5: Chapter 5 Sleep on the floor today, be the boss tomorrow!

"Consume!"

Su Ming's palm suddenly grew hot.

An extremely tiny, pitch-black vortex appeared from the center of his palm prints.

The pages began to gradually yellow and age.

One second... two seconds...

A full minute.

The half-jin book, as if it had undergone tens of thousands of years of weathering, disintegrated into a pile of extremely fine grayish-white powder that slipped through his fingers.

The system notification sounded.

[Ding! Paper book consumed, purification and refinement complete, mass points + 0.01 (minimum guarantee)]

"Zero point zero one?"

Su Ming's eyelids twitched violently.

"System, are you playing some kind of discount game here? Can't you give me a minimum guarantee of 1 point..."

Complaining was just complaining, but this was a test after all.

Besides, paper is just plant fiber, low density, so it was understandable.

He turned his head and set his sights on the broken wooden chair nearby, which was missing a leg and tied together with wire.

"Let's try wood, will it be better than paper?"

He pressed his left hand onto it.

"Consume."

Another long minute of waiting.

Under his palm, the chair withered and shattered inch by inch, finally turning into a pile of sawdust and ashes.

[Ding! Wooden seat consumed, purification and refinement complete, mass points + 0.01 (minimum guarantee)]

The corner of Su Ming's mouth twitched.

The exact same minimum guarantee.

He looked around, his gaze quickly scanning the cramped room.

There was no need to test water; its density was about the same as the human body.

Su Ming's gaze finally landed on the red brick in the corner that was propping up the table.

About five jin, sintered clay, it should contain some iron and silicates.

He pressed his palm onto it.

"Consume!"

A minute later.

The hard red brick in his hand turned directly into a pile of shriveled yellow soil.

The table leg propped up by the brick lost its support and collapsed with a "clang." The enamel mug rolled off the table, smashed onto the floor, and made a harsh, crisp sound.

[Ding! Construction brick consumed, purification and refinement complete, mass points + 1]

"Five jin of brick, all soil, and it only squeezed out one point."

Su Ming shook off the residual yellow soil powder from between his fingers.

To effectively extract mass points, he had to use something hard.

He crouched down and pulled something out from under the bed.

A twenty-kilogram cast iron dumbbell.

Its surface was covered with a layer of reddish-brown surface rust, it felt rough to the touch, and the rubber on the handle had long since cracked.

He had picked it up from a second-hand market, thinking of using it to strengthen his body.

This was also the hardest asset in the whole room.

Su Ming pressed his left palm onto it.

"Consume."

The feeling this time was different.

The miniature black hole in his palm was like a shark that had smelled blood, and its suction power suddenly increased by a few notches.

The twenty-kilogram iron block dimmed and turned gray under his hand, visible to the naked eye.

The rust on the surface fell off first, followed by the oxide layer, the metal crystals...

A minute later.

The heavy dumbbell had completely disappeared, leaving behind only a small pile of foul-smelling rust dregs and a few rubber fragments.

[Ding! Inferior dumbbell consumed, purification and refinement complete, mass points + 14]

Su Ming looked at the pile of dregs on the ground and scratched his head.

Fourteen points.

Was this paying a six-kilogram "tax"?

"System, are you robbing me? Twenty kilograms and you only give me fourteen points?"

Su Ming was furious and furiously questioned the system in his mind.

"Can you just refine what's useful and keep the remaining impurity structures for me? You keep turning things into ashes at every turn; how am I supposed to live like this?"

[This sequence is a microscopic black hole collapse and stripping process. Once mass is consumed, it returns to the singularity, and conventional material forms cannot be restored.]

Listening to the system's reply, Su Ming rolled his eyes.

The laws of physics were indeed cold and heartless.

Su Ming looked at his mass points balance of 15.02, still almost 5 points short!

His gaze slowly shifted behind him.

The rusty iron single bed stood quietly in the corner.

The bed frame welded from iron pipes weighed at least ten kilograms.

