“Ring, ring, ring…”
With the alarm clock’s ringing, Feng Xue jolted awake from his light sleep. He had not slept well last night. Corpses, blood, all manner of images kept flashing back through his mind. Still, this body of his had at least been generated by blood-and-flesh source energy; in a certain sense, it could be regarded as “the optimal state his own genes could reach under normal development.” He merely stretched hard, and that trace of fatigue was already dispelled.
Last night, he had crafted five pairs of prosthetic arms, all in the combination of cheap goods + subdermal armor + lightweight (Note ①), emphasizing one thing above all else: toughness and durability.
As for why they were all hands… it was because, in a place like the slums, hands sold the best. Whether one went to a factory assembly line to tighten screws, or worked logistics in a loading and unloading department, a pair of high-load, low-consumption arms was absolutely a necessary choice. Even for someone looking to join a gang, a sturdy pair of prosthetic arms like these was decent starting equipment.
The only problem was that Feng Xue was somewhat worried about the safety of the black market.
Although he had learned where the Rust Zone’s black market was from the materials the old man had left behind, he had never been there. And with the old man’s enemies still unknown, he was also somewhat concerned about the safety of the journey.
“Forget it. I’ll enter the battlefield first. If I really can’t think of any other solution, I’ll go to Xie Miao. On the surface, he runs a pawnshop, after all. Even if the price is a little low, at least I can get rid of them.”
Thinking this, Feng Xue opened his golden finger, looked at the cooldown that had already returned to zero, and selected the [Garbage Dump] map.
[Create character?]
“Yes!”
…
Entering battlefield: Garbage Dump
Preparation time: 59 seconds
Battlefield intensity: Low
Evacuation condition: Reach the evacuation point (marked) and remain there for 15 seconds to evacuate successfully.
Evacuation time limit: 6 hours
Evacuation failure: Loss of synchronization
Random side missions:
1. Precision Recycling: Collect five materials rated 3 stars or above (0/5)
2. Cleanup Master: Kill ten Cleaners (0/10)
3. Wasteland Ghost: Complete evacuation without engaging in combat.
…
The familiar prompts appeared before his eyes, but at this moment, Feng Xue had no mind to consider much of anything, because he was devoting all his attention to dealing with the vast amount of information that had suddenly poured into his mind.
They were two skills composed of enormous amounts of information, completely different from something like [Great Strength], which could be deployed with nothing more than the thought to “activate” it—
[Hell Sword]: A martial art evolved from the Dharma Sutra. Fusing with metal blades is only its outward appearance, and sword techniques and saber moves are merely its surface. Its essence is an unsurpassed secret art that pours one’s own intent into achieving unity of man and sword.
[Heavenly Martial Killing Path]: An ultimate art that requires severing emotion and abandoning righteousness, yet can only display its power in the hands of those who value emotion and righteousness deeply. It manifests different properties in different people’s hands, and requires affection and loyalty as nourishment to feed domineering will and killing intent. The more one loses, the more its power can be brought forth.
The contents in his mind were less like two skills and more like two schools of martial arts. Although they could also be used directly as skills, that would be no different from a reckless waste of heavenly gifts.
Feng Xue calmly exhaled. By now, the countdown had long since ended, but he did not act immediately. Instead, he calmly extended his left hand.
A blade glinting with cold light emerged from the palm that had already transformed into flesh and blood, until it extended into a Chinese longsword about eighty centimeters in length, its entire body forged from Damu alloy.
The short sword Feng Xue had originally used for the [Dark Sword] entry was clearly not this long, nor could it possibly have been this long. But at this moment, perhaps because of some habitual cognition of Feng Xue’s, it had taken on the appearance of the most common swords from the wuxia films of his previous life.
Holding the longsword just like that, he began to swing it as if no one else were present.
His movements were childish, laughable, and awkward, like a young child who had watched a wuxia film and could not wait to pick up a wooden stick and wave it around. Yet the characteristics of a [skill] as defined by his golden finger allowed him, no matter how clumsy he was, to use these two martial arts all the same.
And as he danced in self-absorption, a bit of sharpness gradually entered those green and immature movements.
