Bai Yu couldn’t help looking over as the door of the transition airlock was pushed open from the outside by a figure in a white protective suit. Right after, the whirring hum of the transition airlock’s purifier sounded at the entrance. The person quickly closed the door, cutting off the loud hum, and walked toward the hospital bed carrying a tray.
“You’re awake. I thought you were going to sleep through the entire day again,” said Zhou Wang, the guard, stopping in front of the bed and reaching out to activate the automatic dining table so he could place the food for Bai Yu.
On the tray were a bowl of porridge and a cup of green vegetable puree. It smelled mild, but not bad at all.
The dining table rose from the side of the bed and unfolded in front of Bai Yu. The guard placed the tray on the tabletop and prepared to help Bai Yu sit up.
Bai Yu just glanced indifferently at the middle-aged man without speaking, sitting up with the other’s assistance.
Once seated steadily, he picked up the spoon and began eating the porridge. Although his hands didn’t have much strength, the hand holding the spoon did not tremble, only moving with a slight sluggishness.
Zhou Wang stood guard right beside the hospital bed, staring intently at Bai Yu. Beneath the thick face mask, his slightly puffy eyes looked rather heavy.
After a few minutes, he still couldn’t hold back: “When are you going to resume your experiments? It’s already been a week since you last stepped into the lab.”
Hearing this, Bai Yu’s movement of scooping the porridge paused. He slowly raised his head to look at the guard who was staring intently at him.
He remained silent, simply staring back.
Zhou Wang felt a bit creeped out by Bai Yu’s dark, pitch-black pupils, and his mood was exceptionally complicated. Yet amidst all these swirling emotions, a trace of impatience and irritation inadvertently leaked out.
Bai Yu was extremely sensitive to emotional perception. Sensing the guard’s change, he frowned slightly, but quickly returned to his aloof state, saying nothing. He simply withdrew his gaze and continued eating his porridge.
This attitude of his only made Zhou Wang feel even more helpless. The research center was spending a fortune to keep Bai Yu alive; if the other party failed to produce results, their entire team would be held accountable. As the guard responsible for persuading him to conduct experiments, he shouldered even greater pressure.
However, no one had ever been able to completely control Bai Yu.
In his impression, Bai Yu had always been cold-expressed, his brows carrying a genius’s arrogance. At times excessively aloof, he looked at people with a detachment removed from the mortal world, and occasionally a smile of his seemed to carry an indifferent contempt.
He had grown up in an orphanage, but entered the research center to work at thirteen, becoming the most outstanding and top-tier biological genetic researcher by seventeen. Now only twenty-three, he had already achieved results that many researchers couldn’t reach in a lifetime. He was a true genius with every right to be proud and cold.
Thinking of this, Zhou Wang felt a mix of helplessness and resentment. He just wished Bai Yu would obediently cooperate. This research was for all of humanity, yet he lacked the big-picture mindset to sacrifice everything, still acting recklessly according to his own will.
Right now, the entire team was stagnating, waiting for him to get slightly better so they could proceed with the next step of the experiment and keep the research moving forward.
The most helpless part was that this research was critically important, yet they truly couldn’t do without Bai Yu.
Given his ability and brains, he should be producing even more results instead of being self-important and ignoring the team’s arrangements.
Sensing the guard’s increasingly resentful gaze, Bai Yu remained unmoved, continuing to eat his lunch leisurely.
After finishing his meal, Bai Yu picked up a napkin to wipe his mouth before casting his gaze toward Zhou Wang once more, though it was just a faint glance.
“The train of thought I provided a week ago, did the team get any results?”
Hearing this, Zhou Wang was taken aback, then frowned fiercely. He stared at Bai Yu in silence for a moment before saying in a deep voice, “Not yet.”
Bai Yu paused, calmly withdrew his gaze, and simply said, “Oh.”
Even though Bai Yu only replied with a single syllable, Zhou Wang seemed to hear all the information packed into that one sound. Looking at Bai Yu’s cold, arrogant face tinged with pride, the message conveyed seemed to be: You haven’t even researched a single result out yet, so why are you rushing people?
Thinking of this, a surge of irritation welled up in Zhou Wang’s heart, making him even more anxious. Didn’t Bai Yu understand what he meant? It was precisely because their team couldn’t figure it out that they needed him to come out and steady the ship.
“We need you,” Zhou Wang said with some difficulty. As a senior researcher leading several major projects, pleading so straightforwardly and humbly with a junior made him feel awkward and uncomfortable. Moreover, this wasn’t the first time, yet Bai Yu’s attitude was always unpredictable.
Normally, a scientific research career dedicated to the future of humanity required researchers to take the initiative, rather than always being guided by their own will. Although Bai Yu was a genius, he was still far too young.
Bai Yu merely stared at Zhou Wang with profound eyes, and after a good few seconds, repeated once more, “For this project, I am no longer a core researcher.”
Zhou Wang was choked once again, his expression turning unnatural as he slightly averted his gaze to avoid looking at Bai Yu.
After a moment of silence, he said, “Your removal from the team was an accident. The researcher responsible for submitting the project member list has been fired, but everyone knows you are the core member. The team has resubmitted the latest list, and it will be approved soon. You will be the head of the team; no one will object.”
However, Bai Yu just continued staring at Zhou Wang without speaking.
Zhou Wang felt that Bai Yu’s gaze was as substantial as a physical entity, not only seeing right through him but also capable of burning a hole straight through him.
He felt even more guilty. In truth, Bai Yu and all of them knew the truth in their hearts: this project was originally proposed by Bai Yu, who had been leading a few of his team members in working on it.
