Chapter 143.2: This was groundbreaking research!
Colleen said, “Stop overthinking things. This really is a pretty good [Company]. The benefits are excellent, and it’s a [Longevity Faction] company, too. Never mind how things are outside right now—even if this were a hundred and fifty years ago, I’d still be willing to work here.”
“We’re just small fry. Even if there really is some kind of conspiracy, it wouldn’t have anything to do with you or me… All right, your turn to wash my hair.”
She turned around and let Jin Yin wash her hair.
As she did so, Jin Yin muttered, “You can’t be so sure. How do you know someone hasn’t taken an interest in my potential? Maybe even rescuing you and your family was part of a conspiracy targeting me by the [Company].”
“They could be using you to make me lower my guard or something. Don’t you remember the cartoons we watched together when we were little? That’s exactly how they did things in those.”
Why cartoons?
Because after they turned ten, they had been too busy studying to have time for movies or other forms of entertainment.
Colleen laughed. She figured Jin Yin was deliberately joking around to lighten the mood.
“Stop messing with me. I work with energy, while you research ordinary anti-aging treatments. Why would they spend so much effort and resources targeting the two of us?”
She enjoyed the pleasant sensation of having her hair washed and happily closed her eyes.
She had to admit, this primitive way of taking a shower was actually quite comfortable. Especially with water this clean and this cheap, it made the whole experience even more satisfying.
It was much more refreshing than standing in a washroom a hundred and fifty years ago and having yourself dry-cleaned in a single second.
That ridiculous dry-cleaning shop had deliberately calibrated its standard dry-cleaning service to leave people not quite clean enough, all so it could raise prices and pressure customers into buying memberships.
Even after a hundred and fifty years, Colleen still felt a pang of heartache whenever she thought about all the money she had thrown away at that dry-cleaning shop.
Hearing her mention the dry-cleaning shop, Jin Yin felt the pain too.
“I told you back then that I could just go bathe at Bozi, but you insisted on getting me that membership card. Thinking about it now, wouldn’t it have been better if we’d used that money to buy some food and stock it at home?”
Colleen said, “Bozi-style bathing is so uncomfortable. It uses sound waves to forcibly shake the dirt off your body. Even wearing protective equipment doesn’t help. After one bath, your head would be buzzing for two days. It’s not like I couldn’t afford it, so why would I let you put yourself through that?”
Jin Yin rinsed her hair, her expression becoming nostalgic yet complicated.
“Back then, after I was demoted to Deep Blue, all I could afford was nutritional paste just to barely fill my stomach. I couldn’t worry about anything else. I depended on you to take care of me…”
Colleen said, “Hey! What’s the big deal? Didn’t you take care of me all the time when we were kids? That’s what friends are supposed to do—take care of each other.”
Jin Yin said, “Yeah. That’s what friends are supposed to do.”
She watched the clear water flowing over her hands and suddenly asked,
“Colleen, do you really like it here?”
Colleen wiped her face and looked at her, her expression turning serious as well.
“I do.”
“Jin Yin, you know me. The fact that I asked the [Company] to send people to bring you here already proves what I think. If I didn’t like this place, I wouldn’t have asked you to come.”
“Okay. I understand.”
Jin Yin smiled and continued, “I quite like this [Company]’s philosophy, too. The [Longevity Faction]… As long as you live a long, long life, you never have to worry about the [Company] taking your brain.”
Colleen stepped beneath the showerhead and rinsed herself.
“Yeah. It’s even better than the [Inspiration Faction]. At least this way, I know for certain that I’ll be able to watch my daughter grow up.”
As she rinsed herself, she stuck her head out from beneath the shower and continued talking.
“Come over to my place for dinner tonight. Regg learned a new dish, and he keeps insisting that we invite you over to eat with us. There’s this kind of meat called sea monster meat. It’s really chewy, and when you eat it, you have to sprinkle a little vinegar on it, and then…”
Jin Yin, who normally had plenty to say, remained silent this time. She simply listened quietly as her friend rambled on about how to eat a particular dish.
After talking for a while, Colleen found it strange.
“Why haven’t you said anything for so long?”
Jin Yin replied, “I’m using my brilliant brain to think.”
Colleen: “…What are you thinking about?”
Jin Yin: “I’m thinking about how to demonstrate just how brilliant my brain is.”
Colleen: “…”
She had been worried that after Jin Yin spent more than half a month living in such a harsh environment, being someone who loved to talk yet not seeing a single person, she might have been left with some kind of psychological trauma.
Now she was certain.
Nope!
Jin Yin was still just as fond of joking around.
Hahahahahaha!
—
Day Four—
Colleen sat blankly in the Institute of Technology’s conference room, staring at Jin Yin standing at the front and speaking confidently.
“My research can be used to selectively eliminate senescent cells, creating customized targeted drugs that can precisely identify and destroy aging cells throughout the body while simultaneously replacing and repairing mitochondria…”
“Already a hundred and seventy years ago, this research had been proven feasible. I memorized all the underlying theories, more than a thousand sets of experimental control-group data, and the optimized solutions. As long as you provide me with the equipment, specialized facilities, and personnel, I can immediately begin mass-producing targeted slow-release senolytic drugs…”
Colleen: “…”
Wait, girl!
Why does this sound more and more familiar?
Isn’t this the project where you put together a team that was as tiny as it could possibly be, spent seven years researching it, and ultimately announced failure, resulting in your demotion?