Even if it was badly rusted, squeezing out seven or eight points shouldn't be a problem.

Su Ming's hand was already raised.

But the movement froze in mid-air.

If he consumed the bed, where would he sleep tonight?

Besides, rent was due this month, and last year the landlady had wanted to deduct fifty yuan from him because of some peeling wall paint. If she discovered the whole bed was gone... the three-hundred-yuan deposit would be deducted immediately.

His entire net worth right now was only one thousand yuan.

Su Ming's hand hovered in mid-air, hesitating to come down.

"System! Is there any way to just absorb a little bit? I only want the metal elements on the surface, just leave me a frame so I can manage to sleep!"

Silence.

A full five seconds of silence.

Fine, no luck.

The system was probably binding with such an impoverished host for the first time.

[The host is currently in the first life form and only has the basic consumption sequence unlocked. This sequence is a total collapse mode and cannot perform partial stripping. After advancing to the second life form, the system mall will be opened, at which time you can exchange for high-level functions such as the "Rapid Consumption Sequence."]

Su Ming's eyes lit up.

What would the second life form be like?

... That would require gathering twenty mass points first.

Do it!

"Sleep on the floor today, become a boss tomorrow!"

Su Ming bent down, rolled up the pitifully thin mattress on the bed, and threw it into the corner.

He also pulled out the wooden boards laid on the iron frame one by one and stacked them against the wall.

At least he could use them to pad the floor and manage to sleep for the night.

After doing this, he pressed his left palm onto the rusty iron bed leg.

"Consume."

His palm grew hot, and the black hole activated again.

One second... two seconds...

The bed leg thinned at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the welded joints broke first.

When the last section of the crossbeam silently shattered into powder under his palm, it was exactly one minute.

The iron frame bed that had originally occupied a small corner of the room had completely disappeared, and the room suddenly became much brighter.

[Ding! Inferior iron bed consumed, purification and refinement complete, mass points + 22]

"It's done."

He called up the panel, and the mass points balance flickered and settled at 37.02.

The system notification sounded immediately after.

[mass points meet the repair conditions. Repairing all damaged bones and tissues requires consuming 20 mass points. Do you want to repair?]

"Repair!"

The next second, a scalding hot current surged from his chest into his right arm.

A slight clicking sound came from the fracture.

The burned skin on his two forearms began to peel off and regenerate at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The repair process took only a dozen seconds to complete.

Both arms were as good as new, without a single scar left behind.

Moreover, he felt that the reconstructed ulna seemed to be a bit harder than before.

He stood up, moved his arms twice, and turned to look out the window.

Su Ming licked his lips.

"The arena tournament in seven days."

"It should be very interesting!"

...

After the joy passed, Su Ming realized he was facing a very realistic problem.

He was too poor.

So poor that he couldn't even take the first step toward changing his destiny.

mass points balance 17.02, federal currency account less than one thousand yuan.

To stand out in the college entrance exam arena tournament, he would need to consume at least a ton of metal.

And even the cheapest scrap iron had a market recycling price of two mao per kilogram.

Several tons would cost several thousand yuan.

Selling himself wouldn't be enough!

Then there was only... to figure out some "zero-cost shopping"!

Now the problem became where to find so much free scrap metal?

Going out on the street to pry up municipal manhole covers would get him caught by the Federal Guard and thrown into jail.

Suddenly, Su Ming recalled what someone had said to mock him when he awakened today.

Go to the dump and be a solid weight for people.

That's right!

The dump!

The High-Martial Scrap Yard!

That place was piled high with weapon fragments damaged during Awakened training, scrapped alloy armor, and shattered mecha parts.

Nothing but metal scrap, piled up like a mountain!

And it was said that the place recruited temporary workers all year round to do the manual labor of sorting scrap.

Although the wages were pitifully low, but...

"Who said I'm going there to earn wages?"

"What's wrong with me loving to eat some hard dishes since I was a kid!"