"Are you serious?"
Qin Siyang waved the document in his hand at Quan Taibin in disbelief.
"Kowtowing can turn the disc armor into Sequence potions, which is already ridiculous enough. But how can pissing on it work too?"
"Ridiculous, right? I think so too. Bowing and worshiping the disc armor is equivalent to believing in a god. Pissing on the disc armor is equivalent to blaspheming a god. Worshiping a god can transform the disc armor, and blaspheming a god can also transform the disc armor. What exactly are gods? It's really impossible to figure them out."
Quan Taibin looked up at the starry sky outside the skylight, "Student Qin, I'm feeling that the world after the apocalypse is like an absurd drama woven by gods. The bigger your imagination, the closer you might be to the truth."
"That's also why I think I might be able to find a way to speed up my progress along the Path of the Believer, I naturally have a pretty vivid imagination."
"That's true. Not only is your imagination vivid, your brain works in a pretty strange way too," Qin Siyang couldn't help agreeing, "How could an ordinary person think of kowtowing three times and bowing nine times to the disc armor? Let alone kowtowing three times and bowing nine times, then pissing on the disc armor afterward."
A strange grin appeared on Quan Taibin's face as he said to Qin Siyang, "Actually, pissing isn't the only thing that can turn the disc armor into Sequence potions. I thought it was a little disgusting, so I didn't write it down. Actually, if you shit on the disc armor…"
"Stop right there!", Qin Siyang hurriedly covered his ears, "The pissing method is already enough for me. I don't need to learn any other, more disgusting methods. I'm not a researcher anyway. There's no point in learning so much."
"Hmm? You're not a researcher? Then where did your drill pod come from?"
Qin Siyang froze for a moment before casually making something up, "Uh… What I mean is, I'm not researching the disc armor."
"Oh, I see."
"You focus on your work. I'll renovate this place first. At the very least, it needs to look like somewhere a person can live."
"Okay, thanks," Quan Taibin continued with his research.
Qin Siyang rolled up his sleeves and started renovating the place with a series of "clink, clank" sounds.
A few hours later, there was no exposed dirt left in the cave. Everything was covered by flooring and wall panels.
Although it looked pretty rough, with floor gaps of uneven widths and the ceiling light hanging crookedly, it was at least much better than the environment before.
Quan Taibin saw Qin Siyang standing in front of the electrical control box, staring blankly at the parts on the floor, and asked, "What's wrong? Are you missing some parts for the electrical control box?"
"No, I've already finished installing the electrical control box… But there are two parts left over, and I don't know where they're supposed to go."
"…"
"Hey, it's fine. You're a Sequence Level Six anyway. This little bit of voltage can't kill you."
"…"
After finishing all this, Qin Siyang clapped his hands and looked with satisfaction at the "half-finished" renovation he had done. He then took a carefully prepared box out of his backpack and placed it on Quan Taibin's worktable.
"I brought you something to keep you entertained, so you won't get bored when you're tired from researching."
Quan Taibin walked over and opened the box. Inside was an old-fashioned game console and several hundred game discs.
These things had become rare commodities after the apocalypse, and ordinary people had no chance of coming into contact with them. To get them, Qin Siyang had spent a large amount of money searching the black market. Just collecting those complete game discs had taken quite a bit of effort.
He knew that a research fanatic like Quan Taibin basically had no entertainment in his daily life. In this lonely and oppressive environment, having something to entertain himself with might be a good way to relax.
After Qin Siyang left, Quan Taibin went over to the game console and started playing the fighting game he had liked most before the apocalypse.
He sat on a wooden box against the wall, holding the controller as he played an intense fighting match on the screen.
It was the game he had been best at as a child. Every day after school, he would rush home, lie in front of the TV, and practice his character's combos tirelessly.
It was as if time had flowed backward at this moment. Quan Taibin suddenly felt as though he had returned to that warm home from the past.
His parents were still by his side, and his family was harmonious. He had resolved to become a prosecutor so that his parents would no longer have to live in their cramped little house.
He mechanically controlled the game character as scenes from his childhood surfaced in his mind, along with memories of his youth, when he had been full of hopes for the future.
But as the years passed, his skills had inevitably grown rusty. Now he couldn't even beat the computer-controlled character anymore.
Quan Taibin put down the controller and stared at the flickering screen, a lingering smile on his lips.
His gaze turned to his surroundings. The cave that had originally been in terrible condition had now been turned into a real room. Although the renovation was crude, it looked much more like a place where someone could stay without worry.
He laughed, "How could there be someone like Qin Siyang in the Safe Zone?"
After a moment, his smile gradually faded, and he sighed softly, "What a pity I was born a few years too early. If I could have been his classmate, I probably wouldn't have ended up like this."
"Forget it. I'd better focus on my research and repay him for saving my life."
———
Qin Siyang returned to the guesthouse and washed the dust and stinking sweat off himself. After testing Quan Taibin's theory in the bathroom, he lay on the bed to rest, holding a fist-sized glass ball filled with a dark cyan liquid.
"Is this a Sequence potion? The Sequence potions we normally take are light cyan. This color is way too dark… Hmm? Could it be concentrated Sequence potion?"
Qin Siyang became suspicious, and his sleepiness disappeared completely.
He sat up in bed and took out Quan Taibin's research paper again.
[The concentration of the Sequence potion inside the glass ball is too high. Taking it directly is life-threatening (personally tested). Experiments have shown that it needs to be mixed with distilled water at a ratio of one to nine.]
"No wonder the color is different. So it still needs to be diluted… Wait! So the United Government has been giving us diluted Sequence potions all this time?"
Qin Siyang stared at the glass ball transformed from the disc armor of the Doom Octopus in his hand, and immediately became interested.
"I remember this Doom Octopus's disc armor was originally worth more than four hundred points. If I handed it over to the United Government, I could get more than forty bottles of Sequence potions. I wonder how many bottles of Sequence potions I can get by directly transforming the disc armor?"
He carefully cracked open the glass ball and weighed the Sequence potion inside.
"It's more than four hundred grams in total. After diluting it at a ratio of one to nine, that's more than four thousand grams of Sequence potion. One bottle of Sequence potion holds ten grams, so I can get more than four hundred bottles of Sequence potion…"
Qin Siyang's eyes widened, "So the United Government takes ninety percent of the Sequence potion transformed from the disc armor, while Sequence ability users only get ten percent?"
"Good grief, that's way too fucking shady!"
After being shocked for a moment, Qin Siyang muttered to himself, "No wonder anyone who researches the disc armor ends up getting killed… If this split ratio got out, wouldn't the Sequence ability users turn the United Government upside down?"