Chapter 10: Heading to Tucson

Casually flicking an iPhone 5 that looked brand new in his hand, Sun Cheng was very bored right now.

Barricade had disappeared; just two days ago, after leaving Sun Cheng with the words "Wait for me here," he had run off somewhere unknown.

This boss had just up and left, leaving him in a miserable lurch.

Sun Cheng helplessly glanced at the piles of dirty, messy trash around him; he was currently staying inside a large scrap yard on the outskirts of Washington, and although he couldn't smell anything, no one would feel good being surrounded by piles of junk over ten meters high.

And he was starting to regret it even more: why had he been so rash to return to this world again?

Two days, it had been a full two days.

Because he had encountered some setbacks in reality, Sun Cheng had acted on impulse that day and chosen to re-enter this world, just to verify if he truly had the ability to travel to a parallel world.

Thinking about it now, he really had been muddled that day.

He had assumed that after having the experience of traveling back and forth once, he should be able to return to the real world quite easily.

However, Sun Cheng now wished he could give his past self, who had that thought, a hard slap in the face.

It had all gone wrong!

The moment Barricade left, Sun Cheng, who had racked his brains to get rid of him, was immediately ready to return to the real world now that this trouble was gone.

But it was only then that he realized he had overlooked the most important problem: he had absolutely no idea how to enter that Spherical Space!

This was awkward!

Because to this day, Sun Cheng still hadn't figured out how he had entered the Spherical Space while at the Yanjiu Zhongxin last time.

In fact, he was completely clueless as to why he could enter the Spherical Space even in the real world; he only vaguely felt that certain conditions might need to be met.

Unable to return to the real world for the time being, Sun Cheng didn't dare to run around; after all, he didn't have Barricade's combat power, and he was very worried that if he—with his thin arms and legs—were discovered by the government of the country he was currently in, the United States, they might directly dispatch an army to capture him and then dismantle him into a pile of parts to study the composition of Mechanical Life.

With nothing to do for a while, and only able to sneak around the vicinity in the dead of night, he was too idle; these past two days, he had actually taken the time to seriously study his 【Core】 and his body, and he had truly discovered a function that the Decepticons didn't seem to value, but which was inherently heaven-defying—Enhancement!

Perhaps because Decepticons were Mechanical Lifeforms, they were born with the ability to perform Enhancement on electronic devices.

In fact, Sun Cheng had already used it that night when he invaded the internet.

The IBM computer hardware he had temporarily requisitioned couldn't be called bad, but it wasn't exactly great either.

Although after the invasion function was activated, the 【Spy Template】 in Sun Cheng's 【Core】 took over all data processing and downloading, he still needed to use that IBM computer as an invasion port, so he had temporarily performed an Enhancement on it.

However, strictly speaking, that Enhancement wasn't an Enhancement in the true sense; Sun Cheng had merely temporarily assimilated that IBM with his own body, making it a part of his body for a short time, which resulted in an unimaginably high configuration.

This kind of temporary Enhancement would revert to its original state once he canceled it, and it wouldn't waste much of his energy.

The Enhancement function Sun Cheng had discovered, however, was an improvement performed on a certain electronic device by consuming the energy or even Life Force within a Decepticon; the effect was not only permanent, but the magnitude of the improvement was also unimaginable.

For example, right now, Sun Cheng was performing an Enhancement upgrade on the only electronic device he had on him: that iPhone 5 that had inexplicably traveled with him.

A blue fluorescent glow, almost invisible to the naked eye, was currently tracing along his finger—which had transformed and inserted into the phone's interface—conducting a comprehensive scan of the phone.

At the same time, in his mind, the 【Core】 was constantly sending prompts to Sun Cheng: "Processor has reached the limit of Enhancement... Screen has reached the limit of Enhancement... Camera has reached the limit of Enhancement... Battery can be further enhanced... Memory storage card can be further enhanced. Do you wish to consume 1 point of energy to perform an Enhancement on this electronic device?"

"Enhance!"

Following his command, Sun Cheng immediately felt a sudden sense of emptiness emerge within his body; having experienced this feeling several times over the past two days, he naturally knew it was because the energy stored in his 【Core】 had been permanently consumed.

Strictly speaking, Decepticon life and humans still have quite a few similarities; for instance, humans have hearts and brains, and they have 【Core】s.

And for Decepticons, energy is like blood to humans.

