I Studied Abroad in the Modern Times-Chapter 315Book 2: : Rejuvenation, Let’s Start Together

Vol 2 Chapter 315: Rejuvenation, Let’s Start Together

Zheng Fa sat on the black couch in the director’s office, waiting as a guest.

Outside the door, the researchers sat upright, eyes forward, silent and hardworking—every one of them looked like a diligent old ox.

The only odd thing was—maybe they all had weak bladders. They lined up one after another to use the restroom, trickling past the office door.

Zheng Fa examined the office environment.

This small two-story building had probably been around for over a decade. Although it had clearly been tidied up, the bubbling on the ceiling and the yellow stains on the desk still betrayed the institute’s decline.

Or rather—its backwardness.

Seeing him looking around, the director couldn’t help but look a little nervous.

Clearly afraid of being looked down on.

Zheng Fa took a glance around, smiled at him, as if to reassure.

He truly didn’t mind. Before coming, he and Tang Lingwu had already gone over the institute’s technological reserves.

Objectively speaking, this institute had fallen behind in recent years. In today’s age of intelligent systems, it couldn’t quite keep up.

But what caught Zheng Fa’s attention was exactly this backwardness!

Or to put it another way—he valued the foundation the institute had built over the past half-century.

Of course, Zheng Fa had also wanted to find the most advanced institute and bring the Jiushan Sect the highest-end tech.

The problem was... the Jiushan Sect wasn’t quite worthy yet.

All that talk of smart systems and high precision—given the current level of tech in the Jiushan Realm, not only could they not build that stuff, they couldn’t even find qualified workers if they did.

Instead, the old-fashioned, clunky, brute-force, straightforward style suited the Jiushan Realm perfectly right now.

Every pot has its lid—these folks didn’t despise the Jiushan Realm’s backwardness, so how could he look down on this institute’s age?

After discussing with everyone at the nursing home, Zheng Fa also realized something—perhaps the simpler the machinery, the easier it would be to replicate in the Jiushan Realm.

Clunky and basic meant easier to make, lower learning costs.

If they tried to force high-end tech into place, it might not adapt well to the environment and end up being useless.

Only once the foundations were built could the Jiushan Realm gradually upgrade its industries.

Put simply, backward production capacity could not only be exported to Uncle Hei—it could also be exported to the Jiushan Realm...

And this design institute, though it looked a bit rundown now, had once accumulated solid technical strength during its prime.

At the very least, it was more than capable of meeting the Jiushan Realm’s current needs.

As for long-term industrial advancement in the Jiushan Realm, it would still rely on the nursing home and Jiushan Realm’s own research.

The old director spoke: “Immortal Zheng—”

Zheng Fa found the title a little odd. “Just call me Zheng Fa.”

“Director Zheng…” As if recalling Zheng Fa’s title from the documentary, the old director corrected himself, “Well, our conditions right now… are a bit rough…” R̃𝘈𐌽ǑβƐs

“But every one of our people is solid!”

“Whatever you need, we…” The director gritted his teeth, calling up his old spirit. “I’m willing to make a military oath!”

Zheng Fa chuckled.

This wasn’t the first institute they had inspected.

He and Tang Lingwu had visited many universities and research centers. With the Sword Qi Forms a Rainbow technique, they moved fast—as long as Team Leader Yang helped coordinate so they didn’t miss anyone.

Everyone they met looked about the same—some were even more excited than this director.

Zheng Fa raised a hand and smiled. “No need for military oaths, I don’t go for that. I’ve got some materials here I’d like you to look at…”

Beside him, Tang Lingwu, looking like a secretary, pulled out a USB drive.

The USB drive contained mainly information on the Shenxiao External Pill and test results on a few spiritual ores from the Jiushan Realm—

Such as hardness and other physical properties, burial depth, etc.

Also, lightning-type spirit stones often had extra hazards, like primordial magnetism and lightning force.

All this had been measured by Senior Sister Zhang and Xiao Yuying.

Spiritual ores had never appeared in the modern world, so Zheng Fa could only provide these reference materials.

Additionally, the power source would have to be switched to Shenxiao External Pills.

“This…”

Looking at the data on the computer, the old director asked, “Director Zheng, are you hoping… we create a plan tailored to these ores?”

“Yes. Based on your institute’s experience, propose a suitable design,” Zheng Fa explained. “I’ll be honest—we made the same request to universities across the country.”

“Whichever works best—we’ll go with that one.”

The director straightened in his chair. “So it’s a national competition?”