It wasn’t until the first phase of experimental results came out that a larger team took over, gradually marginalizing Bai Yu and his team members.
Yet after researching for a while, the newly taking-over research team hit a bottleneck, while Bai Yu—whose project had been snatched—didn’t make a fuss, simply preparing to start a new project with his members.
However, this project was truly crucial to humanity’s future and involved immense profits. With a direction already established and twenty percent progress made, no one was going to voluntarily give it up.
Thus, the new team had no choice but to seek out Bai Yu and his team members, demanding that they return to the core of the research. Yet as luck would have it, the new team’s member submission list directly omitted Bai Yu and his members. Whether this was intentional by the researcher who submitted the list or the work of some shadowy schemers whose tails couldn’t be caught, it resulted in such an awkward predicament.
Originally, they had only thought to minimize Bai Yu’s presence—since Bai Yu had already established a firm foothold in the scientific community and possessed far too many achievements for many big-name researchers to even see his taillights, they didn’t want him to occupy more resources, intending to let him act as a peripheral researcher in the project and drag him out to logically solve problems when bottlenecks arose.
Things, however, did not go as planned.
Once the matter was exposed, Bai Yu naturally refused to return to the team, leaving the new team completely helpless.
Right at that exact moment, however, Bai Yu happened to be contaminated by biological genetic technology, and his body rapidly collapsed.
The research center naturally couldn’t let Bai Yu die like that and throw the research into a complete dead end, so they used the condition of providing Bai Yu with top-tier treatment in exchange for his continued participation in the project’s research.
Who knew what the head of the research center discussed with Bai Yu? In the end, Bai Yu agreed. Not long after he moved into the special isolation ward, the bottleneck of the entire project was broken through, and the twenty percent progress suddenly skyrocketed to thirty percent.
Thus, they truly realized that the project genuinely could not function without Bai Yu.
This put them in a very passive position, yet they had no choice but to rely on Bai Yu. No doubt, Bai Yu’s lack of fuss when his project was stolen meant he had anticipated this ending all along, carrying a strong sense of quietly watching them make fools of themselves.
As for Bai Yu’s attitude, they had never been able to figure it out.
Lately, Bai Yu’s physical condition was growing increasingly poor, causing the entire team to worry endlessly. What if Bai Yu suddenly died one day? The project might completely collapse as a result.
Yet this project was truly too vital for all of humanity.
It possessed a milestone significance surpassing any other research.
“Experiments will always yield a result eventually,” Bai Yu said suddenly after a while.
This perfunctory remark only made Zhou Wang even more anxious.
He endured it for a moment before suppressing his emotions.
“Forget it. Focus on recovering for now; your complexion seems a bit better,” Zhou Wang said with a sigh.
Bai Yu said nothing.
Seeing Bai Yu’s impervious attitude, Zhou Wang stopped talking about the project and changed the subject.
“Do you know about the Taboo Cult? There’s been quite a bit of gossip about this religion lately,” Zhou Wang said with a mocking chuckle. “We researchers work hard to do research just so humans can live a little longer, while these religions can effortlessly steal our credit and break the balance between science and faith.”
The Taboo Cult?
Bai Yu instantly perked up, his eyes locking onto Zhou Wang with a deep gaze.
Lately, his body had been growing worse, and he hadn’t browsed the internet for news in a very long time.
“Hmm?” He expressed his question briefly.
Zhou Wang was already used to Bai Yu’s taciturn nature. He just sighed mockingly again before saying, “The Taboo Cult has been making a huge fuss looking for their so-called Dragon Son who can save the apocalypse, and they were explicitly named and criticized by the authorities. However, this behavior provoked resistance from some newly converted believers, making the authorities even angrier. They issued a series of decrees to purge this unhealthy trend. Once anyone from the Taboo Cult is found preaching, they are arrested for administrative detention and subjected to ideological re-education. This matter has blown up into a huge commotion, and other religions have immediately tucked their tails in.”
Bai Yu was somewhat surprised. The Taboo Cult had been dormant for several years, and much of its information was unsearchable. Why had it suddenly risen abruptly and sparked such massive public opinion?
He couldn’t help glancing at the spot under the quilt where the book was hidden. That book was obviously related to the Taboo Cult.
And he had once been rescued from the hands of the Taboo Cult—was there any connection between him and them at all?
What on earth did the Taboo Cult want to achieve by making such a massive spectacle?
When an era is in crisis, religion often becomes a spiritual pillar for humanity to keep gritting their teeth and persevering. Therefore, he didn’t harbor strong feelings against what the Taboo Cult was doing; it was simply that this religion was far too mysterious, sparking curiosity and a desire to explore.
Bai Yu made no comments on this, simply giving Zhou Wang a look before withdrawing his gaze.
At that moment, Zhou Wang spoke again: “I really don’t understand why the authorities don’t just define the Taboo Cult as an evil cult and wipe them out directly. Religions like that ought to be eradicated; they simply corrupt people’s minds and steal everyone’s hard-earned credit.”
Zhou Wang’s tone was laden with intense resentment. Bai Yu suddenly felt a bit displeased upon hearing this. For humans who required spiritual faith, science was of paramount importance, but it was cold and sometimes struggled to soothe the fragile inner hearts of humanity, whereas religious faith softly provided a resting haven for the human soul.
After a moment of silence, he finally spoke: “Since the authorities haven’t defined it as such, ordinary people have nothing much to say about it.”
These words choked Zhou Wang for a moment, leaving him holding in a breath of air, though he said no more.
However, right at that moment, a sudden pain stabbed through Bai Yu’s head.