Chapter 341: Wool

The Slum Street Management Committee may be a bit of a rip-off, but they really are efficient.

Li Cheng paid the fee at the self-service kiosk in the afternoon, picked out the building blueprints, and signed the contract. By evening, the committee had already sent a message saying the construction crew had finished building the two-hundred-square-meter house.

Li Cheng and Hui Yu arrived on-site to take a look, and sure enough, a two-story material building stood abruptly on the empty lot, with tiles on the outside and streetlights already installed,

and the inside was fully finished too—plumbing, electrical, gas, and internet lines all in place.

"Holy crap, is this efficiency even legal?"

Hui Yu walked into the house in shock, touching this and poking that, then discovered that even with her strength, she couldn't quite poke through the walls. "What kind of material is this made of?"

Li Cheng glanced at the inspection sheet posted on the door and said casually, "C200 concrete mixed with steel fibers, with lead plates added inside."

Ordinary single-story buildings generally use C20 or C25 reinforced concrete, high-rises use C30 to C60, and even a cross-sea bridge would be fine with C80.

Using C200 steel-fiber cement was probably to account for the fact that Slum Street prohibits players from harming each other, but doesn't prohibit players from using skills.

Using higher-strength building materials saves you from having some powerhouse passing by and punching the place to smithereens.

After all, compared to land prices that run into the hundreds of millions, the cost of a bit of concrete is dirt cheap.

Li Cheng signed the delivery receipt, and the document immediately turned to ash on its own, leaving behind a business card from the construction crew on the spot.

【Blue Sky Construction Crew. Team members possess abilities including telekinesis, Magneto mutant serum, Steel-Metal Devil Fruit, Wood Release kekkei genkai, Necromancy, etc. Available for high-rise buildings, subway tunnels, gravity dams, haunted houses, nuclear power plants, and other engineering projects.】

【Professional Team · Precise Construction · Transparent Pricing】

【For inquiries, call 135********, or add "Civil Engineering Ashen God of War" as a friend in the player search bar.】

Uh.

Li Cheng looked at the business card with a strange expression.

In a sense, transcedents going into civil engineering do have a bright future. Bodies honed through long training can carry bricks far more efficiently than construction machinery—one person equals an entire crew, and various skills can shorten building cycles.

He tossed the business card aside casually, turned around and pulled down the roller door, then summoned his dimensional warehouse and began arranging the shop's interior.

There wasn't much to set up, really. According to Li Cheng's plan, the shop only needed a dozen or so rows of shelves for selling various props and skill scrolls,

along with a sign posted announcing the purchase of historically significant artifacts from ancient and modern times, China and abroad.

For example, the bullet that killed Lincoln, the crooked old tree that hanged the Chongzhen Emperor, the hard drive containing Detective Conan that bin Laden had on his computer—yes, that thing was really on Laden's computer.

Just don't know whether he was team Conan or team Haibara.

"The Toy Factory isn't picky—it can absorb artifacts from both the real Earth and script worlds. When the time comes, I'll level the Factory to Lv. 1 and the Recasting Room to Lv. 2, and the production line efficiency will be even higher."

Li Cheng muttered, hauling shelves, counters, monitors, routers, and the most important of all—the 【Hands-Off Boss Terminal】—out of the dimensional warehouse.

This thing was a Prometheus product, roughly equivalent to an upgraded unmanned supermarket. Besides self-checkout, customers could also leave messages for the shop owner through the terminal and place pre-orders.

"Woo-hoo~"

Hui Yu transformed a pair of inline skates onto her feet and skated around the empty room, occasionally helping Li Cheng with the interior setup. Suddenly she thought of something and asked, puzzled, "Oh right, what are we naming our shop?"

Li Cheng answered without hesitation, "Convenience Store."

"Huh? Isn't that way too casual?"

"Just throwing something together. We've got exclusive supply capabilities like custom props and skill scrolls anyway, so we won't have to worry about business."

Li Cheng said casually, standing on a ladder installing surveillance cameras on the ceiling.

He'd never had any talent for naming things, and besides, Slum Street wasn't so small nor so big—as long as the shop's business was impressive enough, related posts would quickly rise to the front page of the player forum.

"That won't do—even the best wine fears a deep alley."

Hui Yu shook her head like a rattle-drum. "Pick something proper and domineering. Then when I go out to buy e-cigarettes without bringing money and face dozens of snobbish, mocking shop clerks, I can loudly proclaim I'm the proprietress of some big-name chain store."

"What e-cigarette shop is so high-end it can hire dozens of clerks—Ding Zhen Flagship Store, right?"

Li Cheng, feeling a headache coming on, screwed the surveillance camera into place. "Then you tell me what to call it."

