32: Chapter 32 The Two Thousand Mark! A Slap Through the Wall

Unconsciously, dusk was approaching.

In the heavy goods section of the Xinghuo Scrap Processing Plant, the setting sun dyed the piles of scrapped armor a dark gold.

Su Ming crouched behind the wreckage of a scrapped self-propelled artillery piece.

His left hand pressed against a B+ grade titanium-tungsten alloy side skirt plate half a person's height.

He felt the black hole in his palm greedily tearing at the metal molecules.

The alloy plate began to collapse silently from the point of contact, peeling away layer by layer, compressing, and flowing into his palm.

A minute later, only a small pile of grayish-white dust remained on the ground.

[Ding! Devoured B+ grade titanium-tungsten alloy side skirt plate. mass points +67.]

mass points balance: 1547.8.

Su Ming whistled, brushed the dust off his hands, and climbed onto another mountain of scrap metal.

From eight in the morning until now, a whole day, he had scoured every nook and cranny of the heavy goods section he could reach, devouring all the high-purity alloys.

B-grade, C-grade, occasionally even finding a few special supply alloy components with military serial numbers.

Every piece swallowed meant a solid deposit of mass points.

Satisfying.

So satisfying.

It felt like others paid to work out, while he gained muscle on the job, and even got paid for it.

A bloody good deal.

But he wasn't blinded by the current harvest.

1547.8 points, still over four hundred short of two thousand.

Based on the remaining stock in the heavy goods section, he could barely scrape together eighteen hundred by the end of the workday today.

That two hundred point shortfall... come back tomorrow for it?

No.

He had to leave for the Source Abyss with Shen Qingci first thing tomorrow morning. No time.

Su Ming squatted atop the scrap pile, stroking his chin, his gaze sweeping across the entire heavy goods section.

He now faced a choice.

In the system store, among the three divine skills, he had already purchased [Mass Engine]. That left [Mass Concealment] and [Mass Mastery].

Two thousand points was only enough for one.

[Mass Concealment] would suppress a ton of body weight to a normal person's level. He wouldn't shatter the floor when walking, and daily life would return to normal.

The scene from earlier today flashed in his mind: Shen Qingci using her atomic wire to slice his finger.

That girl had used her trump card, sparks flying all over her face, yet in the end, she hadn't even scratched a layer of his skin.

The expression on Shen Qingci's face at that moment...

How to describe it? Like a lumberjack who had used all his strength to chop down a tree, only to suddenly realize he was hacking at a steel pillar.

The corner of Su Ming's mouth uncontrollably twitched upwards.

Showing off really was addictive.

But...

The day after tomorrow, he was going to the Source Abyss.

That place, where even high-ranking military martial artists frequently perished, with Tier 2 and Tier 3 Source Beasts roaming about. Being just tough wouldn't be enough.

He needed to be able to fight.

[Mass Mastery]: Master the laws of one's own mass and density. Each exertion of force generates kinetic energy equivalent to 1.5 times one's own mass. 30% chance to trigger full True Damage.

A 1.5 times kinetic energy multiplier.

His current True Mass was just over a thousand kilograms. A punch would deliver an impact force equivalent to one and a half tons.

If the 30% True Damage triggered, that would be one and a half tons of damage ignoring all defense.

What did that mean?

It wouldn't be inferior to a small artillery shell!

Dominion.

He definitely had to buy Dominion.

Concealment could wait. At worst, he'd just be careful when walking.

Decision made, he jumped down from the scrap mountain. Upon landing, two more deep pits appeared in the blast-resistant concrete beneath his feet.

Su Ming looked down, his face expressionless.

...It can wait.

These have always served the people, served the nation.

What's wrong with the nation serving me a little in return?

He bent down and squeezed into the innermost corner of the heavy goods section, where several scrapped medium-sized military command vehicles were piled.

This batch was newly delivered today. Scarface Li said they were withdrawn from the front lines and hadn't been sorted yet.

Like opening a package, Su Ming used his bare hands to pry open the chassis of the first command vehicle.

The chassis armor was three times thicker than ordinary vehicles, made of pure military-grade high-manganese steel.

Devour.

+38.

The second one. Devour.

+41.

The third one...

Su Ming's hand stopped.

On the inner side of the chassis was a hidden recess, blocked by charred armor fragments. Impossible to see without prying it open.

A crystal the size of a ping-pong ball was wedged inside the recess.

Dark red, with a liquid light slowly flowing within.

Su Ming's pupils constricted sharply.

He reached out, pried the crystal loose, and turned it over in his palm.

Extremely high energy purity, far surpassing the inferior fragments he'd found in tank armor crevices before.

A Tier 2 fire-type mutant beast crystal.

Perfect condition. Probably got embedded when the command vehicle was destroyed by a mutant beast. The sorting workers hadn't noticed it at all.

Su Ming swallowed hard.

This wave...

He didn't hesitate, fully opening the black hole in his left palm.

The dark red glow on the crystal's surface flickered violently for two seconds, then, like ice thrown into boiling water...

It disintegrated silently, transforming into pure energy that surged into his palm.

[Ding! Devoured Tier 2 fire-type mutant beast crystal (intact specimen). Extremely high energy purity. Zero-loss conversion. mass points obtained: 450.]

Su Ming froze for half a second.

450.

A single haul of 450.

Apart from that 2400-point robot, this was the biggest windfall since he started devouring.

