After speaking, Qin Siyang went downstairs.
Zhang Kuang watched his back, the corners of his mouth curling slightly.
"'Miracle Bro', truly not just an empty name. Old Li's been running around trying to pull strings for this matter, but looks like he's worrying for nothing."
Saying that, he turned and went back into the lab.
When Qin Siyang was about to leave the Miracle Building, the lab door behind him opened again.
Out came a man whose hair was even messier than Zhang Kuang's, and whose eyes were even more dazed.
Qin Siyang looked closely, it was Lu Daoxing, whom he hadn't seen for many days.
"Professor Lu, you look exhausted. Don't tell me, like Director Zhang, it's because of your sequence ability?"
"Huh? Oh, it's you, Little Qin…", Lu Daoxing rubbed his temples, "I'm not like Old Zhang. I'm just plain tired from not sleeping enough."
Qin Siyang immediately repeated what he had just said to Zhang Kuang, "Professor Lu, you really should rest! Be careful you don't drop dead in the lab."
Lu Daoxing sighed, "If I could live healthily, who'd want to end up looking like this?"
"What's wrong? Did the Economics Department pressure you to pay off your debt recently? Or did their minister, Jiang Yuanrui, start acting up again?"
"That's not it," Lu Daoxing shook his head, "All transactions are written clearly in the contracts. Since the contracts were drafted by the Economics Department itself, Jiang Yuanrui wouldn't slap his own face."
"Then what happened?"
"A few days ago, a professor tried to repay his debt with God-Hunting tools, but was told that the submitted tools didn't meet the requirements."
"Didn't meet requirements? He tried to pass off a second-tier God-Hunting tool as a third-tier one?"
"No, he submitted five identical third-tier God-Hunting tools. The Economics Department, citing the contract clauses, ruled them invalid."
"That's when we discovered a small, barely noticeable clause in the contract, it said the God-Hunting tools used to repay debts cannot be duplicates."
"They can do that?", Qin Siyang's head started to ache just hearing it, "So what now?"
Lu Daoxing's brows drooped into a sad eight-shape, "These days, I'm not only crafting God-Hunting tools but also trying to design new ones that aren't too hard to make. It's driving me insane."
"Is that really that difficult for you?"
"Little Qin, did you ever have the experience in elementary school, when the teacher assigned a diary with a required word count, but you just couldn't think of what to write and had to squeeze out words?"
Qin Siyang shuddered, "Professor Lu, don't say another word, I can already picture it."
"Ah, so you understand my pain?"
"Anything I can do to help? You said before that the more rare materials used, the easier it is to increase a God-Hunting tool's tier. Would it help if I gave you more Crimson Crystal or Vine's Heart?"
Lu Daoxing shook his head, "To meet the debt payments, I've already used every trick I can with those two materials. Giving me more won't help. The only rare material left that's still usable is Bluewater Glazed Star Ore. But that's our trump card, we haven't even fully studied it yet. There's no way I'm handing it over to that bastard Jiang Yuanrui."
"Then take it slow, I guess. Just grind through it."
Qin Siyang sighed along with him.
Lu Daoxing looked dazed and listless, clearly in terrible shape.
After a moment of staring blankly, he seemed to recall something, "Oh right, my wife said you ate quite a lot when you came over for dinner last time. She thought you appreciated her cooking. So she made more and told me to bring it to you. Wait here, I'll go get it."
Swaying a bit, he went back into the lab.
Two minutes later, he returned carrying a bag of lunchboxes.
"Take it and eat. If you think it's good, tell me. Don't worry about troubling my wife, she'll be happy to find a way to thank you."
After saying that, he patted Qin Siyang's shoulder and went back into the lab.
"Alright, tell Auntie Yang I said thanks…"
Qin Siyang watched Lu Daoxing's back, feeling a trace of bitterness in it.
Eagerly, he opened the lunchboxes to see what Yang Dan had packed for him. If it tasted good, maybe he could share it with Wen Shu later.
But the moment he lifted the lid, a wave of moldy stench hit his face.
Qin Siyang stared at the mold-covered meal inside, "This is… mapo tofu? Ugh! The tofu's turned black! Mapo tofu's already become stinky tofu. When did Auntie Yang even make this?"
He shut the box and figured it out.
Lu Daoxing must have been so buried in his experiments day and night that he'd lost all sense of time, and completely forgot that Yang Dan had asked him to deliver the food.
Realizing this, Qin Siyang grew even more worried about Lu Daoxing's condition.
"He didn't even notice the food he brought me was moldy. Who knows what he's been eating these days."
Qin Siyang pulled out his phone and called the front desk of the guesthouse.
"Hello, it's me, Qin Siyang."
["Hello, Mr. Qin. What can we do for you?"]
"I'm at the Miracle Building right now and can't go back for dinner. Could you send a meal over?"
["Delivery costs extra."]
"Deduct it from my rental income."
["Understood. Please wait a bit, we'll have it sent within twenty minutes."]
"Thanks."
Qin Siyang wandered around near the Miracle Building for about half an hour before he spotted the delivery person.
After picking up the food, he went back and knocked on Lu Daoxing's lab door again.
No response.
"Looks like Professor Lu's completely absorbed in his research again."
Qin Siyang set the meal beside the door, left a note, and strode away.
Three or four hours later, Lu Daoxing came out of the lab to use the restroom and saw the meal and note left at his door.
[Sharpening the knife doesn't delay chopping wood. Eat when it's time to eat, rest when it's time to rest, so you'll have the strength to crush that dog Jiang Yuanrui.]
Lu Daoxing read it and smiled warmly despite his fatigue.
"Alright then, I'll give myself a little break."
———
With nothing else to do, Qin Siyang strolled carefully around the South Glory University campus and noticed a problem.
Although the floor of his guesthouse had a gym and swimming pool, the campus itself had none.
For sequence users, working out in a gym wasn't much harder than breathing.
Maybe because the guesthouse residents might include wealthy students' parents, while the campus students were all sequence users, that explained the difference in facilities.
Aside from the labs and teaching buildings, the university also had two facilities specifically for improving sequence users' combat strength, the Battle Arena and the Divine Arena.
The Battle Arena was for resolving disputes and sparring between sequence users.
Qin Siyang had once "accidentally" killed a provocateur there.
But his memory of that person was already blurry, he couldn't even remember if the guy's name was Bob or John.
The Divine Arena, on the other hand, used certain God-Hunting tools to simulate gods within the arena, allowing students to gain real combat experience by fighting them.
"The Divine Arena? There's something this good, and Old Li never mentioned it to me?"
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