Chương 149: What's the Point of Money If Not to Spend It?

Leo touched down on the Sunshifter outside the International Formations Institute with fifteen minutes to spare. He was surprised to see Professor Whitmore waiting for him in the lobby. He'd expected to walk into the building underprepared and face whatever a formal GAO (Government Accountability Office) review was alone.

Whitmore looked exactly as Leo remembered him from the Atlanta Catacombs: rumpled tweed jacket, coffee-stained tie, the permanently exhausted expression of someone who had spent decades fighting grant committees for scraps of funding. He stood up from a bench near the entrance when Leo walked in, and his eyebrows rose.

"You actually came," Whitmore said.

"Was I not supposed to?"

"Miss Xin informed me there was a twenty percent chance you'd read either her email or Professor Vogt's in time." Whitmore gathered a stack of folders from the bench beside him.

"I prepared to represent you at the meeting myself. Miss Xin had you sign a Power of Attorney yesterday. You probably don't remember, but she made sure you were taken care of." Leo felt something unclench in his chest. Vivian had abandoned him to go 'hiking' in the Appalachian wilderness, but apparently she'd arranged backup before she disappeared. He silently upgraded her from "traitor" to "traitor with a conscience."

"The GAO auditors aren't here yet," Whitmore continued, walking toward the elevators.

"This meeting is with Vogt first. She wants to speak with us before the government does."

"That sounds like good news." Whitmore pressed his lips together briefly, as if deciding how much to say.

"Why don't you look like you think it's good news?" Leo asked.

"Professor Vogt and I have our professional differences." The elevator arrived. They stepped inside, and Whitmore pressed the button for the fourth floor.

"What kind of professional differences?" Whitmore stared straight ahead at the closing doors.

"The kind that have been ongoing since before you were born."

Professor Vogt's office occupied a corner of the International Formations Institute's administrative wing, and she was already seated behind her desk when they arrived.

"Mr. Chen." Vogt rose and gestured to the chairs across from her desk.

"Professor Whitmore."

"Professor Vogt." Whitmore settled into one of the chairs.

"The institute treating you well?"

"The institute functions as intended, Professor. That is the benefit of structure." She turned to Leo without waiting for Whitmore to reply.

"Let me begin with the facts." Leo took the other chair. He could feel something in the air between them, the kind of tension that only existed in academia, where the battles were so vicious precisely because the stakes were so small.

"Mr. Chen, the military allocated you a four-year research budget. You spent the entire allocation in four weeks. The Government Accountability Office has initiated a formal review, and as the Principal Investigator on record, you are personally liable for documentation of these expenditures."

"Every expenditure fell within the categories authorized by the grant application," Whitmore said immediately.

"And the results speak for themselves. Over thirty thousand original research papers. Fifty-three percent of the hexagram vocabulary decoded. An entirely new field of formation study opened to the academic community." Vogt set down her pen.

"Legal compliance and responsible stewardship are different things, Professor. A four-year grant is a statement of trust. The government is saying they believe this institution will steward their resources carefully, produce meaningful results over time, and justify continued investment. You do not exhaust that trust before the first quarterly review."

"The purpose of a research grant is to produce research." Whitmore leaned forward.

"We produced more original scholarship in four weeks than the entire country produced in a year. If the GAO wants to complain about efficiency, they should be writing us commendations."

"Commendations." Vogt repeated the word the way she might repeat an incorrect formation derivation on a student's exam.

"For staffing a classified military project with fraternity pledges. For creating a citation network so incestuous that three of your researchers have higher impact scores than tenured professors who have been publishing for thirty years." Leo sat between them, turning his head back and forth like he was watching a tennis match. Neither of them seemed to remember he was in the room.

"You have spent your entire career optimizing for compliance," Whitmore said.

"Filing the correct forms. Attending the right meetings. Cultivating the loyal subordinates. And what has it yielded? A corner office and a reputation for saying no."

"Institutional credibility takes decades to build and moments to destroy, Professor."

"Institutional credibility." Whitmore made it sound like a disease.

"The last refuge of academics who have stopped producing original work." Leo raised his hand.

"What?" they both said, turning to look at him at the same time.

"I was wondering," Leo said carefully, "if maybe we could talk about the thing I'm going to get arrested for." Vogt blinked. Something shifted behind her eyes, and she set the argument aside with visible effort.

"Yes. Of course." She straightened the papers in front of her.

"My apologies, Mr. Chen. Professor Whitmore and I have a tendency to revisit old disagreements."

"Disagreements you initiated," Whitmore muttered. Vogt ignored him.

"The government's concern is the output, Mr. Chen." She pulled a summary sheet from her folder and slid it across the desk toward Leo.

"Your research team published over thirty thousand original papers analyzing the hexagram formation system. The academic community is thrilled. The Department of Defense is not." Leo looked at the sheet in front of him. He could read some of the words.

"The papers essentially reach the same conclusion," Vogt continued.

