Chapter 7322

Charlie said with a smile.

“All you need is to boil water.”

“And a little spiritual energy will suffice.”

“You can eat here by the window,”

“Or even outside in the freezing cold if you want.”

Maria’s eyes lit up, and she exclaimed with delight,

“I almost forgot that your cultivation can also be converted into heat!”

“If that’s true, I’d really like to try eating hot pot on the Antarctic ice sheet where temperatures are tens of degrees below zero.”

“Does what you said earlier count?”

Charlie nodded with a smile,

“Of course it counts.”

“There are only four of us within a hundred kilometers.”

“So there’s nothing to worry about eating outside.”

“Here’s what we’ll do: once the ingredients are ready, we’ll take them all out.”

“I can protect the vegetables and other ingredients with my spiritual energy so they won’t freeze.”

Maria agreed with a smile and happily returned to her room.

Jeremiah and Ria also went to the kitchen at the back of the research station.

The Nordic research station was quite large for four people.

The kitchen was over a hundred meters away,

And they had to pass through the station’s work area,

Fitness area, and dining area before reaching the kitchen.

Charlie remained alone in the hall, gazing at the vast ice plains and the ever-changing aurora borealis outside the window.

He suddenly recalled the mysterious entity that had guided him under the aurora.

It had not only taught him the Great Sun Tathagata hand seals.

But had even led him to that mysterious and vast underground city.

Charlie thought to himself, since it knew about that underground city,

It must be related to those advanced cultivators.

Perhaps it was even something they had left behind.

But what exactly was it?

Or rather, where was it hidden?

While Jeremiah and Ria dawdled over preparing the ingredients,

Charlie had already moved the table onto the vast, icy plain.

The biting wind was icy cold, but it didn’t bother him much.

On the contrary, he liked this apocalyptic environment and its rugged, sharp feel.

The delicate Maria followed beside him with the hot pot broth.

Charlie didn’t bring fresh water from the research station.

Instead, he used his spiritual energy to cut a deep pit in the ice,

Then scooped out a pure, almost transparent block of ice and placed it in the pot.

He then gathered his spiritual energy in his palm and gently pressed it against the pot’s side.

The large block of ice immediately began to melt into water,

Which boiled in a very short time.

Maria watched in amazement, adding hot pot broth to the boiling water while remarking to Charlie,

“Young Master, spiritual energy is so precious,”

“Isn’t it a bit wasteful to use it for hot pot?”

Charlie smiled and said,

“It’s alright, but ultimately,”

“It feels like using diamonds to cook hot pot.”

“Luckily, I have tons of diamonds.”

Maria smiled knowingly and nodded gently.

It was only then that she realized that Charlie.

This calm and composed man actually had a touch of romance.

Charlie saying that using spiritual energy to cook hot pot was equivalent to using diamonds wasn’t an exaggeration at all.

Diamonds are also carbon, and their calorific value might be similar to that of an equal weight of coal,

But their price could be hundreds of millions of times different.

A hot pot meal that can be cooked with just a few kilowatt-hours of electricity,

Even in Antarctica using an expensive diesel generator,

Wouldn’t cost more than one dollar per kilowatt-hour, including the transportation cost of diesel.

However, the spiritual energy Charlie used to cook the hot pot was invaluable.

Spiritual energy is very much like electricity in a technological society.

Electricity can be converted into various forms of energy: power, heat, light, and even computing power.

As for spiritual energy, in Charlie’s view, aside from the fact that it couldn’t be converted into computing power,

It was almost indistinguishable from electricity.

However, in terms of value, the price per unit of energy consumption of spiritual energy was far too high.

Electricity came from wind, water, light, and heat, but spiritual energy could only be reliably obtained from pills and spirit stones.

It was at this moment that Charlie understood even more clearly that the so-called Dharma-ending Age was actually an age of depletion in the cultivation world.

They had exhausted all the energy sources on which this planet depended for cultivation;

To them, this place was a dead planet.

Refining a Rejuvenation Pill didn’t consume much spiritual energy,

But it was worth hundreds of billions of dollars to the wealthy.

This was, in fact, the value of spiritual energy.

The spiritual energy Charlie used to cook a hot pot, if directly injected into an ordinary person’s body,

Could at least extend their lifespan by three to five years,

Or completely cure a terminal cancer patient whose cancer had spread throughout their body.

Using it to cook hot pot now was indeed somewhat wasteful.

Charlie didn’t care. Maria wanted hot pot, and he wanted to eat hot pot in the freezing cold.

