Chapter 25: Fifth Senior Brother Is Fierce (Part 1)

Chapter Fifteen

Once Chen Yi thought of it that way, he could no longer sit still.

He stood and called out, “Mom, stop cooking. Let’s go back to the sect together.”

His mother, Xiang Lan, had just put the peas and meat on to braise. How could she leave now? No matter what he said, she refused to go.

Chen Yi was just planning to “kidnap the children” and use them as leverage when he heard a knock at the front gate.

Da Huang alertly pricked up its ears and stared at the gate for two seconds. After identifying the visitor, it lay back down on the ground.

Chen Yi’s “kidnapping” attempt failed. He could only tuck his daughter, who had been smoked black like a little calico cat, under his arm and casually throw a dust-removal spell over her. By then, he had already opened the courtyard gate.

Outside stood Third Brother Wang, who said, “Sect Master, the people arranged by the state have arrived.”

Chen Yi thought for a full three seconds before remembering who these people were.

Yesterday, after discovering the ancient bacteria, Chen Yi had immediately asked Tang Qirui to report it. Faced with this kind of highly infectious bacteria, the state had dispatched epidemic-prevention troops and bacterial-virus research experts to provide support right away.

Their mission here, besides controlling access to Lishui Village’s villagers, was to establish a research station and try to solve the infection problem through scientific methods.

The nationwide cultivation Chen Yi had proposed probably would not be realized anytime soon, so they could only vaccinate ordinary people.

This group had mainly come to develop epidemic-prevention medicines, conduct a more detailed study of the ancient bacteria, and set up defenses in advance.

Chen Yi put his daughter down and handed her to Da Huang, who had already come over to take her. Then he called into the house, “Mom, I’m going out. I’ll be back later.”

His mother, Xiang Lan, poked her head out of the kitchen. “What were you about to say just now?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back.” With no time to say more, Chen Yi had already closed the door and left.

When he reached the village entrance, the village meeting happened to have ended. A tide of people was coming toward him. From afar, Chen Yi saw the troublemakers walking in the middle of the crowd, speaking loudly and stirring up the villagers to raise the demolition compensation. He immediately used the aura-concealing technique.

For a moment, the only person the villagers saw coming toward them was Third Brother Wang.

“Ping’an!”

“Third Boy!”

“Can you tell us what exactly is going on? What kind of mine did they find in our North Mountain? Can we get more demolition compensation?”

Third Brother Wang did not think about why everyone was asking him instead of Chen Yi. He remembered his task, so no matter how the villagers tried to get close to him, he only said with a stern face, “I don’t know. I still have work to do. If you have questions, you can ask the village committee. Please move aside.”

Although he was a child they had watched grow up in the village and was as familiar as one of their own, Third Brother Wang, dressed in the Criminal Protection Team uniform and wearing a cold expression, suddenly seemed completely distant. Like Moses parting the sea, he walked straight through the crowd.

Chen Yi followed behind him, and not a single person seemed to notice him.

Only after they had gotten some distance from the villagers and could see the parking lot in the distance did Chen Yi release the aura-concealing technique.

Third Brother Wang’s eyes suddenly registered Chen Yi again. “???”

This time, the state had also arranged a bus. A group of people in civilian clothes stood in the parking lot. Many wore glasses. There were both men and women, and many were older, with graying hair.

Among them, in the three-person group being received by Village Chief Comrade Chen Jiankang, one elderly man looked somewhat familiar. Chen Yi stared at that face for a while, estimating that he might have seen this face before his transmigration, but when he tried to recall carefully, it was not exactly the same. It was just like him and the original owner of this body. They were seventy to eighty percent similar, while the remaining differences mainly came from the environments they had grown up in.

Seeing Chen Yi arrive, Comrade Chen Jiankang led the others over and introduced them. “This is Academician Li Wei, an expert from the National Institute of Infectious Disease Prevention.”

“Hello.” Chen Yi shook his hand and introduced himself. Looking at this Academician Li Wei, he found even the name and position were almost the same. It seemed that for a true genius in a particular field, no matter which parallel space they were in, they would engage in a similar profession.

After the two sides exchanged brief pleasantries, Third Brother Wang led some of the younger medical scholars, whose main work was epidemic prevention and control, into the village.

Earlier, they had thought the situation was severe, so everyone had prepared for epidemic control. A large amount of protective equipment had been transported up the mountain, and many people had already put on epidemic-prevention suits. Now they took them off again and agreed to examine the villagers under the name of free medical consultations, while also collecting symptoms after infection by the ancient bacteria.

This group did not know their real mission. Even those who occasionally felt suspicious had nowhere to ask, so they could only follow the main team.

The people Chen Yi took away were the true core researchers.

There were six in total, all in the configuration of academicians plus research assistants. Following Chen Yi, they passed through the village and headed straight toward North Mountain.