"The hexagram formations are fascinating from a historical perspective, but wildly inefficient compared to modern systems. They consume three to five times more spiritual qi to achieve equivalent effects. The only advantage, autonomous self-maintenance, is functionally irrelevant in the current wartime economy."

"Negative results are still results," Whitmore said.

"Understanding why something is inefficient advances the field. That is fundamental methodology." Vogt glared at him.

"The Department of Defense does not fund papers that conclude 'theoretically interesting but wildly inefficient'. I have explained this to you before, Professor. Multiple times. Over multiple years." Leo felt the walls closing in. Thirty thousand papers explaining why ancient formations were worse than modern ones. Millions of dollars in spiritual qi spent to confirm what Lord Shattervow had told him before he ever set foot in the Everlasting Empire ruins. The formations were centuries obsolete.

"What does the government actually want?" he asked. Vogt turned back to him.

"The government employs competent analysts, Mr. Chen. Their intelligence reviewers have examined the materials your team studied. They've noted that the hexagram formations you provided were relatively low-tier. Useful for academic study, certainly, but hardly the kind of top tier technology that justifies the resources invested." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. She paused, choosing her next words carefully.

"They suspect you have access to more. Higher-tier formations. Deity Transformation level, or perhaps above. They are unhappy that you have withheld this material from the research team." Leo kept his face neutral. He thought about the Deity Transformation formations he'd screenshotted in the underground city. The ones he'd deliberately kept because three percent royalties on civilization-defining technology was an insult.

"What specifically are they looking for?" he asked.

"Screenshots of Top-tier formations. Anything Deity Transformation Tier or beyond." Vogt folded her hands on her desk.

"The government gave you millions in spiritual qi. They received papers about inefficient ancient technology. They want to know what else you have." Leo kept his mouth shut. He certainly wasn't going to hand over spoils he'd risked his life for at three cents on the dollar, especially the Void Refining formations.

"Mr. Chen." Vogt's voice softened, though only by a degree.

"The GAO audit is tomorrow. If you arrive empty-handed and uncooperative, the outcome will be unfavorable. I am trying to help you, but I need something to work with." Leo sat with that for a moment. The office felt smaller than it had when he walked in. Whitmore watched him with an expression that mixed curiosity and concern in roughly equal measure.

He needed to give the government something real enough to satisfy them, something that sounded valuable but wasn't actually worth anything to him, something that let a bureaucrat somewhere check a box and stop asking questions. Then he remembered Monarch Embercrown. The Vermillion Bird descending on Human Hut Mountain in wings of divine fire. He had drawn the Vermillion Bird array rune thousands of times without ever thinking about what the rune actually depicted. Meeting the inspiration had been humbling.

Leo had taken screenshots. Lots of them. He even had a short video. And if the government wanted Deity Transformation level formation data, well, there was nothing more authentic than the original source material.

"Professor Vogt," Leo said, leaning forward slightly.

"Are you familiar with the Vermillion Bird?" Vogt looked at him like he'd asked her to explain what a triangle was.

"The Vermillion Bird is one of the Four Symbols. Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Black Tortoise, Vermillion Bird. Every formation student learns the Four Symbols array runes in their first year." She tilted her head.

"I taught you how to draw it."

"Right." Leo nodded.

"I have a very good screenshot of a Deity Transformation Vermillion Bird. In a form that no formation master has ever drawn before." Vogt's expression sharpened. The skepticism was still there, but Leo caught something else underneath. He'd seen the same look on Whitmore's face in the Atlanta Catacombs the first time they met. The look of an academic who smelled novel data.

"Is it an orthodox Vermillion Bird?" she asked. Leo understood what she was actually asking. The government wanted to know if this was something useful, something that fit into orthodox modern formation theory, unlike the ancient hexagram systems they had just spent millions confirming were obsolete. Leo smiled. She'd said 'orthodox,' a word that could mean a lot of things. And she'd forgotten to include the words 'array rune.' She was practically begging him to show her pictures of Embercrown.

"I guarantee," Leo said with complete sincerity, "it is the most orthodox Vermillion Bird any formation master has ever seen." This was technically, absolutely, one hundred percent true. The Four Symbols were mythical creatures, divine beasts that existed in legend and formation theory but that no cultivator on Earth or in the Catacombs had ever actually observed.

A photograph of a real Vermillion Bird, a living Deity Transformation spirit beast in her full glory, was by definition the most orthodox representation in existence. You literally could not get more orthodox than the real thing.

"I'm willing to provide a screenshot," Leo continued.

"But I have one condition." Vogt's eyes narrowed.

"What condition?"

"The government signs something. A release, a waiver, whatever you want to call it. A document stating that no one will be held liable for anything if I provide a screenshot of the most orthodox Vermillion Bird anyone has ever seen."

"Why would you need a liability waiver for a formation screenshot?" Leo did not answer that directly.

