Chapter 348: What Is... Respect?

“What are you standing there for? Take it. Wake up, and stop dozing off.”

The young man blinked, somewhat dazed.

What was... that?

Green. Thick. A whole stack.

It was an entire stack of greenbacks!

He stared at the stack of greenbacks, scarcely believing his eyes. The denominations were so large they made his head spin. The solid weight in his hand, the crisp rustle of paper, the scent of ink that hit his nose—

Every single one was real.

No doubt about it.

In a daze, something came back to him.

During the morning meeting, he and his colleagues had been complaining about their boss, about how he didn’t know how to respect frontline researchers like them.

“Making us work overtime every day—zero respect at all!”

“People like him have no idea what respect even means!”

At the time, one colleague had asked him: “So what do you think respect looks like?”

He’d opened his mouth, hemmed and hawed, and couldn’t come up with anything.

A raise? Too crass.

Better working conditions? Too vague.

More vacation time? Too unrealistic.

The respect he wanted—it seemed like something ineffable, something he couldn’t quite put into words.

He hadn’t been able to articulate it.

But now, he knew.

What was respect?

This. This right here was fucking respect!

He jolted as if electrocuted, swiftly tucking the greenbacks into his inner pocket, pressing them against his chest as though they weren’t money at all but his very life.

In an instant, he was more alert than if he’d just downed three shots of espresso!

Had he looked in a mirror at that moment, he would have seen his face glowing with vitality, his eyes bright and sharp—not a trace of fatigue or lethargy left!

“This way, this way!”

“Let me show you the latest experimental results!”

“You’re going to be very interested!”

His voice was loud and clear, his stride brisk, walking with a spring in his step. He was a completely different person from the yawn‑prone, drowsy figure of a minute ago.

Watching the researcher suddenly brimming with energy, Pandora gave a subtle nod to herself.

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Just as she’d thought.

Money wasn’t everything—but in the vast majority of situations, it was extremely effective.

Before coming here, she had taken a few minutes to withdraw some cash precisely for moments like this. Arriving late at night, faced with exhaustion and apathy—if she’d tried to project the authority of a superior, it would have only backfired, breeding resentment.

But a stack of greenbacks could make someone more alert at two in the morning than at nine in the morning.

It seemed this little preparation had been the right call.

Led by the eager young researcher, Pandora walked slowly into the laboratory’s interior.

Phoebe held her hand quietly, looking around with curiosity. Her eyes widened slightly when they fell upon the glass vessels and the blinking indicator lights of the instruments.

Crocodile hung back half a step, silent and obedient, like a diligent secretary. His gaze remained lowered, never straying left or right, his pace unhurried, maintaining a restrained distance from Pandora.

The laboratory occupied an entire floor of the office building—spacious and expansive.

By current standards, it qualified as a top‑tier research facility.

Stretching out before them, rows of large lab benches stood neatly arranged, covered with glass petri dishes, manual incubators, and an array of precision instruments. Some were still running, emitting low, steady hums, their indicator lights blinking on and off.

Vast cultivation racks extended from floor to ceiling, densely packed with thousands of flowerpots.

But most of the pots were empty.

Only a handful of withered remains were left—shriveled into dark brown crumbs, curled up along the edges of the pots.

The air carried a faint scent of soil mixed with humus, and a subtle, elusive hint of chemical fragrance. The scent was faint but sharp, like the tail end of some volatile reagent still lingering in the air.

Against one wall, rows of glass‑partitioned greenhouses stood side by side. Mist swirled within them, and banks of incandescent tubes and artificial humidifiers ran day and night, delivering precise amounts of light and moisture to seeds waiting to germinate.

“The results?”

Pandora asked calmly.

The young man didn’t hesitate. He led her directly toward the lab’s innermost section.

“Doctor, right this way.”

There was a barely suppressed excitement in his voice as he spoke.

“Although the current batch hasn’t been fully cultivated yet, the previous one... we successfully induced a ‘bloom’!”

“The first time in three months for this laboratory!”

His steps quickened, almost breaking into a jog as he led the way.

Pandora followed, passing through vast stretches of withered cultivation zones.

There were thousands upon thousands of failures here.

Broken root systems poking out from flowerpots. Yellowed leaves, curled and cracked, crumbling to dust at the slightest touch. Moldy soil, its surface covered with a layer of greyish‑white mycelia, reeking of decay.

They too had once been carefully cultivated. They too had been watered, fertilized, and given regulated light.

But in the end, they hadn’t survived.

In this laboratory, death far outnumbered survival.

And among these withered failures, the young man pointed to a cultivation rack that had been isolated from the rest. It was slightly different from the others—a small supplementary lamp stood beside it, though it was now switched off.

On it sat a terracotta flowerpot, already dried out.

Inside the pot, only a tiny heap of greyish‑white powder remained.

The remains of the flower that had once bloomed.

“This is the result.”

The young man’s voice dropped, tinged with regret.

“Boss, we really did succeed last time. Even if it only bloomed for an instant...”

Pandora said nothing.

She simply gazed at the empty flowerpot in silence.

That pinch of greyish‑white powder was nearly indistinguishable from the dry potting soil under the light.

However, the young man quickly retrieved a developed photograph from a carefully sealed tin box nearby. He handed it over, his fingers trembling slightly.

“We captured it on camera.”

“Even if it was only a moment, but... Boss, it really did bloom.”

Pandora took the photograph.

It was a somewhat grainy black‑and‑white image. The angle was slightly tilted, as though the shutter had been pressed in haste, and the lighting wasn’t great. The photographer was clearly no professional.

But without question, at the center of the photograph—

There was a flower.

A very pale, fragile‑looking, delicate little flower.

It had only a single petal, thin as a cicada’s wing, almost translucent in its pure whiteness. A white so nearly nothing that the petal seemed as if it might vanish at any moment, along with whatever beauty it carried.

And upon that tender, thin white petal, as if someone had dotted it with a single speck—

A tiny spot, like a blemish.

So small. So deep.

Against all that pallor, that one point of black was strikingly conspicuous.

But it was no flaw from developing the film.