Chapter 227. Research, Learn, Grow

     Xie Xin is an exceptionally intelligent person, and so is his wife.  

     They know their boundaries, understand when to advance or retreat, and have a clear sense of reason, all while maintaining their moral bottom line. With both high IQ and EQ, their tactfulness is never a negative trait, it has nothing to do with slyness or deceit.  

     Whether as a friend, colleague, or superior/subordinate, interacting with Xie Xin is always effortless.  

     Apart from giving Xie Xin’s two precious children a decent gift, Ye Mo didn’t go out of her way to show Xie Xin any special favor and Xie Xin never asked for it.  

     Their dynamic was like old friends playfully teasing each other, chatting about work and life.  

     After Ye Mo left, Xie Xin never flaunted having a “backing” in front of others, not even in front of the Supernatural Investigation Bureau. But in truth, he did have a backer, an invisible one.  

     Where there are people, there will always be politics. This backing at least ensured he wouldn’t be bullied in his new workplace and gave him a bigger stage to showcase his talents.  

     Whether in mechanical design or managerial skills, he was versatile and socially adept.  

     Xie Xin had a clear understanding of himself—he knew he could hardly become a survivor, given his abysmal tested aptitude (his wife’s was only slightly better).  

     Their family could only rely on the ‘country’s father’, never expecting an extra stroke of colossal luck to fall from the sky.  

     With a heavyweight friend like Ye Mo, as long as they didn’t make any principled mistakes, their family wouldn’t end up as cannon fodder. Tonight—well, perhaps tomorrow night after signing the agreement he could finally sleep soundly.  

     Xie Xin’s joking remark carried both a sincere wish for Ye Mo’s safety and his genuine thoughts. After all, the true age of a survivor was always a mystery.  

     As for Ye Mo, seeing her friends and colleagues, people she cared about thrive in this far-from-peaceful society through their own efforts filled her with pure, uncomplicated joy.  

     …

     This time, when Ye Mo entered Xishan Industrial Park, Xie Xin had become the lead of a certain thermal weapons project in the area, codenamed Five-Element Bullets.  

     She’d learned about it from the Supernatural Investigation Bureau’s files, it was one of their more critical projects, as firearms were far more practical for the masses than cold weapons.  

     After resolving just a few (ahem, countless) issues raised by the Bureau, Ye Mo entered the heart of the base’s R&D zone: her own private laboratory.  

     The size of this laboratory goes without saying; even without the extension of her space ability, it was still enormous.  

     Every piece of equipment inside was personally crafted by Ye Mo, from raw material processing and analysis, to final production and product testing, along with the most advanced and comprehensive database on Earth.  

     Here, Ye Mo could access 100% of China’s technological data, scientific exchanges between China and developed nations (led by the United States), as well as her self-created Arcane Studies Archive.  

     Backed by the state, even as the Chief Survivor, she had to admit—it was fantastic.  

     With enough points, Ye Mo and her two companions had even considered shutting down Maria’s Shop and living a semi-retired life, split between dungeon runs and leisurely reality.  

     The answer was No.  

     The reason wasn’t distrust toward the Supernatural Investigation Bureau, but the fact that multiple reality dungeons posed apocalyptic risks. Ye Mo had no desire to spend her days perpetually saving the world… or watching Earth perish.  

     Maria’s Shop served as a diplomatic buffer between China and other nations. Only when China gained stronger global influence would true retirement be an option.  

     —  

     Upon entering the lab, Ye Mo retrieved a heap of mineral ores from her storage space, using telekinesis to distribute them across thirty-plus smelting devices for initial processing.  

     The second step was high-temperature filtration.

     The third step involves adding different catalysts during condensation. Different catalysts and varying dosages can lead to vastly different results.

     Even now, Ye Mo produces a fair amount of waste material during her experiments. The greatest charm of research lies in its constant evolution, the unknown is full of surprises.

     This is the fundamental reason she fell in love with this field and will always love it.

     Ye Mo first created a proportionally scaled-down model of the Great Pyramid of Giza using materials nearly identical (if not more pristine) to the original. After all, the real pyramid had suffered significant wear and tear over millennia.  

     The spiritual inscription environment was replicated with 80% accuracy, the remaining 20% divergence primarily concerned astronomical alignments. Within this framework, she began innovating while preserving the foundational rules.  

     Three hours later, Ye Mo finally marked out 56 suitable basic material ratios, each with distinct advantages: some excelled in spirit-gathering, others in durability, dark-attribute affinity, or malleability.  

     Next came refining the array formations.

     As Ye Mo finished drawing 12 types of array formations, her phone rang. It was Wang Xue, calling her back for dinner.

     During her mission in Egypt, Grandma Ye and the others had indeed been quite frightened. Ye Mo also planned to spend more time with her grandma in the mornings and evenings over the next few days.

     This was to reassure them and steady their hearts.  

     Ye Mo paused her work for the day, washed her hands, changed out of her lab coat, and put on her mask. She exited the laboratory, then the research area, and finally the industrial zone. The entire Supernatural Investigation Bureau industrial base was equipped with space containment arrays, which she had personally set up.

     Fortunately, she had a special, uncrowded passage. Once outside the base, there was even a dedicated spot for space teleportation.

