Didn't you go to Teyvat to earn money to support me?

Pado was taken aback.

She suddenly realized what Möbius was talking about.

Almost trembling, she typed each word carefully, but as expected, someone was faster than she thought. Before she could finish typing, other people's comments arrived quickly.

Sakura: Dr. Mebius, what does the third... mean?

Hua: Dr. Mei, according to the growth record, if I remember correctly, Eve's growth logic is different from that of normal people. Although his body grew rapidly, it would remain the same at a certain point, and even now he still looks like a young boy. How did you determine that he has reached maturity?

I know my sins: ...

vv: Mebius, what exactly do you two know? Don't hide it from me! I knew you wouldn't publicly recruit volunteers for no reason!

The group chat exploded instantly, even surprising Aponia, who hadn't posted in years. After all, how could the girls possibly suppress their suspicions! As if by prior arrangement, May and Mebius went back to hiding.

At that moment, Paddo's feline intuition and luck made her suddenly realize that something was wrong.

—Even Aponia was alarmed. Where is Alicia, the most active member of the group? And Eden, why did he remain silent as if he hadn't seen the notification at all?

Suddenly, Pado's IQ increased a million times!

—Who was on duty taking care of the baby this week?

She abruptly closed the group chat, opened her contacts, and requested a video call!

"Beep—Sorry, the user you dialed is currently on another call. Please try again later. Sorry, the subscriber..."

The cat-like girl clenched her little fists, her face filled with the grief and indignation of a female college student who had suddenly discovered that she was actually her boyfriend's mistress.

----------

Golden Garden, Eden's detached house.

Although it was close to the Fire Chaser Base, Eden didn't like the monotonous dormitory buildings and usually lived in his own manor. Alicia, of course, did the same; as Eden's best friend, she was invited to live with him.

Although this sometimes gave Alicia the illusion that she was being kept by a rich woman, considering that Shen Liang also stayed here every now and then, the number of people being kept by her had increased to two, so she didn't feel any psychological pressure at all.

The large bedroom was dark, with the lights off and the dark curtains blocking out the sunlight. The room was gloomy, devoid of daylight. The air conditioner was running, but it couldn't dispel the sweet fragrance lingering in the air.

A large three-seater bed, the sheets were messy, and the blanket casually covered the woman's back, but only barely.

Hanging on the bedside clothes rack was Eden's gilded cheongsam from yesterday's concert, while casually tossed aside were Alicia's uniform-style dress and black knee-high boots. The silk cheongsam looked as if it had been roughly torn open, clearly unwearable, and the other items scattered around the room were equally conspicuous.

A sheer black bodysuit, a daringly styled lace suspender bra, and various colors and styles of ultra-thin, easily tearable stockings tossed on the living room sofa... There were even two or three well-made cosplay outfits with inexplicable thigh straps and inexplicable tails hanging from them.

With her long, disheveled hair completely unkempt, Alicia casually lay on the back of the burgundy-haired pop diva, sketching and writing with her finger dipped in red ink behind her bare, white shoulder blades.

Eden, also wrapped in a soft pillow, lay lazily on the bed, scrolling through her terminal. Her round, high breasts were flattened by the bed surface. She seemed to have no strength left. Even though she knew Alicia was playing around with her in a fancy way, she couldn't be bothered to stop her. She just watched the chat box pop up rapidly with a meaningful smile on her face.

Just then, another call came in, rang twice, and was then blocked by the pre-set busy tone.

Eden raised his beautiful eyebrows.

“This time it’s Pado.”

"Even Paddo guessed it?" Alicia licked her fingers to dilute the paint and make it easier to paint. "Don't move, Eden, we're almost at the last few strokes."

“Padre is just timid, that doesn’t mean she’s not smart, or that she doesn’t like dolls.” Eden looked at the more than thirty messages that had come in in just two hours and smiled broadly. “Ellie, everyone is going crazy. Your mischievous ideas always surprise people. If they’re going to beat you up for this, I won’t stand up for you.”

"You've already distanced yourself so quickly, my dear Eden~" Alicia snorted. "We were both the ones who would get beaten up, okay? Remember? You haven't forgotten, have you? Hmph~ I wasn't the first one to pretend to be drunk, pin someone down, and turn on the electric bed function..."

“Ellie.” Eden interrupted her with a slightly annoyed and coquettish voice.

