27: Chapter 27 Sorry, Newton won't allow it!

When Su Ming crawled out of the dirt pit, only one thought remained in his mind: Do it again.

He stood up, brushed the gravel dust off his body, and turned to look at the granite block a hundred meters away that he had punched through.

Morning light shone through the circular hole, its edges still shimmering with a dark red, glass-like luster, with wisps of smoke curling up.

That was granite with a compressive strength of a hundred tons.

He had smashed right through it.

Su Ming clenched his fists, feeling something burning in his veins.

It wasn't pain; it was excitement.

The destructive power was fine; the problem lay in the control.

That last shot was a perfectly straight line. From the start, through punching through the granite, to plowing a hundred-meter trench, the entire process was like a bullet leaving the chamber—fixed in direction, unable to deviate, and impossible to stop midway.

But what if... he could deviate slightly during the sprint?

He didn't need a sharp turn; even five or ten degrees would be enough to avoid a pillar or bypass an obstacle in combat.

A one-ton body moving at high speed had terrifying inertia.

But he was now Tier 2 Bronze; his muscle fibers had undergone mass reconstruction, and their strength far exceeded that of an ordinary person.

Theoretically, as long as he exerted force with his waist and hips the moment he sprinted, leaning his center of gravity like a sprinter taking a curve, he should be able to make fine adjustments.

Su Ming scanned the quarry.

His gaze crossed the scattered piles of gravel, locking onto a perfect test route.

Two hundred meters straight ahead, an abandoned stone pillar, three meters thick, stood alone—a remnant of the support structure left behind by the quarry in years past.

About five hundred meters behind the stone pillar was the natural cliff wall on the north side of the quarry, its grey-white rock face steep and sheer.

The plan was simple.

Ignite, charge toward the stone pillar, use his waist to exert force at the moment of approach to dodge to the limit, bypass the pillar, and continue charging toward the cliff wall.

If he succeeded, it meant this skill was still salvageable.

Su Ming stretched his neck, his joints cracking audibly.

He planted his feet, crouched slightly, and lowered his center of gravity.

One ton of mass sank entirely into the contact surface between his soles and the rock layer.

In his mind, the force exertion path of the Mass Engine emerged automatically. Muscle fibers compressed to their limit, joints locked, and force conducted from the soles of his feet to his waist and hips, then through his spine to his shoulders and back—all in one fluid motion.

This time, he added an extra command for himself: when approaching the stone pillar, pivot his right foot fifteen degrees outward and twist his hips to the left to forcibly create a lateral force component.

It was theoretically feasible.

Su Ming gritted his molars.

"Ignite."

The rock layer beneath his feet exploded.

This was not hyperbole, but a physical explosion; a half-meter-deep circular pit appeared once again, gravel shot out, and a sonic boom cloud bloomed into a white flower behind him.

Su Ming's figure vanished from the spot.

The air in the quarry was torn apart, leaving a visible vacuum trail.

His vision turned into high-speed flowing color blocks once again.

But this time, he was mentally prepared, forcibly suppressing the surging dizziness and focusing all his attention on the stone pillar rapidly enlarging directly in front of him.

Two hundred meters.

One hundred and fifty meters.

One hundred meters.

The stone pillar drew closer and larger; the three-meter-thick grey-white rock pillar already occupied most of his field of vision.

Now!

Su Ming's brain issued the "turn" command.

Pivot right foot outward! Twist hips left! Shift center of gravity!

The command was precisely transmitted to every single muscle fiber.

Then...

Nothing happened.

No, that wasn't right.

Something did happen.

His right foot did indeed try to pivot outward.

His hips did indeed try to twist to the left.

But one thousand kilograms of mass multiplied by near-sonic speed produced an astronomical amount of inertia.

His muscles were desperately trying to change direction, while inertia was using the physical laws of the entire universe to tell him: No.

Sorry, Newton won't allow it.

Su Ming's body assumed an extremely bizarre posture.

His upper body did indeed develop a slight leftward trend, tilting about three degrees.

But his lower body remained completely locked on the original straight trajectory, his soles seemingly welded to train tracks.

He was twisted into a slightly deformed pretzel.

Just like that, in a pose so twisted it was comical, he slammed straight into the stone pillar.

"Bang...!!"

The three-meter-thick stone pillar didn't even last half a second.

It shattered directly from the middle, gravel exploded to both sides, and a cloud of grey-white dust billowed up, blotting out the sky.

Su Ming shot out from the cloud of gravel.

His speed hadn't diminished in the slightest.

The cliff wall five hundred meters away approached his field of vision at a desperate speed.

It was too late.

It was simply too late.

He didn't even have time to curse in his mind.

"Boom...!!!!"

The entire quarry was shaking.

This was not a figure of speech.

It was truly shaking.

Su Ming slammed face-first into the cliff wall in a pose resembling the character " big" (a splayed-out pose).

One thousand kilograms of mass combined with near-sonic kinetic energy smashed a human-shaped crater over two meters deep into the hard granite cliff face.

Cracks spread from the center of the crater in all directions, dense like a spiderweb, covering over a dozen meters of the cliff face.

A large amount of gravel collapsed from above, clattering onto the ground for quite a while.

The dust settled.

On the cliff face, there was a perfect human-shaped crater in the form of the character " big".

Su Ming was embedded inside, his chest pressed against the rock, limbs splayed, head tilted to the side, his left cheek pressed tightly against the cold stone.

He didn't move a muscle.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

"..."

Ten seconds.

"Cough."

He tried to move his left hand.

It wouldn't budge.

He was embedded too deeply; the rock was wedged against his shoulders and elbows, like he was encased in concrete.

"...Damn it."

Su Ming gritted his teeth and exerted force violently.

"Crack..."

