Chapter 538: Inspection

This place

On the bustling street of Loujie, a young man in a Special Affairs Bureau uniform stared at the sign hanging above the opposite side—"Zhu Xing Zhen Tai"—and nervously swallowed.

Strictly speaking, Zhu Xing Zhen Tai truly lived up to its forum advertisement: good value, fair to all, young and old alike.

Especially for novices below Lv7, even if they passed the major guild's assessment and joined successfully, their HR department would still file records, tracking training efficiency, average mission performance, ideological awareness, professional competence, political orientation, and more, adjusting their D-to-S ratings in real time.

Resources were allocated according to rating tiers.

Newcomers rated A or S were seen as having limitless potential, receiving the most professional training, even one-on-one guidance from high-tier transcendents; family resettlement, personal life, and power system reinforcement required no personal deliberation.

Novices rated D, C, or B received only basic-tier training resources.

But Zhu Xing Zhen Tai offered the broad masses of novices a chance to surpass their original limits—if they could muster the resolve to abandon humanity, implanting seventeen or eighteen enhanced organs, or even replacing limbs, they could instantly gain combat power exceeding their current level.

Including, but not limited to: implanting reinforced fibers into the dermal layer of the skin, replacing skeletal joints with servo motors, swapping out eyeballs with the True Eye of the Evil King.

If one could obtain top-tier organs from script worlds or opening crates—such as the Supreme Bone, Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Ring, or Beast God Crystal—and implant them directly, one could defy fate and rewrite destiny, leaping from a D-grade nobody to an S-grade supernova.

Luxury cars, mansions, villas—all within reach.

But those who could open top-tier organs remained a rarity among rarities; most novices still had to settle for common goods, leading frequently to "tragedies" that failed to meet customer expectations.

For example, a customer brought a T-800 chip from the Terminator universe, requesting implantation into the brain to gain a visual tactical interface aiding combat.

The result? It succeeded: the customer could henceforth efficiently parse enemy information within his field of vision, seeing tactical options calculated by the chip and their success rates.

But the cost? The T-800 chip, following its programming, deemed all emotion-driven irrational behaviors as inferior options lowering survival rates.

Everything became prioritized by rationality, permanently altering the customer's personality and character.

He turned off the life-support system of his gravely ill grandfather in the ICU—because when he was in school, his grandfather had scolded him: "People must be independent; you can't live if you're dependent on electronics."

Other cases included implanting Wolverine's adamantium skeleton, only to be sucked away by a powerful magnet at a scrap yard;

Implanting the soul stone of an ancient powerhouse, gaining great wisdom, great perseverance, great fortune—only to inherit that powerhouse's cursed fate: at critical moments, one would inevitably be haunted by inner demons, trembling hands and legs, plummeting performance.

And Zhu Xing Zhen Tai's other main business—acquiring relics to craft items and skill scrolls—was equally riddled with pitfalls.

Mismatched goods were the norm; a time-stop scroll did indeed freeze time—but froze the user along with everything else.

A stealth skill scroll did indeed grant invisibility—but only to the skin; internal organs floated visibly in midair.

Some dissatisfied customers posted online, accusing Zhu Xing Zhen Tai of secretly siphoning off a certain mysterious degree embedded in relics, keeping it for themselves, resulting in products that failed to meet expectations.

Then these customers received stern legal notices from Zhu Xing Zhen Tai, warning them that without evidence, baseless defamation would trigger legal action.

The Lousjie Seventh District Court, whose judge was a designated member of the Truth Side's Trial Committee, would initiate litigation.

What, you're not satisfied?. jpg

All this left Zhu Xing Zhen Tai and its owner, Master Pi Fu, in a Schrödinger's quantum superposition state.

Sometimes a friend to novices, sometimes a heartless conglomerate.

"What are you standing there for? Keep up."

Director Xing Hechou's voice shattered the young man's thoughts; he hurried after Xing Hechou and the dozen other Special Affairs Bureau colleagues, stepping quickly into Zhu Xing Zhen Tai, where in the sparsely decorated office, they met the figure shrouded in rumor: Master Pi Fu.

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He lay with closed eyes in his executive chair, feet propped on the desk; beside him, a Sennheiser speaker played the radio drama "Milk Dragon vs. Captain America," clearly sourced from a parallel universe's script world where Milk Dragon was a top-tier IP rivaling Disney.

Beside the desk, the robot pet named "Grey Rain" wore headphones, intently watching a gaming match on the computer screen,

biting his nails nervously, muttering under his breath: "Don't go into that grass—it'll cost you tens of millions." "The Korean team's using meds! Chinese team, take some meds now!"

One couldn't help suspecting he'd placed bets on some betting site.

Both were utterly bizarre; the dozen elite agents of the Special Affairs Bureau struggled to keep straight faces, unable to imagine these two had single-handedly stormed Britain, slapped the clock tower, nearly nuking London.

Xing Hechou rubbed his palms and greeted: "Master Pi Fu?"

