After completing the check-in procedures, Bai Mo sprawled on the bed and, holding his phone, began researching the route to Chernobyl City.
"I'll take this route then," Bai Mo muttered to himself, staring at the map app, "passing through Chernobyl City to have a look around, and tomorrow, I'll just ask the hotel to arrange a car."
The next day, he drove the car he had rented from the hotel, setting off for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
As he drove along the road, the surrounding environment grew increasingly desolate, like a veritable forbidden zone for life, somewhat resembling a Gobi Desert, except this place was gloomier.
Years of radiation had driven most humans away from this land. Aside from a very few elders who couldn't bear to leave their homeland and intended to rest here forever, everyone else had been evacuated to more distant cities. This place had become an isolated island in the ocean of modern civilization.
From time to time, he glanced at the radiation detector he carried, watching the readings steadily climb as the car advanced.
He drove all the way to the abandoned Chernobyl City, where the readings had already reached 50 times that of normal environmental radiation. According to the information Bai Mo had previously looked up, this intensity was nearly identical to the radiation astronauts received in space.
The entire city strongly resembled a scene from a post-apocalyptic wasteland novel. The only difference was that even zombies and survivors no longer existed; what remained was just a colossal, empty shell made of concrete, devoid of any signs of life.
Without stopping for sentimental reflection, he, merely passing through, simply observed his surroundings from the car, watching the urban ruins as an outsider.
Leaving Chernobyl City, Bai Mo continued driving towards the nuclear power plant. To his surprise, there were quite a few small animals active in the suburban radiation zone, seemingly oblivious to the radiation.
"It's a pity I'm not a professional biologist, otherwise, I'd definitely catch them for a thorough study, to see how they can survive in such a radiation zone."
Although he had been cramming extensively these past few months, there was simply too much biological and medical information to memorize. At best, he was at the level of an undergraduate student in a related field, still a long way from being able to conduct independent research.
By the time he reached the outer wall of the nuclear power plant, the surrounding radiation was roughly four times that of Chernobyl city proper. He could feel his Absorptive Skin becoming even more active. Whether it was spirit qi converted from nuclear radiation or the radiation itself, it was all being absorbed by the Absorptive Skin with full force, as if it had always been in a state of semi-starvation.
After parking the car to the side, he began searching for a way to get inside.
After walking several hundred meters around the outer wall, Bai Mo found an entrance. At the entrance stood a stone monument, with something written on it in Russian. Not knowing much Russian, he typed the words into a translation app, and the general meaning he got was "Unforgettable Memorial."
"Unforgettable Memorial, huh?"
After entering the interior of the nuclear power plant, since he had no internal map, he could only rely on his intuition, walking towards where the spirit qi felt densest.
When he reached a place that looked like the main building of the nuclear power plant, he felt that the spirit qi concentration around him had already exceeded ten times that of Tianhai.
With his Absorptive Skin simultaneously absorbing high-energy nuclear radiation and high-concentration spirit qi, Bai Mo felt the same exhilarating sensation he once had at McDonald's, drinking Coke and eating fries.
However, even as he enjoyed the sensation, his mind didn't stop working. While absorbing the radiation, he began to ponder the feasibility of artificially creating radiation environments.
"This kind of experiment could be considered for proposal to the higher-ups. It's just, I don't know how feasible it will be to get approved. After all, humanity's fear of nuclear radiation is deeply ingrained in their bones. Even if my mentor were to publish relevant research findings later, the vast majority would certainly still have doubts about its safety.
"Purely from an operational standpoint, forcibly detonating nuclear bombs to create radiation zones is the most wasteful. Of course, if one could withstand the power at the center of a nuclear explosion, the power output would certainly be the greatest, and for an individual, the effect would be the best."
"However, looking at the current situation, an output at the level of a minor nuclear leak is still safer. A higher power might not be something the body can withstand. I'll have to go back and do a careful feasibility analysis."
Bai Mo kept wandering inside. As he walked, he found himself in a basement. According to the information he had looked up, this basement housed the fireproof suits of the firefighters who had participated in extinguishing the fire at Reactor No. 4 of the nuclear power plant back then.
Even before he reached the suits, the radiation detector he was carrying emitted a piercing alarm.
"Beep beep beep, beep beep beep..."
Finding the sound somewhat distracting to his thoughts, he simply turned off the detector. Then, using his divine sense, he meticulously examined the suits, which, though covered in decades of dust, showed little change in radiation intensity.
Exiting the basement, Bai Mo continued walking towards Reactor No. 4, only stopping when he felt the absorption rate of his Absorptive Skin reach its limit.
"This is already the situation after part of the radiation has been assimilated by spirit qi for several months. I wonder how high the radiation here was before spirit qi appeared." After Bai Mo stopped, he strolled around the extreme boundary he could reach. When he got tired of walking, he sat. When he got tired of sitting, he lay down. When he got tired of lying down, he got up and walked again.
Because the radiation intensity was too severe, Bai Mo's phone couldn't function properly at all. As a modern person usually engrossed in his phone, he could only idly observe his own body with his divine sense, watching every detail of the spirit energy flowing within.
He continued to watch like this with his divine sense, observing how his Absorptive Skin operated at full capacity, and then, like a zombie, he wandered back and forth daily in areas where the radiation did not exceed his absorption limit.
A week later, he suddenly felt a qualitative change occur in his body. His Absorptive Skin had evolved once again, beginning to merge with the mysterious Life Field, as if becoming a part of it.
The Life Field, controlling his entire body, expanded the concept of energy absorption from the surface of his body to the interior in an indescribable way.
Originally, only his skin was the source of attraction, but now, after combining with the Life Field, his entire body gained the function of an attraction source, and his absorption capability was more than three times the original.
"The next direction for cultivation is to merge spirit energy organs with the Life Field..." After experiencing the entire evolution process, Bai Mo finally found the path forward after the spirit energy transformation.
"But the method of fusion is still a mystery. Could it be that one must constantly use the corresponding spirit energy organs at full capacity to achieve this step of fusion?" Considering his own situation, Bai Mo put forward a conjecture.
In the time that followed, with a problem to ponder, he no longer found staying in the nuclear power plant too boring.
To verify his conjecture, Bai Mo began to keep his divine sense active around the clock, observing everything on the ground, underground, and even in the sky.
After gradually getting used to divine sense vision, he suddenly had a feeling: he was in a higher-dimensional world, looking down upon everything in this three-dimensional world. An inexplicable sense of loneliness immediately arose.
Unconsciously, another seven days passed. Aside from the lingering sense of loneliness, he didn't see any sign of integration into the Life Field.
Bai Mo, having gained nothing, began to feel a little lost, catalyzed by the loneliness.
"Is it that I haven't persevered enough, or is the fundamental direction wrong?" This question, which countless people agonized over, appeared in Bai Mo's mind.