“It’s not a competition,” said Tang Lingwu from the side. “Here’s a budget sheet.”

The old director took the form and his jaw dropped. “You’re paying up front?”

“Yes. We’re treating this like a research project. Funds will be issued in advance, and you don’t need to worry about costs,” Tang Lingwu explained. “As for whose plan gets selected, we’ll provide extra rewards.”

“You could say we’re like a research grant foundation.”

The old director looked at the base funding column on the sheet and swallowed hard. “Per year…”

Worried that people outside might hear, he lowered his voice and mumbled a number. Then asked, “And there’s additional rewards?”

At the door, a balding man froze mid-step. His ears twitched, his hand trembled, and the scalding water in his cup burned him—but he didn’t seem to notice. He gripped the doorframe and stared at Zheng Fa like he’d seen the God of Wealth.

The director had no time for him.

He looked at Zheng Fa, deeply moved. He had heard the rumor about no budget cap—but hadn’t expected such generous terms.

He had thought Zheng Fa was trying to make the whole country compete.

But now—

The entire academic world had just gained a new sugar daddy.

Tang Lingwu added, “The foundation’s current funds aren’t very large, but in the future we’ll continue…”

No—more like a grandpa-level benefactor!

“A big one. A very big one!”

To Zheng Fa and Tang Lingwu, they had too many things to deal with—this wasn’t big money to them.

But to a dying institute…

It was fortune raining from the heavens!

…

After Zheng Fa left, the director still hadn’t recovered. He turned to the balding man at the door and asked, “This project…”

“I’ll take it!”

The balding man volunteered.

“Well…” The director hesitated, shaking his head. “This External Pill stuff is all new. We need young people. Let Huang Yi handle it—”

“He’s quitting!” the balding man blurted, speaking like a machine gun. “Said it himself—quitting today, right now…”

“I did not!”

Behind him, the young Huang Yi squeezed in, glaring angrily.

“Stop stealing my spot!”

The director slammed the desk and glared at both of them. “You! Are you quitting or not?”

“No, no, no…”

The director nodded and grunted, “Meeting!”

…

A day later, staring at the bold red banner in the office that read “Charge Hard for 100 Days,” the young Huang Yi felt like he had time-traveled thirty years back.

“Our old director… always had this kind of taste.”

The balding man stood beside him and said with a smirk:

“Director says we’ll be working overtime for three months—everyone’s sleeping on the floor here. Your girlfriend okay with that?”

A smile crept across Huang Yi’s face. “I told her I was doing a project with Director Zheng…”

“…”

“This morning, she dragged me to get our marriage certificate.”

The balding man nodded, understanding. “Smart girl.”

“So at home… you gonna reassert your manhood?”

Huang Yi laughed and teased.

Sure, the demolition payout was nice—but with a rich wife, life used to feel a little humble.

The balding man rubbed his waist, raised his head, and sighed. “Three months… still not enough.”

“…”

Huang Yi choked, coughed, then burst into louder and louder laughter.

The balding man lit a cigarette and, through the wisps of smoke, squinted at the painfully bright red banner on the wall.

He used to think that thing was ugly.

Still was, really.

But now, the red color looked a bit like the institute’s heart—flashing and pulsing through the haze.

The aging institute felt like it had become young again.

The balding man turned to look at the deity statue by the door—wearing a faint, compassionate smile, watching over them.

He removed the cigarette from his mouth and placed it in front of the statue.

…

Zheng Fa and Tang Lingwu had just finished touring the entire country before returning to the nursing home.

He didn’t know much about the field and could only wait for the results from the universities and institutes.

To be honest, he was pretty anxious—but he also had patience.

Throwing money now was like watering the soil—just waiting for the seeds to blossom and bear fruit.

What surprised him was that as soon as they got back, Tang Lingwu asked him to activate the Lingshan Method and locked herself in her room to cultivate.

He wasn’t quite used to it.

Before, he had always been the busy one, while Tang Lingwu took every chance to cling to him, chirping away.

Sensing his surprise, Old Bai and Teacher Tian came over, clearly wanting to say something.

“Little Lingwu… has been working way too hard lately…”

Zheng Fa frowned.

He recalled that aside from helping him manage the grain company and inspecting research institutes, Tang Lingwu had been holed up cultivating nonstop.

Much more diligently than before.

He understood what Old Bai and Teacher Tian were trying to say—cultivation was a meticulous process. While haste doesn’t always lead to failure, rushing could easily cause problems.

“What’s wrong with Lingwu?”

