Chương 141: The Power of Other People's Money

International Formations Institute, Pittsburgh Thankfully, Vivian had a better idea. Instead of burying Leo with more loans, she suggested that they ask the government for a grant. After all, they owed Leo a few favors, plus the formation they discovered probably had some military applications. Leo would have hugged her over the phone if he could. He had been checking his loan balance every hour since the bank visit, watching the interest accumulate like an incremental clicker game. He tried uninstalling the app.

It didn't work. A few days later, Leo and Vivian walked into the International Formations Institute at Carnegie Mellon. The campus looked the same as it had six months ago, and even though the competition was over, the hallways buzzed with researchers and graduate students. Professor Vogt, Leo's former formation teacher, was waiting for them behind her desk when they reached her office. She smiled when they entered.

"Mr. Chen. Miss Xin." She gestured to the chairs.

"Good to see you both."

"Professor." Leo sat down.

"Thanks for meeting with us. How has Morimoto been?" Vogt laughed.

"He's been transferred to a new prison facility in the Alaskan Catacombs."

"Alaska?" Leo winced.

"What happened?"

"He tried to bribe a guard." Vogt shook her head.

"I warned him repeatedly.

'Focus on teaching. Build goodwill. Demonstrate rehabilitation.' Instead, he spent every spare moment trying to recruit accomplices."

"Is he still teaching?"

"Probably. He's too valuable to leave rotting in a cell." Vogt folded her hands on her desk.

"Now then. What exactly are we looking at?" Vivian was already pulling materials from her bag. She set a tablet on the desk showing one of the formations Kevin had scanned from the ruins. Vogt studied it for a long moment. Her fingers traced the outer ring of the array displayed on the screen.

"I've never seen a formation like this." She looked up.

"You said this was a sixty four rune system?"

"I found it in an abandoned city." Leo explained vaguely. Vogt already knew that Leo had access to something special and knew not to push him for specifics.

"It was full of autonomous puppets, most of them still functional after thousands of years." Vogt's eyebrows rose slightly, which for her was the equivalent of open astonishment. Vivian placed a second tablet next to the first, this one displaying a fourteen page document with headers, diagrams, and footnotes. Leo stared at her. This hadn't existed yesterday. She must have stayed up all night putting it together.

"I put together a preliminary analysis of potential military applications," Vivian said, swiping to a comparison chart.

"Current drones rely on external operators or simplified AI targeting. These puppets operate completely autonomously. Plus, they run on principles completely foreign to modern formation engineering." Vogt studied the arrays on the first tablet for a long moment.

"There's one big problem. This targeting array consumes three times the spiritual qi of a modern equivalent." She tapped several points on the diagram.

"Once we understand the hexagram system well enough to optimize it, we can work on efficiency," Vivian said. She swiped to page eleven, showing Vogt her analysis.

"And even if that isn't possible, we'd at least open up a new field of formation study that no one has ever seen before." Vogt was quiet for a moment.

"So what exactly are you asking for?"

"A military research grant. We need formation masters to help us understand the rune systems, linguists to translate the stone tablets, and subsidized spiritual qi so we can actually practice replicating what we find."

"Tier Three spiritual qi subsidies require congressional approval and a twelve month review cycle." Vogt shook her head.

"The defense budget committee won't fast-track an application from two eighteen year old Foundation Establishment juniors."

"We don't need Tier Three." Vivian closed the tablet.

"Tier Two or even Tier One spiritual qi would be fine. We just need extra hands to speed up the work." Vogt leaned back in her chair. Her fingers drummed the armrest once, twice.

"If you're only asking for Tier One and Tier Two..." She trailed off, and thought for a moment.

"To be honest, the land reclamation work you helped initiate last year has been making remarkable progress. For the first time in centuries, America has an excess of low tier spiritual qi." Leo straightened in his chair.

"If all you are asking for is low tier spiritual qi, I can get you that." Vivian and Leo exchanged glances. This was better than they had hoped.

"However," Vogt said, "there is a condition." Leo's brief moment of optimism cooled.

"Military research grants provide allotments of free low tier spiritual qi from the recondensed spirit veins of the Catacombs. That qi can't be transported back to Earth." She let the implications settle.

"So you'll need to establish your research facility in a war zone." Vivian turned to look at Leo. She knew his reservations about going back. Leo thought about the Grey Cult. Ashviel. Everything that had happened on his last trip to the Catacombs.

"Fine." Leo nodded.

"As long as it's anywhere besides the Boston Catacombs, that works for me."

Leo stared at the contract on his phone. The terms were exactly what Professor Vogt had promised. A generous allotment of Tier One and Tier Two spiritual qi that should last them for years. A workshop in the Atlanta Catacombs. A small stipend for anyone they hired. The catch was buried on page forty-seven.