"If we're going to be punished, we'll be punished together, but I don't think I can afford the fine for the Infinite Experimentation Laboratory... Um, Airi, as an accomplice... I'd appreciate your help."

"You're getting a good deal and then acting innocent," Eden chuckled softly. "What are you doing?"

“Drawing.” Alicia sucked on her finger and said with a grin, “This mark means that the doll has finally figured things out. In the future, it will be a sign of gene fusion.”

"A hallmark of gene fusion?"

"Hmm? Don't understand? From now on, I'll mark all the genetically compatible individuals who fuse with the dolls with this mark. Those marked won't be allowed to be volunteers anymore," Alicia laughed. "You can't be unaware of the dolls' charm, can you? Even someone as smart and cute as me can't resist them. I don't believe the members of the Firemoth will be able to control themselves. They probably don't have the courage to marry the dolls, but I think they not only have the courage, but a great deal of courage, to use the guise of volunteering to play with the dolls."

Eden paused for a moment, then took the terminal and took a picture of himself.

A magnificent and intricate scale emblem is prominently displayed on the butterfly-shaped shoulder blade.

She burst into laughter.

"fair?"

“Yes, the doll is everyone’s common property, at least in the Fire Chaser Base, everyone should share it fairly. What do you think? Isn’t it pretty? Using this as the fusion symbol for the doll won’t seem strange, right? I also have other designs to choose from, like the Crystal Flower that looks like me, the Gold Coin Ribbon that looks like you, the Mebius’s Two-Headed Snake… If you don’t like the doll’s scales, I can change it.”

“No need.” Eden shook his head. “Let’s use the symbol of the doll, the scales… that’s good, something that maintains balance… The current Moths are indeed in a fragile relationship, and I hope the doll can use its charm to become the bond that maintains balance.”

“Wait a minute, Eden, don’t you think… the position of the logo could be changed? It’s not very noticeable behind the shoulder.” The pink fairy suddenly said after examining it for a while.

“No, I know what you’re thinking, Ellie. Enough, it’s ridiculous enough already,” Eden refused decisively. “Besides, it doesn’t really need to be conspicuous at all!”

Alicia couldn't help but laugh at her best friend's nervous expression. Then she leaned down and nuzzled Eden's face. "Okay, okay, I'm just teasing you. How about I make you some oatmeal? You haven't slept or eaten for over ten hours, are you hungry?"

Eden stretched as she watched her best friend's graceful back, then looked down and noticed a new topic that had started in the group chat. She paused, startled.

"Oh? Is this what Asians call 'double happiness'?"

------------

Paddo was playing cards in the salon again.

"Ten thousand."

"Have you heard? The Infinite Experimentation Lab is completely full. Volunteer registrations are open until nine years from now... Let me think, that's 2010 for Chasing Fire!"

"East wind."

"It seems that Dr. Mebius is preparing to change the queuing system to MMR, so that the better the applicant performs, the easier it will be for them to be approved when they reapply."

"Three cakes."

"What do you mean by 'good performance'? It's been three months, and as far as I know, no one has been able to successfully pair up the dolls yet."

"Yaoji."

"A good performance means you come out standing up instead of lying down."

"Five items."

"Is this testing genetic suitability or physical ability?! Are they looking down on fusion warriors who excel in mental and computational skills?! Damn it!" Desdovia slammed her fist on the table, shouting angrily, "This damn MMR system! Can't they just change it to ELO?!"

"Self-draw, 50,000, all of one suit." Pado silently pushed the mahjong tiles aside. "I won."

Unlucky in love but lucky in gambling, Pato had never experienced such sorrow before.

Then she looked at the crowd.

Chapter Thirty-One: How dare you let the boys at the base know about this!

"Swipe card or pay with military merits?" Pado greeted skillfully. "All 24-point cards, 480 yuan per person, the usual rule. If you pay with military merits, it's one to three. Everyone knows I'm short of military merits."

The Fire Chaser Base does not reject military merit trading; military merit can be exchanged for corresponding money. However, each fusion warrior has a military merit assessment score every quarter, and fusion warriors who fail to reach the passing score must undergo brutal recruit training again.

To be honest, the training for new recruits is more arduous than most service fusion soldiers going on missions. Pado is too lazy to even go on missions, so she prefers to exchange something for military merits with others.

