My health recovery is incredibly fast.

Xia Zuo suppressed the urge to twitch his lips. "Ahem... Team leader, I think I'll choose the first option. My expenses have been a bit high lately, and I don't have much savings."

“A wise decision.” Hillenburg extended his right hand.

Xia Zuo shook hands with the other person, a wave of emotion washing over him.

The world has changed, and so has the bond that allows us to reproduce.

The only thing that hasn't changed is capital and leverage, risk and return.

Chapter 64 The Bionic Lungs of the Tiger-Headed Demon Whale

Hillenburg had long-term rental of a warehouse at Kemming College in Bloomington to store raw materials for gold refining.

He is a person who clearly distinguishes between public and private matters and would not use the assets of the Ocean Observatory to enrich his own inventory.

These raw materials are obtained through points redemption or by hiring others to collect them from public areas in the Mediterranean.

Hillenburg plans to create alchemical lungs suitable for bionic humans, modeled after the lungs of a giant whale-like monster.

His raw material warehouse happened to contain a complete set of demon whale lungs.

The moment Hillenburg obtained this precious sample, he was acutely aware that it would be incredibly important at some point in the future.

So he spent a lot of money to buy expensive oil and soaked the lungs of a whale, which was about the size of three adults, entirely in the oil.

When Hillenburg manipulated the robotic arm to lift the live whale lungs out of the sealed container and place them into the huge culture tank, Xia Zuo even had the illusion that it was slowly shrinking and expanding.

"This sample comes from an adult Steller's whale, which is over 20 meters long and weighs about 45 tons. It can rise or dive at a speed of 200 meters per minute, and its maximum diving depth exceeds the depth of the dimensional interface, at least 3000 meters."

Hillenburg explained while pointing at the control panel:

"After learning that the underwater patrol had discovered the monster's trail, the manager of the sea castle immediately contacted me and an alchemist from the alchemy school who was interested in sea monsters. Together, we covered the expenses of the hunting team and it took us seven days to capture the monster."

Hillenburg pressed the switch to inject preservative oil into the culture tank, walked to the bottom of the tank, opened his arms, and said with a look of rapture:

"The manager of the sea castle bought the head of the tiger-headed whale, while I spent all my money to buy the lungs."

“I have always longed to study this sample in depth, and now the best opportunity has finally arrived.”

Xia Zuo activated his toxin sensor, looked up at the enormous lung, and walked around the culture tank several times. He saw no trace of toxins and confirmed that the lung was not mutated tissue.

It is an ordinary material; as long as it undergoes routine biological identification, accurate data can be obtained without involving uncertain mutation knowledge.

However... cutting into such a large lung is a difficult problem.

"Team leader, how do we obtain research materials?" Xia Zuo asked, looking at the large scalpel on the tray, which was about the length of his forearm.

“Don’t worry, I’m prepared.” Hillenburg walked back to the control panel and pressed a dark blue button.

The blue light, capable of penetrating organs and revealing their internal structures, shines from the top and base of the culture tank. The light is clear and bright, and the lungs of the demon whale instantly become transparent.

"Wow...it's so beautiful..." Xia Zuo whispered, praising the wonder and magnificence of nature's creation.

Inside the lungs of the tiger whale are many honeycomb-like cells of different sizes; these are the alveoli of the tiger whale.

Human lungs look like bunches of grapes, with large and small alveoli forming the grapes on the bunch.

The lungs of the Orca resemble olives, with small and dense alveoli near the outer edge, becoming larger towards the inner edge. The membranes of the small alveoli are thicker, while the membranes of the large alveoli are thinner, with many tiny protrusions on them.

Hillenburg approached Shazo and introduced him:

"When the tiger whale dives, it injects air into its alveoli based on the pressure it feels on its skin, increasing the pressure in the alveoli to counteract the pressure of the seawater."

"If the alveoli are damaged, for example, if they rupture under the impact of an external force, or if the alveolar membrane of the alveoli cracks, then a new alveolar will proliferate from the small protrusions on the alveolar membrane."

