew what they knew, and he wouldn't have been interested in such a boring chore either, if it were his old self.
After acquiring the new Spirit Stone, Bai Mo directly swapped out the first Spirit Stone, whose Spirit Qi was nearly depleted, by placing it in the lab to replace the newly acquired material.