His left arm pulled out of the cliff wall, bringing a large chunk of gravel with it.

Then his right arm.

Then his left leg.

His right leg.

Finally, his whole body "popped" out of the cliff wall and landed on his butt in the pile of gravel.

Dust billowed up.

Su Ming sat there, looking down at himself.

Clothes? Gone.

Shredded.

Only his belt remained hanging on.

His body? Unscathed.

One ton of True Mass combined with the bone density of Tier 2 Bronze meant not even a red mark was left behind.

He looked up at the human-shaped crater on the cliff wall, silent for three seconds.

Then he started cursing.

"System!"

"This Mass Engine you sold me."

"It can't turn?"

[The host's description is inaccurate. The Mass Engine provides extreme directional thrust; the direction is determined by the force vector at the moment of the start. Once initiated, it cannot be changed.]

"So it just can't turn."

[...Yes.]

"You f*cking knew that!"

Su Ming almost punched the ground, but thought better of it, afraid of punching a crater into the quarry and ending up on the news tomorrow.

"Two thousand mass points! Two thousand! Two tons of pure mass! I scrimped and saved, poured all eight million worth of panshi robot into it, only to get a suicide skill that can only move in a straight line?"

"Tell me, when I'm fighting, if the opponent moves half a step to the side, do I just smash my head into a wall and kill myself?"

[Suggesting the host...]

"Suggest my ass! Refund! I want a refund! Ever heard of consumer protection laws? The product does not match the description; seven-day no-questions-asked return policy!"

[The system store does not support returns or exchanges.]

Su Ming felt a tightness in his chest.

"Fine. Very fine."

He stood up, brushed the gravel off his butt, and his mouth twitched.

Two thousand points of his savings, gone just like that.

Is that it? Is that really it??

[Host's emotional fluctuation detected as excessive. Supplementary explanation: The Mass Engine is a basic version sequence, designed for extreme straight-line bursts. The host's current stage is Tier 2 Bronze; muscle fiber strength is insufficient to counteract inertia lock at extreme speeds.]

Su Ming was stunned for a moment.

"What do you mean?"

[When the host promotes to Tier 3 Silver, the system store will automatically unlock the supporting god-tier skill sequence for the Mass Engine...]

A dark gold icon appeared on the panel, with silver-white light patterns flowing along its edges.

Name: [Inertial Drift].

The description text was only one line.

[During high-speed movement, use mass as an anchor point to reconstruct the inertia vector, achieving directional deviation and rapid course changes.]

Su Ming stared at that line of text, his pupils slightly constricted.

Inertial Drift...

It wasn't braking, it wasn't slowing down to turn; it was changing the direction of inertia while at full-speed sprint.

If the Mass Engine turned him into a cannonball, then Inertial Drift was installing a guidance system onto that cannonball.

A straight-line cannonball becoming a guided missile.

Su Ming's mouth twitched.

"...What the hell, Inertial Drift."

"Is the next step going to be equipping me with an AE86 paint job? And maybe play some Eurobeat...?"

The system did not respond.

Su Ming rubbed his face, pushing down the surging irritation.

Cursing was one thing, but he couldn't stop thinking.

He sat back down, crossed his legs, and began to review.

Mass Engine, basic version, straight-line directional burst.

Peak performance from the start, full speed instantly; a one-ton body charging out could even punch through granite.

The destructive power was unquestionable, bordering on absurd.

The drawbacks were obvious: no turning, no braking, no changing direction.

Once ignited, he was an uncontrollable cannonball.

But the tactical value wasn't zero.

In narrow terrain—corridors, tunnels, canyons, urban alleyways—the opponent would have nowhere to run and would have to take the hit.

A one-ton solid human body slamming into them at the speed of sound would turn them into a photograph, even if they were wearing S-grade full-body armor.

And there was the preemptive surprise attack.

Before the enemy could react, a straight-line charge right to their face, at a speed so fast that their nerve signals wouldn't even have time to transmit.

Su Ming's mouth slowly curled up.

A one-hit-kill skill.

It wasn't for drawn-out battles; it was for wiping the opponent off the board right at the start.

Combined with the future Inertial Drift... Su Ming didn't dare to fantasize any further.

If he kept thinking about it, he'd get carried away.

He stood up and looked at the devastation around the quarry.

Two circular blast pits, a giant piece of granite that had been punched through, a stone pillar that had been smashed to pieces, and a cliff wall embedded with a human-shaped crater.

Plus two hundred-meter-long deep trenches.

The scene was at the level of a tactical nuclear bomb.

Su Ming thought for a moment, then looked again at the " big"-shaped crater on the cliff wall.

"Before fighting, I have to check if the venue is worth any money," he muttered.

"If I did this in the city..."

He couldn't afford the damages even if he sold his ass.

Forget it, that wasn't the priority.

Tier 3 Silver unlocks Inertial Drift.

To go from Bronze to Silver, he needed his True Mass to reach ten thousand kilograms.

He was just over one thousand kilograms now, with a mass points balance of 277.2.

He was still far off.

But Shen Hongyuan had already agreed to grant him access to the Heavy Object Zone today.

The Heavy Object Zone.

Scrapped armor plates, mecha wreckage, military-grade alloy components...

Those weren't just small parts and screws in the corners of the Sorting Area; they were tons upon tons of high-purity military metal.

Swallowing just one piece would be worth an entire day of gnawing in the Sorting Area.

Su Ming turned and walked toward the quarry exit.

The rising sun had just crossed the horizon, casting a long shadow behind him.

In the distance, the towering chimneys and mountains of steel scrap of the Xinghuo Scrap Processing Plant shimmered with a cold metallic luster in the morning light.

Su Ming licked his lips.

Today, he had to eat the Heavy Object Zone clean, no matter what.