Chapter 282: Education

"What did you just give me to drink? My body feels so hot and strange right now."

In the three-dimensional warehouse, Hui Yu said to Li Cheng with flushed cheeks, unable to help but let out a soft hum.

"Yogurt Me's new milk tea. If you're not drinking it, give it back."

Li Cheng's eye twitched. He snatched the Yogurt Me from Hui Yu's hand, then ducked back under the gun turret to keep tightening screws.

It had been over half a month since the Toy City deathmatch mission. This stretch had been unexpectedly peaceful—no slaughter stage missions had come in, and neither Bart Mo Si nor Seeing Gouchen had come seeking revenge.

That's right, Seeing Gouchen was still alive. In the real world, as an outstanding representative of young entrepreneurs, he had even attended a UN-affiliated charity event in Southeast Asia.

As for Bart Mo Si, probably because Li Cheng and Seeing Gouchen were both still alive, he couldn't figure out which of the two had actually won the deathmatch, so he hadn't made a big fuss about it either.

But there was no guarantee that Bart Mo Si and Seeing Gouchen wouldn't make contact in the future.

So Li Cheng had spent this period busy improving his own strength.

First was the Gearsmith class. After day after day of tightening screws and reading books, going from imitation and replication to invention and creation, the Gearsmith class had leveled up again.

The caliber of magic cannon he could create had been raised from 122mm to 155mm.

The new magic cannon was modeled after the real-world domestically produced SH16A wheeled unmanned turret howitzer, with a 52-caliber barrel, available in wheeled, tracked, and multi-legged chassis variants for swapping,

and it employed automation and information technology, able to network with the drones Li Cheng commonly used, automatically completing howitzer deployment, ammunition loading, gun adjustment and firing, gun retraction and withdrawal, and other procedures.

Paired with laser-guided shells, cluster munitions, high-explosive fragmentation shells, smoke shells, illumination shells, white phosphorus shells, and other different shell types, it could handle different combat environments and mission requirements.

If loaded with rocket-assisted gliding shells, the maximum range could even reach an absurd 100 kilometers—of course, ordinary scenario missions wouldn't need such far-off fire support.

If one absolutely had to name a flaw of the new magic cannon, there was probably only one: it was expensive.

Li Cheng spent five thousand game coins to buy a large amount of enchanted metal from Slum Street, experimented repeatedly, and finally managed to forge high-strength legs, allowing the magic cannon to maneuver quickly in complex environments, instead of being stuck the moment it encountered steep slopes, stairs, ruins, or mud.

And to cover the deficit from developing the magic cannon, Li Cheng first used a 【Perfect Ten Great Tonic Pill】 he'd taken three bites out of as collateral to take out a loan of twelve thousand game coins from a commercial bank on Slum Street,

then used those twelve thousand to buy relics on the forum black market, tossed all the relics into the Toy Factory, and refined them in batches into one perfect-quality and two premium item props.

They were respectively 【Water-Repelling Sword】, a close-body soft sword, usable only by players who are biologically female or psychologically identify as female, its strikes silent, formless, and shadowless, specialized in assassination.

Sold for thirteen thousand.

【690 Tactical Nuclear Graphics Card】, a graphics-card-shaped large bomb that, after delayed detonation, could easily blow up an entire building. Crucially, its volume was small enough to fit in a bag.

Sold for two thousand.

【Pro Gamer Goatane Testicles】, a set of plush decorations shaped like cat testicles. Worn on the body long-term, they could provide the body with a steady stream of testosterone, allowing an untrained ordinary person to quickly build muscle and lose fat in a short time,

even if they gorged on hamburgers, pizza, chocolate, and other calorie bombs every day, they'd still sport an absurdly muscular physique.

In the real world, certain athletes and fitness influencers inject themselves with lots of steroid drugs to externally increase testosterone and enhance muscle growth.

