Days passed, one after another, as Bai Mo continued his three-point routine: absorbing Spirit Qi, conducting experiments, and studying.
While such a life might appear incredibly tedious to others, he was clearly enjoying it. Day after day, his qi cultivation slowly improved all aspects of Bai Mo's physical metrics.
For someone who fully embraced the settings of various web novels and possessed an intense interest in transcendent powers, merely witnessing his daily progress was a pleasure in itself. However, his rapidly increasing appetite did bring some minor vexations.
Alas, this world still lacked the legendary monster meat, so rich in energy that one piece could equal ten, let alone demon beast cores that could be popped like candy as high-energy nuclei. He had once considered cultivating something, but the Spirit Stones he currently possessed weren't even enough for his own needs, let alone anything else.
So-called heavenly materials and earthly treasures were nowhere to be found, forcing him to consume large quantities of ordinary food after cultivating, which, regrettably, led to a significant increase in his bathroom visits.
Bai Mo, for his part, didn't much care if others mocked him; external opinions were of no consequence to an egoist like him. It was simply that he had always disliked drawing attention, as it could increase the risk of his secrets being exposed. At least for now, he was unwilling to take any such risk.
To resolve this issue, he began seeking various high-energy foods to reduce the sheer volume of his food intake.
He bought a pile of items like compressed biscuits and high-energy military rations online to test. The results confirmed they were indeed useful. Regardless of the taste, at least his bathroom frequency dropped significantly.
From then on, Bai Mo's daily diet transformed from copious amounts of meals into various high-energy and compressed foods. Although his food expenditures skyrocketed, he wasn't particularly short on money, and thus, at least in terms of eating, he could fully satisfy himself.
Logically, a sedentary homebody who consumed large quantities of high-energy food should gain weight at an astonishing rate. In reality, however, his physique remained almost unchanged, save for a slight increase in muscle that was barely perceptible to outsiders.
The only change an outsider might notice was that his skin, which had previously deteriorated from frequent late-night novel reading, had regained its luster, becoming soft and smooth.
Of course, no one around him cared about a shut-in's skin condition, especially since he lived in a single dorm room.
His own appearance was merely average; he was the type of person who would simply vanish into a crowd without any distinguishing features. Naturally, he wouldn't catch the eye of any aesthetically discerning girls.
As long as he didn't do anything outrageous to grab attention, no one paid any mind to such an ordinary person. Thus, even after a full month of cultivation and such profound internal changes in Bai Mo's body, he hadn't attracted any notice.
In the half-month since he received the new samples, he hadn't been slacking off in the lab.
Furthermore, he conducted various experiments on the first Spirit Stone he had obtained, the one whose Spirit Qi was almost exhausted.
In previous tests, Bai Mo had discovered that the stone's main component was still calcium carbonate, so subsequent experiments had no longer involved acid washing.
Using 20 degrees Celsius as a single increment, he meticulously tested 40 different heating temperatures, from two hundred degrees Celsius up to one thousand degrees Celsius for the Spirit Stone. Other than a slight increase in the rate of Spirit Qi release, there were no groundbreaking discoveries.
Next, freezing, high pressure, and spectral analysis were each brought into play, but still, nothing was found.
Feeling that he was hitting a wall, he had no choice but to set aside the experiments for now and head to the library to cram in some relevant knowledge.
During his studies, he also noticed that his comprehension and memory abilities seemed to have significantly improved after cultivating. Knowledge that he previously found agonizing to memorize now seemed considerably simpler to learn.
Seizing this momentum, he began to pore over university biology and medical textbooks. Bai Mo knew that, given his personality, he would definitely not be handing anything over to the state; he would only explore the path of future evolution alone. Broadening his knowledge base was therefore crucial.
At least until he possessed sufficient self-preservation capabilities, he would not publicize his cultivation secret. As for the bottom line Bai Mo set for revealing his secret, it was being able to withstand a nuclear explosion in the central blast zone and suffer, at most, minor injuries.
He consistently felt that without reaching the prerequisite of one person being able to stand against a nation, and without being able to withstand the attacks of humanity's most potent weapons, revealing these secrets would essentially mean being captured and dissected by a group of powerful figures driven mad by their lust for immortality and strength.
Having his worldview profoundly influenced by web novels, he had always maintained a very low estimate of the moral limits of society's upper echelons. Fearful of death, he had no intention of risking exposure, and thus needed to proceed cautiously, step by step.
"Forty days already?" Bai Mo glanced at the calendar.
After more than a month of cultivation, he unexpectedly discovered that his eyes had developed an ability: when focusing intensely, he could achieve temporary x-ray vision.
He also privately conducted various extreme tests of this ability in his dorm room. A single sustained use of his x-ray vision could last for about half a minute, though in reality, it became very uncomfortable after twenty seconds, requiring sheer willpower to persist.
Generally, after using it for twenty seconds, he needed to rest for half an hour before he could use it again. Furthermore, after about three uses, his physical stamina would plummet due to the massive energy consumption. However, if he only used it for one or two seconds at a time, he could accumulate seventy to eighty seconds of use before his stamina was still depleted.
"What a pity, it's not a direct combat ability," he mused. "But at least it's a first step. After all, this is still a peaceful society; combat abilities aren't necessarily more useful than auxiliary ones."
"X-ray vision... I could use it to make money at casinos. As long as I don't go overboard, it could even be a long-term source of income. And it seems it's also a standard feature for the legendary 'stone gambling'..."
Just as Bai Mo was indulging in wild fantasies about his x-ray vision, his phone chimed.
He picked up his phone and saw it was a WeChat message from Zhao Jia Sen. Habitually, he tapped to play the voice message.
"Xiao Mo, my boy," Zhao Jia Sen's voice played, "have you made any headway with the sample research recently?"
Zhao Jia Sen's voice abruptly jolted him awake from his pleasant reverie, startling Bai Mo as well.
"Mentor, I've already conducted quite a few more detailed experiments on the sample you asked me to test, but I still haven't discovered any special properties. I estimate more samples will be needed for testing."
Zhao Jia Sen harbored no suspicions. Analyzing the properties of unknown materials was inherently a task that relied on extensive experimentation and a bit of luck; the amount of samples consumed was bound to be considerable.
"Just contact Xu Yue Hai directly," Zhao Jia Sen replied. "Most of the samples are with him."
"Understood."