Although Feng Xue had gradually come to accept Old Man Jiang’s theory of cobbling together cybernetic bodies, when he saw the old man preparing to assemble that mess of miscellaneous parts, he finally couldn’t hold it in anymore.
The limbs and whatnot were crude, yes, but at least they looked like proper mechanical prosthetics. Once connected to a power source, they could indeed be controlled normally.
But this torso...
“Doctor Jiang, don’t tell me this tin barrel is supposed to be the body!”
Hearing the conflicted tone in Feng Xue’s voice, Old Man Jiang nodded without the slightest self-awareness.
“That’s right. You’re down to just a head, so there’s no need to make it too complicated. We can skip things like blood-vessel layout. As for the torso, aside from the basic frame and main control computer, as long as we can fit in an air pump and a water pump to ensure blood-oxygen supply, that’ll do. Oh, right, we also need a filtration system, otherwise you’ll end up short two kidneys... Don’t give me that look. The judgment criteria for flesh-and-blood source energy are pretty lenient. With this control system, you could stuff it into a fully solid doll and it’d still work... Oh, I forgot. Our budget isn’t enough. That thing’s way too expensive!”
As Old Man Jiang spoke all kinds of nonsense, he picked up a hammer and started pounding away at the tin barrel.
“You have to trust the skills of this old ju—cough, this old Chinese doctor. Don’t look down on it just because it’s still a barrel right now. I guarantee I’ll hammer you out a perfect figure!”
Feng Xue watched as Old Man Jiang went “ding ding, clang clang,” hammering the tin barrel back and forth. Before long, that originally round barrel had actually been beaten into something resembling a human body, and he had even made movable joints in the abdomen. If Feng Xue hadn’t watched the whole process with his own eyes, he might have suspected the old man had secretly swapped in a finished base body!
“See? This torso has so much space inside. Once I give it a heat treatment, I guarantee it’ll be sturdy and durable!” Old Man Jiang slapped the tin body with loud clangs, mixed the concrete powder from before—the stuff supposedly used as filler in mecha legs—into a paste, and brushed it bit by bit over the inside and outside of the tin body. From time to time, he would also put various devices through the access windows at the waist and chest ports to compare their positions, then weld in one or two brackets. Watching this, Feng Xue once again hallucinated those welding videos by a certain Minister of Justice.
Seeing Old Man Jiang stuff the welded tin body into the oven, Feng Xue felt that his future was bleak, as though he would soon become a postmodern artwork cobbled together out of industrial waste—and the kind no one would buy.
But after his sense of anticipation hit rock bottom, fate played a joke on Feng Xue that was neither too big nor too small. Soon, after Old Man Jiang knocked and hammered all the parts together, this thing—hey! Guess what? It actually looked a little like a T-800!
Except for not having a head.
“How about it? Pretty damn fine, right? Look at this package, tsk tsk, it can even bend!”
Old Man Jiang made a gesture like a fly rubbing its hands together, and that sleazy air instantly made the tiny bit of admiration Feng Xue had just felt vanish without a trace.
But out of responsibility toward himself, he still asked,
“So I can just install this directly? No need for a brain-computer interface or anything?”
At this point, Feng Xue suddenly shut his mouth. Considering that Old Man Jiang had already removed a cochlea before he woke up earlier, maybe he had already installed it?
Unexpectedly, when Old Man Jiang heard this, he waved his hand.
“No need, no need! If you were normally installing a cybernetic body, you’d definitely need a brain-bridge modification to send and receive commands. You’d also need one to two weeks of bodily data collection before making fine adjustments to the cybernetic body based on your physical condition, ensuring that person and prosthesis could integrate better.
“But with your current situation, you’re just a dead head. If I did a brain-bridge modification on you, you’d turn into a cyberpsycho in minutes! We’ll just use brainwave control directly. The reaction speed is a bit slower, but in any case, you’re going to assimilate it with source energy. As for the interface... we’ll make do with a patch-type interface for now!”
With the thought that “if Old Man Jiang wanted to screw me over, there’d be no need to go through so many twists and turns,” Feng Xue didn’t dwell on it too much. As his consciousness gradually grew hazy, after a bizarre and dazzling dream, Feng Xue woke up again.
Only, as his awareness slowly returned, the first thing Feng Xue noticed was not the body he had “regained” after losing it, but rather...