In fact, they also did not know that in the orange grove not far from here lay the state’s most central secret for facing aberrant disasters. They were only responsible for studying the highly diffusive ancient bacteria. Only if necessary would they be allowed to come into contact with the core secrets step by step.

At the foot of North Mountain, Captain Ye was waiting with two people. They were all team members who had been assigned to carry out the mission last night and had not yet rotated off duty.

After receiving their task, they had used entrenching shovels to clear weeds and tangled branches from the route leading from the rear of North Mountain toward the peach grove. Working as fast as they could, they had dug out a mountain path. Academician Li Wei was almost seventy. Even the smallest bump or fall would be a loss to the country.

Captain Ye did want to carry him on his back, but the man took one look and saw that Captain Ye was already in his sixties, with more white hair on his head than he had. Yet he could still act as a soldier all over the mountains and wilderness. He truly was hale and hearty in old age!

Academician Li Wei asked, “May I ask your honored age?”

“…” Captain Ye said, “Take a guess?”

Academician Li Wei understood the ways of the world, so he said very conservatively, “Around sixty?”

“Ah, right, right.” Captain Ye nodded.

In this way, they went all the way down. When they reached the mountain hollow, the dense wild peach trees hung with bright red nectarines appeared before everyone’s eyes.

Not far ahead was that ground pit.

After one night had passed, there were also a few small changes here.

Chen Yi and Captain Ye had made several trips overnight, carrying a few camouflage tents over from the sect. The rumbling generator was extremely loud. A row of hanging lightbulbs extended from the tents all the way into the depths of the pit, and even the ladders had been set up.

It was worth mentioning that this was a 300-kilowatt generator, weighing one thousand kilograms, and Chen Yi and Captain Ye had carried it down by themselves. Of course, Chen Yi’s cultivation was high and his strength great, but just the fact that cultivation increased strength was enough to make people marvel. What kind of cultivation was this? It was practically a kind of evolution of life.

The high-power generator easily lit up the depths of the dense forest, driving away the invisible pressure brought by the deep, dark pit.

Chen Yi walked in front. His gaze fell on the warm, lustrous stones hanging from the tents or on the wall of the pit. As his vision opened and closed, petals spun deep in his eyes, and he saw what the others could not: bacteria adsorbed on the surfaces of those stones.

Before a folded space opened, it would leak spiritual energy, bringing Spiritual Energy Revival to this world. It had therefore awakened aberrations, awakeners, and demonic beasts, and it would also bring bacteria from different spaces.

Bacteria themselves were not harmful. On this Blue Star, humans had coexisted with hundreds of millions of types of bacteria for tens of thousands of years. Some bacteria were even beneficial to humans.

Only bacteria from other spaces were not so friendly. They could even be called viruses.

Before life on Blue Star established a complete defensive system of its own, their lethality was not a bit weaker than that of viruses.

However, these troublesome bacteria were now all adsorbed on stones that gave off a faint glow on their own, displaying an attitude of great fondness, mild and harmless.

Once Chen Yi swept them with a dust-removal spell, they were directly sent away in batches.

As for the other places, there were only a few scattered free-floating bacteria. Forget a cultivator like Chen Yi; even ordinary people would not have much of a problem coming into contact with them.

At worst, Chen Yi would come over to “disinfect” once a day. Once someone in the sect reached second-stage Qi Refining, they would just barely be able to use the dust-removal spell once or twice. Slowly, this work would not necessarily have to be done by him.

Or perhaps, after some time, once the higher-ups issued a notice and Academician Li Wei and his students joined the sect and gained resistance of their own, would that not be even simpler?

“What is this?”

One young graduate assistant wearing glasses keenly noticed the stones deliberately hung in the corners and asked Chen Yi.

Chen Yi said, “A special kind of ore. You’ll be able to see it very soon.”

“Jade?”

Chen Yi thought about it. It was probably close enough, so he nodded. “Yes.”

Hearing this, Academician Li Wei was puzzled. “Jade? Or a jade mine? Could it be that you dug up some ancient tomb and discovered a virus that has survived until now?”

In a sense, Academician Li Wei had basically hit on the truth. Chen Yi could not explain too clearly, so he could only answer vaguely, “Please take a look first. It’s just ahead.”

As they spoke, they had already arrived before the ground pit.

Compared with last night, this place had been dug more than one meter deeper. In the soil, one could see a crack about thirty centimeters long and eight centimeters wide. It was immeasurably deep, so dark it seemed capable of absorbing light. If one shone a flashlight into the depths, one would see stones as small as grains of rice and as large as broad beans, glowing a lustrous white.

The material of these stones was exactly the same as the stones in the tent and hanging on the pit wall. It was just that their sizes differed significantly, and the energy contained within them also differed by quite a bit.

These were, of course, spirit stones.

However, the spirit stones dug out from the ground fissure were still in a “seed” state and were far from ready to be mined. After all, even the spirit stone the size of a pigeon egg that Chen Yi had obtained had been called a low-grade spirit stone.