Unexpectedly, Old Bai shot him a glare, looking a bit angry.

“You don’t get it?”

Zheng Fa froze for a moment. His mind had been entirely focused on the research institutes these past few days, and he had completely neglected people like Tang Lingwu.

Now that he thought of the slightly heartbroken look on Tang Lingwu’s face earlier, he immediately understood.

“She…”

“She wants to help you.”

Old Bai snorted.

“Lingwu has already helped me a lot.”

Right now, Tang Lingwu was the chief financial officer of the nursing home. The grain company, Jiushan Martial Hall, and all of the nursing home’s funding and expenses were on her shoulders.

Though there had been some mistakes at first.

Tang Lingwu had improved extremely quickly and now managed the company in perfect order.

Even Zheng Fa had to admit—without Tang Lingwu, he couldn’t run such a massive operation on his own.

Teacher Tian sighed. “She’s been trying hard… just to stand beside you.”

Zheng Fa knew that. In fact, he knew more than Teacher Tian did.

He actually remembered… back when he first met Tang Lingwu, she said she didn’t like managing businesses and didn’t want to inherit the family company.

But now… she had already become an excellent director.

On the other hand, he wasn’t very optimistic about Tang Lingwu’s current effort.

There was nothing he could do about it.

The spiritual energy concentration in Hongshan was still quite low. After all, it all came from Zheng Fa himself, and he was only at the Golden Core stage.

Even at Soul Formation, in terms of spiritual energy production and efficiency, he might not match up to the Sun and Moon Bell.

No matter how good Tang Lingwu’s aptitude was, no matter how hard she cultivated, no matter how much she understood the nature of cultivation—

In this environment, it would be very hard for her to surpass the geniuses from the Xuanyi Realm.

Not to mention, beyond spiritual energy—

Modern society still didn’t have a mature method for refining spiritual pills.

That severely limited modern people’s cultivation progress…

At the very least, the Jiushan Realm had far more resources than the modern world.

By the time Tang Lingwu was truly able to help out, the Jiushan Realm might be filled with Soul Formation cultivators, with Nascent Souls crawling everywhere.

Zheng Fa now treated the modern world as just a lab—that was the reality of the environment.

As for Tang Lingwu… her efforts might all be in vain.

“Diligent cultivation is a good thing,” Zheng Fa thought for a long moment and finally said, “but some things can’t be forced. Don’t rush it. Please try to talk her down.”

“I tried… she understands, but she won’t change,” Teacher Tian said softly, her face gentle. “She said… the three of you have always been in this together.”

Zheng Fa pursed his lips.

He glanced at Tang Lingwu’s room. He knew the girl had a very stubborn personality—sometimes even bullheaded, clinging tightly to her beliefs.

And he… was that belief.

“Sometimes, you might be just a little upset…” Teacher Tian stood beside him, speaking quietly, “but for little Lingwu, it becomes everything.”

…

Zheng Fa didn’t go see Tang Lingwu.

Just as Tang Lingwu understood him well, he understood her character too.

He also noticed that Old Bai’s cultivation sessions had become more frequent.

Just not as intense as Tang Lingwu’s.

In fact, he didn’t even want to stop them. After all, if they could really get stronger, that wasn’t a bad thing.

What he could do wasn’t to pamper them under the pretense of care—but to find something meaningful that he himself could do.

He was reading research papers.

The nursing home didn’t have its own journal yet, but there was ongoing research, and naturally, many papers and project proposals had been produced.

The paper Zheng Fa was reading was about spiritual herb research.

Or rather—medical experiments.

The issue of spiritual energy concentration could likely only be solved when Zheng Fa’s cultivation advanced, or if the Lingshan Method developed something new.

But the problem with spiritual herbs—wasn’t entirely hopeless.

So far, only six or seven types of spiritual herbs had been successfully cultivated in the modern world.

But the small number wasn’t the biggest issue.

The biggest problem was—most of these spiritual herbs weren’t even being properly used…

Although there had been human experiments with death row inmates, many spiritual herbs needed to be paired with alchemy to fully activate their effects.

At present, there was still… a lot of room for modern development in that regard.

But after reading for a long while, Zheng Fa found that many scholars in the institute didn’t have particularly good ideas either…

Even for the same spiritual herb, there were conflicting hypotheses—and even arguments.

Zheng Fa flipped through the papers, feeling like he wasn’t getting anything useful, his brow furrowing.

Until…

“Teacher Tian, do you know this person named Zhou Miaomiao?”

He picked up a paper and went to find Teacher Tian.