【You have obtained a new entry. It has been stored in the 【Entry Library】. You may open the 【Manufacturing Bench】 to view it.】
Looking at the prompt that had abruptly appeared before his eyes, Feng Xue instantly realized that his golden finger had activated. He didn’t even bother checking what that six-hundred-buck cybernetic body was like and directly tapped the icon in the corner of his vision.
The golden finger’s response speed was extremely fast. Almost the instant his consciousness reached it, it had already opened. When the panel of the Manufacturing Bench appeared before him, the previously empty Entry Library now had one additional item—
【Cheap Goods】.
“I...” Feng Xue nearly overheated with anger because of those three words. But with the thought that “this is a golden finger,” he still calmed himself down and focused his consciousness on those three words. Very soon, just like moving the mouse over a piece of equipment in Diablo II, a somewhat shabby-looking stat panel popped up—
Entry: Cheap Goods
Type: Manufacturing
Quality: Gray Basic (Cannot be upgraded)
Effect: When manufacturing an item, adding this entry can reduce the consumption of basic materials to 10% of the original amount, at the cost of reduced item performance (not below the quality’s lower limit) and the inability to add auxiliary components. Effects of the same type cannot stack.
Remark: Cheap goods, so just make do.
...
“Holy shit? What kind of god-tier entry is this?!”
The slight displeasure Feng Xue had felt instantly vanished without a trace. Perhaps in a game, this kind of entry that lowered equipment attributes while taking up a slot would be trash among trash, but in reality, this thing was a whole different story!
With one portion of materials that others used, he could make ten cybernetic bodies. Forget reduced performance—couldn’t he just deliberately make it at the lowest performance for its current quality tier from the start? In any case, this thing wouldn’t drop in grade. Materials for a four-star cybernetic body would still, at worst, produce a four-star cybernetic body. Of course, the prerequisite was that he had to know how to make one.
Thinking of this, Feng Xue’s heart immediately grew fiery. Mm, it really grew fiery!
“Shit, why is it so hot!”
“You finally reacted!”
Before Feng Xue could process what was happening, Old Man Jiang’s slightly worried voice entered his ears. However...
Why was there so much static in his left ear?
“Hey, hey, can you hear me? That’s not right! All the indicators are fine!” Old Man Jiang waved his arm in front of him and spoke in a rather loud voice. Feng Xue subconsciously wanted to raise his hand, but after a full second, a mechanical arm finally moved beside his ear. By then, Feng Xue had already responded—
“I can hear you. It’s just that there’s a lot of static in my left ear, and I feel a little hot.”
“Oh, the heat is normal. I saw you weren’t waking up for a long time, so I adjusted the parameters of the life-support device. I’ll switch them back for you right away. As for the static, that’s because the artificial ear I installed for you is almost scrapped. After all, flesh-and-blood source energy requires equipment with the same function before it can assimilate it. If you’re not used to it, just turn it off. Here, this is the main control switch for your body.”
As Old Man Jiang spoke, he handed Feng Xue a palm-sized terminal that looked somewhat like a smartphone from his previous life. Feng Xue looked at the silhouette of the robot on it, then actually lagged for nearly two seconds before finally raising his hand to take the device.
Seeing Feng Xue’s delayed movements, Old Man Jiang answered before he could even speak.
“It’s normal for brainwave control to have a delay. It’ll be fine once the flesh-and-blood source energy assimilates it. Cheap goods, so just make do.”
Why would anyone think there’s no generational gap between three-, four-, and five-star? You can’t assume there’s no technological gap just because they all exist in the modern era, right?
From ordinary minivans and electric scooters to missile trucks—if there really were no generational gap, why would only a few countries have them?
The difference between military and civilian use lies in combat power, reliability, stability, and durability.
But the gap between stars is a matter of technological level.
In the book, only Dongda and Gelian can mass-produce five-star items. It’s like how, in reality, only Dongda and Xida can mass-produce mushroom bombs.
Some people might not get it if I talk about luxury cars and tanks, so let’s use consumer graphics cards and workstation graphics cards, civilian computers and company servers instead. That should be easier to understand, right?
Three-star is like integrated graphics or a two- to three-thousand-yuan gaming laptop. It ranges from low-end integrated graphics to high-end 20-series graphics cards, with the peak being 20-series cards with heavily modded VRAM that don’t lose to 50-series cards when running AI image generation.
Four-star is like a 50-series graphics card, or the kind of high-end computer for rich people that easily costs tens of thousands or over a hundred thousand. You can’t think there’s no generational gap between 20-series and 50-series graphics cards just because they both exist in reality!
As for five-star, that’s a supercomputer.