"Grandpa, that's roughly how things happened. What do you think?" Chen Xi, feeling quite displeased after being threatened, slightly embellished the events as she relayed them to Chen Jian Shan.
Of course, in her words, she still introduced a slight bias, hoping the old man would make a choice more aligned with her own feelings. Yet, Chen Xi understood that as the helmsman of the entire family, he couldn't let a momentary pique influence his judgment.
Interests were interests, and cooperation was the optimal solution. The other party's words were merely intended to convey to his partner that he possessed equivalent power, to prevent any unequal schemes or forceful seizures.
"If he can silently slice my clothes, he can silently slice my throat." Chen Xi reiterated the threat.
"The military has a monster, one that can even directly confront an armored division bare-handed," the old man murmured to himself.
"What does it even mean to face an armored division alone..." Chen Xi felt incredulous upon hearing this. "It's been less than half a year since the outbreak; how could such a monster exist!"
"Because that person's ability is too well-suited for dealing with ordinary people. According to internal test data, he can maintain a heating field with a radius of over one hundred meters. Any ordinary person caught within that range will have their bodily fluids heated to over seventy degrees Celsius in a matter of seconds.
For regular soldiers, this ability is completely unsolvable. Moreover, he can move at a speed exceeding forty meters per second; unless electronic fire control technology is used, humans wouldn't be able to react in time.
Thankfully, he's a soldier, a soldier deeply loyal to the country," the old man emphatically stressed the last sentence.
"How long can that kind of loyalty... last?" She was afraid.
"I don't know." Chen Jian Shan's words carried a hint of helplessness.
"Put aside that pointless pride."
Chen Jian Shan ultimately decided to seize this opportunity, temporarily overlooking Bai Mo's offense. With significant gains at stake, he hoped to leverage this chance to stand out among the many families in Tianhai.
In his view, Bai Mo, having obtained such a fortuitous encounter, was a person of great Qi Luck. And for his family, being the first to secretly cooperate with him, wasn't that also a fortuitous encounter?
Among the countless powerful clans throughout Huaxia, they were merely one of many upper-middle-class families. To truly enter the core circle, they likewise needed some fortuitous encounters.
...
"Talent, in truth, is the most unfair and illogical thing there is. There will always be people who can stroll leisurely and still move faster than us running until we vomit blood.
What we need to concern ourselves with is how to leverage them to achieve our goals, rather than disparaging ourselves." He valued his granddaughter quite a bit, so he entered elder-lecturing mode, sharing his life experiences.
"Intellectual geniuses are ultimately just human; they remain powerless before authority. But this particular type of genius is different! Their talent is violence itself; they possess the ability to flip the table at any time."
"..." Chen Jian Shan sighed softly, saying no more.
...
After Bai Mo proposed the concept of the Contribution Points system, he couldn't be bothered to think about the subsequent changes.
Because he also understood that this system could only begin to be planned after the upper echelons had completed their games of chess and exchanges of interest. For a long time, at least, it would have little to do with him.
And once the distribution of interests was decided, the nation's professional teams would quickly implement this system. After all, with such massive profit driving it, no amount of "Huaxia speed" would be excessive.
As for the various technical details... these were likewise not issues he needed to research. All he wanted was an exchange platform.
Having understood these points, he resumed his daily, uninterrupted "cultivation" work.
After his heart completed its spirit energy conversion, Bai Mo's efficiency in absorbing spirit qi greatly improved. Unfortunately, while the total absorption increased, the proportion of spirit qi truly refined remained very low.
Nevertheless, in his previous discussions with Hua Taishan and the others, he had learned many methods to enhance his ability to manipulate spirit qi. At the same time, the new perspectives Bai Mo brought them had also greatly benefited them, leading both parties to depart satisfied each week. RaNOb+Es
...
Another half a month passed, and then he suddenly received an unfamiliar phone call.
"You're Bai Mo, correct? I'm Major General Zhang Jin Qu's adjutant. The Major General was one of the interviewers at the Spirit Energy Research Institute a month ago." A strange male voice spoke from the phone.
"Now that the nation has established an ability user unit within the military, it also wants to find some individuals in the civilian sector whose abilities are suitable for special missions, to form a detachment that operates relatively outside the system. This detachment won't necessarily be composed entirely of combat personnel; it also requires many young people like you, with ideas and the capacity for independent thought."
"Perhaps I'm being a bit vague, but the reality is that nearly two months have passed since the Spirit River Autumn. Recently, there have been reports from various places about small-scale emergence of new ability users, and the cause has yet to be identified."
"Furthermore, those who originally gained abilities from the Spirit River have seen their powers and physical constitutions significantly increase over these past two months."
"The nation is forming this new detachment, on one hand, to investigate the cause, and on the other, to combat the issue of superhuman ability-related crime."
With such a massive base of ability users, there will always be those with ill intentions who acquire power. Traditional criminal investigation methods sometimes can't keep up with the endless emergence of new abilities.
"For example, in a recent gold theft case, an ability user with control over the gold element appeared, causing a string of thefts across various jewelry stores."
"Your role is to serve as an investigator for us, to ascertain why some individuals are continuously growing stronger, and simultaneously to assist criminal investigators in handling cases they are unable to resolve."
"Understood." Bai Mo agreed without hesitation, for he had his own plans.
He had previously considered that before other ability users could establish their Life Fields, he should join the ability user organization established by the state to collect more physical data on other ability users.
