Chapter 641

The metal plates in the underground laboratory steadily provided a fluorescent white light.

Gao Jie Ming stood before his workstation, with a half-dismantled sealing rune slate spread out in front of him.

The slate was silver-gray, its surface carved with dense, fine grooves, with pale blue rune powder remaining in the grooves.

His fingers moved slowly along the direction of the grooves, his fingertips covered in a thin film of spiritual power composed of alchemy, analyzing the structure of the slate layer by layer during the touch.

This was what he had been doing for the past half month.

The research on the Shadow Stealer had come to an end.

Now, Gao Jie Ming was researching the Hazard-tier anomaly he had purchased at the auction, which was sealed in a metal box.

As for the Shadow Stealer, it had been studied by Gao Jie Ming over and over again countless times in the past half month.

Its energy structure, the mechanism of devouring shadows, the way it connected to the host's life layer, and even its "dormancy" cycle while in a sealed state, had all been repeatedly dissected and recorded by him using the Eye of Shimmer and the Fate System.

The results were naturally quite considerable.

On the left side of the workstation, in a row of incubators, new Eyes of Shimmer were slowly growing in the culture medium.

As one of the few anomalies that carried its own body, for Gao Jie Ming, the Shadow Stealer was not just about studying anomalous power.

Its own structural existence and energy distribution could even serve as a reference for optimizing the Eye of Shimmer.

The energy frequency of the second-generation Eye of Shimmer had been recalibrated, not only significantly extending its survival time but also being able to be "compatible" with the aura of most anomalies, reducing the instinctive reaction that made psychics' hair stand on end.

After completing the preliminary inspection of the sealing slate in front of him, Gao Jie Ming wanted to conduct further testing.

Subconsciously, he lifted his head to look to the left, then suddenly remembered that that side was now occupied by the incubators for the Eyes of Shimmer.

Scratching his hair, Gao Jie Ming made a beckoning gesture, and several experimental instruments on the left were retracted into his internal cave, and then with another gesture, a strangely shaped experimental instrument was summoned out from the cave.

Placing the slate into the instrument, after completing a series of operations, he was finally able to conduct the second round of testing.

Suddenly, Gao Jie Ming let out a sigh, his voice filled with helplessness.

He had already excavated and expanded this underground laboratory as much as possible toward the surroundings.

All four walls had been pushed outward by several meters, expanding the total area of the basement to three times its original size.

Space expansion technology had also been used.

He had carefully cast the wizarding spell capable of "stretching" existing space four times, each time increasing the internal volume by about fifty percent.

But this was already the limit; it could not be expanded any further.

The problem lay in the power of the anomalies.

This basement was located beneath the old city of Fog City; this land had accumulated over hundreds of years, and various residual anomalous energies had long since permeated the soil and rocks.

When the space expansion factor was too large, the internal space would become unstable, subsequently leading to chaos at the level of laws.

Gao Jie Ming had discovered this problem after the third expansion: the energy fluctuations of the two anomaly samples placed in the laboratory began to show irregular, random rises and falls.

To confirm this phenomenon, Gao Jie Ming had even conducted control experiments.

He divided the same batch of anomaly samples into two groups, one group placed in the expanded laboratory and one group placed in his bedroom on the second floor of the bookstore.

The result was clear: the energy fluctuations of the samples in the laboratory showed inexplicable random changes, while the samples in the bedroom were completely normal. This was the influence of anomalous power.

When the spatial structure was artificially altered, the residual anomalous energy permeating the land would be activated, subsequently affecting the environment inside the laboratory.

If Gao Jie Ming forcibly continued the expansion, the research results would no longer be reliable, and every experiment would produce random conclusions.

For a researcher, this was unacceptable.

As for digging downward... he had considered it.

But beneath the old city were dense underground pipes; the so-called underground black market basically used these underground pipes as strongholds. As for bypassing these underground pipes and digging deeper, that would not work either.

Less than thirty meters down into this land, one would enter a special rock layer.

He had scanned that rock layer with his spiritual sense during the day and discovered an extremely faint periodic vibration deep within the rock layer.

Later, Gao Jie Ming consulted materials and learned that people in this plane called similar situations "anomalies deep underground."

What specific tier it was, no one knew, because no one had ever returned alive from that depth.

But Gao Jie Ming had seen relevant records in the internal materials of the Psychic Association: the characteristics of that kind of anomaly were closely intertwined with the concept of "earthquakes," and once angered, it was enough to wipe the entire city off the ground.

This was not alarmist talk.

This plane had once had a similar event.

One hundred and twenty years ago, when a city was conducting underground engineering construction, it accidentally triggered a deep-layer anomaly.

The entire city was destroyed by continuous high-intensity earthquakes within three days, with a death toll exceeding three hundred thousand.

That city was later abandoned and remains a restricted area to this day.

Gao Jie Ming did not intend to become the next case study.

He had also considered another plan: sending anomaly fragments or anomalous power into his internal cave for research.

That would allow him to completely avoid the environmental limitations of this plane; the space was large enough, the environment stable enough, and it was absolutely safe.

But this thought was rejected by himself the moment it surfaced.

The reason was simple: even that Tier 8 wizard Auston had crashed.

