“Skill-type… the third kind of entry. Judging from its current performance, Manufacturing affects the composition of the prosthetic body, Traits take effect passively, and Skills need to be actively triggered?”
Feng Xue looked at the [Great Strength] entry and muttered thoughtfully. Then he opened his golden finger again and found that the battlefield was still selectable, but the character creation interface had turned gray. In the lower right corner of the interface, there was also a twenty-four-hour countdown.
This seemed to mean that his golden finger did not—at least for now—have a limit on the number of uses. As long as the character could successfully evacuate, he could run it any number of times, but if the character failed to evacuate, he would have to wait for a twenty-four-hour cooldown.
But even if he could create an account right now, Feng Xue would not do it. Rubbing together a character took more than a dozen jin of materials—thirty kilograms after the flesh-and-blood source energy conversion. Some wastage while practicing was normal, but too much would be hard to justify.
Besides, the performance of prosthetic bodies made from cheap goods was honestly a bit underwhelming. Rather than wasting materials here, he might as well think more about how to put together a character that could actually be of use.
“Right now, apart from Cheap Goods and Lightweight, I have the two entries Battle Continuation and Great Strength. Battle Continuation can only be put on one piece, but Great Strength is a pretty good burst option. Doubling the boost means triple output. After being assimilated by the flesh-and-blood ability, even at the lowest level it should still have the physical qualities of a healthy adult male. That’s quite impressive.”
At this thought, Feng Xue suddenly found it hard to keep lying down. He immediately wanted to get up, but in the end, his reason pressed him back onto the bed. He merely began planning what came next in his mind.
The failure of this exploration was not merely due to the gap in character performance. His lack of combat experience and shallow understanding of scavenger behavior patterns were the core reasons for his failure.
Of course, forgetting to bring a weapon on his first entry was also a problem.
And so, Old Man Jiang suddenly discovered that Feng Xue, this kid who seemed to have just passed his initial excitement for learning and had begun to grow lazy, had inexplicably started pushing himself again.
“No, I mean, what did you suddenly remember?” Old Man Jiang looked at Feng Xue in some puzzlement. Judging from the kid’s physiological state, there should not have been any change, but for a student who had just entered a slump to suddenly start working hard again, he could not think of any other reason.
“Nothing! What’s wrong?” Feng Xue did not quite understand why Old Man Jiang would ask such a question, but he still answered honestly.
Seeing that Feng Xue’s vital signs did not look like he was lying, Old Man Jiang was also full of question marks. He could only shake his head and say,
“Nothing. I just feel that if you keep working this hard, the little bit I have in my hands will soon be completely learned by you.”
“Please don’t joke with me. Forget everything else—just your ability to process Dam alloy with a crappy oven is enough for me to spend a lifetime learning.”
Feng Xue waved his hand. This was not the modesty of someone with a golden finger. In fact, it was precisely because his golden finger could also process Dam alloy that Feng Xue deeply understood just how absurd this old man was.
Dam alloy was extremely powerful in performance, but because it was difficult to process a second time, their little shop had taken in quite a lot of it. Naturally, Feng Xue had tried using his golden finger on it. But in the golden finger’s processing flow, secondary processing of this thing required a massive furnace, precision instruments, and a technical process that, even sped up until the images blurred into afterimages, still took half an hour to finish.
Yet for Old Man Jiang to process the stuff, all he needed was a bottle of ointment, a furnace like an oven, and the time it took to chat for a bit.
No matter how much source energy was involved in this, the mere fact that he could use source energy to replace such a complicated process was enough to show just what kind of absurd technology this sloppy, lecherous-looking old man had mastered.
In response to Feng Xue’s flattery, Old Man Jiang merely waved his hand.
“Don’t be modest. At your current pace, your technical level will catch up very quickly. What remains will only be experience. Once you’ve handled enough prosthetic bodies, you’ll naturally know how to deal with them. As for Dam alloy… I know you want this. Here!”
“Hey, hey! Old man, don’t scare me!” Feng Xue received the formula for the catalytic paste that the old man transmitted over, and his expression immediately changed. How should he put it? This scene was simply like something out of a novel, where a character like the protagonist’s master was about to collect his lunchbox and entrusted his lifetime’s learning to his disciple.
Seeing Feng Xue’s expression, Old Man Jiang instead put on that lecherous smile of his and said,
“You’re scared already? I have even more impressive stuff!”