"Ninety-seven percent of all royalties," Kevin read aloud on their group Zoom call.

"In perpetuity. Across all derivative works, applications, and future discoveries stemming from research conducted under this grant."

"That's highway robbery," Arthur said. His voice crackled through the call.

"It's standard for military research grants," Vivian said.

"The government provides resources, they own the results. Every university lab in the country operates under similar terms."

"Three percent," Kevin repeated.

"We do all the work, we take all the risks, and Uncle Sam walks away with ninety-seven cents of every dollar." Leo closed his eyes. Three percent of something was better than a hundred percent of nothing. But signing away ninety-seven percent of potentially civilization-defining technology felt like selling his Sunshifter for a handful of magic beans.

"We could try to negotiate," Vivian suggested.

"With the Department of Defense?" Arthur laughed.

"Kid, I've dealt with government procurement offices. They don't negotiate. They hand you a form and tell you to sign it or get lost." Mike's voice cut through the chatter.

"Hey guys, hold on a second. The Shen family got back to us last night, and I just finished translating their message." The call went quiet. It had taken Mike and Arthur about a week to respawn, travel all the way back to Skyhome, and send a message about what they'd found to the Shen Clan. Mike had received a reply from Tianyi's grandfather an hour ago and had spent the time since translating it.

"The Shen family received word from their contacts in the Imperial Court. Lord Ironhorn and Shattervow reported back after leaving us. They told the Court that the underground seal was broken." Leo's stomach dropped.

"The Imperial Court has ordered the secret police to close the entrance," Mike continued.

"Tianyi's grandfather says we have maybe four weeks before they arrive."

"That Enlightened guy has influence over the secret police," Arthur said quietly.

"That's why they're moving so fast. He wants us out of there before we find anything useful." Kevin made a strangled noise.

"So we have four weeks to learn an ancient sixty-four hexagram formation system, decode a dead language, and crack open a fortress guarded by four Deity Transformation puppets before the secret police show up to seal everything away forever?"

"That about sums it up," Mike said. Leo looked at the contract again.

"Sign it," Leo said.

"What?" Kevin's voice jumped.

"Sign the contract. Accept the terms. Take the money."

"Leo, we'd be giving away almost everything. Mike's wife probably knows some venture capitalists. We could shop this around, keep twenty percent at least."

"We don't have time to shop around. We have four weeks." Leo pulled up the grant application on his phone.

"The military wants to give us free resources? Great. We use them. All of them. As fast as possible." Vivian's eyes narrowed.

"What exactly are you suggesting?"

"I'm saying we spend every cent they give us. Hire everyone who applies. Buy every piece of equipment we can get our hands on. Burn through their entire budget in a month." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Arthur started laughing.

"Kid, I like the way you think." Kevin was stunned.

"You want to hire a ton of people, give them free spiritual qi, and just hope something sticks? The grant committee is going to have an aneurysm when they see the expense reports."

"If they're taking ninety-seven percent of whatever we discover, we might as well spend a hundred percent of their budget doing it." Leo grinned. After staring at thirty million in debt, he was starting to enjoy the feeling of getting to spend someone else's money. He continued.

"So let's make sure we spend as much as we can over the next four weeks." Kevin opened his mouth. Closed it.

"I hate that this actually makes sense." he said finally.

"Let's do it."

Vivian's POV, Atlanta, Georgia Vivian sat on a metal bench inside the Catacombs Transit Authority checkpoint. Through its reinforced windows, she could see the Atlanta exclusion zone. The exclusion zone looked the same as the one in Boston, miles of land that was cleared decades ago to minimize collateral damage if the Cults broke through. The spatial tunnel itself was barely visible from here, just a seven-foot-wide crack between worlds that connected Earth to the Catacombs. The checkpoint was quiet.

The war in the Catacombs had cooled recently, which meant no lines, no crowds, just a handful of military personnel processing paperwork at their stations. Sergeant Delgado, the military liaison assigned to their grant, sat across from her with a pen poised over his clipboard. He was a stocky man with a shaved head, and he wasn't happy that Vivian didn't have answers for any of his questions.

"So, Miss Xin. How many personnel are we expecting for your research team?" Vivian checked her phone. No new messages from Leo. She sighed.

"I can text him again. It won't help. He doesn't know anything useful." She typed out another message to Leo.

"Direct quote: 'Harry sent some friends over and they'll be here any minute.'" Sergeant Delgado's pen stopped moving.

"Harry sent some friends. That's what we're working with here."

"Harry Rockefeller. I'm sure you've heard of the family." Delgado pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I've heard of Harry specifically." He sighed.