While campaigning in a plane, Auston had inadvertently allowed the rule phenomena of an anomaly to permeate his own backyard, leading to that miniature glazed garden plane being "infected."

That was a Tier 8 wizard, and even he had not been able to completely block the permeation of the anomaly.

Gao Jie Ming did not believe his internal cave was more stable than Auston's plane.

After the formation of the True Body Dharma Image, the internal cave was the foundation of his internal circulation and the support for his true body.

If anomalous power were to permeate into it, the consequences would be unimaginable.

Before fully understanding the essence of anomalies, rashly ingesting unknown power into his core system was not something a good researcher should do.

Therefore, he could only continue to squeeze into this laboratory, which was already too small for him.

Having finally completed the research for the current stage in an environment that could be called crude, Gao Jie Ming placed the last piece of equipment, closed the cabinet door, and walked back to the workstation when suddenly, his body paused.

He lifted his head, his gaze passing through the ceiling and the floor of the bookstore on the first floor, casting toward the street outside.

Someone was approaching the bookstore... the black-market middleman had arrived.

When the wooden door of the old bookstore was pushed open, the sound of the door hinge was louder than usual.

Clearly, the person pushing the door was too hurried, and their force was not well controlled.

The black-market middleman stood at the door, his trench coat collar turned up, his hat brim pulled very low.

His breathing was somewhat rapid; it looked like he had run the distance from the street corner to the bookstore door.

And he had run very hurriedly, as if something were chasing him from behind.

Gao Jie Ming sat in the rocking chair, holding the newspaper, and looked at him.

"Close the door," Gao Jie Ming said.

The black-market middleman hurriedly closed the door and bolted it.

He turned around, took off his hat, his forehead covered in sweat, looking quite nervous.

"Long time no see, Mr. Gao Jie Ming." He lowered his voice, "I am truly sorry, the checks have been too strict lately."

Gao Jie Ming put down the newspaper, said nothing, and waited for him to continue.

"On the Psychic Association side, starting last month, they suddenly strengthened the control over anomalous resources and genetic agents." The black-market middleman took a cloth bundle from the inside of his trench coat and placed it on the table, but did not open it as usual.

"Many things on the black market are out of stock. It's not that they've been sold out; it's that no one dares to sell them. When I came out this time, I took several detours and even changed cars three times just to shake off possible tails."

Gao Jie Ming's gaze fell on the cloth bundle.

Judging from the shape and weight, the quantity of goods this time was much less than usual.

"Do you know the reason for the checks?" Gao Jie Ming asked.

The black-market middleman shook his head, then nodded again, and finally sighed: "I heard it has to do with the incident at the abandoned factory last time. I don't know the specifics, but someone I know who works in the Association's logistics department said that the higher-ups are investigating people inside. Not investigating us, but investigating their own people." Gao Jie Ming's expression did not change; he had anticipated such a thing long ago.

After all, the people in the Psychic Association were not stupid; the performance of the other side during that battle was too obvious, and in the absence of too many clues, they would certainly prioritize investigating internal spies and the flow of various large-scale resources within the city.

"Have they found anything?"

"I don't know." The black-market middleman wiped the sweat from his forehead, "They wouldn't let us know about such things. But the control is real; the price of anomaly fragments on the market has risen threefold, and genetic agents are even more exaggerated; some banned items have risen fivefold and still can't be bought. I could only bring this much this time; please make do with it for now."

As he spoke, he opened the cloth bundle. Inside were a few small anomaly fragments and two genetic agents sealed in metal tubes. It was indeed much less than usual, but the quality looked quite good.

Gao Jie Ming picked up a fragment and examined it under the light.

Hazard-tier, medium-to-high quality; it seemed the Psychic Association's self-investigation was having an impact on these black markets.

"The money follows the old rules." Gao Jie Ming put down the fragment and closed the cloth bundle, "Next time you come, bring more intelligence. It doesn't matter if there are fewer goods, but the intelligence cannot be lacking."

The black-market middleman nodded repeatedly, then took a folded note from his pocket and carefully placed it on the table:

"This is what I've managed to find out over the past few days. I can't guarantee it's all correct, but it should be useful."

Gao Jie Ming opened the note and scanned it.

On it were a few lines of handwritten text, the handwriting sloppy, recording some recent movements of the Psychic Association: which department's warehouse had increased guards, which batch of anomaly fragments had been transferred to where, and which area had seen frequent appearances of Association people recently.

This information was not fresh to Gao Jie Ming; he could see it all with his spiritual sense scans during the day.

But the fact that the black-market middleman could provide this showed that his channels were indeed deepening.

"Understood." Gao Jie Ming put the note away, "You go. Don't come by often lately; if there's anything, I'll find you."

The black-market middleman let out a sigh of relief and bowed to Gao Jie Ming.

Putting his hat back on, turning up his collar, pulling a crack in the wooden door, he peered outside for a few seconds, then slipped out.

Gao Jie Ming sat in the rocking chair, his fingers tapping lightly on the armrest twice.

The Psychic Association investigating strictly meant they were indeed taking the mole problem seriously.

This was not a bad thing; at least it showed that the Association's higher-ups did not intend to gloss over it.

But this also meant that the difficulty for him to obtain high-quality research materials from the black market would only increase.

"However, the research material problem should be solved before long..."