To say that Old Jiang’s kindness toward Feng Xue was as heavy as a mountain would not be an exaggeration. The grace of saving his life, the affection of passing down the Dao—if it had been before, Feng Xue would inevitably still have carried some suspicion in his heart, suspecting this unfounded kindness. But now, after Old Jiang’s death, that suspicion had also turned into guilt.
Feng Xue did not have much in the way of domineering will, but driven by gratitude, loyalty, and guilt, his killing intent toward the murderer who had killed the old man was already boiling over.
Feng Xue did not understand Magnetic Field Rotation, but these two martial arts did not require Magnetic Field Rotation to begin with.
With the support of the action-module training module, the Illusory Dragon Soul Type-3 chip displayed at this moment the performance befitting a five-star prosthetic core control hub. Each movement was broken down, then recoded in a way Feng Xue’s brain could more easily memorize, stored, and with every rehearsal, this set of algorithms was optimized.
Feng Xue worked hard to memorize these two sets of martial arts, even giving rise to a few traces of regret in his heart. After all, once this character died in the battlefield instance, before he scraped together sixty thousand credit points to craft another one, he would no longer be able to rely on the [skill] advantage of “certainly using it correctly,” nor would he have a suitable weapon that had already achieved unity of man and sword. He would only be able to study on his own from the manuals in his head.
It was just that the Heavenly Martial Killing Path was, in itself, a martial art filled with hostility. As Feng Xue practiced, that pent-up breath of gloom in his heart was also continuously accumulating.
For an expert skilled in the martial way, such a state would instead be beneficial for deep study of the Heavenly Martial Killing Path. But Feng Xue was ultimately only a martial arts novice. He was merely using the power granted by this golden finger, [skills], to forcibly drive ultimate techniques that far exceeded his realm and that he had hardly practiced at all.
Fortunately, this was the Garbage Dump. And here, there was no shortage of garbage!
“Kid, that sword’s not bad! Lend it to your brothers for a look?”
A voice clearly harboring ill intent came from a corner. Feng Xue swept his peripheral vision over and saw that, at some point, he had already been surrounded.
Having entered the battlefield so many times, and having followed the old man to receive so many patients, he could now easily distinguish between scavengers, Cleaners, and gang members.
And people who wandered around the Garbage Dump in groups like this should belong to a fairly sizable gang.
He drew his sword into a finishing posture, while a bit of killing intent rose in his heart, only to be forcibly suppressed by him. Looking at those expressions composed of greed, mockery, and cruelty, Feng Xue merely calmly resisted the agitation in his heart that was becoming somewhat impossible to restrain.
“Kid, you deaf? Brother Quan is talking to you!”
A thug with a dyed green mohawk suddenly stepped forward. His right arm, made entirely of metal, reached straight toward Feng Xue’s neck. The gazes of those watching grew even more brazen, and obscene, unbearable filth rang out along with their laughter. But in the next instant, a bone-deep chill made every sound come to an abrupt stop, leaving only a deathly silence.
“Shua!” The sound of blood spraying mingled with a leaking, bubbling noise as it gushed from the fallen green-haired thug’s throat. Feng Xue somewhat clumsily flicked the filthy blood from the edge of his sword, and a kind of unprecedented exhilaration surfaced in his heart.
Killing someone did not seem to be that hard?
Note ①: Although this was mentioned before, to avoid confusion, here it is again: crafting prosthetics can only use one manufacturing entry. One- to two-star prosthetics can have one trait and cannot add skills. Three-star ones can have one skill and one trait. Four-star ones can have two skills and one trait. The protagonist has not seen anything higher-level, so he does not know for now.
As for why the protagonist here uses two manufacturing entries, cheap goods + subdermal armor, it is because cheap goods is used to craft the basic components, and then subdermal armor is used for assembly, thereby achieving a basic three-star prosthetic with high defense, low consumption, and low weight using one-tenth of the materials.
Incidentally, if the protagonist could obtain manufacturing entries for other basic materials, he could even use cheap goods to process the most basic parts like screws, then use another basic manufacturing entry to assemble them into secondary parts like frames, hydraulic rods, and power supplies, and then use Dark Sword or subdermal armor to assemble them into finished prosthetics. In theory, this can be nested, but manufacturing entries that can be used for parts processing are not easy to find. At present, Dark Sword, subdermal armor, and Perfect Companion can only be used for assembling finished prosthetics. So he can only nest two layers.