Even so, the discovery of a spirit stone mine was enormously significant. These small spirit stones were just right for research, and they also solved the severe shortage of spirit stones faced by both the state and Chen Yi.

It was only that to ensure the researchers’ safety, Chen Yi painfully took out five more spirit stones to attract the ancient bacteria. He did not know whether these bacteria gathered around spirit stones simply because they liked them like moths to a flame, or whether they would absorb the spirit stones.

The ancient bacteria were far too small. It was difficult to make an assessment after only one night, but Chen Yi still hoped they could be recycled and reused.

Chen Yi spoke vaguely, while Academician Li Wei and the people he brought were also attracted by the ground fissure. The young assistants took off the backpacks on their backs, pulled out the instruments they had brought, and automatically gathered around the fissure.

Chen Yi was squeezed out of the middle of the crowd and had nothing to say for a while.

After some time, Captain Ye stood beside him and said softly, “The gold troops also set out today. They may arrive tonight. The higher-ups have already decided to dig downward to the source area, and under suitable circumstances, they’ve decided to carry out reverse exploration.”

Chen Yi raised his brows. “You mean actively entering the other space?”

“It depends on the situation. When the time comes, you’ll still have to make the judgment. As humanity’s current strongest combat force, only you can make the final decision.”

Chen Yi was silent for a few seconds, then said, “I thought the sect’s name had already expressed my standards for handling people and matters very clearly.”

Captain Ye chuckled. “The capable should do more work. If you don’t work hard, who will?”

Chen Yi suddenly thought of the Personal Disciple function he had discovered just before setting out, so he said, “Do you still remember the Technique Transmission I mentioned yesterday?”

“Mm.” Captain Ye nodded. “Call me along next time you transmit technique. I don’t mind if it’s little. Any improvement counts. You also hope someone can share your work, don’t you?”

“…” Even this had someone thinking about it. Chen Yi then explained his new discovery in detail.

He had originally wanted to say that the number of Personal Disciples was limited and should be related to the number of cushions in the Scripture Pavilion. There were ten spots, and he wanted five. He wanted to ask Captain Ye whether the higher-ups would agree to this demand.

But then he heard Captain Ye say, “Sect Master! Don’t look at my age and appearance. In truth, I also want to devote my heart to seeking the Dao. If Sect Master does not disdain me, please accept me as your disciple.”

“…”

“I’m sincere, Sect Master!!”

In the space of one sentence, Captain Ye’s eyes were already red with excitement. He clasped his fists in a salute to Chen Yi, bowing with his back bent. The corners of his eyes and mouth had both creased into deep folds from smiling.

Chen Yi choked up for several seconds. Just then, Academician Li Wei held up a tiny spirit stone and asked, “What is this?”

Before walking away, Chen Yi said to Captain Ye, “Talk to Minister Tang. If it’s you, it should be fine.”

Then Chen Yi said to Academician Li Wei, “Strictly speaking, it counts as a certain kind of highly contaminated item. You’d better put it down quickly.”

Academician Li Wei was startled, but he did not drop it. Instead, quick as lightning, he tossed that rice-sized spirit stone into a sample-collection vessel. Professional instinct told him that the more highly contaminated an item was, the easier it would be to research the truth.

After collecting a certain number of samples, Academician Li Wei hurriedly left with his people.

Before Chen Yi left, he swept the area around the ground pit with the dust-removal spell once more. Next, it would depend on how the higher-ups arranged for the gold troops to dig.

Folded space was the culprit that would cause chaos in the future world. There was nothing wrong with taking the initiative to attack. It was just that if they wanted Chen Yi to lead the team for exploration, before he had a sufficient understanding of the situation on the other side, he definitely would not agree easily.

With his sixth-stage Qi Refining cultivation, against the whole great backdrop of this world, where did he even rank? He was not even qualified to be the tiny shrimp eaten by a little fish.

After leaving North Mountain, Academician Li Wei led his people into the rapidly built temporary base beside the orange grove.

They would conduct three to five days of observation and research there before considering the next step.

As for the group of medical personnel who had gone to the village for free consultations, arrangements had already been made for them to leave. Since the crisis was resolved, the secret of the base still had to continue being kept. Non-core personnel were forbidden from coming into contact with it.

After settling Academician Li Wei and the others, Chen Yi returned to the sect at once. The main reason was that Captain Ye’s longing gaze could not be ignored. In this life, Chen Yi had never been looked at by an old man in his sixties with eyes so full of childlike admiration.

This was going to be the death of him!!

“Fine, fine. Let’s go find Minister Tang.”

Saying this, Chen Yi and Captain Ye returned to the sect.

Now, the outer perimeter of the orange grove had already been enclosed with camouflage cloth, precisely to conceal the secret of entering and exiting the sect.

The area happened to be exactly all the land transferred under Chen Yi’s name.

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