He looked down at the system panel.

mass points balance: 2076.8.

Broken.

The two thousand milestone, broken.

Su Ming stood behind the dim scrap mountain, taking a deep breath, then another.

He really wanted to roar at the sky.

But he couldn't. There were still patrolling workers nearby.

Couldn't break character.

He pressed his facial expression back into aloof mode, patted the iron rust dust off his hands, and walked out of the heavy goods section as if nothing had happened.

As he passed Scarface Li, the man offered him a cigarette.

"Young Su, good work today. Coming back tomorrow?"

"No, I have something on tomorrow."

"Alright, take care of yourself. That petrification mutation of yours... sigh, don't push too hard."

Su Ming nodded, his face indifferent.

Inside, he was singing.

As dusk settled, Su Ming walked out of the Scrap Yard's main gate.

His spatial storage ring and all valuables were deposited in the plant's storage room as per regulations.

He wore his school jacket.

Thirty dollars in his pocket.

He decided to eat instant noodles tonight!

Why? Ask him and he'd say he couldn't wait!

He was itching to get back to his cheap rental room and exchange for [Mass Mastery].

Then get a good night's sleep and set off first thing tomorrow morning.

The plan was perfect.

As Su Ming turned into a remote, narrow alley on the city's outskirts, several flashlight beams suddenly lit up ahead.

Five burly men blocked the alley entrance, all in identical black T-shirts.

The bald leader held a short rod gleaming with a cold light, a dagger tucked at his waist.

Su Ming's footsteps halted.

He recognized the leader.

Leopard.

One of the Zhao family's guard dogs. A Black Iron Rank Enhancement Type Awakened. A local bully collecting protection money in these outskirts.

Last time at the school gate, this guy and his crew had blocked Su Ming, sent by Zhao Kuo to gather intel on Su Ming's daily movements.

A few passing low-level laborers recognized the Zhao family men, their faces turning pale as they slipped away along the wall.

Leopard tapped the short rod against his palm twice, producing a crisp metallic sound.

"Su Ming."

He tilted his head and grinned, the smile particularly glaring under the flashlight beams.

"Young Master Zhao asked me to pass on a message. You think you can offend him and still go to the college entrance exams in one piece?"

The short rod pointed at Su Ming's two arms.

"Today, we'll collect these two arms as interest."

The burly men behind him chuckled darkly. Someone had already drawn a dagger.

Su Ming glanced at the short rod.

C-grade alloy.

Decent quality. Probably worth around seven or eight thousand Federation credits.

Then he looked at Leopard and his lackeys behind him.

Black Iron Rank.

All Black Iron Rank.

Su Ming suddenly felt a bit sorry for Zhao Kuo.

Paying Black Iron Ranks to fight a Bronze-rank? This wasn't inviting someone to a feast; it was inviting someone to be the feast.

"Go ahead." Su Ming stood his ground, even putting his hands in his pockets.

Leopard was infuriated by this attitude.

"Looking for death!"

He roared, Enhancement Type battle aura surging into his arms. The C-grade alloy short rod, carrying a whooshing sound, smashed viciously towards Su Ming's left shoulder.

This strike, he used his full strength.

Enough to shatter the spine of a full-grown bull.

Su Ming didn't dodge.

Didn't raise a hand.

Didn't even blink.

"CLANG!!!"

A deafening metallic collision exploded in the narrow alley, the echo reverberating several times.

Leopard's smile froze.

The C-grade alloy short rod struck Su Ming's shoulder. No expected sound of breaking bones.

The short rod bent.

Bent from the middle into a perfect V-shape.

A terrifying recoil force traveled back up the rod into his hands. Leopard's tiger-mouth split open instantly.

Blood dripped down the rod's handle. His entire right arm went numb.

Wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

This wasn't a person.

What the hell was this?!

Before Leopard's brain could process this information, Su Ming moved.

He didn't use any skill.

He simply pulled his right hand from his pocket and, like swatting a fly, casually swung a slap.

The motion was very casual.

The speed wasn't particularly fast either.

But with over a thousand kilograms of True Mass concentrated in that palm, the kinetic energy of this blow...

Leopard only felt like a fully-loaded dump truck had slammed into the side of his face.

"BOOM!!"

His entire body flew backwards, covering over a dozen meters in half a second, his back crashing into the red brick wall at the alley's end.

The wall collapsed.

Crushed bricks, dust, and snapped rebar exploded together.

Leopard was embedded in the rubble, his eyes rolling back as he lost consciousness on the spot.

The alley fell silent.

That eerie kind of silence where even the sound of breathing vanished.

The remaining four burly men still held their daggers aloft, but their hands holding the knives were trembling.

Their brains were desperately denying the scene they had just witnessed.

One slap.

Just one slap.

Leopard, a Black Iron Rank, was slapped through a wall by a lanky teenager in a school uniform.

Su Ming shook his wrist.

Just as he was about to walk over to the wall to see if Leopard had anything valuable on him...

A strange sensation suddenly came from beneath his feet.

Cold.

The ground was freezing.

A thin layer of white frost spread from deep within the alley. Not fast, but covering a wide area.

Moisture on the alley walls condensed into fine ice crystals. The air temperature plummeted by over ten degrees.

Su Ming frowned.

It wasn't even autumn yet, and it was freezing.

Unhurried footsteps sounded from the shadows, soles crunching on the frost with a fine, grating sound.

A figure emerged from the darkness at the end of the alley...