21: Chapter 21: Are there still people buying?

Just as Zhou An was wearing his silver battle armor, feeling the nuclear power surging within his body, the metal door on the side of the hall was kicked open with a "clang."

Luo Ning stumbled out, her hair as messy as a bird's nest, even stained with a few specks of black machine oil, her eyes bloodshot.

"Boss... catch!"

She gave a casual flick, and a purple streak of light arced through the air, heading straight for Zhou An.

Zhou An caught it steadily, and upon looking down, his pupils constricted sharply.

The storm assault rifle, which was already of exceptional quality, had undergone a complete transformation in appearance.

The gun body was covered in a layer of dark purple matte shell, and the original feed port had been replaced by a huge, cylindrical drum magazine covered in blue patterns.

[Name: storm energy pulse submachine gun (Purple)]

[Tier: Tier 2]

[Ammo Capacity: 120 / 120 (Energy Slot)]

[Attack Form: High-frequency Energy Pulse (No longer consumes physical bullets; charged by the core)]

[Special Effect: Tier 2 Piercing — The energy pulse has extremely strong penetrating power and can ignore all physical armor and energy shields of Tier 2 and below.]

[Note: "It is no longer a toy. In front of it, Tier 2 defense is just like paper." — Mad Scientist Luo Ning.]

"A purple-grade energy weapon!" Zhou An was ecstatic.

"Boss... I'm about to collapse. I won't... eat. I need to go... recharge... You study the thing first."

Luo Ning didn't even have the energy to look at Zhou An's new battle armor. She muttered a few words, turned around, and stumbled into her room, slamming the door shut with a "bang" before physically disconnecting to go to sleep.

...

Luo Ning slept soundly until noon the next day.

When she pushed the door open again, her SAN value had returned to a healthy level, her hair was neatly groomed, and she had returned to her quiet and obedient self.

"Awake? Hungry?" Zhou An was sitting in front of the master control console; he didn't turn his head but pointed to the dining table next to him.

The table was filled with steaming dishes: stewed mutant beast ribs, boiled shrimp, and a large bowl of white rice, the aroma wafting everywhere.

Smelling the fragrance, Luo Ning's eyes went wide. Her ladylike image lasted less than three seconds before she rushed over and swept through the food like a whirlwind.

"Boss... mm, your cooking... is really quite good." Luo Ning said incoherently while stuffing rice into her mouth.

After eating until she was seven-tenths full, she remembered the main business and looked at Zhou An with some embarrassment: "Boss, I used quite a few of my private stash of rare materials to successfully alienate that gun. The failure rate was terrifyingly high; I almost blew myself up. Look... can you reimburse me?"

"Reimbursement?" Zhou An turned his head, a playful smile hanging on the corner of his mouth, "No problem. As long as it's a problem that can be solved with materials, it's not a problem for me."

He casually swiped on the system panel and sent over a supplies package.

[Notification: Teammate Zhou An transferred to you: Tier 3 Memory Titanium Alloy x 4000, Tier 3 Composite Rubber x 3000, High-Density Energy Core x 3000...]

"Pfft—cough, cough, cough!" Luo Ning sprayed out the soup she had just taken a sip of. She widened her round eyes, staring fixedly at those 10,000 units of Tier 3 materials.

"O-one... 10,000 units?! And they're Tier 3?!" Luo Ning jumped up abruptly, looking at Zhou An as if he were an alien, her voice cracking: "Boss! Did you rob the system bank? Or did you just wipe out the headquarters of those major guilds earlier?!"

As someone involved in scientific research, she knew too well how precious Tier 3 materials were. At this stage, ordinary players couldn't even scrape together Tier 2 materials, yet Zhou An casually threw out 10,000 Tier 3 materials? This was even more outrageous than winning the lottery!

Zhou An calmly gave a brief account of how he had wantonly harvested Tier 1 materials yesterday and used Hextech to carry out a dimensionality reduction strike.

"Anyway, it's not a secret."

Luo Ning listened with her mouth agape, her whole person stunned for a full five minutes.

"Left hand to right hand... 2-to-1 synthesis... Good heavens..."

"Then why didn't you keep flipping it? While there are still over a million people, you should have sucked the rest dry!"

"No rush." Zhou An looked out at the sea of clouds outside the window with deep eyes.

"The market hasn't been fully exploited yet. Although many of the remaining million-plus people are penniless, there are certainly quite a few old foxes holding onto their currency and waiting, clutching their Tier 1 materials tightly. Now that the ratio has fallen to 1 to 2.1, the profit margin is small. If I force a sweep, it will instead drive the price back up."

"Let the bullets fly for a while." Zhou An stood up and straightened his collar.

"Put the material issue aside for now. My vehicle upgrade is stuck on the last item — the Sky Island Core Crystal."

"We are going to a Sky Island."

"Speaking of which, how many times have you been up to these sky islands filling the sky?" Zhou An asked casually while adjusting the course, taking the opportunity to toss the storm assault rifle to Luo Ning.

Luo Ning hugged the newly upgraded storm energy pulse submachine gun and shook her head repeatedly: "I've never been to one. How was I supposed to land on an island before? And although my firepower is fierce, it's a typical glass cannon. The sky islands not only have monsters, but the terrain is also complex. Once ambushed, I'd be dead for sure. What about you, Boss?"

"I've only been to a micro sky island once." Zhou An shrugged, "Back then, I still had a LV1 helicopter. I relied entirely on a submachine gun to grind a mutant pterosaur to death and got the first kill. Other than that, I've never been up again."

The two looked at each other.

"Forget it. Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will win every battle. Let's go to the regional forum to find some guides first."

Zhou An summoned the system panel and clicked directly on [Regional Public Forum].

However, before he could even type the word "Sky Island" into the search box, the screen full of bold, highlighted trading information and crazily scrolling chat records immediately drew both their attention.

[System Trading House Real-time Top: Four Seas Chamber of Commerce is purchasing Tier 1 basic materials without limit—wood, scrap iron, rubber, etc. Current exchange ratio — 1 unit of Tier 2 material : 1.7 units of Tier 1 material!]

"1 to 1.7?!"

"Are the people from the Four Seas Chamber of Commerce crazy?" Zhou An couldn't help but complain.

"When I was selling off yesterday, the market price had been smashed down to 1:2.1 by me. Now they are actually using a high price of 1:1.7 to sweep up goods in reverse? They don't think that hoarding a pile of soon-to-be-obsolete industrial trash will allow it to rise in value later, do they?"

Luo Ning leaned over to take a look and was also dumbfounded: "They probably think that the mysterious big shot who smashed the market yesterday has already cleared their position and run away, so they want to take advantage of the remaining stock in the hands of retail investors to monopolize all the Tier 1 materials on the market, thinking there will be customers coming to take over."

"Idiots." Zhou An sneered.

This is the typical monopoly mindset of the Four Seas Chamber of Commerce, but there are no new players in this world to take over Tier 1 materials!

And what they don't know even more is that Zhou An holds the absolute synthesis conversion rate of 2:1...