Chapter 210: with translation of chapter title

Zhao Jianguo crouched before the detector, his finger sliding over the three indicator lights on the panel. The green light on the right flickered again, its color a shade darker than before. He stared at the screen log; the anomaly record at 04:16 was still there, its duration having increased from 1.3 seconds to 1.8 seconds.

He didn't rise, directly opened the encrypted terminal and entered a command.

【Task Priority Adjustment: Maternal and Infant Protection Plan】

【Added Monitoring Frequency: Deep Scan Once Per Hour】

【Trigger Condition: Heart Rhythm Fluctuation Exceeding 1.2 Seconds Triggers Immediate Alert】

After hitting enter, he stood up, put the instrument back in the cabinet. Dawn had just broken; the courtyard was empty of movement, only the sound of a bucket falling in the boiler room direction came with a splash.

He walked toward the workshop. The door was ajar; he pushed it open, and on the workbench lay a mechanical hand not yet fully assembled. This was a prosthetic he was making for Master Wang of the steel plant, already debugged for three days. Last night, before sleep, he had revised another version of the program, lowering the response threshold of the myoelectric signal by two units.

"Try again." He said, picking up the controller and connecting it to the computer.

On the screen, a data stream appeared; the neural feedback model began running. Originally used to monitor fetal neural development, he now employed it to optimize the prosthetic's recognition accuracy of muscle signals. The flexion angle of the finger joints, grip force distribution, reaction delay—each item was slowly being calibrated.

Just after nine, footsteps sounded at the courtyard gate. Master Wang walked in leaning on a crutch, his left sleeve empty and hanging, his right amputation site wrapped in a thick layer of cloth.

"Chief Zhao, can you really do it?" He stood at the doorway, voice trembling, "I've been without this hand for five years; I long ago gave up hope."

"Give it a try." Zhao Jianguo handed over the connection cable, "First plug into the test port."

Master Wang sat down, placing his residual limb on the sensor pad. Zhao Jianguo launched the program, and the five fingers of the mechanical hand twitched slightly.

"Is… this me moving it?" Master Wang jerked his head up, "I didn't exert any force!"

"It's your nerves directing it." Zhao Jianguo pointed at the screen, "As long as the muscle contracts even a little, it can pick up the signal."

Master Wang bit his lip, trying to lift his right shoulder. The mechanical hand rose slowly, palm opening, then gradually closing.

"Ah!" He suddenly laughed, "It's actually like that!"

Beside the tool rack, Sha Zhu appeared out of nowhere, holding an enamel basin, steam rising straight up.

"Old Wang, come have a taste!" He set the basin on the table, lifted the lid, "Stewed pig's trotters, specially made to nourish your tendons and bones."

A rich fragrance wafted out. Master Wang sniffed, his eye sockets instantly reddened.

"Do you still remember I love this?"

"Why wouldn't I remember?" Sha Zhu grinned, "You used to help in the Kitchen, slicing pig's trotters with one precise cut; everyone called you 'Fast Knife Wang'. Now your hand is back, why not come help in the Kitchen tomorrow? Your knife skills are still needed."

Master Wang lowered his head to look at the mechanical hand, flexing and extending his fingers joint by joint, as if confirming this wasn't a dream.

"Can I… chop vegetables?"

"Why not?" Sha Zhu patted his shoulder, "I think this iron hand is even steadier than a flesh hand; slicing potato shreds doesn't make it shake."

Zhao Jianguo opened the control panel, pulled up a new set of parameters. "Today's goal is fine manipulation." He said, "There's a raw egg on the desk; see if you can pick it up."

Master Wang nodded, took a deep breath. The mechanical hand slowly reached toward the egg at the center of the desk, fingertips lightly touching the shell, then gently closing.

Everyone fell silent.

The fingers continued to close, force steady. The egg was lifted, its shell uncracked and not slipping.

"It's done!" Sha Zhu slapped his thigh, "Fast Knife Wang is back!"

Master Wang's hand began to tremble, not from exertion but from uncontrollable emotion. He lifted the egg to eye level, looked at it repeatedly, then suddenly bowed his head, tears splashing onto the desk.

"I can… still work." His voice choked, "Not only can I eat, I can earn my meals… this old body of mine can still contribute to society."

Zhao Jianguo said nothing, merely saved the program. A system prompt popped up silently.

【Biomechanics Basics Unlocked】

He glanced at Master Wang's still-moving fingers, then turned to check the backend log. Fetus C's heart rhythm had temporarily returned to normal; the latest scan showed no abnormality.

"Can this hand write?" Master Wang suddenly asked.

"Yes." Zhao Jianguo handed him a pen, "What do you want to write?"

Master Wang took the pen; the mechanical hand gripped the barrel, wrist twitching slightly, and on paper he wrote a few characters stroke by stroke:

**I want to go to work**

The characters were crooked but legible.

"Good!" Sha Zhu shouted, "See you at the cafeteria at six tomorrow morning! I'll have the cutting board and knife ready for you."

Zhao Jianguo casually opened the app, added an item under "Community Services": "Prosthetic Maintenance and Training", filling in his own name as the person in charge.

At two in the afternoon, Aunt Li came with a child to find him.

"Chief Zhao, I heard you can make this kind of high-tech thing?" She pointed at the child's left leg, "After polio left a defect, he walks dragging his toes; is there any solution?"

"Yes." Zhao Jianguo nodded, "We can make a corrective brace, 3D printed, lightweight and able to grow with him."

"And… how much would it cost?"

"Material cost fifty, no charge for labor."

Aunt Li's eye rims reddened instantly. "You're truly a living Bodhisattva… we mother and child finally have hope."

Before her words faded, Dong Xu rushed in, pushing the door open, clutching a drawing in his hand.

"Zhao Jianguo, something's wrong." He panted, "The reaction chamber's cooling valve is clogged again; temperature won't drop, and if this continues the crystals will all be ruined."

"I know." Zhao Jianguo glanced at the wall clock, "Let me wrap up here first."

"But the countdown is still running!" Dong Xu raised his voice, "It's been 729 days; we have no time to waste on these trifles!"

Zhao Jianguo turned his head to look at Master Wang. The old man was carefully disassembling the mechanical hand, wiping the joint gaps bit by bit with a soft cloth.

"This isn't trivial." He said, "He wrote four characters today—'I want to go to work'."

Dong Xu opened his mouth, then said nothing more.

Zhao Jianguo stood, picked up his coat. "Come on, let's go to the laboratory and see where the problem lies."

The two had just reached the courtyard when Sha Zhu came running after them.

"Wait!" He shoved a lunch box into Zhao Jianguo's hands, "Master Wang insisted I bring this; he says it's a thank‑you."

Zhao Jianguo opened it; inside were several golden‑fried sunny‑side‑up eggs, neatly arranged in an enamel tray.

"He said, the first egg you can fry yourself should be given to you."

Zhao Jianguo closed the lid and nodded.

Night deepened, and the lights in the tech room stayed on. On the computer Screen, the nanostructure simulation kept running, and the countdown numbers flickered:

**729 days 23 hours 41 minutes**

Zhao Jianguo sat at the Operation Console, listening to Jia Dongxu describe the cooling system fault details, while casually placing his Meal Ticket box in the corner. He opened the biological module interface; three sets of life signals blinked steadily.

The signal on the far right had just shown a faint fluctuation lasting 0.5 seconds.

He pulled up historical data for comparison and found the fluctuation curve highly resembled the neural feedback waveform from the Mechanical Lesson hand's first activation.

He halted his actions and stared at the Screen for a while.

His fingers moved toward the keyboard, preparing to create a new cross‑analysis task.