     Arriving at the Ye family compound, a table laden with dishes was already set. Ye Mo and Uncle Ling were the last to return. Aunt Zhang, understanding their hard work, rewarded each of them with an extra fried chicken drumstick. Ye Mo even got an extra chicken wing compared to Uncle Ling, it was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside—delicious!

     Wang Xue, not to be outdone, sweet-talked her way into getting two more drumsticks. Puffed up like a victorious rooster, her mother promptly smacked her on the back.

     “Behave yourself!”

     The dining table featured several new Southwestern Chinese dishes, courtesy of Wang Xue’s mother, who modestly insisted they were “nothing special.” In truth, her twice-cooked pork and mapo tofu were absolute perfection.  

     Ye Mo and Wang Xue dueled chopsticks for the last bites.

     At the dinner table, Aunt Zhang accidentally let slip that Ye Mo’s birth parents’ family had come to disturb them while they were in Egypt.

     They’d upset Granny Ye so badly that the Supernatural Investigation Bureau had to step in and kick them out. Their visitation rights remain suspended to this day, which explained the current lively, drama-free meal.  

     Ye Mo: …The restriction period can be a bit longer then.

     After dinner, Ye Mo took a stroll with Grandma Ye. The whole family then sat in the courtyard soaking their feet, much like in her childhood days.

     After seeing Grandma Ye back to her room, Ye Mo exchanged a knowing look with Wang Xue. She then returned to her own room and teleported back to Xishan Industrial Park.

     There were quite a few people working at the Supernatural Investigation Bureau base at night, not just Ye Mo.

     Ye Mo immediately dove into her pyramid research project, continuing the work she hadn’t finished earlier.

     Oh, and while gnawing on a chicken drumstick at dinner, she sparked a random epiphany: areas dense with dark-attuned spiritual energy tended to attract lightning strikes. With China’s frequent summer thunderstorms, she’d need to incorporate anti-lightning arrays… Why her brain made that absurd connection, even the heavens might not know.

     After an all-nighter, Ye Mo’s first pyramid prototype was complete. Next step: comparative testing.

     But first—breakfast at home and then return to Xishan Industrial Park to continue her work.

     That evening, when Ye Mo returned to the Ye family compound, she found Watson and Ji Li there. Watson’s elder brother and Ji Li’s grandparents and parents had also arrived, making the dinner table even livelier than the night before.

     Watson’s elder brother was there to discuss a medical collaboration with the Supernatural Investigation Bureau and stopped by. He was very courteous, bringing numerous carefully selected gifts. He even brought gifts for Ji Li’s family.

     It was clear that Watson and his elder brother had a good relationship; they were both very gentle and patient people. Watson’s elder brother’s Mandarin wasn’t standard, but he made a great effort, speaking it over and over.

     Ji Li’s grandparents and parents had always worried about their grandson/son being alone. Now that he had companions and a strong backing (companions in the granddaughter of an old friend, and the nation as his support) they were much more at ease.

     Since Ji Li had recovered, the four of them (Ye Mo, Watson, Ji Li, and Wang Xue) held a small meeting that evening at Watson’s villa. The timing of the meeting was primarily to accommodate Ye Mo’s work schedule. They exchanged notes on their gains from the trip to ancient Egypt.

     Overall, as some on the Survivor Forum had speculated, their haul was quite substantial. The biggest gain was knowledge, followed by the blessings of four of the Egyptian Ennead gods, and the Dark Whip, a semi-artifact. This doesn’t even account for the various scattered collections of the priests.

     Watson had his medical texts, and Wang Xue had her witch music.

      On the beach, Ji Li tried swinging the whip. The dark-attributed whip was perfectly suited for him; its power wasn’t a simple “one plus one equals two” scenario. The ocean, once again, suffered.

     Of course, this didn’t mean the sea was broken again.

     Ji Li and Ye Mo were still far apart in terms of ability, but for Ji Li himself, the Dark Whip was like adding wings to a tiger. If the Survivor app had a sub-ranking between the top two, Jili would undoubtedly climb significantly with this weapon in hand.  

     Ye Mo already had the Sword of Light, so she told Ji Li to start learning whip techniques. Once he mastered them, the next owner of Anubis’s Dark Whip would be him.

     Currently, only Wang Xue in the team didn’t possess a semi-artifact, but she wasn’t discouraged at all. Instead, she confidently declared, “Next time, the semi-artifact we acquire will definitely be fire-related, and who knows, maybe it’ll be forged by Sister Jing!”

     Ye Mo replied, “I hope so too, but I’m still short on some inspiration and the right timing to forge a divine artifact.”

     That night, the four of them also exchanged a lot of knowledge they found interesting. Ancient Egypt’s dark-element knowledge was truly rich, and their sacrificial music and medical arts were also very mature.

     As for the inheritance of mental power and light abilities that Ji Li received, it was like a new door opening for Ye Mo, and inspiration flowed like a spring. All four of them gained many insights from their discussions.

     Aside from Bandit who only knew how to eat and sleep, Hawk-eye was surprisingly able to help a little. Hawkeye previously had no right to think, but that changed after the “Chimei Wangliang” dungeon. Having lingered in the temple for centuries, he’d witnessed countless phenomena, offering perspectives none of them had ever considered. That, in itself, was invaluable insight. 

     …

     The next day, after dawn broke, Ye Mo returned to Xishan Industrial Park. Her mind became even clearer, inspiration flowed continuously, and her experimental research progressed very smoothly.