"This new alveolus will push the existing alveoli outward and squeeze the damaged alveoli out of the lung, thereby maintaining the integrity of lung function."

Hillenburg clenched his left fist and raised his right index finger. "Imagine my left hand is the lung of the tiger-headed whale, and my right hand is a sharp spike of sufficient length. There is only one scenario in which the whale's lung can be completely destroyed in a very short time."

Hillenburg inserted his right index finger vertically into his left fist, "like this, directly destroying the trachea and all the large alveoli that can proliferate small alveoli."

"If I were attacked like that..." Xia Zuo imagined the scene, "Not to mention the lungs, the stomach and other parts of the body would also be severely damaged, which would be equivalent to a fatal blow. Could the damage during the assessment be that high?"

“Hmm…” Hillenburg pondered for a few seconds, “It’s hard to say, Shazo. If severe disability is used as the evaluation criterion, all the bionic lungs that are selected will have to undergo a fatal blow test.”

Helenburg paused, then asked:

"What are your thoughts? Tell me, I need a poison alchemist to give me some sound advice."

Xia Zuo crossed his arms, rubbed his chin, and stared at the lungs of the demonic whale, saying:

"In my experience, I think there are three main difficulties in counterfeiting."

"One is to imitate the function of large alveoli to proliferate small alveoli."

"Secondly, it is necessary to solve the material problem of the alveolar respiratory membrane. It must be able to withstand strong internal and external pressure, while being able to switch freely between high permeability and high airtightness to maintain normal breathing and counteract the constantly changing external pressure."

"Finally, we need to find a way to replenish the protrusions on the large alveoli so that the large alveoli can no longer produce small alveoli after the protrusions are depleted."

Xia Zuo pondered and said:

"But if we take the factor of a fatal blow into account... we have to make this a primary factor when considering the raw materials for the alchemical bionic system."

Hillenburg, with an approving look in his eyes, nodded and said:

"Just as I thought, after carefully reading the human body model and annotations provided by the school, I have a good idea."

Hillenburg took a jewel from his pocket, placed it on the soft cushion of his desk, and gently rubbed it. A simplified image of a human figure appeared inside the jewel; this was a small prop distributed to each group by the alchemy school.

Hillenburg zoomed in on the lungs of the human model, saying:

"You see, the design of respiratory function in the template provided by the school of thought is not complicated."

"The school of thought only requires that it be able to breathe in a two-in-two-out manner."

"Both air intake tubes are located at the top of the lungs, providing channels for the bionic lungs to inhale air."

"The gas inside the bionic lungs will be transported to other bionic organs of the bionic human body through gas channels on the template before being exhaled."

"The waste gas produced by other bionic organs returns to the bionic lungs and is then expelled from the body through two tracheae."

Hillenburg gestured a circle with his hands towards the jewel and said:

"This biomimetic gas exchange method is much simpler than our original human body, and not every alveolus needs to participate in gas exchange."

“We can completely separate the functions of gas storage and gas exchange, strengthen the alveoli that store gas, and use them to protect the alveoli that exchange gas.”

Hillenburg turned around, facing the enormous lungs of the whale, and raised his hands again, making a large circle in front of him.

"The outer alveoli of the whale's lungs are sturdy and resistant to high pressure. For the same volume, they can store several times more gas than the large alveoli, making them ideal for gas storage."

"We only need to add a tough outer shell to them to protect the large alveoli inside the lungs very well."

Hillenburg pointed to the top and bottom of the lung with both hands, "especially these two parts. As the vital parts of the bionic lung, we must spare no expense to use the toughest materials to strengthen the alveoli there, ensuring that a fatal blow cannot easily penetrate the lung."

“That makes sense…” Xia Zuo nodded, then asked, “So, team leader… how powerful a needle-like spell or how sharp a weapon would the school use to pierce the bionic lung?”

Hillenburg adjusted his glasses and lowered his voice slightly as he spoke:

"Considering Nexus's status, let's assume the Church of the Otherworld sent a high-ranking member, a treacherous assassin, to assassinate him..."