This behavior not only damages the liver, causing the body to break out in acne, lose hair, and drop in IQ,

but also suppresses the body's own testosterone production, causing irreversible shrinkage of the testicles.

But this 【Pro Gamer Goatane Testicles】 had none of the above drawbacks, so even though it was only a premium item decoration, it still fetched an astonishing eight thousand game coins at auction.

Presumably it was bought by some well-known real-world athlete, or a second- or third-generation rich kid.

After all the back and forth, Li Cheng had earned back twenty-three thousand game coins—not only covering the magic cannon's deficit and getting the 【Perfect Ten Great Tonic Pill】 back, but also pocketing eight thousand.

So he took those eight thousand game coins again to collect relics, extract Singularity Points, and unlock a new function of the Toy Factory—the Collection Room.

The Collection Room was located in a corner of the Toy Factory, itself a large space resembling a museum.

According to the Intelligent Core, the Collection Room could store concepts not currently needed for long periods, and when needed, the concepts could be taken out and placed into the Recasting Room.

In the future, it could also be used to store equipment and props that couldn't be sold for the time being, or that had strict preservation requirements.

All the glass display cases in the Collection Room were empty, except for one case labeled "Toy City Crystal Ball" beneath it,

and on the velvet cushion inside that case, there were still traces left behind by the crystal ball pressing down.

Looking at it now, the truth matched Li Cheng's guess exactly—Toy City really was part of the Toy Factory. He just didn't know where Toy City had gone now.

In any case, now that he had the Collection Room, Li Cheng simply tossed the nuclear lighter that had run out of fuel and the rusty machete into the Refining Room, and actually managed to extract C-rank Burning and D-rank Rust concepts.

Presumably it was because Li Cheng had rewritten the futures of Toy City's eight million residents, causing the nuclear lighter and rusty machete that had appeared in the deathmatch mission to also be counted as Singularity items rich in entropy.

"Wait until I've collected concepts of the electronic and mechanical type, maybe I can refine equipment and props like solid-state drives, RAM sticks, CPUs, and the like, and install them in Hui Yu when the time comes."

Thinking of this, Li Cheng, who was lying under the gun turret tightening screws, poked his head out and glanced at Hui Yu,

the girl was happily drinking bubble milk tea, using the straw to spit the pearls up into the air, then wobbling her head to catch them precisely, showing off to Li Cheng every now and then.

Sigh.

Li Cheng ducked his head back under the gun turret to keep tightening screws, with an inexplicable sense of déjà vu that you can be poor at anything but not education, suffer anything but not the child.

Hui Yu wasn't a player, and Li Cheng had no intention of making her one.

As his level kept rising, the difficulty of future missions would only get higher and higher,

so buying Hui Yu some intelligence syrup and learning devices to top up her intelligence might allow more uses of liquid metal to be developed, indirectly boosting strength.

"Hey,"

the friends communication page suddenly buzzed, a message from Yuan Zhixia: "You there?"

Li Cheng slightly raised an eyebrow and replied: "Yeah, what's up."

"There's something I felt I should notify you about."

Yuan Zhixia said: "Your cousin and cousin's wife passed out last night while attending a tutoring class outside, were sent to the hospital, and were diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

At the same time, several hundred cases nationwide and over ten thousand cases worldwide were reported with identical circumstances—all adolescents from middle school to college age.

The Special Affairs Bureau and the Global Paranormal Alliance discovered the same unknown APP, claimed to boost brainpower and enhance learning, on these patients' phones."

"Hmm?"

Li Cheng stopped tightening screws, frowning: "An APP like the ones from the Evil Science Alliance?"

The guild members of the Evil Science Alliance, back in the day to rake in money, had developed plenty of shady apps—summon succubi, turn your luck around, curse your enemies—causing all sorts of trouble.

"We consulted the Evil Science Alliance, and they said it wasn't them. The bureau's experts also appraised it, and confirmed it wasn't."

Yuan Zhixia said: "This APP looks more like, the work of another world."