9: Chapter 9 The Surprise at the Scrap Yard
When the shuttle dropped him off at the intersection in the west of the city, Wang Pingan felt as if he had been kicked out of civilized society and into a trash heap.
The smell in the air was so pungent that he almost performed a beatbox routine on the spot.
It was impossible to describe.
It was the kind of complex, toxic gas that could only be concocted after leaving rusty iron lumps to rot for a hundred years, dousing them in expired motor oil, and then covering them with a layer of sewer sludge to ferment for forty-nine days.
Just smelling it made him feel like his lungs were about to retire early.
Looking around, there was no trace left of Shen City's stature as a second-tier international metropolis.
Beneath the grey sky were mountain ranges made of scrap metal.
Massive mechanical cranes moved sluggishly, grabbing a junked shuttle, then creaking and groaning as they tossed it into a pitch-black crusher. The sound was like a giant snapping a biscuit, setting one's teeth on edge.
This was the Shen City Industrial Scrap Trading Station.
A dump of a place so remote that even the scavengers disliked it.
Wang Pingan stood at the entrance, looking at his relatively clean sneakers, then at the sticky, black sludge on the ground, and hesitated.
Just for an unreliable possibility mentioned by two peddlers while bragging, he had thrown away nearly half of his remaining 250 star coins on travel fare.
Now, he only had a little over a hundred star coins left to his name.
If this place was just like the antique market, with nothing to be found...
Then his high school comeback script wouldn't just be cut short; it would be dead on arrival.
He thought about the hundred-plus star coins in his pocket, and a sense of tragic desperation surged within him.
He was already here.
What else could he do?
He couldn't just turn around now and tell Teacher Liu, "Teacher, I'm giving up. I'd rather go back to being a loser."
Damn it.
Wang Pingan cursed, gritted his teeth, and stepped into the sludge.
"Squish."
The contact between his sole and the ground made an extremely uncomfortable sound.
He hunched his back and shrank his neck, looking exactly like a poor student here to scavenge bottles to help with household expenses, walking inside with his head down.
He was broke now, but he still had his final trump card.
The last 1 pay-to-win point he had exchanged for 1,000 star coins.
This was his final ammunition.
"Activate, Energy Scan."
He silently chanted in his heart.
【Command received, Energy Scan function activated. Current consumption: 1 pay-to-win point/minute.】
【Remaining pay-to-win points: 1】
Only one minute.
Success or failure depended on these sixty seconds.
The familiar deep-blue 3D map instantly covered his vision.
The surrounding filthy environment and the pungent smell were temporarily shut out.
His heart was in his throat as he stared intently at the map.
Please, there has to be something!
Even if it's just a faint white dot, it would count as a consolation prize!
However.
The next second.
Wang Pingan's breathing stopped.
His pupils instantly constricted into the most dangerous pinpoints.
On the map.
It didn't show the emptiness he had expected, nor did it show those few scattered white dots.
Instead...
A brilliant starry sky!
Dense clusters of light points suddenly lit up on his 3D map!
White!
Green!
Countless faint white dots, like dust in the galaxy, covered every corner of the scrap yard.
And among these white dots were an equally astonishing number of green dots emitting bright light!
Each of those green dots represented at least the energy contained in one complete low-grade spirit crystal!
This wasn't a junkyard!
This was a fucking unmined gold mine!
Wang Pingan froze on the spot, his mind going blank.
Ecstasy!
An indescribable ecstasy, like the most violent volcanic eruption, exploded from his chest, instantly shattering all his reason and pretense!
He wanted to roar at the sky!
He wanted to laugh out loud!
He wanted to grab a passing worker and excitedly tell him, "What you're sitting on isn't scrap metal, it's money! It's money that can change your destiny!"
The energy reaction here was a hundred times, a thousand times more intense than all the stalls in the entire antique market combined!
He had come to the right place!
He had won his bet!
【pay-to-win points - 1, scan ended.】
The cold system prompt was like a bucket of cold water, pulling him back from the brink of losing composure.
The starry sky before his eyes vanished, and his vision was once again occupied by that dirty scrap metal.
Wang Pingan shuddered violently and came back to his senses.
A layer of cold sweat instantly broke out on his back.
Calm down!
Wang Pingan, you fucking need to calm down!
He pinched his thigh hard, and the intense pain made his heart, which was about to jump out of his throat, settle down a little.
Wealth should not be flaunted.
He understood this principle.
He was now like a child holding a treasure map but possessing no weapons.
The workers operating heavy machinery around him were all burly and fierce-eyed; any one of them could dismantle his small frame.