Isn’t life about doing what makes you happy?

Jeremiah and Ria happened to arrive with ingredients at that moment.

Seeing Charlie use his spiritual energy to boil the water,

They couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret.

When the four of them sat down in the snow,

Charlie used several small arrays to keep their dipping sauce bowls warm, preventing them from freezing due to the extreme cold.

Despite the howling wind, the food remained piping hot.

Charlie had never imagined that eating open-air hot pot under the polar night and aurora borealis of minus sixty degrees Celsius in Antarctica would be so enjoyable.

The distant aurora was dreamlike and ethereal. Charlie gazed at it, somewhat lost in thought.

Today, the aurora seemed to have received no guidance, nor did it display any strange patterns.

It seemed the mysterious entity within him had begun to hibernate.

However, Charlie wasn’t in a hurry.

The mysterious object had already brought him too much, and he wasn’t the kind of person who was greedy.

He was just waiting for the opportunity to come again.

Maria ate the most enjoyable meal.

It seemed that in over three hundred years since her father’s death,

She hadn’t had such a relaxing and comfortable meal.

In Antarctica, where it was always polar night, and she couldn’t even distinguish whether she was eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner,

The weariness and vulnerability that had accumulated in her heart for many years were quickly repaired and smoothed out by this hot pot.

Sometimes, people are like that.

Some wounds take a lifetime to heal, but others only need a moment.

The latter is very much like unwavering love.

Even if the other person has hurt you deeply,

As long as they release undisguised love for you in a certain moment,

You can let go of everything in an instant.

Jeremiah and Ria initially didn’t think that eating in this environment would have any special feeling.

However, when they calmed down and looked at the desolate landscape around them, like an uninhabited planet,

And the profound starry sky above, they suddenly felt an unprecedented sense of openness.

Humans live between heaven and earth, yet rarely have the opportunity to experience that macroscopic feeling of being immersed in the universe.

At this moment, the two seemed to have an epiphany.

After dinner, none of the four suggested going back.

They leaned back in their chairs, their lips curving into undisguised smiles as they appreciated the vastness and desolation.

After a long while, Charlie’s satellite phone suddenly rang.

He took out the phone and found that the caller was his younger, loyal friend, Steve Routhchild.

Charlie answered the phone and asked with a relaxed smile,

“Steve, what good news do you have?”

Steve respectfully replied,

“Mr. Wade, I have two good things to report to you.”

Charlie smiled and said, “Please speak.”

Steve said, “The first thing is that the fish has taken the bait.”

“I’ve started raising the price so he can take the opportunity to sell.”

“I expect he’ll make a fortune within two days.”

“Not bad.”

Charlie nodded slightly, then asked,

“What’s the second thing?”

Steve said, “The second thing, do you remember the AI computing center your family built for you in Northern Europe?”

Charlie hummed in agreement and said,

“Yeah, I remember. What’s up?”

Steve said, “The price of computing power and storage has skyrocketed.”

“That computing center is now worth more than ten times its original price.”

“Even the company our family hired to build that large model has come back to us, saying they’re willing to pay twelve times the premium to buy it back.”

“If you want thirteen or even fifteen times, it’s not impossible to talk to them.”

“But if they don’t want to sell, that’s fine too.”

“They’re willing to rent out the computing power they can’t use.”

“They’ll earn at least tens of billions of US dollars a year.”

Charlie was somewhat shocked and frowned,

“That computing center only cost a total of ten billion US dollars back then.”

“Gold?”

“The annual rent is already in the tens of billions?”

Steve exclaimed.

“Yeah, who wouldn’t say it?”

“This thing is insane! It’s like a mad dog; it just takes off and can’t be stopped.”

“Computing power is currently the most valuable, most sought-after, and fastest-growing commodity on this planet, bar none.”

“Even drug dealers in Mexico and Colombia would weep and call Huang Renxun their patriarch!”

Charlie clicked his tongue in amazement, saying,

“It’s really interesting.”

“I’ve invested so much money in building cars and haven’t even seen a return,”

“But a spur-of-the-moment decision to set up a computing center has yielded a profit of over ten times.”

Steve said, “Who wouldn’t say it, Mr. Wade?”

“I estimate your own computing power needs are probably less than 5% of the entire computing center.”

“You can keep 5% of the remaining 95% as a redundancy and rent out the rest.”

“You can earn tens of billions of dollars a year lying down.”

“This is a worthwhile deal!”