Everyone else in the room listened with serious, attentive expressions.
Apart from the utterly stunned Colleen, there was also a Blue Sea officer sitting there with the exact same blank expression.
He was there because he was responsible for security during the meeting.
—Though at this point, it seemed his main function was to serve as a human decoration who occasionally looked like he was about to fall asleep.
The more he listened, the sleepier he became. Faced with a pile of incomprehensible terminology, the officer really didn’t want to keep being decorative any longer, so he couldn’t help asking,
“I have a question. So, is the main purpose of this drug basically anti-aging? And to what extent can it slow down aging?”
At this moment, Jin Yin looked nothing like the timid, neurotic, chatty, food-loving woman she’d been before.
Her entire presence had completely changed.
It was very much like the state Old Eighth entered whenever he encountered a beast deep in the wilderness where he had to fight to survive.
In her own field, she possessed absolute confidence.
“All right. I’ll briefly explain the ultimate effects of the targeted slow-release senolytic drug.”
“First, it can extend the human lifespan to between 250 and 270 years.”
—Cheng Qisheng, who had been exercising with a pair of dumbbells, suddenly crushed one of them until it became nothing more than a dumbbell plate.
Extend the human lifespan to 250 years?!
She stopped exercising altogether. She even stopped working out, picked Aether up, sat down on the floor, and focused entirely on Jin Yin’s explanation.
—Even Colleen, a native of Moon Silk, drew a sharp breath.
The most advanced lifespan-extension technology on Moon Silk could only extend human life to two hundred years.
This one instantly added at least fifty years!
What did fifty additional years of life mean?
Before lifespan-extension technology existed on Moon Silk, ordinary Moon Silk people could only expect to live for around sixty years in their entire lifetime!
Good heavens!
Oh!
My friend, you really do have an unbelievably brilliant brain!
Thinking back to how Jin Yin had previously announced that her research had failed, been demoted to a Deep Blue researcher, struggled through each day eating nutritional paste, and couldn’t even afford dry-cleaning… Colleen felt her entire worldview shattering piece by piece.
A research achievement like this would have been enough to get Jin Yin written into the textbooks even a hundred and fifty years ago.
Forget becoming a White-ranked researcher—she could have jumped straight to becoming a top-level Black-ranked researcher without any problem.
This research breakthrough could directly change the entire world!
And the person who had developed it was eating nutritional paste.
Colleen trembled with excitement.
Why? Why had she hidden it… Oh~
It took Colleen less than three seconds to figure it out.
What other reason could there be?
She didn’t want her brain to end up inside a glass box, obviously.
Jin Yin was right.
—At least, that was what Colleen’s rational mind told her.
But emotionally, she was still screaming at the top of her lungs:
‘My friend is actually this much of a genius! She’s this amazing! She’s insanely powerful!’
No wonder Jin Yin seemed to have a persecution complex, constantly suspecting that [Ota] had set some kind of trap for her.
Jin Yin really did have the kind of talent that was worth going to all that trouble for!
Colleen thought the shock her friend had given her was already more than enough.
But Jin Yin continued.
“Moreover, if the drug is administered during the peak of a person’s prime, it can achieve telomere homeostasis regulation in the human body.”
She smiled as she swept her gaze across the room, pleased to see that every [Ota] employee present wore nothing but delight on their faces. Not a single one showed the slightest hint of greed or covetousness toward her brain.
It was as though something that had been weighing heavily inside Jin Yin had finally come to rest.
She maintained her reserved smile.
Just like when she had stood before a virtual screen at the age of ten and announced to her classmates that she would become a great scientist someday, she raised her chin slightly.
“In other words, the person who uses the drug will remain in the prime of their life for a very long time.”
“In theory, signs of aging would only gradually begin to appear during the final five years before natural death.”
Colleen swallowed audibly.
This was groundbreaking research!
This was research worthy of making all of humanity remember Jin Yin!!
At some point, Colleen’s eyes had turned red. She hadn’t even noticed that she had stood up. Now she was staring at her friend in front of her and applauding with all her might.
—Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!
The other Blue Sea residents sitting in the conference room also began applauding.
This was genuinely impossible ‘not’ to applaud.
The Blue Sea residents’ hands were practically turning red from clapping.
Fortunately, one-third indifference, one-third politeness, and one-third arrogance remained firmly welded onto their faces.
Jin Yin looked at the entire room full of people applauding for her.
She swept her gaze around once more, once again confirming that no one wanted to take her brain.
The smile on her face finally became sincere.
There were thirty-two people sitting in the room.
All thirty-two were applauding for her.
—Actually, there were thirty-three.
Cheng Qisheng knew Jin Yin couldn’t see her, but she was sitting on the floor too, slowly joining in the applause.
The drug Jin Yin had developed would not only allow humans to live for at least 250 years, but throughout those long 250 years, they would spend only five years in a state of old age.
In other words, with these drugs,
for the 250 years of life that Blue Sea residents could look forward to, their bodies would remain in peak condition for 245 of those years.
Cheng Qisheng could sense that the Old Eighths in the conference room were already screaming “Our God!” in their hearts from sheer excitement.
And the great Blue Sea Creator God whom her believers were calling out to was still slowly applauding.
She almost wanted to take her own title of [Great] off and put it on Jin Yin’s head instead.
A researcher as great as Jin Yin deserved it.
She truly, truly deserved—
a round of applause and praise.
