Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Origin
He focused his attention back on himself.
Five seconds later, the virtual panel appeared again.
[Common Name: Human (Expandable)]
[Composition: Carbon-based Cells (Expandable)]
[Structure: Multicellular Carbon-based Organism (Expandable)]
[Status: Bone Age: 26 Solar Years; Human Adult Stage; Mild Fatigue; Mild Fatty Liver; Mild Myopia; Adrenaline Levels Rising; Rapid Fluctuation in Brain’s Neural Activity... (Expandable)]
[Function: Consumer in Earth’s food chain; One of the cornerstones of human civilization; Vessel of self-will; Vessel for a Special Spacetime Dimension Fragment (Expandable)]
Jiang Miao focused his attention on the entry: "Vessel for a Special Spacetime Dimension Fragment."
Five seconds later, the information panel refreshed again.
[Common Name: Vessel for a Special Spacetime Dimension Fragment]
[Composition: Carbon-based Lifeform, Special Spacetime Dimension Fragment, Appraisal Skill Information Module from a Cultivation Game... (Expandable)]
[...]
After more than ten minutes of continuously using Appraisal to expand the data entries, Jiang Miao gained a preliminary understanding of the appraisal panel’s origin.
Three days ago, by a bizarre twist of fate, his phone’s signal had attracted a ball of lightning from the sky. As the ball lightning neared his head, it coincided with a dense stream of neutrinos from a solar flare sweeping through it.
The neutrinos triggered a series of miniature black holes. These miniature black holes then interacted with the ball lightning, causing a minor collapse in spacetime that lasted for a hundred-millionth of a second.
In that very instant, a dimension fragment broke off, happened to land on Jiang Miao, and absorbed the residual energy from the ball lightning.
Furthermore, the massive number of neutrinos fixed the miniature black holes onto the dimension fragment. This allowed the fragment to continuously absorb the surrounding zero-point energy from the vacuum through the miniature black holes, thereby maintaining its stability.
For a dimension fragment to remain stable long-term, it must contain a certain amount of information internally.
Coincidentally, at the exact moment the dimension fragment fell, Jiang Miao happened to be playing a game and used an appraisal skill.
The dimension fragment instinctively absorbed the data of this appraisal skill and simultaneously fused into Jiang Miao’s body.
For the past three days, the appraisal system formed by the dimension fragment had been constantly receiving information from its surroundings.
In the Modern Era, advanced wireless communication networks meant that electromagnetic and light signals, carrying an extraordinarily vast amount of data, were constantly rippling through the air.
This special environment caused the appraisal system’s database to grow explosively.
However, although Jiang Miao now knew the panel’s origin, he understood that his success was merely a special, isolated case.
At the current level of technology, it would be extremely difficult to replicate another successful case.
His success had depended on six indispensable conditions: a solar flare eruption, a solar storm reaching Earth’s atmosphere, neutrinos passing through, a ball of lightning drawing near, a phone being used to play a game, and perfect timing.
The timing was especially crucial. If Jiang Miao hadn’t been playing on his phone, the ball lightning wouldn’t have been attracted by the signal. If the ball lightning had been a little faster or a little slower, the result would have been completely different.
Of course, Jiang Miao still recorded the details of this event.
He wrote the following in his journal.
[March 13, 2024, Evening.
Thinking back on what happened three days ago still gives me the chills. I almost kicked the bucket. A difference of seconds could have been the difference between life and death. I have to be extra careful during thunderstorms from now on.
After being discharged from the hospital today, I passed by the side of the road downtown. The camphor trees really stank; the smell made my head spin. The evening sun was incredibly dazzling—maybe it has something to do with the solar flare from three days ago?
I was so bored tonight. I played with a Rubik’s Cube for a while but still couldn’t sleep. I picked up my copy of "Three-Body," which I bought years ago, and read the part about Wang Miao. I finally felt a little drowsy.
Brushed my teeth, washed my face, drank a glass of warm milk. Good night.]
The cautious Jiang Miao didn’t write everything down directly. Instead, he used coded language and keywords to hide the information within his diary entry.
He was in the habit of writing in his journal every few days, so even if someone got their hands on it, they wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
As for why he was so cautious, it was simply part of his personality.
Jiang Miao had been this way his whole life—extremely cautious and prudent in everything he did.
He didn’t plan on telling anyone about this. After all, success relies on secrecy. The moment one other person knew his secret, it would only be a matter of time before it was exposed.
Human nature is inherently selfish. He had no intention of using his own life and safety to test the character of others.
Jiang Miao planned to keep the matter of his appraisal system a secret forever, preferably taking it with him to his grave.
As for turning it over to the authorities, his twenty-year-old self might have considered it.
But he was twenty-six now, heading for thirty in a few years. He was long past the age of passionate naivete.
Life had taught him many lessons, and reality had stung him time and time again.
In this age of rampant materialism.
In this age of fading integrity.
In this age of unrestrained chaos.
Nobility is the epitaph of the noble.
Baseness is the passport of the base.
Jiang Miao’s bottom line was to look out for himself and be a selfish person.
Lying in bed, he was now wide awake.
A thousand thoughts tangled together in his mind.
The appraisal panel seemed like a very ordinary thing, but in the hands of someone who knew how to use it, it could produce unimaginable results.
Jiang Miao knew he was about to strike it rich.
Still, he repeatedly warned himself in his heart: ’Stay steady! Don’t get reckless!’
First, he needed to legally acquire a large sum of money as startup capital for his ventures—at least a million, but preferably around ten million.
And to legally get ten million in a short amount of time...
There was only one path left: gambling!
The lottery, stone gambling, and Macau.
These three express lanes all involved gambling, but for Jiang Miao, they were legal ways to use the appraisal panel to quickly accumulate his initial capital.
However, while this method was a fast way to make money, he couldn’t do it long-term. It was basically a one-shot deal.
After all, if he relied on this method to make money for too long, people would easily notice something was wrong.
Therefore, Jiang Miao only planned to use these three paths to build his initial capital.
Using the appraisal panel for betting was just a heterodox, side-door approach.
Although Jiang Miao wasn’t a "good person" and wasn’t against profiting from betting, this method was ultimately not a long-term solution.
The true application of the appraisal panel was in the field of scientific research. And only by developing a real industry could he establish a lasting foundation.
Just by staring at an object for five seconds, he could obtain all sorts of information about it. This was equivalent to gaining the power of omniscience.
In the field of scientific research, the major expenses for many experiments weren’t the experiments themselves, but the costs associated with testing: the instruments, the consumables, the personnel, and the laboratories. That’s where the real bulk of a research project’s budget went.
This was especially true for drug development projects. Just verifying a drug’s efficacy and side effects required four or five rounds of experimental testing, with a huge portion of the manpower and resources being consumed by the analysis.
Now, Jiang Miao himself was a human testing machine. What’s more, his detection accuracy was extremely high, his speed was incredibly fast, he was comprehensive, and he required no consumables or electricity.
As long as Jiang Miao had the startup capital, he could quickly become a "scientific genius."
As for why he wanted to go it alone, it was mainly because Jiang Miao didn’t want to essentially work for free for some other company, nor did he want to get entangled in office politics.
Why work for someone else when you can be your own boss?
