“Sorry, Professor, I just picked up that stone randomly… Uh, yeah, by the moatside wasteland… Okay, I’ll keep it a secret.”
Xing Chen hung up on his mentor and then looked at Theresa’s peaceful sleeping face beside him, as if she was having a beautiful dream.
He tried to quietly get up and leave, when suddenly, a hand grabbed his shirt corner.
“Good morning~~ Xing Chen,” Theresa yawned. Xing Chen turned to look at her, and her expression had become very serious, “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“My eyes?” Xing Chen did feel some discomfort in his eyes. He thought it was a normal reaction, as his lifestyle wasn't exactly healthy. “Let me check with my phone…”
Opening the front camera, Xing Chen found that his eyes were indeed bloodshot. Speaking of which, had he really been that tired lately? Or was the time he spent staying up late in dreams also being counted in reality?
“Can’t you see the Originium symbol in your eyes?”
From Theresa’s perspective, Xing Chen’s pupils were no longer black, but rhomboids emitting an ominous light.
Xing Chen also felt strange. He specifically got dressed and went to Old Wang next door, who also said there was nothing unusual.
“Could it be that only you can see it?”
“Possibly. How about we go back to Terra and try it now?”
“Let’s not. I feel like it’s getting harder and harder for me to fall asleep,” Xing Chen said, shaking his head, but strangely, he didn’t feel sleepy or tired. “Oh, Theresa, do you know how long we stayed in Terra this time? I was in the factory the whole time, so I didn’t keep track.”
“Let me think… at least a month.”
“Then have you calculated the interval between our two returns to Terra?”
Theresa hadn't really paid much attention to this question. In the wasteland, isolated from the civilized world, calculating dates was quite difficult.
But she and Xing Chen shared a consensus: the intervals between their round trips were shortening, while the time they spent in Terra was getting longer.
“So, from my world’s perspective, Terra’s time is directional but uneven? The time mapped by daylight is shortening, and the time corresponding to night is lengthening?”
“Xing Chen, does this mean that the connection between your world and my world is deepening?”
“To be precise, it’s the connection between me and your world that’s deepening. Look at other places; there are no related signs.”
Xing Chen specifically used someone else’s phone to log into the game and check, but there were no changes at all. Either he hadn’t done enough, or the two world lines had completely separated at some point.
The hypothesis of parallel worlds is easy to propose, but with the current level of human technology, verification is basically impossible.
Perhaps the Seer and Preces could do it?
“Theresa, do you know a fictional historian named Nieve?”
“I know someone named Nieve, but what kind of profession is a fictional historian?”
“Just assume I’m rambling. You’d best not delve into where that term came from.”
...Although there were many questions, they didn't affect daily life.
Theresa continued to study programming on the computer Xing Chen set up for her, while Xing Chen had to go out to find food for them and deal with his studies.
“Xing Chen, do you have time? Come to school,” his mentor called.
His mentor was very laid-back; aside from telling him to report expenses for money, he rarely contacted him proactively at other times.
“Do you humans get paid even if you don’t work?”
Theresa sat on the bed with the laptop on her lap. She felt a little uncomfortable, perhaps because her chest was a bit too large.
“That depends on your status and region.”
“Like those royal court Sarkaz?”
“Not quite, because we actually do a lot of work.”
Xing Chen finished packing and was about to leave when Theresa suddenly said, “Be careful, come back soon.”
“I know.”
Rushing all the way to the lab, Xing Chen found his mentor and senior brothers gathered in a circle, with an iron basin in the middle.
“Professor, what are you looking at?”
Xing Chen leaned closer and found that it contained perfectly crystallized Originium clusters.
“Where did you get these?” Xing Chen didn’t remember picking up this type of Originium.
“We were going to ask you!” the senior brother said. “What exactly is this? I remember I only collected a tiny bit of powder, and then it grew into this—it completely defies the law of conservation of mass.”
“Forget your broken law,” another senior brother said. “Now, all the departments capable of component analysis are buzzing, saying we found an alien stone that contains every element with 100% purity.”
“Stop arguing, we’ll know what this thing is once I send it for testing,” the mentor interjected, interrupting the two senior brothers’ argument. “Xing Chen, you name it. You were the first to find this.”
Xing Chen was a bit bewildered. He did have the idea of developing his country by bringing Originium, but he also knew this thing was a bit too advanced.
And now, these things were being sent to various experts. He hoped it wouldn’t lead to declarations of the death of human science.
“How about calling it Originium?”
“I think ‘Raw Stone’ sounds better,” a joking senior brother said. “I know which Originium you’re talking about; it really is quite similar to the one in the game.”
“Since Xing Chen said so, it’s settled. Oh, by the way, you’ll go to a meeting in Y City in a while to see what those people think.”
Xing Chen was naturally happy to go to a business trip with pay. However, Theresa was undocumented and couldn’t take public transport without an ID, and he didn’t dare leave her alone at home.
Driving there himself was an option; he had a driver’s license, and Old Wang was willing to lend him his car. But then he thought—why not ask his mentor if he could help solve the ID problem?
“Wait, wait, wait, you mean you found an undocumented person to be your girlfriend?” Not only his mentor, but his two senior brothers also looked at him as if he were a rare animal.
“No, there are so many good girls in our department and school, and you had to go find an undocumented person outside?” The senior brother’s face was filled with incredulity.
“I just happened to meet her during the holidays and developed feelings…” Xing Chen had thrown caution to the wind. Luckily, he didn’t participate in many group activities.
“Alright then, give me a photo, and I’ll ask,” his mentor said, rubbing his forehead.
“Let me look…”
Xing Chen didn’t have many photos of Theresa. He rummaged through his album for a while and finally found one.
In the photo, Theresa was wearing a short-sleeved shirt in the dead of winter, one foot bare, crossing her legs, looking at a programming tutorial by the table.
“You found a programmer who cosplays?” a senior brother said.
“I think you should let her fix your XP system.”