"Report the day after tomorrow at ten in the morning. I'll have someone send the reporting address to you later. There will be a test then, covering your strength and ability orientation, so prepare seriously." With that, the adjutant hung up the phone.
Swordsmen violate prohibitions with their martial arts; with strength, ambition naturally swells, always eager to push boundaries for the sake of unfettered thought. To combat this type of superhuman crime, many times one can only rely on high technology combined with official ability users, so the emergence of an ability user organization is not surprising at all.
Of course, Chen Jian Shan's private recommendation for Bai Mo to join the Dao Academy also served as a means to probe his hidden cards.
Through their previous several exchanges and probes, he had also realized that Bai Mo was actually just a charlatan, using some fortuitous encounter from a certain ruin to mystify and deceive him under the guise of research.
Other than the ancient scroll he possessed, he actually had no real research capability; he was a complete academic fraud.
But Chen Jian Shan didn't care, because the Spirit Stone candles were indeed useful, allowing them to absorb gentle spirit qi, and that was enough.
Even if the rest was a scam, what of it? This was merely a transaction, a young man exchanging a portion of his fortuitous encounters for his support.
If anything, he had profited considerably.
Spending a few hundred million in cash, which was nothing to him, and a bit of goodwill, to be the first to obtain something that might extend life—it was a guaranteed profit from any perspective.
No matter how one looked at it, the Chen family's combined assets amounted to tens of billions. The funds Bai Mo requested were even to be paid in installments, posing no cash flow pressure whatsoever.
Chen Jian Shan was well-versed in promoting young talents. A casual word to the head of the research institute, and adding a position was no big deal, easier than installing a town mayor.
Of course, the power Bai Mo displayed was the fundamental guarantee for this transaction to succeed. There was absolutely no need to forcefully seize an ability user who was unencumbered, unrestrained, and capable of single-handedly massacring a city in a full-blown rage, unless there was a mortal feud.
It was better to win him over; perhaps in the future, there would even be a chance for him to become a part of the family.
It was precisely because Chen Jian Shan, through Chen Xi's investigation, understood that Bai Mo was not a genius in spirit qi research at all, but merely a fraudster operating with an ancient book, that he was willing to let go and recommend Bai Mo into a semi-combat-oriented institution like the Dao Academy.
If he truly were a research genius, Chen Jian Shan wouldn't have arranged for him to be on the front lines. Research personnel should stay obediently in the rear; if he were captured by the United States, that would be a tremendous loss.
As long as it was effective, he didn't care if Bai Mo was a fraud. The two of them were already in a mutually exploitative relationship; as long as there was profit to be made, morality was irrelevant.
...
As for Bai Mo, he had roughly guessed Chen Jian Shan's thoughts. This image was, in fact, precisely what he wanted to project to the other party.
He genuinely intended to leverage Chen Jian Shan's influence to legitimately enter the core of the Spirit Energy Research Institute, making it convenient to obtain various classified research findings.
A large number of cutting-edge results would certainly not be disclosed to the outside world; even if they were, they would lag far behind the actual situation. Often, information circulated only within a small, upper-echelon circle.
Bai Mo knew that he was merely a commoner; even if he gained power, it would be impossible for him to immediately enter the upper echelons. Therefore, there was only one way to access this information: to possess the authorization of a formal member of the research institute.
This was his true objective.
The research institute was so vast, and based on his understanding of Huaxia's academic circles, there were certainly no shortage of academic freeloaders holding positions without doing any work, so he wouldn't be one more than usual.
Therefore, Bai Mo intended to use Chen Jian Shan's authority to directly parachute himself in as a formal member of the research institute...
...
Bai Mo gladly accepted their invitation. After all, the Dao Academy gathered a large number of powerhouses from all over Huaxia. Perhaps one day, when the social climate completely changed and the principle of "the strong are revered" took deep root, they would have the opportunity to become the rulers of this nation.
Before acquiring enough power to challenge the entire world, Bai Mo still had to maintain his disguise—that of a refined egoist, rather than the madman represented by his inner personality.
In the time that followed, he rarely went to the laboratory or read books; instead, he simply sat in his dorm, organizing his current abilities.
Through continuous training, his control over the telekinetic power derived from his divine sense had become much more precise compared to when he first returned from Hawaii.
Initially, he could only perform rather crude operations, such as directly overpowering someone with force, or compressing air into an air shield for damage reduction, or even the imagined direct destruction of an enemy's internal organs.
Now, however, Bai Mo could use telekinetic power to control various cold weapons for close-range attacks with relatively high precision. Sometimes, he could even apply the telekinetic power to a very small area to achieve greater pressure, producing an effect similar to being cut by a blade.
As for his physical constitution, he hadn't specifically measured it in quite some time.
Thanks to his faster spirit qi absorption rate, his muscles, bones, and blood were continuously undergoing spirit energy conversion. His fundamental attributes were slowly strengthening each day at a perceptible rate. It was precisely because of this that he decided to conceal most of his strength and abilities during the test, so he could better "fish in troubled waters" later.
For the sake of tomorrow's test, he uncharacteristically spent an entire day racking his brains, contemplating applications for his abilities, and continued thinking deep into the night.
"If telekinetic power is developed to its extreme, could it be possible to freely restructure matter, or even become a fundamental force that sustains the world?" As night deepened, Bai Mo once again let his thoughts soar.
With his current control precision, achieving these insane effects was naturally impossible.
But the greatness of intelligent life lies in their rich imagination. Even for things that do not exist at all, they can engage in deep thought and contemplation. This, precisely, is their greatest difference from wild beasts.