Chapter 223 Big Shot’s Lab

South Sea, Deep Love Adult Hotel.

A suggestive pinkish-purple light spilled from the headboard onto the carpet, and the mirrored wall reflected the disheveled sheets.

Heated sounds carried on intermittently for about fifteen minutes before finally fading into silence.

CLICK.

The sound of a lighter flicking open.

Zou Jun frowned and turned his head to look at the woman beside him.

“I don’t like the smell of smoke.”

Angela, a cigarette dangling from her lips, paused. She then smiled and stubbed it out on the nightstand.

“Alright, alright, I won’t smoke. Who asked you to be so amazing? You nearly wore me out.”

Zou Jun subconsciously touched the pendant around his neck.

It was an exquisite sheep’s head, with an inverted pentagram symbol embedded between its horns.

The craftsmanship was meticulous, carrying an indescribable religious air.

‘I’m this amazing all thanks to this thing.’

He looked back at Angela.

She was genuinely beautiful, with the delicate features of a minor celebrity.

Back in high school, she had been Zou Jun’s goddess.

At that time, Zou Jun was the top student in his class, and she was the school’s goddess.

Zou Jun had a huge crush on her, but… she liked bad boys.

Girls who dropped out of high school to be with delinquents rarely had happy endings.

She was no exception. She’d already been divorced three times.

And Zou Jun?

After graduating high school, he went to Meiqi Country and studied all the way to a master’s degree, majoring in bacteriology.

At least in his own eyes, he was infinitely successful.

Of course, he’d had other fortuitous encounters… like the pendant on his chest.

People with low self-esteem often swing to the other extreme after achieving success—arrogance.

Like a spring that has been compressed for too long, it violently snaps back, refusing to stop until it has shot into the sky.

In other words, he was now arrogant beyond measure.

During his years in Meiqi Country, the one person Zou Jun could never forget was Angela.

It had nothing to do with love.

It was an obsession.

After all, what man, upon achieving success, doesn’t want his former “white moonlight” to get a good look at what he’s become?

Zou Jun had not only let Angela see, he’d taken her to bed.

Angela snuggled against his chest, her face full of bliss, tracing circles on his pecs with her finger.

“So you’ve decided to stay in South Sea? I’ll go home, pack my things, and move in with you.”

The corner of Zou Jun’s mouth twitched as he let out a very soft sneer.

“South Sea?”

He stared at the suggestive mirror on the ceiling, his tone as casual as if he were discussing something trivial.

“Nowhere in the entire Xia Kingdom is worthy of housing a great Buddha like me.”

He shook his head, a playful look in his eyes.

“The Xia Kingdom… it’s too barren.”

Angela looked up, her eyes filled with adoration.

“You’re so amazing.”

She just liked arrogant men.

She’d liked arrogant boys in high school, which was why she ran off with that delinquent.

After her divorces, she’d had two other relationships, and both men had been cool and cocky.

But, she always felt she had bad luck; the men she liked were all scumbags.

Her fingers hooked the pendant on Zou Jun’s neck, toying with it casually.

Zou Jun’s eyes widened abruptly.

He slapped Angela’s hand away, the force so great that it immediately left a red mark around her wrist.

“You can’t touch this.”

He lowered his head and carefully wiped the Sheep Head Pendant, as if Angela’s fingers had been covered in filth that might defile his most precious Sacred Artifact.

Angela didn’t understand.

If she had read a few more books, she would have known that this symbol, in certain religions, represents Satan.

The man lying beside her was a follower of Satan.

“Alright, alright, I won’t touch it.”

Angela sat up and gathered her messy hair.

“So when are you taking me to Meiqi Country? I’ve never even been abroad.”

Zou Jun frowned.

“When did I say I was taking you to Meiqi Country?”

Angela froze for a moment.

“What… what do you mean?”

Zou Jun rolled out of bed, took out a few bills, and tossed them on the mattress.

“Get a taxi home yourself. I have a flight this afternoon.”

Angela’s face twisted in an instant.

“Zou Jun! You bastard!”