The slight regret is that while humans can continuously produce blood through red bone marrow, Decepticons cannot; the amount of energy stored in the 【Core】 equipped by every Decepticon after birth determines their status and life.

For example, a lowest-level Decepticon spy like 'Frenzy' has about 750 points of energy stored in his 【Core】; calculated by time on Earth, 'Frenzy' would only consume 1 point of energy every 5 days or so, so his theoretical lifespan is about 3750 days, which is just over ten years.

Of course, that is only a theoretical algorithm; just like that internet invasion a few nights ago, which consumed 4 points of energy in just over ten minutes, it is evident that low-level spies like him are nothing more than Cannon Fodder to the Decepticon Legion.

Fortunately, the energy in the 【Core】 is not impossible to replenish.

From 'Frenzy's' Memory Data, Sun Cheng learned that if they perform meritorious service for the Decepticons, they will also be rewarded with some energy to replenish what was consumed; this was one of the reasons why he was willing to waste energy to enhance his phone.

However, it was a slight pity that Sun Cheng could not find any relevant information regarding the promotion of low-level Decepticons; it seemed that for this mechanical race, their future status was decided the moment they were born.

This was not good news!

The energy in his body was still continuously flowing into the phone; feeling the changes in the phone in his hand through the data monitoring function of the 【Spy Template】, blue light flickered in Sun Cheng's eyes.

It was incredible!

While the phone his family gave him back then was a top-tier model, it was still an old model from three or four years ago, so obsolescence in its functions was unavoidable.

However, after he had enhanced this phone—which had inexplicably traveled with him—several times over the past two days, not only had the performance of the core A6 processor increased nearly eightfold, pushing the performance of this dual-core processor to its absolute limit, but the screen and camera had also seen impressive improvements.

But this wasn't the most surprising part for Sun Cheng; what he found most incredible was that the lithium battery, which originally only had a capacity of a little over 1000 mAh, had likely increased its capacity by no less than twenty times after several Enhancements.

The most insane part had to be the memory card in the phone; the original 64G of memory had now actually expanded by nearly 48 times—it was simply insane!

These discoveries undoubtedly distracted Sun Cheng's abundant energy for the time being.

Because he had no further references, he simply started studying himself, and as a result, Sun Cheng truly discovered that Decepticons, as a form of Mechanical Life, indeed possessed unimaginably advanced technology in terms of energy and memory storage chips.

Let's not mention energy for now; after all, it wasn't his primary profession, and Sun Cheng only had a superficial understanding of it.

However, he did know a thing or two about memory storage chips, given his background in Micro-electronics, which kept him from being completely at a loss.

After repeatedly studying his current body over the past few days, Sun Cheng discovered that his body was currently equipped with two storage chips; one was built into the 【Spy Template】, and the amount of information it could store, if converted according to human data formulas, was nearly 440EB.

The other was placed in other parts of his Brain outside the 【Core】, a storage chip for storing invaded and stolen data; although its capacity was far less than the memory chip, it still had nearly 165PB.

Even for the lowest-level Decepticon spy, the memory storage chip equipped was shockingly powerful; after learning this, Sun Cheng dared not imagine just how advanced the technology of this mechanical race was in this regard.

After spending half a day finally completing the thorough Enhancement of the iPhone 5, and before he even had a chance to test the new phone's functions, he keenly caught the sound of a dog barking.

Just as he was about to climb up the scrap pile to check the situation, Sun Cheng's body suddenly stiffened, as his 【Core】 had suddenly received an audio message: "Come out, it's me!"

That familiar tone was none other than Barricade, who had been missing for two full days.

Although he was very curious about where this guy had gone after disappearing for so long, he didn't dare to ask the question that was weighing on his mind.

He immediately took his phone, quickly left his hiding spot, and followed Barricade's signal to a corner of the scrap yard.

There, a black and white Ford Mustang police car was parked quietly, the passenger door wide open.

In the driver's seat, the middle-aged white man projected by Barricade stared coldly at Sun Cheng, who had just climbed into the passenger seat; seeing him look up, the middle-aged white man forced a smile, cold and stiff.

"Let's go, there is a lord who wants to see you!"

Sun Cheng was stunned; he had a mind to ask who the other party was, but he worried that Barricade would not tell him, so he hesitated for a moment before asking, "Where are we going now?"

"Tucson!"