Chapter 285: No More Desires?
Translator: TYZ Editor: X_X
After Ren Baqian and the empress changed their clothes, they went out to have something to eat. Then, they headed to the supermarket and bought shopping carts of foodstuff. There were potato chips, popcorn, candies, chocolates, and of course, wines.
Two of them linked up the shopping carts and pushed them as though they were driving a train, attracting a lot of attention.
After going back home to put down their groceries, they went out a few more times to buy the things they needed before settling down.
Ren Baqian downloaded Final Destination for the empress to watch. The unexpected and fascinating storyline entertained the empress greatly. She even finished a huge bucket of popcorn by herself.
Meanwhile, Ren Baqian was reading the messages he received on his phone.
One of the messages was from Chen Qing. He only met Chen Qing once after Chinese New Year. Chen Qing wasn"t really surprised when he saw Ren Baqian.
The Chen family paid great attention to Ren Baqian"s matter. Therefore, when the arrest warranty on Ren Baqian was cancelled, they immediately got ahold of the news.
They wondered what Ren Baqian did to cover up such a huge incident.
However, it was a good thing for them as well. No one would reject a powerful and influential friend.
Other than Chen Qing, Ren Baqian also received calls from his family and Yang Sen.
After giving his family a call, Ren Baqian realized it was nothing important. His mom just wanted him to meet his girlfriend.
Ren Baqian turned around and looked at the empress. The empress acted as though she never heard what Ren Baqian"s mom said and continued watching the movie while eating the popcorn.
Next up, Ren Baqian gave Chen Qing a call. It was a good news. The hangover medicine made from the green vine powder had been approved by the China Food and Drug Administration. At the same time, its production line had been established and the construction of the drug factory was in progress. Once these things were settled, they could advertise the product and launch it onto the market.
The only problem was that the green vines grew too slow and their output was insufficient. It would take some time before the product could spread all over the nation.
Chen Qing asked Ren Baqian to make a trip to that Chen family"s building when he is free. After all, Ren Baqian had not been to the drug factory or met the in-charges before.
"I will leave it to you to settle everything, I"m not interested in these things." Ren Baqian bluntly rejected Chen Qing"s offer.
Ren Baqian was very confident of the green vine hangover medicine. He did not intend to partic.i.p.ate in the follow-ups at all, be it now or in the future.
The number of days he stayed on Earth per year wasn"t a lot, it was better for him to keep a low profile. The nation understood his current situation better, it would be troublesome he went onto the radar of other people.
Being an invisible rich man was the best option for him.
However, he did come up with a name for the green vine hangover medicine.
Blue Potion.
The name for the green vine hangover medicine would be "Blue Potion." In those ma.s.sively multiplayer online role-playing games, when one ran out of mana, he or she would drink a blue potion to recover his or her mana.
Magic was always a.s.sociated with one"s mind.
Getting drunk would cause one"s mind to be dazed and tired. This was somewhat similar to the behaviors of the characters in video games when they lacked mana. Therefore, he decided to call it Blue Potion.
In the past, he was even ridiculed by Chen Qing when his character lacked mana.
This name would also remind people of the zinc gluconate that were sold in pharmacies, which were contained in blue bottles.
After hanging up on Chen Qing, Ren Baqian gave Yang Sen, who was from the Messier 87 department, a call.
After two rings, Yang Sen picked up the call.
"Mr. Ren, we have made some discoveries regarding your saber," Yang Sen said.
"Oh?" Ren Baqian was slightly surprised. He thought it would take quite some time before they could come up with anything.
"The saber is made up of steel, but it contains other components as well. One of the components is very weird; it seems to have a life of its own. According to Elder Lu, your saber is alive," Yang Sen continued.
Ren Baqian wasn"t surprised when he heard these words. After all, the saber could grow and shrink at will; it did not seem like something that was dead.
"It might possess cognition, and it might be avoiding our inspection!" Yang Sen"s words gave Ren Baqian a fright.
"Cognition?" Ren Baqian repeated this term. Usually, only mammals possessed cognition. Therefore, it was surprising to hear that a saber possessed cognition.
"It"s still a conjecture. We need to do more experiments to confirm it," Yang Sen replied.
Actually, they had not made much progress. The research progress for this saber was much slower than they expected.
"So, have you considered the proposal I told you previously?" Yang Sen finally reached the main topic.
"Alright, alright, we will collaborate, but I can"t be the only one that"s contributing to the collaboration, right? What can you offer me for my martial arts manuals?" Ren Baqian asked with a solemn tone.
"What do you want?" Yang Sen asked. Through Ren Baqian"s replies, he could roughly determine the situation of that world.
Previously, he already used this method, but he had not benefited from it much. Ren Baqian seldom talked about valuable things. Even if he had told him something, he wouldn"t be totally truthful.
"You should at least get rid of the people that are spying on me to show your sincerity, right?"
"Someone is spying on you? I will send someone to check it out." Ren Baqian"s words gave Yang Sen a fright. The people he sent were high-level professionals and shouldn"t have been discovered easily. However, they were the legendary cultivators after all, and they might have some unknown scouting methods. No matter what, he had to s.h.i.+ft the blame first.
"They were not sent by you? Forget it then, I will settle them myself," Ren Baqian replied.
So they really had not sent spies to spy on me? This couldn"t be...
Actually, Ren Baqian did not know whether or not Yang Sen had sent people to spy on him. He was merely babbling nonsense to feel out Yang Sen.
