Great! I'm surrounded by villains!
Chapter 360 - 279: The Special Nature

Chapter 360: Chapter 279: The Special Nature

This was Duan Mingyuan’s first time attending such an important academic conference, and he represented not only himself but also the image of Blue Star.

In the invitation, Fu Ling introduced the significance of this academic summit. At that moment, experts in the field of life sciences from across the universe were converging here, coming from different planets with diverse cultural backgrounds, to devote themselves entirely to a common goal.

Before departing, Jiuyue suddenly brought up the issue of attire.

Duan Mingyuan had originally prepared an appropriate suit, but Jiuyue said a suit seemed strange for a conference centered on life sciences. In her impression, people who study this subject always wear white lab coats, like doctors in hospitals.

Under Jiuyue’s strong recommendation, Duan Mingyuan changed his outfit at the last moment to the only white lab coat he had, which was a size too small.

For someone with serious OCD, this slightly tight garment made him very uncomfortable. He had planned to use the lunch break to find a secluded place to tailor the outfit, but Fu Ling noticed the issue the moment they met.

At such an important occasion, this was indeed a bit embarrassing.

"I think you have more important things to explain than your white lab coat, don’t you?"

Fu Ling’s eyelids twitched violently a few times.

The venue fell silent; everyone, including Saintfield VI, awaited Duan Mingyuan’s explanation. Clearly, they were not waiting for him to explain why his lab coat was a size too small.

"For instance, how did you get to the venue?"

"Oh, you’re referring to that."

Duan Mingyuan sighed in relief and was internally grateful that it wasn’t his inappropriate attire that had been pointed out. "I made use of the properties of wormholes."

In his view, the Eisenberg-Adler theory was not complicated.

Drawing two dots on a piece of paper and then folding it to bring them together, thus achieving spatial movement in conventional understanding, he spent an afternoon grasping the concept of space and mastered the use of wormholes in just one evening.

Eisenberg turned the entire digitalized world into a stepping stone of another dimension.

Since the crew members who got lost in wormholes didn’t know what they had experienced nor understand why only half a day had passed in the outside world when, in their perception, they had been navigating the wormhole for a month, Eisenberg helped them comprehend.

Eisenberg knew that this theory was complete nonsense, but times had changed. He wasn’t playing the role of a rigorous scientist anymore but rather a "novelist" providing theoretical foundations for mages.

Duan Mingyuan’s explanation sent Fu Ling into deep thought.

Something felt off to her, but she couldn’t rebut it.

She had never entered a wormhole, seen its interior, nor could she question whether it connected to a digitalized world.

After a long silence, she let out a sigh, "The conference is about to begin, and your name card is inside."

That morning marked the opening ceremony of the summit.

For the first time as a host, she welcomed everyone’s arrival. The planned speech by Saintfield VI was canceled due to "illness," and she had to quickly change it to another segment to avoid leaving everyone awkwardly standing.

It was obvious that Saintfield VI was not pleased with Duan Mingyuan’s arrival, as he left the Eco-Ship and returned to the Consortium’s flagship.

To this academic summit, Duan Mingyuan came with questions.

Eisenberg was not an expert in the field of life sciences; he thought perhaps Duan Mingyuan could learn something about 1721 at the conference.

He believed that 1721 was not an independent entity but a sort of creature that resided in black holes.

It was born from the will of the "Cocoon," and it was probably one of the few creations with autonomous thinking abilities—for the literature Eisenberg read suggested that "Cocoons" didn’t prefer species with autonomous thinking. The species left on "Cocooned" planets were almost exclusively driven by instincts, monstrous creatures.

All these species were extremely aggressive and dominated by a primal feeding instinct.

These were the creatures the Long Branch Guards continually fought against.

But others attending the conference had their own questions as well.

No sooner had the opening ceremony concluded than Duan Mingyuan was encircled by people eager to learn how he cured Dehydration Syndrome.

Truthfully, these leading researchers were not focused on how to benefit more patients, but rather, they hoped Duan Mingyuan’s theories would unlock new possibilities for them.

However, they were doomed to be disappointed.

After some conversation, they realized that Duan Mingyuan played by a completely different set of rules.

Duan Mingyuan hadn’t spent his days in labs constructing theoretical models, nor had he discovered a fresh path after decades of research.

He was more like those clerics in games who brought blessings to those afflicted with Dehydration Syndrome.

This blessing could purify all diseases and negative states. While it could be called a miracle, it couldn’t provide any practical guidance on the physical plane.

Thus, the focus of discussion naturally shifted to Life Energy, which the scholars believed was the source of these miracles.

Life Energy was the most scarce resource in the universe and existed only within living beings.

Duan Mingyuan became a relentless demo machine for Life Energy; after a morning of demonstrations, finally, a scholar raised a question.

Is this really Life Energy?

The type of energy they were discussing was a research focus for many of them, and they felt that what Duan Mingyuan exhibited was something elusive.

It had all the characteristics of Life Energy, yet it was much more than that.

"First of all, Life Energy cannot be transformed into other kinds of energy," said a researcher named Glai.

This discovery shocked everyone. Duan Mingyuan was a Blue Star Person, born on a planet abundant in Life Energy, yet his relationship with Life Energy was reversed.

Life Energy became just one branch of his many abilities.

Duan Mingyuan’s Life Energy could change into Mechanical Energy, Scorching Sun Power; no current theory was sufficient to explain this phenomenon.

Not Life Energy?

The experts’ theories were a massive shock to Duan Mingyuan, who had never considered this.

He had always thought the conversion between different energies rooted in fundamentally understanding the characteristics of other energies, but the experts were saying that "understanding" was in itself incredible.

Humans couldn’t fully "understand" a certain type of energy.

Though out of politeness, the experts did not spell it out, between the lines they seemed to convey one idea.

—Are you really human?