642: Chapter 637 Fixed Price

In the rehabilitation room, only his heavy breathing and the occasional jarring, light sound of his bones and joints remained.

Shen Yan and Professor Li stood to the side, neither of them saying a word.

They knew that any language at this moment would be pale and inadequate.

This was a lonely war; Fang Zhizhuo had to face the ruins within his own body alone, and then rebuild it with his own hands.

Another week passed.

Fang Zhizhuo could now slowly shuffle ten meters in the rehabilitation room, leaning on a specially made walker.

Every step was breathtakingly difficult.

Every step was like dancing on the tip of a knife.

But the expression on his face grew calmer with each passing day, and the flame named 'Scholar' reignited in his cloudy eyes.

That evening, Shen Yan finished wiping the sweat from his body and helped him into the wheelchair.

"Professor Fang, I have to leave T City for now."

Fang Zhizhuo paused for a moment, then nodded.

"It is time to go back. Your own enterprise is so large; staying here for three months already..."

His words carried gratitude.

"I will leave Guang Ke here."

Shen Yan interrupted him.

"He will handle all your affairs here, including security and daily living. You can trust him completely."

"The laboratory at Jingluo Bay, and the Spark Project, both need money."

Shen Yan's tone was calm, as if stating a fact.

"If the ammunition runs out, someone has to go back for resupply."

Fang Zhizhuo looked at the young man before him and suddenly smiled.

"You kid, you always talk in such elaborate ways."

"Go ahead, I won't die here."

"When I can walk, I will return to Jingluo Bay to personally watch that great thing... be lit up by me."

Shen Yan hummed in acknowledgment.

He pushed Fang Zhizhuo back to the sickroom, where Chen Guangke was already waiting at the door.

"Yan Zi, is everything settled?"

"Yes."

Shen Yan handed the wheelchair over to Chen Guangke.

"Professor Fang has a stubborn temper. Don't let him push too hard in his rehabilitation training; maintain a balance."

"Raise the security level to the maximum. No one should leave his side for twenty-four hours. Mei Hongyuan over there is not someone to be trifled with."

"Also, tell Wu Ya to increase the bonus for Professor Li's team by another thirty percent."

Chen Guangke listened, nodding continuously.

"Got it, got it. You fellow, you're destined to worry about everything."

He patted Shen Yan's shoulder.

"Be careful on your own in the Capital."

"Don't worry."

Shen Yan said no more and turned to leave.

He left crisply, without any lingering sentiment.

Because just that morning at five o'clock, the cold mechanical voice in his mind had sounded right on time.

[Daily Wealth Intelligence has been refreshed]

[Intelligence Type: Lost Relic]

[Location: Metropolis, West Fourth Ring Road, Panjiayuan Electronic Ghost Market, Stall A-37]

[Target: Relic from the 'Beidouxing' Project, a set of vacuum tube logic gate arrays, dark gold in appearance, engraved with the characters 'Bei 7']

[Background Summary: Core components of the Dragon Country's 'Beidouxing' supercomputer project in the 1970s. Due to the accidental termination of the project, the prototype and accessories were scattered among the populace. This component utilized an experimental 'Gold-Iridium-Osmium' ultra-stable alloy, which possesses extremely stable physical properties and is one of the perfect materials for constructing the bit base of a quantum computer.]

[System Recommendation: Acquire it, regardless of the cost.]

[Estimated Value: 800 million Dragon Coins, or, incalculable.]

Shen Yan's breath hitched for half a second at that moment.

He had spent nearly one billion on Fang Zhizhuo's surgery, front and back.

This money had almost emptied all his liquid assets.

Although the company's cash flow was still healthy, the Spark Laboratory was a bottomless pit, and the Jingluo Bay project was an enormous money sink.

He was short on cash.

Or rather, he would always be short on cash.

And the system always offered a pillow at the most crucial moment.

The next afternoon.

The Capital, outside the West Fourth Ring Road.

This was the Panjiayuan Electronic Ghost Market.

Unlike the antique market teeming with tourists where truth and falsehood were hard to distinguish, this was the true paradise for 'scavengers' and geeks.

The air was filled with a strange mixed odor of solder, ozone, and aged dust.

Mountains of discarded circuit boards, electrical wires tangled like cobwebs, and dust-covered server cabinets constituted the bizarre scenery here.

Shen Yan, dressed in ordinary casual wear and wearing a baseball cap, walked through this graveyard of steel.

He ignored the stall owners hawking 'out-of-print Pentium processors' and 'military-grade capacitors' to him, heading straight for Area A.

Soon, he found Stall A-37, whose address number was crookedly displayed.

The stall owner was a middle-aged man thin as a monkey, currently crossing his legs and scrolling through short videos on his phone, grinning obscenely.

The stall was chaotically piled with various electronic waste.

There were old oscilloscopes, dismantled mobile phone motherboards, and a pile of metal lumps whose purpose was unclear.

Shen Yan's gaze instantly locked onto an inconspicuous wooden box tucked away in the corner.

The box was unlocked, its lid ajar.

Through the gap, a deep, dark gold luster, completely out of place with the surrounding junk, shone through.

That was it.

Shen Yan walked over and squatted down.

"Boss, how much for this pile of stuff?"

He pointed to a pile of old transformers and casually swept the wooden box into the group.

The shrewd stall owner heard the sound, lazily raised his eyelids, and glanced at Shen Yan.

"Oh, little brother, you have good taste."

He pointed at the pile of transformers.

"The copper cores inside this pile can sell for quite a bit of money. If you genuinely want them, this pile is five hundred."

Shen Yan nodded, not haggling.

He reached out to pick up the wooden box.

"Wait a moment."

The shrewd stall owner suddenly spoke, narrowing his eyes.

He put down his phone, stood up, walked over, and placed a hand firmly on the wooden box.

"This pile is five hundred."

He pointed to the transformers.

"This one isn't part of that pile."

Shen Yan stopped his movement.

He looked at the stall owner without speaking.

"I got this thing from an old man who collects scrap metal."

The stall owner picked up the wooden box, opened the lid, revealing the twelve archaic, dark gold metal tubes lying quietly inside.

Each metal tube was connected to complex metal contacts; the surface was smooth as a mirror, flowing with a strange luster in the dim light.

"That old man said this thing was called something like 'Beidou,' and his father worked as an Engineer in a research institute back then. When the institute disbanded, he just took it home."

"Look at the condition, the craftsmanship."

The stall owner tapped the metal tube with his greasy finger, producing a crisp and pleasant metallic sound.

"If you say it's brass, it's not this heavy. If you say it's gold, the color is wrong."

"I estimate it was used by some special unit back in the day; maybe it's some kind of rare metal."

He chuckled, revealing a mouth full of yellow teeth.

"Little brother, I can see you know your stuff. I'll sell this thing as an antique. One fixed price, twenty thousand yuan."