“Ha~” Early in the morning, Feng Xue woke right on time at the call of his biological clock. He subconsciously glanced at the prosthetic body on the workbench, then stretched hard. As he pulled on his clothes, he took out a pouch of nutrient paste and squeezed it into his mouth.
After swallowing the bland, toothpaste-like substance, he finally seemed fully awake. First he checked his inbox, then unhurriedly opened his golden finger. But when he selected the battlefield, he discovered that [Underground Prizefighting] was actually grayed out.
That had never happened with [Garbage Dump]!
Refusing to believe it, he tapped it twice. Seeing the prompt [This battlefield has not yet opened. Please try again later], he quickly understood.
“Right. Even if someone’s fighting at this hour, no one would be watching!”
Although he was itching to test the performance of his new entry, Feng Xue did not settle for [Garbage Dump] or [Automated Factory]. Instead, he tidied up the shop, went out, and took down the closed sign.
Since he had money now, the shop still had to be opened.
After all, “take good care of the shop” was the old man’s only remaining request besides “bring the access pod back to Da Yan.”
“That old man’s dead, and he still wants to find this slum a cheap doctor… He was practically a saint.”
Feng Xue grumbled under his breath, but he still opened the shop door and waited for customers who might arrive at some unknown time. Even if no one came, it did not matter. Compared with the petty profits from a prosthetic clinic, the scavengers at the waste plant were the real big earners!
Never mind that he still had more than three million in hand. That was only enough for him to hover around the low-end four-star level. It was certainly enough to get by in this garbage heap, but he obviously did not want to spend his whole life eating nutrient paste.
Not to mention, he was also shouldering the mission of sending the old man’s access pod back to Da Yan!
A one-day trip through the lawless zone had already made him realize that his current strength was only about the level of a military police squad member. He could not even count as a high-level thug. With this bit of strength, forget going to Da Yan; whether he could even survive in the wilderness was hard to say.
After all, it had not been that long since he ran into that monstrous insect!
“Ring-ring-ring…”
The doorbell suddenly rang. A middle-aged man fitted with two-star engineering prosthetics walked in. He had an honest-looking face and rough skin; with one glance, anyone could tell he was the sort of capable hand who tightened screws in a factory.
“Doctor Feng… Why hasn’t the shop been open these past two days?”
The man seemed to be trying to make a bit of small talk to open the conversation, but Feng Xue merely swept him with a cold glance. Whether the man really did not know or was only pretending, Feng Xue said directly:
“My master died. What needs fixing?”
The man was taken aback by Feng Xue’s blunt, hard answer. He had indeed heard the news, but he also could not find any other shop willing to repair two-star prosthetics at a low price. Even though Feng Xue’s attitude was cold, he still said—
“There’s a bit of a problem with my assembly module.”
“Mm. In any case, let me take a look first.” Feng Xue pointed at the examination counter. The man looked somewhat conflicted. After struggling for a moment, he said:
“The price…”
“Let me look first.” As soon as Feng Xue spoke, he suddenly realized what the man was worried about and shook his head.
“Don’t worry. It’s still the original fee standard.”
“That’s not…” Having his thoughts exposed, the man awkwardly came forward and laid his arm flat on the table, his expression still somewhat tense.
Feng Xue ignored what he might be thinking and simply checked it over on his own. Only then did he say:
“Nothing serious. Open it up, clean out the dust, then replace a connecting rod. Seven credits.”
The man’s nervousness only eased when he heard the quoted price. He immediately took out his terminal and paid.
Feng Xue did not delay either. The tools in his hands danced into blurs, and in a few moves, he had solved the problem. In truth, switching to a sealed casing would greatly reduce the maintenance frequency for this kind of fault, but workers like this had almost no savings. Spending ten credits or so every month was far simpler than spending over a hundred credits to guarantee three to five years. After all, their living environment was destined to make saving money difficult.
“All done. There shouldn’t be any problems for at least a month.” Feng Xue familiarly closed the casing and indicated that the man could test it out. After watching the other party leave, he silently began cultivating the Sword of Hell. Although he did not have Magnetic Field Rotation, the Dharma Sutra itself had not been created for cultivating magnetism!
If even magnetic fields could be cultivated, why couldn’t his flesh-and-blood source energy?
Even if it really could not, wasn’t there still [Flesh Maitreya]? What if it could convert flesh-and-blood source energy into Magnetic Field Rotation?
However, before he could enter meditation, the doorbell rang again. This time, though, it was not a single person who came in, but a dozen or so people all flooding in together. They were neither a gang coming to collect protection fees nor family members accompanying patients. At a glance, it was obvious that every single one of them had come to repair prosthetics.
Feng Xue was slightly stunned, then immediately understood. The man just now had clearly been pushed forward by everyone else to test the waters. After discovering that the price had not changed, they all came in together.
Even though he knew that this group would still pay even if he tripled the price, Feng Xue did not raise it. It was not for the sake of these poor people, but because of that line in Old Jiang’s will: “Don’t let down the skills I taught you.”
What Old Jiang had taught him were crude local methods for controlling costs. He could not raise the prices back up again.
“Tsk. My moral standards are just too high. But then again, if not for the morals I brought from my previous life, the old man might not have been willing to leave this stall to me…”
Feng Xue sighed and began his day of holding the fort. After working no small amount for an entire day, he looked at the profits and found that even without counting labor costs, he had only earned 47 credits.
“Tsk. What a huge loss. I’m not even making as much as a skilled worker!”
He casually complained a couple of times, but Feng Xue had no intention of going back on it. Today’s patients should have been those who had piled up over the past two days; tomorrow there probably would not be this many.
He got up and closed the shop door. Feng Xue was in no hurry to work on tomorrow’s batch of parts. Instead, he opened his golden finger and tapped on [Underground Prizefighting], which had finally become selectable.
[This is the most primitive data exchange market. The hard currency here is your victories and your odds. Hot weapons are psychological comfort needed only by the weak; fist striking flesh is the underlying logic of this place. A nameless nobody or a ring legend? You’ll have to answer that question with your fists!]
A new scene introduction appeared before his eyes. Feng Xue swiftly opened the character creation interface and inserted the prosthetic combination he had already finished preparing last night. Then…
Battlefield, activate!
Entering Battlefield: Underground Prizefighting
Preparation Time: 5 seconds
Battlefield Intensity: Low
Extraction Condition: Reach the extraction point (marked) and remain there for 15 seconds to extract successfully.
Extraction Deadline: 12 hours
Extraction Failure: Loss of synchronization
Random Side Missions:
1. Quick Fight, Quick Finish: Complete a K.O. within 15 seconds.
2. Absolute Powerhouse: Kill the opponent without taking damage.
3. Garbage Time: Fight the full 12 rounds (three minutes per round).
……
“Oh, it didn’t throw me straight into the ring? The layout here looks a bit like a registration desk… Wait! Isn’t this the extraction point? So if I stand on it now…”