He hurriedly switched back to his harmless, poor-student persona, hands in his pockets, pretending to be interested in the massive mechanical parts, and slowly navigated through the mountains of scrap metal.
His footsteps looked casual, but his brain was racing, recalling the map scanned during that short minute.
Most of the light points were too scattered.
One here, one there, hidden deep in various scrap piles. Trying to dig them all out would require too much work and would easily attract attention.
He had to find a target.
A target that was the most valuable and the easiest to obtain!
In his mind, the starry map was called up again.
His gaze swept past the scattered white and green dots and finally locked onto a position in the southeast corner of the scrap yard.
There.
There was a scrap pile.
And in that scrap pile was a light point, brighter and more dazzling than any green light point he had ever seen!
That light even faintly showed signs of transforming into blue!
This was it!
Wang Pingan confirmed his target and stopped wandering around.
As he walked, he carefully observed his surroundings.
Overhead, surveillance cameras were everywhere, as if they were free, one every few dozen meters, with red indicator lights blinking.
Not far away, several workers in greasy overalls were gathered, smoking and chatting, their gazes sweeping across the area from time to time.
He had to avoid everyone's line of sight.
Like a nimble wild cat, he used the mountain-like scrap piles as cover, sometimes walking fast, sometimes pausing, specifically choosing to walk through surveillance blind spots and worker dead zones.
Ten-plus minutes later.
He reached the scrap pile in the southeast corner without any mishap.
The smell here was even worse than outside.
A large pile of heavily rusted metal plates was piled up in disarray.
These metal plates looked heavy and thick, and some charred, melted marks left by energy weapons still remained on them.
Wang Pingan recognized them at a glance.
These were outer armor plates from an interstellar warship.
These were things truly retired from the battlefield!
His heart rate accelerated, and his gaze was fixed on the area beneath that pile of armor plates.
That most dazzling green light point was right there.
He looked left and right, confirmed no one was paying attention to this side, then hunched over and slipped into the shadow of the scrap pile.
He reached out, grabbed the edge of an armor plate, and heaved.
"Hiss..."
So heavy!
This thing didn't look big, but it was terrifyingly heavy.
He mobilized the blood energy of a First-Rank Martial Artist within him, the muscles on his arms bulged slightly, veins popped out, and only then did he manage to barely lift a corner of the armor plate.
A more intense smell of rust hit him in the face.
He didn't care about that; he painstakingly pried away the scrap on top, piece by piece.
His hands were soon cut in several places by the sharp metal edges, blood mixing with oil stains, looking disheveled and miserable.
But he didn't feel any pain at all.
All his attention was focused on that target, which was getting closer and closer.
Finally.
After he pried open the last layer of rusted armor plates.
His movements stopped.
In the middle of that pile of scrap iron, an object lay quietly.
It was the size of a palm.
Its entire body was a dark gold color; the material was neither gold nor iron, and it had a strange, warm, and smooth feeling to the touch.
Most striking were the dense, mysterious, and complex unique patterns on its surface, resembling human meridians.
These patterns seemed to be flickering with alternating light and dark at an extremely slow speed.
Wang Pingan held his breath and carefully took this metal fragment out of the scrap pile.
【High-concentration energy reaction detected...】
【Item identification in progress...】
【Identification complete: High-energy interstellar warship engine core fragment (Type III)】
【Convertible pay-to-win points: 300 points!】
300 points!
Wang Pingan's eyes turned red instantly.
300 points!
This is 300 fucking points!
This was almost the total sum he had managed to get by dumping all his pocket money and New Year's money from his parents during the summer vacation!
His parents, two Second-Rank Martial Artists, fighting tooth and nail against alien races on the front lines for a month, only earned this much in total military merit allowances!
And now.
He had only spent half an hour rummaging through a trash heap.
One lucky find!
And he had earned his parents' month of life-risking money!
A huge sense of happiness and accomplishment, like a tidal wave, instantly submerged him.
He was trembling with excitement, his lips quivering, unable to say a single word.
He was rich!
This time, he was really rich!
He carefully tucked the priceless fragment into his chest, preparing to wrap it up with his clothes and stuff it into his backpack.
Although there had been no abnormalities when absorbing spirit crystals before, there might be special circumstances when absorbing these fragments, so Wang Pingan thought about taking it back to his room to absorb it, and only after confirming there were no issues would he absorb it directly.
However.
Just as he was excitedly preparing to hide the fragment.
A rough voice, like a thunderclap, rang out from behind him without warning.
"Kid!"
"What are you sneaking around digging for?!"