Unfortunately, she was always very lucky. Every quarter when it came time to assess her performance, she always had various opportunities to accumulate military merits. As a result, despite never going on missions, she managed to stay at the Fire Chaser Base for so many years.

The blonde Desdovia expertly tapped her watch terminal against Paddo's terminal, completing the betting transaction. Then she plopped down next to the cat and asked, "Paddo, you're one of Eve's guardians. Seriously, do you have any connections... you know... you know... those kinds of connections..."

Paddy puffed out her cheeks. "Which one?"

“It’s that kind of… insider channel.” Desdobia glanced at the group of girls and card players who immediately surrounded her and whispered, “The people closest to the dolls are the nine of you who provided the underlying genes. You also have an internal group—don’t lie to me, I know! Kosmo told me that you can play with the dolls however you want, and he won’t refuse you at all!”

"So what do you want from the inside channels?" Pado crossed her legs and leaned back comfortably on the sofa. Her posture was quite domineering; after all, she had always been a harmless and weak cat in the base. Only when these people came to her for help did she become so humble.

"What else can we do? Paddo, you're such a spoiled brat who doesn't know the hunger of the starving." Desdobia casually pinched Paddo's slender thigh and massaged it. "You could wait in line your whole life and still not get a chance. There are so many veteran fusion warriors out there. I heard that seniors like Mattline, Bu Feixian, Meloni, and Cora even went so far as to get divorced for the sake of Doll..."

"Wait a minute, aren't they a lesbian family to begin with?"

"The statement prohibited married women from participating in the volunteer recruitment, fearing that the baby would become a bad child who breaks up other people's families. It didn't specifically mention that lesbian couples could be excluded, so for convenience, they all got divorced," Desdobia said. "It seems that they originally planned to apply to the Antarctic Gene Bank and then do in-vitro fertilization, but now that the 'child of a human' experiment is open, they might as well see if they can borrow the baby's genes to have a child..."

“Then they should give up soon. If the doll’s genes were so easy to preserve, they wouldn’t have tormented Snake Sister to the point of losing her hair.” Pado stuck out her tongue. “At the last Snake Sister meeting, she was almost going crazy, saying that the doll’s reproduction problem was something she couldn’t solve at all. She even proposed the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde hypothesis, thinking that it was a completely unrepeatable miracle.”

Even the fusion warriors at the Fire Chaser Base have high levels of education. Desdovia knows about the "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Conjecture," which comes from a science fiction novel called "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The protagonist of the novel researched a drug for split personality, but after he wrote down the formula, he could not make it again. So he thought there was something wrong with the ingredients he bought.

But after a series of events, he realized that the reason he was able to successfully formulate the drug was because the raw materials he used the first time contained impurities, and the unexpected impurities led to his success.

In other words, even a fanatical researcher like Möbius had to admit that Eve's birth must have involved an element of chance, making it extremely unreplicable. The Infinite Experimentation Institute has spared no effort in trying to create a new Eve, but so far it has made no progress, so it can only shift its focus to developing Eve herself.

Now, opening Eve up to everyone on the base for pairing research, relying on this "traditional human method," is, in a way, a last resort for Möbius.

“But,” Paddo said, stroking her chin with a smile, “Dobiya, since you know that Doll and I are the…the very, very closest of friends, do you think I would entrust Doll to you?”

Desdobia was taken aback.

"I get jealous too," Pado said with a mischievous grin.

"Hey! How could this happen!"

"Paddo, you are the best cat! You are all our hope! You can't abandon us!"

"I could have won with a hand of Thirteen Orphans, but I held back, just so you could win, Pado! You can't do this to me!"

"Pado~~~~"

Suddenly, all the girls protested, crowding around Pado's sofa and menacingly surrounding her, their little tiger teeth gleaming. The cat-like girl, who had just finished her wicked grin, found herself completely surrounded, each girl's eyes radiating danger. She panicked, "Hey...you can't force me to buy something! I'm a businesswoman, you can't force me to buy something..."

“If we don’t force them to buy and sell, we young fusion warriors will never get ahead. In terms of military merit, how can we compare to those veterans who have been serving since their military days? They received second-class merits even before they became fusion warriors. And they’re so well-maintained. To teenage boys, older women in their thirties or forties who look no different from twenty are definitely more attractive than us, right…” Desdobia pressed her shoulder, then suddenly changed the subject, “But you just said… you’re jealous too?”