The Undead Assassins are one of the evil lineages controlled by the Church of the Otherworld, ranking alongside the Blood Mage and the Shadow Fiend.

This is a powerful assassin who can use dark rooms to make high-frequency short-range movements and launch surprise attacks from all angles, and can also confront enemies head-on. They possess a strong body and strong will comparable to a witcher, and can also enhance themselves with shadow magic.

Undeserved assassins are extremely rare, and they need to use dark rooms frequently and intensively when assassinating or fighting head-on, making them easy to detect by the city mages stationed within the Silvermoon Federation. Therefore, they have almost never appeared within the Federation.

Hillenburg used the example of the assassination of Nerxat by the Unexpected Assassin, which, although extremely unlikely, is a representative example.

Hillenburg pulled out his notebook, on one page of which was a handwritten record of information about the Undead Assassins, with a drawing of a pair of swords and daggers.

"The hopeless assassin at the high-level cultist level uses a one-handed sword made primarily of the spine of a demonized sword-shaped gecko, with a sharpness level of 80 or higher."

"If you enhance a one-handed sword with Darkroom Flowing Fire, the corrosive effect of the Shadow ability can indirectly increase its sharpness level by 3 to 5 levels."

Hillenburg adjusted his glasses. "In other words, the alveoli at the top and bottom must have a toughness level of at least 85 to stop the blade before the piercing attack penetrates the lung."

“Level 85 toughness…” Xia Zuo muttered to himself, pulling up a material exchange list in his mind and quickly calculating the expenses by comparing the exchange prices.

"Hiss... Team leader, the cost of the toughening tanning agent alone will require at least 3 citizen points... It would take me three or four years of not eating or drinking to earn that amount..."

"Haha~" Hillenburg laughed loudly, "Shazo, you've probably never earned any extra money before, right?"

“Uh…yes…” Xia Zuo scratched his head.

For the past year, aside from work, he's been training with Rexor, with very few opportunities to relax, which he's used to work on blood magic...

“Hmm~” Hillenburg let out a soft hum with interest, “You are more focused than I imagined, no wonder you were chosen by Master Adanavardos.”

He took out a business card holder from his pocket, pulled out a few cards, and placed them in front of Xia Zuo.

"These are business cards from the Alchemist Guild, with my signature on them. They can be used as referral letters. Take them all. If you're short on citizen points, you can take on a few bounties from the Alchemist Guild. With your alchemy skills, completing two to three bounties a year will double your income."

Xia Zuo took some business cards and flipped through them. Besides several well-known alchemy associations, there were also some alchemist associations named after families.

Poor Xia Zuo, he doesn't even have normal social skills, how could he know what these families are or what illustrious deeds they have?

However, the information provided by the team leader must be reliable.

"Thank you, team leader. I'll go check it out when I have time," Xia Zuo said with a smile.

Hillenburg waved his hand modestly, "Let's get back to the main topic. You don't need to worry about R&D costs; our top priority is perfect quality."

Hillenburg raised his hands and pressed them against the glass of the incubation tank. "Developing bionic lungs isn't just for this research project and the research rewards; it's also preparation for the future Temple bidding. The competition for amphibious combat puppets will be even fiercer in the future. Only by being fully prepared can we outmaneuver our opponents and succeed!"

...

The years passed in the daily work and research and development.

Xia Zuo returned to his routine of leaving home at 7 a.m. and returning home at 8 or 9 p.m.

Anru is preparing to advance to the Master-level Elemental Manifestation Master, spending her days reading, reading, reading, and conducting experiments...

Janice is also studying hard for her exams.

The three of them were busy with their own things, pursuing their respective alchemical careers.

More than half a month has passed since Xia Zuo began developing the bionic lung, and An Ruer is now facing her promotion assessment.

She traveled alone by airship to Silvermoon City to take the exam, returned a month later, and then went to the temple for further studies.

There are far more students studying the Concrete Elements than those studying Poison Alchemy, and five outer temple masters are in charge of teaching.

Mars' father, Professor Allen, became a student of Master Kolas during his studies after arriving in the Eastern Continent.