In any case, he felt that if he was Yang Sen, he would definitely send some people to spy on himself.
"Don"t act rashly. This society is governed by laws. By all means, don"t resort to violence. If anything happens, we might not be able to settle it. Don"t let the previous incident happen again and don"t forget you that have promised us." Ren Baqian"s words gave Yang Sen a huge shock.
"Alright, you settle them for me then," Ren Baqian replied casually. He did not sense the anxiety in Yang Sen"s tone.
Ren Baqian had to admit that Yang Sen was much more shrewd than him.
"Anyway, you can use nuclear warheads to exchange for my martial arts manuals!" Ren Baqian demanded an exorbitant price once again, almost causing Yang Sen to choke to death.
"What did you say? What do you want again?" Yang Sen thought he heard Ren Baqian wrongly.
"Nuclear warheads, nuclear warheads, nuclear warheads. I have repeated it three times," Ren Baqian repeated with a solemn tone.
"What do you need nuclear warheads for? How can someone have his own nuclear warheads? It"s too dangerous!" Yang Sen snarled softly.
"I have some enemies back in that world. It"s best to use nuclear warheads to bomb them. It"s easy for you guys to produce nuclear warheads, so my martial arts manuals are far more valuable than them," Ren Baqian replied earnestly.
"Do you have ways to transport them? Are you able to launch them? How"re you going to protect yourselves from the radiation? How can you prevent the radiation from leaking? How"re you going to store them?" Yang Sen asked a series of questions.
Ren Baqian pondered over these questions and realized that he really couldn"t do it.
There shouldn"t be an issue with the transportation since small-sized nuclear warheads weren"t really heavy. However, for the remaining issues, he really did not know how to solve them.
Then again, he was just babbling nonsense and did not really want nuclear warheads. They were not really useful to him. He couldn"t possibly throw one at the capital of Great Xia, right?
"Give me sarin gas instead. It"s easy to store and I can use it," Ren Baqian demanded.
Actually, Ren Baqian had no real need for sarin gas. He still had three bottles of it, which was more than enough for him to use.
He also had no intentions of throwing it on the battlefield after Dayao started warring with the other nations in two years. It was too inhumane. If he really did this, he wouldn"t feel good about it. Furthermore, aboriginals were very powerful to begin with; there was no need for him to resort to sarin gas.
He had prepared to develop that world technologically, but not in the aspect of weapons.
Doing so would not render cultivation irrelevant and worthless.
That world was completely different from Earth. Ren Baqian felt that a combination of cultivation and technologies would be that world"s only way forward. Only through this combination could a magnificent flower of technology later blossom in that world. He did not want to produce high-tech weapons that Earth Wheel experts could not stop. Even the empress, who was at the level of Cardinal Heaven, could stop those weapons of ma.s.s destruction.
"I can"t give you sarin gas either!" Yang Sen"s forehead was beaded with perspiration. Ren Baqian was too dangerous. If he really gave him sarin gas and it was used on Earth, all of them would be in deep trouble.
From what Ren Baqian did in the past, the probability of him using sarin gas on Earth was quite high.
"Then tell me, what can you offer me?" Ren Baqian spread his arms even though Yang Sen couldn"t see him doing so.
The empress turned around and cast a glance at him. Following which, she s.h.i.+fted her gaze back to the television and squeezed herself into the center of two sofa cus.h.i.+ons, feeling extremely comfortable.
She really did not like to bother herself with those troublesome matters.
"We can offer you some methods to optimize the martial arts manuals that you will be giving us. After all, computers are more reliable than human brains at times," Yang Sen said. This was also why they were feeling so hopeful.
"I"m not interested!" Ren Baqian rejected him. He had not even made the decision on whether or not to give them the martial arts manuals, therefore he wasn"t interested in optimizing these methods.
"We can provide your laboratory with various equipment and machinery."
.
"I"m not interested!" If it was really his own laboratory, he wouldn"t mind this offer. Furthermore, given his current unique status, he also reckoned the nation wouldn"t stop him from buying any equipment he wanted. He felt that Yang Sen was trying to con him with those insincere offers.
Moreover, the laboratory would not really belong to him.
Yang Sen was rubbing his temples as well. It was very troublesome to negotiate with Ren Baqian. He couldn"t give Ren Baqian what he wanted, but he also did not know what Ren Baqian would want.
"I will call you back later." Yang Sen hung up and contacted his boss to see if there were any better suggestions. If he was not wrong, there should be a think tank that studied Ren Baqian and Qi Zixiao. They had all the information about them.
Ren Baqian threw his phone aside and began to ponder as well. What did he really want? He had thought about this question for a few days, but still couldn"t come up with an answer.
Facilities? He couldn"t bring them back to that world.
Technologies? Right now, all he needed was fundamental technologies, and these could be easily found online and in books.
As for high-level technologies, he needed to wait for that world to reach a certain development level first before implementing them.
Blueprints? Ditto. Those that he needed, he could obtain himself. Those that he couldn"t obtain himself, he did not need them yet. Actually, there were many things that he did not need top-notch blueprints for. For example, he did not need a top-notch blueprint for brick kilns because he did not even need to use them.
Money? Job? These weren"t useful to him at all.
Women? Ren Baqian turned around to look at the empress, who was watching the television while eating popcorn. Then, he lowered his head again.
Ren Baqian suddenly felt that he was stumped. He really did not have anything that he desired.
"Is it possible that I don"t have any desires anymore? Am I becoming an immortal?" Ren Baqian had a pensive look on his face.