"That kid nearly got dishonorably discharged for smuggling a margarita machine into a forward operating base. During a siege. The only reason he still has his commission is because his grandfather pulled some strings." A low rumbling sound interrupted them. They looked up. Something approached from the north. Something loud. The rumbling resolved into the unmistakable thrum of formation engines, accompanied by bass-heavy electronic music that Vivian could feel in her chest from a quarter mile away.

A moment later, a flying cultivation boat appeared over the horizon and descended toward the checkpoint. Vivian stared. The boat was forty feet long and shaped vaguely like a Viking longship. The hull was painted bright blue with gold trim. A banner reading "DELTA PSI OMEGA" hung from the mast. The deck was packed with young men in matching blue jerseys, most of them holding red cups. Several waved foam fingers. One was doing a keg stand near the bow while his friends counted.

Sergeant Delgado sighed and began to rethink his life choices. The boat touched down thirty feet from the checkpoint. The music cut out. The guy doing the keg stand vaulted over the side of the boat. He landed with surprising grace for someone who appeared to be at least three beers deep.

"Yo!" He spread his arms wide.

"Where's the party at?" Sergeant Delgado looked at Vivian. Vivian looked at the blonde guy.

"You're with the research grant?" Vivian asked.

"Research grant?" The blonde guy laughed.

"Nah, we're Delta Psi Omega, Yale chapter. I'm Chad Brennan, Chief Party Officer." He pointed to a patch on his jersey that did, in fact, say CPO.

"Our boy Flyer Seven said there was free spiritual qi and free booze. Where do we sign up?" Vivian blinked.

"Flyer Seven?"

"Yeah, you know." Chad mimed flying a sword.

"Flyer Seven. Leo Chen. Greatest CFL flyer of all time. Absolute legend. Harry called us up and said his buddy needed bodies for some formation research thing in the Catacombs. Free tier one qi for practice, free drinks at the end of the day." He grinned.

"Delta Psi doesn't turn down free anything." Vivian's eye twitched.

"What's this about free booze?" One of the frat brothers on the boat leaned over the railing. He loudly whispered to Chad while pointing directly at Vivian.

"Dude. Dude. That's her. That's the girl Leo mentioned." Chad's grin faltered for approximately half a second.

"Oh." He coughed.

"Uh, sorry, I wasn't supposed to tell you about that part." The entire boat erupted in laughter. Someone in the back yelled, "FLYER SEVEN OWES US KEGS," and a cheer went up. Sergeant Delgado picked up his clipboard again. He wrote very slowly, as if each letter caused him physical pain.

"How many?" he asked, his voice flat. Vivian counted the frat bros on the boat. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty three.

"Twenty three," she said.

"For now."

"For now?" As if on cue, a second rumbling sound came from the north. Another boat emerged. This one was red and white, with a banner reading "SIGMA CHI" trailing behind it. Behind it, a third boat. Green and gold.

"KAPPA ALPHA."

Vivian sat on the bed in her Atlanta hotel room that night, tablet balanced on her knees, scrolling through the day's spiritual qi expenditures. They were burning through their grant much faster than she had expected. Quantity over quality, sure, but the quality was really holding them back. She pulled up Leo's last text. A photo of him grinning in the Atlanta Catacombs, standing in front of a truckload of kegs. She stared at it for a long time. Leo had a way of making chaos feel intentional.

He would walk into a room with no plan, do something that looked insane, and somehow come out the other side holding exactly what he needed. She had watched him do it at the Grand Formation Summit. She had watched him do it in the Catacombs. But she'd also watched him rack up thirty million dollars in debt. She'd watched him sign away ninety-seven percent of their intellectual property without flinching. And now he'd staffed a classified military research project with fraternity pledges.

There was a version of this where everything worked out. Where Leo's instincts were right, where speed mattered more than precision, where throwing bodies at the problem produced results that careful planning never could. And there was a version where it all came crashing down on him. Vivian set the tablet aside and stared at the ceiling. The problem with Leo was that he never seemed to worry about the second outcome. Which meant someone else had to. She picked up her phone and started drafting a contingency plan.

Three days later, a phone call woke Vivian up at 6: 47 AM. She fumbled for her phone in the dark, knocking over a stack of audit requests from the Government Accountability Office. Someone had flagged their grant for review. Again. The caller ID read "Prof. Whitmore." Vivian sat up immediately. Professor Whitmore had supervised her advanced formation theory independent study two summers ago. He was one of the foremost experts on the five elements system in the country.

The man had once made her almost cry for using the wrong shade of spiritual ink.

"Professor Whitmore." Vivian tried to sound like she hadn't been asleep three seconds ago.

"Good morning."

"Miss Xin." His voice was clipped.

"I need to ask you about one of my students. Chad Brennan." Vivian's stomach dropped. She closed her eyes. Of course. Of course someone had complained. Chad had probably started an unauthorized party in the barracks. Or worse, he had tried to use government spiritual qi to chill his beer again.