"Hmm—"

Hui Yu squinted her eyes and thought for a moment. "The Toy Factory can extract concepts from artifacts of different eras, piece them together, and manufacture equipment and scrolls. How about we call it 【Piece-Together-Well】?" Li Cheng rolled his eyes. "Why not just call it 【Hungry Yet】?"

Hui Yu rubbed her chin and said seriously, "Forging secret treasures, hammering out emperor weapons—let's just call it 【Secret Blood Weapon City】."

Li Cheng sighed. "If you want milk tea, just say so. You can still use today's coupon if you order now."

Hui Yu slapped her palm and said with sudden realization, "Our door number on this street is 8, so let's call it 【Pawnshop No. 8】."

Li Cheng heard this and exclaimed in surprise, "Workout—you've even seen that ancient Taiwanese drama? How many hours a day do you spend binge-watching shows and Douyin?"

"It's not like that," Hui Yu stuck out her tongue. "I only spend ninety-six hours a day on my phone."

Ever since Li Cheng used the Assembled Plushie·Modified to install a CPU and solid-state drive into Hui Yu, her memory capacity had expanded considerably,

and whenever she had nothing to do, she'd split off several small clones to simultaneously play games, binge shows, listen to audio novels, read manga, and do homework—wishing she could squeeze 168 hours out of a single day to play around.

The only downside was that too much information flooding in would cause slight confusion and deviation in her memory.

Like when writing her Chinese composition, she'd write: "I really like a quote from Emperor Zhaolie of Han, Liu Bei: 'When you're out in the world, the most important thing is loyalty.'"

!

The two chatted idly,

and after ruling out a series of names like 【Huaqiangbei】, 【Pang Donglai】, 【Ku Lai Xi Ku】, 【Jesus Doesn't Want to See, Covers His Eyes With His Hands But There Are Holes in Them】, 【Mamba BBQ】 (this shop really exists in Shenyang), 【Imperial Illusory Dream】, 【Mickey's Not-So-Great House】, and so on,

they ultimately settled on a relatively proper name: 【Zhu Xing Zhen Tai】.

"That's done."

Li Cheng clapped his hands, hung the plaque under the eaves, and set up a sign at the door listing the prices.

Custom rare-grade equipment/skill scrolls: 800–1,200 game coins. Production time: three days.

Fine grade: 2,300–3,500 game coins. Production time: five to seven days.

Perfect grade: price negotiable, production time variable. Best to bring an artifact sharing the same concept as the item being commissioned.

As for medical and body modification services, starting at 800 game coins.

After finishing all this, he went to the homepage of the player forum and spent twenty game coins to buy an ad slot, posting the shop's information there.

【Zhu Xing Zhen Tai—Fair Prices, No One Cheated, Young or Old】

"Mm."

Hui Yu rolled her eyes, racking her clever little brain, and asked doubtfully, "If we also list the requirement to purchase cultural relics on it, won't it expose the toy factory's operating mechanism?

Letting those big guilds guess that we're using cultural relics as raw materials to forge items?"

"It will, but it doesn't matter."

Li Cheng said casually, "Once the business expands, it's bound to attract the attention of competitors, commercial spies, information brokers, and headhunting firms. Mass purchasing of cultural relics is something that can't be hidden for long.

And the factory itself is located in a remote area — the physical distance from Slum Street has to be measured in astronomical units. Even if they guess the operating mechanism, there's no way for them to seize it by force or trickery."

The logistics departments of those big guilds, when they want to craft equipment and props, still need to use extraordinary materials like dragon blood and phoenix feathers. The toy factory directly uses mortal-world cultural relics, and only looks at historical influence, not at how precious they are.

Compared to the former, it's practically a no-cost business — many cultural relics that ordinary players bring out from script worlds are hard to liquidate. Things like the Terracotta Warriors, the Sword of Goujian, the Simuwu Square Ding — even if someone's selling them, no rich merchant dares to buy. After all, it's not like they can say, 'The Forbidden City has one, I have one; what the Forbidden City hasn't built, I've built.'"

For these players, it's better to hand the cultural relics over to Li Cheng's 【Zhu Xing Zhen Tai】, and sell them for a little pocket money or commission custom items.

And from a single precious cultural relic, sometimes multiple concepts can be extracted. When crafting equipment, Li Cheng can completely intercept and keep the concepts he doesn't need for this particular craft, store them in the collection room for his own private hoarding, and ruthlessly shear the customers' wool.

Then turn around and the customers still have to thank him."

Li Cheng and Hui Yu reveled in their future commercial empire, feeling that even the streetlamp at the door had grown a few shades brighter.

(End of this chapter)