“Even more impressive?” As soon as Feng Xue heard this, his eyes lit up. Old Man Jiang merely smiled without saying a word, turned his head, and began fiddling with parts.
Seeing this, Feng Xue knew that asking would get him nowhere, so he simply did not ask and let the old man hold it in himself.
For a time, the shop entered a strange silence, but before long, that silence was broken once again.
“Jingle…”
The wind chime hanging above the shop door swayed gently, and a figure suddenly slipped inside.
Although the other party’s clothing and appearance were both extremely ordinary, Feng Xue still recognized him at a glance.
“That ‘cleaner’ from before?”
Feng Xue silently sized him up, only to discover that this time, the man no longer had that intimidating aura from before at all. Instead, he carried a hint of weakness.
The old man had already stepped forward first. Without another word, he gave the man an injection, then said,
“Which family’s hot goods did you set your sights on this time? To actually get injured like this?”
“Bad luck. I had already wrapped things up, but I ran into two mad dogs on my way out. They’ve been dealt with.”
The ordinary man’s tone was still cold, but Feng Xue somehow heard a bit of relaxation in it. Old Man Jiang seemed to mutter something under his breath, then turned to Feng Xue and said,
“What are you standing there for? Help carry him inside!”
“Oh, coming!”
Feng Xue nodded hard and quickly stepped forward to scoop the man up. But the instant his hands touched the other party’s legs, the prompt that an entry had been detected popped up again.
“I’ll endure it!”
Forcefully suppressing the impulse to dismantle one of the customer’s legs on the spot, Feng Xue and Old Man Jiang worked together to carry him into the operating room on the second floor. Watching the old man carry out the surgery with deft hands and feet, Feng Xue also suppressed the urge to ask questions and began studying the old man’s surgical process.
The old man’s surgery could only be described as wildly imaginative, striking here and there without apparent order, yet his speed was astonishingly fast. In just twenty minutes, not only had the patient’s injuries been properly treated, but that entire pile of prosthetic parts had also been maintained one by one.
“Done!” Old Man Jiang tossed the wrench onto the operating table and said in a light tone,
“The damage isn’t too bad. Given your current condition, I don’t recommend adding any more prosthetics. Rest for a couple of months and let your body heal on its own.”
“The consultation fee…” The cleaner struggled to prop up his upper body, but Old Man Jiang waved his hand and said,
“What consultation fee? You think I’m afraid you’ll owe me money and not pay it back? Are you planning not to come to my place anymore? Hurry back and rest for a few days. Once your injuries are healed, just help me get some high-end goods.”
“I will.” The man nodded, then glanced at Feng Xue, who had been watching from the side the entire time. Seeing this, Old Man Jiang smiled and said,
“This is my apprentice. Take care of him more in the future!”
“Fine.”
As for the issue of patents expiring, there’s definitely a time limit, but by the time they expire, that old patent of yours will already be outdated!
Take data cable ports as an example. Setting aside those proprietary ports, just among universal ports, they have already gone through three generations. Let’s assume the first-generation port was patented. Then if you wanted to make a port, you would either have to pay patent licensing fees or work around that patent. Of course, you could also develop based on the other party’s patent, but before that patent expired, none of your technologies based on the other party’s patent could be monetized.
Meanwhile, the other party could absolutely begin releasing second-generation patented ports within the duration of the first-generation patent, then transition smoothly. By the time the first-generation patent expired, the second-generation patent would already have accumulated enough users. That way, you would already be behind on the second-generation port.
By the time you worked around that patent, or when the patent expired, they might even have begun putting third-generation ports on the market. Are you going to use your already outdated first- and second-generation port technology, or start from scratch and chase the third generation?
As for poor people using outdated technology… putting aside whether someone in an era of 100m/s networks could accept a transfer speed of 100k/s, first of all, the devices themselves might not even be compatible anymore. Take online games, for example. If you can’t complete data exchange within the allotted time, you can only disconnect.
More importantly, the Ge Union is a capitalist system. They can even use the law to stipulate a “legal port,” and only those that conform to the legal port standard are legal.
Wireless patents are the same. It may not necessarily be a patent on “wireless signals,” but rather patents on related protocols and algorithms. If the authorities stipulate that wireless must use this algorithm, then there’s no way for you to work around it.