"I also have lots of other angles. And a small video." Whitmore, who had been watching this exchange with growing interest, leaned back in his chair. He didn't know exactly what Leo was doing, but he knew to let Leo cook. Vogt studied Leo for a long moment. Her fingers tapped against the desk in a slow, deliberate rhythm.

"A liability waiver," she repeated.

"Standard legal protection. You draft something saying that I and all affiliated parties accept no responsibility for any consequences arising from the materials I provide. In exchange, I give you the most orthodox Vermillion Bird screenshot ever captured."

"Mr. Chen." Vogt's voice had gone very careful.

"What exactly am I going to see in this screenshot?" Leo smiled and said nothing. Vogt waited. The silence stretched. When it became clear Leo wasn't going to break it, she tried a different approach.

"Is the material dangerous?"

"She can't hurt us here."

"She?" Leo's smile didn't change. Vogt pinched the bridge of her nose. It was the same gesture she'd made in her office when Vivian first explained that Leo had staffed a classified military project with fraternity pledges.

"I will draft the waiver," she said finally.

"And I will regret this."

"Probably," Leo agreed.

"I also want an independent arbitrator. A neutral party with no government or Institute ties, present when I hand over the materials."

"That is outside standard procedure."

"So is what I'm about to show the government." Whitmore laughed. Vogt did not.

It took three rounds of redlining and two days of back-and-forth with the Institute's legal office before anyone signed anything. Vogt handled the negotiations herself. Leo suspected she'd tell anyone who asked that it was about protecting the Institute's interests, but she'd also called him twice to make sure he understood what he was agreeing to before he signed. The evening the waiver was finalized, Leo sent the screenshots from his apartment.

All forty-three photographs of Monarch Embercrown, including two of her bird form and her transformation. The short video. A brief note that read: "Most orthodox Vermillion Bird ever captured. As discussed." Then he turned off his phone and closed his laptop. He had learned something from Morimoto, of all people. The government was bound by its own rules. The waiver was signed. The independent arbitrator was on record.

He had promised the most orthodox Vermillion Bird ever captured, and that was what he had delivered. Every word was technically true. All Leo had to do now was nothing. No calls. No emails. No anxious check-ins that gave some mid-level analyst an opening to renegotiate. Just silence, and the quiet confidence of a man whose paperwork was impeccable. So he waited.

Three days later, he took his phone out of the fridge, turned it on, and found eleven missed calls from Vogt, forty-seven frantic texts from Kevin, and one email from Professor Vogt with the subject line: "New Terms. Please Read Before Signing (For Once)." He opened it. The government had accepted the Vermillion Bird materials.

The GAO review had been quietly downgraded from "formal investigation" to "administrative reconciliation," which Leo hoped meant someone at the Government Accountability Office had decided this was no longer worth the headache. Vogt explained in the email that the government wanted him to sign a new research partnership agreement. This time they would do all the work and the only thing he needed to do was provide the screenshots.

He would get ten percent royalties on any Deity Transformation or Void Refining formation screenshots he provided. Paid in cash, not equivalent spiritual qi. Leo stared at the number. Ten percent was better than three. A lot better. But maybe he could get twenty. He heard the front door open. Vivian walked in looking suspiciously pale for someone who had supposedly spent three days 'hiking' through the Appalachian wilderness.

Her skin had the kind of glow that came from spiritual cucumber masks and formation steam rooms, her hair was freshly styled, and someone had clearly done her nails recently.

"You look well-rested," Leo said.

"The trail was very relaxing." She dropped her bag on his couch and sat down across from him.

"I see you survived."

"Barely. I had to put my phone in the fridge." Vivian studied his face for a moment, the way she always did when she was trying to figure out whether he'd gotten lucky or whether he'd actually known what he was doing. Leo had never been sure himself.

"The government isn't happy with you," she said.

"They were expecting a formation diagram, something they could hand to a research team and reproduce. What you gave them was candid photographs of a woman."

"That sounds like a them problem, not a me problem. Besides, Whitmore already published two research papers on the anatomical correspondence between the living Vermillion Bird and traditional Four Symbols iconography. He has five more coming. He's on track for the Heavenly Formations Prize this year."

"You're impossible."

"I'm also getting ten percent now instead of three." He tilted his phone toward her so she could see Vogt's email.

"Cash, not qi." Vivian read the terms. Her expression shifted through several stages before settling on her usual mild exasperation.

"Don't push for more," she said.

"I wasn't going to."

"You were thinking about it."

"I was thinking about it," he admitted. Vivian made a note on her tablet.

"Kevin might have more screenshots from the underground city. I'll take the train over to Queens and check." She paused at the door.

"For the record," she said, "Whitmore called me. He said you handled Vogt well."

"High praise from a man who thinks institutional credibility is a disease."

"He also said you should still read things before you sign them."

"I read Vogt's email."

"Vogt's summary doesn't count, Leo. You need to read the contract too." She left. Leo looked at the new contract on his phone. It was fourteen pages long. He read the first paragraph. Then he signed it. Progress.