Hearing Old Jiang say this, Feng Xue naturally knew the man was looking out for him. He hurriedly nodded in agreement, got up, scooped a pile of parts from the white scrap heap, and ran toward the small workshop the old man had modified for him.
Only after Feng Xue had entered the workshop did Old Jiang set down the teacup in his hand. He gave the prosthetic body Feng Xue had pieced together a meaningful look, and the praise he had been holding back finally surfaced.
In today’s work, he had actually used a little trick outside the rules. Just as the source energy of the flesh system possessed the supernatural ability to overwrite machinery with flesh-and-blood information, his own source energy could likewise impose his will upon parts.
But this was not cheating, nor had he fooled Feng Xue. It was precisely because he knew where the problems in those parts lay that he could complete the processing so effortlessly. Conversely, even without using his ability, as long as he knew where the problems were and spent a little more time, he could have achieved the same result.
Feng Xue was a promising seedling. Unfortunately, his source energy had already been fixed. If he wanted to reach this level without relying on source energy, he would undoubtedly need far more tempering. As for the matter of source energy…
“I’ll tell the kid once he manages to piece together a three-star prosthetic body.”
…
That night, Feng Xue lay in bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, the image of Old Jiang handcrafting the prosthetic body appeared in his mind.
He suddenly sprang up from the bed, darted into his little workshop in a few steps, looked at the piles of scrap metal that could only be smelted down after all the useful parts had been removed, then looked at the standard parts the old man had exchanged for him. All at once, he gritted his teeth.
“I have a golden finger, damn it!”
It was a little embarrassing to say, but Feng Xue had transmigrated half a month ago, and yet he had never actually used his golden finger. It was not because he was worried about hidden traps or anything like that; he was simply poor.
Now that he finally had parts he could freely use, he naturally could no longer suppress the restlessness in his heart.
“I wonder what form the golden finger’s crafting station activates in.”
Muttering inwardly, Feng Xue opened the golden finger interface. Looking at the slots for [Required Components], [Auxiliary Components], [Extra Affixes], and [Design Blueprint], he discovered that the slots for [Extra Affixes] and [Design Blueprint] had actually gained a red dot.
Feng Xue, who was fairly familiar with visual interfaces, understood at a glance that this meant there were selectable options.
He tapped open the red dot, and sure enough, the only selectable option that appeared under Extra Affixes was [Cheap Goods]. As for [Design Blueprint], a chaotic mess of entries popped up in a long list.
Universal arm skeleton, bioenergy interface, bionic muscle, synthetic skin…
The blueprints Feng Xue had learned from textbooks and from Old Jiang’s hands-on demonstrations all appeared in the entries at this moment. There were even blueprints for the discarded equipment he had dismantled, though aside from the textbook blueprints, most of the others carried the suffix [Incomplete].
Without thinking too much, Feng Xue opened a blueprint for [Universal Right Arm Prosthesis]. As the blueprint entered the slot, the original crafting station interface immediately changed. The phantom outline of an arm appeared before his eyes, and on that phantom, the rearranged slots were now labeled with names—
[Required Component: Right Arm Skeleton]
[Required Component: Power System]
[Required Component: Energy System]
[Required Component: Hand Drive]
[Auxiliary Components: Bionic Skin (Optional), Tactile Feedback (Optional), Data Interface (Optional)…]
With Feng Xue’s current understanding of prosthetic body structures, he understood the processing logic at a glance. However, he did not currently have these components on hand, so he could only reopen [Design Blueprint] and find the design diagram for [Right Arm Skeleton]—
[Universal Right Arm Skeleton]
[Required Component: Main Material]
[Auxiliary Components: Bearings (Optional), Hydraulic Rods (Optional), Coating (Optional)…]
Seeing this, Feng Xue fished out a metal casing from the scrap heap that had already had all its parts removed. Sure enough, a red dot appeared over [Required Component: Main Material]. He tapped it open and saw—
[d6 Steel (763g)]
“Tsk, it’s only d6 grade?”
Feng Xue thought for a moment, but still placed it into the slot. Immediately afterward, the title at the top of the crafting page changed to [1-Star Right Arm Skeleton]. There was also an asterisk after it, followed by a small line of text—[This rating does not represent the final result].
“This evaluation is based on the materials? And this note is way too much of a joke, isn’t it? Does it mean it could turn out even worse? Then doesn’t the note on Cheap Goods saying it won’t fall below the lower quality limit become meaningless? Or is it the other way around? There’s a chance of producing something good?”
Based on his still-shallow knowledge of prosthetic bodies, Feng Xue felt that producing something good was unlikely.
Looking further down, however, he discovered that the craft button was still gray. He had been thinking something along the lines of, “Aren’t auxiliary components optional?” But after looking it over a couple more times, he finally noticed that after [Main Material], there was a note that said “Requires 1kg.”
“Oh, not enough material…”
Feng Xue slapped his forehead, but he did not add more material to craft it. Just as Old Jiang had said, making any number of one-star prosthetic bodies was a loss. Even smelting this rusted d6 steel back down and selling it as ingots would be more profitable than piecing together a one-star prosthetic skeleton.
He turned around and picked through the pile of scrap metal, finally managing to select a little over a hundred grams of [d9 Steel] scrap.
The material system of this world was extremely complex, but for the sake of unified standards, it did have a complete grading system. For example, metals that focused on properties such as strength, toughness, hardness, tensile resistance, wear resistance, and so on were numbered with d.
d1 was basically scrap iron. d7 was roughly on the level of ordinary cast iron. Only materials that reached d8 or above could be considered industrial-grade materials. The Dam alloy previously used to make his skeleton had a grade of d26, enough to serve as the main material for high-end mecha! If it were not for the fact that once that stuff took shape, it was nearly impossible to process, it would never have appeared in a garbage heap.
“Thinking about it that way, the fact that Old Jiang could process Dam alloy with rustic methods really is kind of outrageous!”
When he had watched it back then, he had even thought Old Jiang’s work was rough. Now that he thought about it, the old man was badass as [beep], okay?
He placed the d9 steel into the required component slot. Looking at the “Requires 1kg” entry behind it, then at the material marked (107g), Feng Xue opened [Extra Affixes] and selected [Cheap Goods]. The originally gray craft button immediately turned orange-red, and the title at the top of the crafting interface also changed to [2-Star Right Arm Skeleton].
“Next comes the moment to witness a miracle!”
Feng Xue rubbed his hands together and used his consciousness to trigger the orange-red button. Accompanied by the activation effect of a button being pressed, the scrap metal he had filled into the [Required Component] slot—though in reality it had been sitting on the tabletop—suddenly floated up.
On Feng Xue’s panel, a cutscene CG was playing out, showing this piece of metal being thrown into various machines for processing. In reality, however, what he could see was the metal material constantly twisting, changing, and even giving off a red-hot glow as the interface CG fast-forwarded.
“So it actually feeds back into reality… In that case, I won’t be able to secretly craft prosthetic bodies. That said, although it changes color during heat treatment, it doesn’t actually raise the room temperature. I wonder what would happen if I reached out and touched the material during processing.”