"Oh, it's Director Xing."

Li Cheng opened his eyes, rose from his chair, and casually pulled open a drawer. "The Special Affairs Bureau's first batch—inspect it?" Inside the drawer was a clear plastic bin containing several odd items,

including an old BBK (Bubugao) learning machine;

a can of health supplement with no expiration date, looking highly suspicious;

a clump of cotton heavily mixed with dust;

all of these were battlefield items.

【Improved BBK Learning Machine】, premium item; effect: each use injects knowledge directly into the brains of children aged 3 to 7, even if not immediately grasped, the knowledge is instantly acquired once the brain matures.

With no cooldown and guardians able to pay for the spiritual energy cost, it means 480 children can be trained daily, over 3,000 weekly.

【Happy Planet Chewable Tablets】, perfect item; effect: after ingestion, enhances children's immunity, significantly accelerates physical and mental development, improves learning efficiency, boosts energy and sleep efficiency.

As for the cotton: 【Pure Sky Beast】, perfect item; effect: when released into the air, expands thousands or tens of thousands of times in volume, absorbing toxic substances such as volcanic ash and nuclear dust according to the user's request, slowly altering atmospheric composition.

Before the Tremor Mission, Xing Hechou, representing the Special Affairs Bureau, reached an agreement with Li Cheng: the former provided funding and large quantities of relics, commissioning Zhu Xing Zhen Tai to craft survival-oriented items infused with transcendental elements for building apocalypse shelters.

The dozen Special Affairs Bureau agents Xing Hechou brought were elite logistics personnel; upon receiving the items, they immediately activated their skills, combining them with scientific instruments to scan and detect the items' data and hidden attributes.

Li Cheng held genuine respect for the Special Affairs Bureau, which cared for the masses and defied heaven's will—he had not exploited the relics for profit, and even signaled his robot servant to add several high-tier concepts into them.

He said casually: "You don't need to come personally for inspections next time; send your subordinates."

"Too formal—call me Lao Xing."

Xing Hechou forced a smile: "This matter is too critical; I'd rather come myself."

Seeing the few strands of white hair at Xing Hechou's temples, Li Cheng couldn't help asking curiously: "Is this project that urgent?"

"High winds, rough seas."

Xing Hechou shook his head, not elaborating further.

Each Tremor Mission reveals new special locations of the Battlefield entity, shifting the interests of major guilds. More importantly, by tradition, every few Tremor Missions bring major updates to the Battlefield game.

Whether one admits it or not, as transcendental power spreads and is abused, and the Battlefield's influence deepens, ordinary people will inevitably grow increasingly "fragile."

A natural disaster, a virus, a memetic contamination—all could cause casualties in the millions or tens of millions.

The tide of the world rolls on; at this stage, it's impossible to make everyone a dragon, granting all citizens transcendental power. The only viable solution left is to trade space for time—build shelters, slowly adapting to the dramatic changes brought by the Battlefield.

An operative put away his instruments, held up the bottle of 【Happy Planet Chewable Tablets】, and nodded to Xing Hechou. "Director, A-2 cargo is fine."

Another operative gently patted the 【Sky-Cleansing Giant Beast】. "A-3 is fine too — the air purification efficiency exceeded projections by 13%. As for A-1, uh—"

The atmosphere grew a little awkward. Xing Hechou waved his hand and said, "Master Pi Fu is a friend of our Special Affairs Bureau. If you have something to say, just say it."

"It's like this — the 【Improved Bbk Learning Machine】 meets expectations. In three minutes it can pump 220 million bits of information into a preschooler's brain, roughly equivalent to all the textbooks from elementary through high school combined — language, math, English, science, physics, chemistry, the lot.

You could say it exceeded our most optimistic projections."

That operative explained, "The only flaw is that the 【Improved Bbk Learning Machine】 must be connected to the internet when in use. Among those 220-plus million bits, just like AI pollution and AI hallucinations, a small amount of internet content inevitably gets mixed in.

The impact on adolescents is incalculable."

Saying 'incalculable' is actually putting it nicely. In the future, the smarter the kid, the more internet abstract slang spilling out of their mouth,

The genius children of Zhongke Academy's youth class open their mouths and it's nothing but: 'As the only person in my small county who's played Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, Honkai, and Arknights.' 'Hajimi O Maji Limbo.' 'Compared to sugared cola, ice-chilled sugar-free cola goes down smoother.'"

That scene would be absolutely ridiculous.

Xing Hechou's expression was a little strained too. If he didn't know that Pi Fu was fundamentally a reliable person, he'd have suspected this was something Pi Fu had secretly slipped in. "... Understood. Pack it up for now and hand it over to the logistics department for study."

Before the words had faded, aside from Huiyu, the expressions of everyone present changed sharply — they had all heard the system notification.

【Notification: System detection complete. All Tremor Tasks for this Earth's chosen have been settled. The requirements to open Phase Three have been met. The Killing Ground game version will update in one hour.】