“Her?” Teacher Tian thought for a moment, then looked up. “I remember her—young woman doing her PhD, couldn’t finish. Came here with Academician Chen.”

“She couldn’t finish?”

Teacher Tian glanced at Zheng Fa, looking like she wanted to laugh. “You pulled her advisor into your project. Her research group’s gone—how’s she supposed to graduate?”

“…”

…

Zhou Miaomiao walked nervously to the door of the nursing home’s main building conference room.

She wasn’t actually that young, but her round baby face made her look like she was only in her early twenties. She hunched her shoulders and looked timid.

“Zhou Miaomiao?”

Zheng Fa had been reading progress reports from research institutes. Sensing someone entering, he looked up and smiled.

“Sit.”

Zhou Miaomiao sat with her knees pressed together, awkward and restrained, barely touching the edge of the chair.

“Don’t be nervous. This paper—Design of a Human Body Scanner: Starting from the Properties of Five-Elemental Sub-Talismans—you wrote it?”

Zhou Miaomiao nodded.

“What made you think of that?”

“Well… well… I was out of options.”

“Out of options?”

Zhou Miaomiao looked up at Zheng Fa. “Our methods for observing spiritual herbs are really lacking. The data from human testing… is also really imprecise.”

“There’s a lot of disagreement in the group.”

Zheng Fa nodded slowly.

Seeing him nod, Zhou Miaomiao seemed to forget her fear and started explaining fluently:

“I figured—because spiritual energy interferes with instruments, traditional detection tools don’t really work.”

“So why not design a scanner that uses the properties of spiritual energy?”

Zheng Fa smiled. “So you thought of the Five-Elemental Sub-Talismans?”

“Yes!”

“Five-Elemental Sub-Talismans are one of the most basic features of spiritual energy. If we can measure how much of each is in the body, we can determine the amount and nature of spiritual energy inside.”

Zheng Fa fell silent.

He looked at the paper—it was still very rough, more of a concept than a plan—

Zhou Miaomiao’s thinking was simple: spiritual energy or power interferes with particle motion. If you could measure the level of interference, you could reverse-engineer the amount and nature of spiritual energy in the body.

She even proposed two approaches.

One was like an X-ray—shooting electrons into the body and observing the image on a fluorescent screen.

With knowledge of Five-Elemental Sub-Talismans, you could reverse-engineer the electron image of each type of energy.

The other was like nuclear magnetic resonance.

But reversed—finding a material that reacts with the five types of spiritual energy, observing how the material changes to deduce the energy properties.

“Actually… my advisor said the idea was good, but hard to execute.”

“The first method—Five-Elemental Sub-Talismans don’t act on pure electrons, so the image might have no clear pattern.”

“The second one… depends too much on luck with the material. Too unreliable.”

Zheng Fa listened, and understood why this paper hadn’t drawn enough attention.

Both issues were fatal flaws.

But honestly, what Zheng Fa valued was the concept—modern science was built on observation, and the importance of measurement instruments was beyond question. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Especially now, when Zheng Fa wanted to study spiritual herbs and build a pharmaceutical system that could help people like Tang Lingwu cultivate.

A device that could precisely measure the body’s reaction was urgently needed.

Moreover, this kind of tool would be very useful for the Jiushan Realm too.

Data—accurate data—was one of the lifebloods of modern science.

Extremely important, and full of potential!

“I’ll allocate resources to you!”

Zhou Miaomiao’s head shot up. She had come in with a bit of hope, but now she couldn’t hide her surprise.

“I’ll think of a way to solve the material issue. You all try the first method first.”

“Yes!”

“I’ll give you all the resources—people, spiritual herbs, anything you need… If you pull this off, I’ll give you a PhD program at my nursing home! Nationally accredited!”

Zhou Miaomiao’s eyes lit up, but now she grew hesitant, afraid she’d lose her degree again. “Then… what if the first method doesn’t work? The second one…”

“Then we’ll try to find a material that reacts with the Five-Elemental spiritual energy.”

“That… won’t work.” Zhou Miaomiao’s baby face scrunched up, looking miserable. “My luck is terrible. My thesis is about to end, and now I’ve lost my advisor…”

Zheng Fa instinctively looked away, a bit guilty, but still tried to comfort her:

“You don’t need to rely on luck…”

“Huh?”

Zheng Fa chuckled. Right now, all he wanted was to head back to the Jiushan Realm and ask—

That thing Senior Sister Zhang once used to test his spiritual roots—what exactly was that?

Tang Lingwu needs it—urgently!