You really couldn’t blame her for falling for the wrong person.

After all, she’d been into bastards her whole life, hadn’t she?

Zou Jun pulled the door open, the sharp curses of his former goddess echoing from behind him.

The corners of his mouth slowly curled up, his smile cold and satisfied.

“You should be proud you got to sleep with me.”

Coming back to the Xia Kingdom was all for this one thrill.

To have a good time in this barren country, then return to Meiqi Country to pursue greater dreams, and never come back.

…..

As he reached the hotel entrance, his phone vibrated.

It was an email notification.

After returning to the Xia Kingdom, he had sent out quite a few résumés.

Not to find a job, but to “challenge the dojo”—to show off his knowledge.

He would wait until the company’s CEO showed their utmost admiration and hoped he would join, only to casually remark, “Your labs aren’t up to snuff. I’ll keep looking.”

‘You’re interested in me?’

‘Sorry, but I’m not interested in you.’

“Divine Peptide Biotechnology?”

He stared at the sender’s name and thought for a moment. “Oh, that one.”

The biotechnology company under the World Dream Group.

To be honest, he really looked down on this kind of small lab.

Isn’t World Dream just some company that builds lifestyle amenities?

They might have money, sure, but can real scholarship be bought?

“If it weren’t for my flight this afternoon, I’d actually be willing to go and play around a bit.”

He casually opened the attachment—it wasn’t an invitation, but a test.

He chuckled.

‘A real estate company has the nerve to test me?’

‘I’ll ace it, then reply with, “Too easy, not interesting.”‘

With that thought, he opened the test.

And then, his expression changed.

First question, a slight frown.

Fifth question, his finger paused on the screen.

Tenth question, he sat up straight on the sofa in the hotel lobby.

Every single question was incredibly profound, involving a level of professional depth on par with his advisor back in Meiqi Country.

And his advisor was someone who had published papers in *Green Biology Weekly*.

Zou Jun got serious, his brows tightly knitted as he deliberated over and over.

He even opened academic forums to look up information, comparing it line by line, terrified of missing a single detail.

By the time he finished the last question, it was already afternoon.

A patch of his shirt on his back was soaked with sweat.

He clicked submit, let out a long breath, and leaned back in his chair, muttering to himself,

“These questions… Just who in the world wrote them?!”

He paused, and the corners of his mouth curled up unconsciously.

“It has, however, piqued my interest a little.”

He began to worry that the person on the other end wouldn’t be able to understand his solutions.

The deduction processes were too exquisite; an ordinary person wouldn’t even be able to grasp the basics.

But at the same time, he was dying to know what score they would give him.

He glanced at the time—still two hours until his flight took off.

Grading a test of this level would take three days at the very least.

The curve of his lips widened a bit more.

‘I wonder how devastated they’ll be when they realize they’ve missed their chance with a great talent like me?’

Just as he stepped out of the hotel’s main entrance, his phone vibrated again.

Zou Jun looked down, and his pupils contracted sharply.

‘A reply?’

‘It’s only been ten minutes!’

How could he have known that waiting for him on the other side of the screen was the number one figure in the Xia Kingdom’s microbiology field—Liu Weiqian.

Ever since obtaining the Beast Language Magic Flute, Liu Weiqian had become the absolute observer of the microbial world, his academic attainments long since reaching a level incomprehensible to mortals.

“Don’t tell me they couldn’t understand my work and just rejected it outright?” Zou Jun’s expression darkened as his finger tapped open the email. ‘What a bunch of idiots.’

The next second, he froze.

The email was densely packed with comments.

Where his line of thinking was insufficient, where his arguments were flawed—every single question was covered in red-pen-like markings.

It didn’t feel like a graduate student’s exam being reviewed; it felt more like an elementary school teacher correcting a first grader’s homework.

And the few short lines of feedback at the end struck his mind like a bolt of lightning.

A moment of profound enlightenment.

He saw a deeper level of the academic world, a realm he had never even touched.

“This… this…”

Zou Jun’s expression flickered between anger and shame, as if he had just been viciously slapped across the face by a giant hand.