"Professor, I take full responsibility for the oversight." She straightened.

"Leo handled recruitment. His criteria were... nonexistent. I'm currently auditing the team for actual qualifications. Chad will be sent back once we establish what exactly he did." There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"Miss Xin, I'm calling because Chad Brennan just got published." Vivian blinked.

"What?"

"Published. In the Journal of Applied Formation Theory." Whitmore's voice was thick with disbelief.

"Peer review accepted it last night." Vivian pulled up her email on her tablet. There it was. A notification from the journal, cc'd to all co-authors.

"Preliminary Analysis of the Sixty Four Rune System: The Third Rune." First author: Chad Brennan. Coauthors: Kevin Miller, Leo Chen, Vivian Xin, and fourteen other names she recognized from the Delta Psi roster.

"I don't understand," Vivian said slowly.

"What did he actually do?"

"According to the methodology section, he uploaded scanned formations into ChatGPT and asked it questions." Vivian waited for the rest.

"That's it. That's the methodology." Whitmore made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob.

"He used the free version, Miss Xin. The free version!" Vivian scrolled through the paper. The writing was unmistakably ChatGPT, full of phrases like "Certainly! Here are some tips to help you..." and "As an AI language model..." But the analysis was real. The formations were real. And the conclusions, buried under layers of AI buzzwords, were actually sound.

"Half his fraternity is already coauthored on three other papers," Whitmore continued.

"They're citing each other. They've formed their own peer review circle out of their pledge class. One of them reviewed Chad's paper. His feedback was, and I quote, 'looks good bro.'" Vivian winced.

"Do you know what that means for their impact scores?" Vivian understood. Academic impact scores measured how often a researcher's work was cited by others. More citations meant more prestige. More prestige meant more funding, more opportunities, more everything.

"Miss Xin, let me tell you a secret about academia." Whitmore's voice dropped.

"The whole thing is a massive circle of people citing each other. That's it. That's the secret. You cite me, I cite you, we both look important. The only rule is that you're supposed to pretend it's about the research."

"Professor?"

"I have spent thirty seven years playing this game. Thirty seven years of writing grants. Thirty seven years of submitting papers to journals that charge me three thousand dollars to publish my own work, which I did for free, which my colleagues reviewed for free, so that the journal can turn around and charge libraries fifty thousand dollars a year to access it." Whitmore let out a long breath.

"And now Chad Brennan, who thinks the Five Elements are from Avatar the Last Airbender, has figured out the same game in three days. He's citing his fraternity brothers. They're citing him back. By next month his h-index will be higher than mine." Vivian scrolled to the acknowledgments section of Chad's paper. It thanked "the brothers of Delta Psi Omega for their unwavering support" and "whoever invented energy drinks."

"How did his paper even get through peer review?" Vivian asked.

"Because nobody has ever seen a sixty four rune system before, Miss Xin." Whitmore's voice shifted.

"Do you understand how rare genuine novelty is in formation research? Every paper published in the last twenty years has been incremental. Researchers spend entire careers fighting over fractions of a percent improvement on systems perfected centuries ago."

"And then Chad Brennan walks in with formations that no living researcher has ever seen."

"Exactly. The peer reviewers didn't care about the methodology. They didn't care that he used ChatGPT. The data is novel. The formations are new. That alone makes it publishable, because there is nothing else like it in the literature." Vivian heard papers shuffling on his end of the line.

"Where did you even get these formations?" Whitmore asked.

"The paper mentions 'recovered documents from a cultist's USB stick.'" Vivian had rehearsed this part. Leo had come up with the cover story.

"Leo received a USB stick from a Weaver Cult cultivator named Sariya during the Grand Formation Summit. The stick contained copies of ancient formation systems that she had apparently been researching. We've been working to analyze and catalog the contents." Whitmore was quiet for a moment.

"A USB stick full of never before seen formations from an entirely new formation system."

"Yes."

"And you gave access to Chad Brennan."

"We give access to everyone, Professor."

"I can be in Atlanta by this afternoon. I'll bring my graduate students. All of them. We'll need workspace, access to the source materials, and..." He paused.

"How much free spiritual qi did you say you had available?"

"Enough for four years of research."

"Four years of free qi. Free access to novel formations. And apparently no ethics board oversight because you're operating in a war zone."

"I don't think that's supposed to be a benefit, Professor."

"Miss Xin, do you understand what you've created? No grant applications. No journal fees. No fighting over scraps of qi budget. Just pure original research on formations that nobody else on the planet has ever studied."

"Professor, are you okay?"

"I am better than okay. I am going to publish so many papers. I'm going to put my name on everything. First author, second author, corresponding author, I don't care. By the time I'm done, my citation count is going to look like a phone number. See you in eight hours." The line went dead.