Chapter Ninety-Two: Experiment

Yoya, a top-tier researcher at the Extraordinary Office who was famous for her painstaking diligence, was not about to take Ye Chen’s claim that the storage space was capped at one cubic meter at face value.

She had a strong feeling there was something fishy about his words.

She practically wanted to cram every movable thing in the entire lab into Ye Chen’s watch.

The experiment did not end until Ye Chen was buried under a pile of apparatus.

He poked his head out from a gap in the mess and protested indignantly.

“Is there really not even this much trust between people?”

Yoya replied coolly, “Make bold assumptions, verify them carefully.”

As Ye Chen shoved aside the equipment pressing down on him, he grumbled under his breath, thinking, Burying me alive on the spot counts as careful?

Yoya asked, “How much does it consume? I mean the cost in vital essence.”

Ye Chen rolled his eyes at her, complaining that she truly did not treat him like a human being, then answered simply, “Every time an item goes in or out, it costs one point of vital essence.”

“So economical. That one point of vital essence is basically the toll an item pays when it breaks through the spatial barrier,” Yoya offered, with a more professional explanation.

“Wait.” Yoya suddenly thought of another question and asked in confusion, “If it’s only for storing things, then it could just stay in box form. Why transform it into a watch?”

“It can’t possibly be only for portability. There must be another reason. You’re definitely hiding something from me!”

“Space... time... could it be?” Yoya seized Ye Chen’s wrist again.

With a click, she closed the watch face and studied the dial closely.

This was the third time today that Ye Chen had been grabbed by the hand. The touch was smooth as jade, but because she was excited, her grip was a little too tight.

Yoya paid no heed to such physical contact; all her attention was on the dial.

Near the center of the face was a tiny metal zero.

“What does this zero mean?”

Yoya tried turning the knob gently. When she rotated it clockwise, the zero became one, then two.

At the same time, the watch hands began moving noticeably faster.

When she turned it counterclockwise, the number changed again, from two to one, to zero, and then to minus one.

Correspondingly, the hands slowed down.

Just as she was playing with it to her heart’s content, Ye Chen hurriedly cried out, “Stop, stop, stop. Don’t turn it anymore. If you keep playing, you’re going to wreck me.”

Ye Chen naturally knew about the function that adjusted the flow of time long before Yoya did.

He had deliberately kept it from her before because he had discovered that this woman took experiments to extremes.

He was afraid she would boost the time flow a hundredfold, and he would be emptied out in minutes.

Yoya withdrew her hand from Ye Chen and rose to pace around the room.

Tap... tap... tap...

The sound of her high heels on the floor echoed rhythmically through the quiet room.

Recalling the changes in the hands’ speed, she gradually formed her own guess and said, “Could this zero mean that time inside the storage space flows at the same rate as outside?

“The numbers one, two, three would then mean faster time flow, while minus one and minus two would mean slower time flow.”

At that, Yoya suddenly turned around, narrowed her eyes at Ye Chen, and said with equal parts suspicion and certainty, “You figured out this function long ago, and deliberately didn’t tell me, didn’t you?”

Ye Chen was left speechless, thinking that her powers of inference were unbelievably formidable.

Combining the notes, he had already formed his own idea for how to use it.

If something was perishable or prone to decay, then by slowing the flow of time, could it not be preserved for a long time?

This was truly an essential treasure for home, travel, and wild hunting alike.

It was not that Ye Chen’s thinking was narrow; rather, years of hunting had made him far more practical.

But Yoya’s next sentence completely opened up his imagination.

“Next, let’s try a living subject experiment.

“First, to test whether it can hold living beings. Second, to see whether a living being confined inside can accelerate the passage of its life.

“Here’s what we’ll do: you’re not going home today. You’ll stay at the office and try out all of my ideas one by one.”

The “innocent-minded” Ye Chen was stunned. This woman was far too ruthless.

Was she trying to forcibly turn a storage awakenable artifact into a silent murder weapon?!

...

The shouting outside the research room had started out high and excited, but gradually died down into silence.

Even the way people addressed her changed, from “Chief Director Yoya” at the beginning, to “Goddess.”

Then came some unknown soul’s cry of “those dog man and woman,” and finally, “spit... spit... spit...”

Thanks to the excellent soundproofing of the research room door, neither of the two inside was disturbed, and they remained fully immersed in their work.

The researchers gathered outside the door eventually dispersed in disappointment, only after being driven off by Chief Director Yuzhi.

At one point, someone suggested that Chief Director Yuzhi help open the door. Yuzhi glanced at him and said only one thing:

“Are you sure you can beat her? Are you sure she won’t beat me instead?”

The man who made the suggestion fell silent. Some were disappointed. More than a few came to a realization: these two siblings were cut from the same cloth. When they encountered research that interested them, they would first tinker to their heart’s content on their own.

Only when a puzzle could not be solved would they put a nice-sounding name on it and call for collective wisdom.

Hah!

Watching his subordinates muttering as they drifted away, Chief Director Yuzhi suppressed the urge to produce his access card and instead pulled out a cigarette, hurrying to the corridor to calm his mind.

...This kid is something else. What a waste to keep him on patrol duty. He ought to be brought into the Extraordinary Office.

...

Late at night, a transport vehicle dispatched by the inner-city patrol office arrived below the Extraordinary Office building.

Yuanzi, together with the other staff, had already seen off the final guests early on, but she still could not get off work.

She had to accompany the inner-city patrol officers while they loaded the vital essence ore needed for tomorrow’s auction and transported it that night to the exhibition and sales venue.

Among the items on the shipping list was the ore Ye Chen had entrusted to them for consignment.

And that ore had even drawn the attention of several prospective buyers that afternoon.

This made Yuanzi even more excited; one of Ye Chen’s good friends was about to become a very rich little brother.

It was only after the brightly lit Extraordinary Office building went dark that Yuanzi finally finished her shift in exhaustion.

Standing in high heels for an entire day had left her toes aching.

Wrapped in her coat, she slowly stepped outside, braced herself against the wall, lifted one foot to massage her calf, and looked up at the building with puzzled murmurs.

“Huh... someone’s still working this late at night?

“That room seems to be Chief Director Yoya’s research room, doesn’t it?

“Chief Director Yoya is so dedicated. She really is the idol in my heart!”