The star pirates handed each of them a small rock-drilling machine, only about half a person’s height. When it was Cheng Li’s turn, she straightened her back, her dirty little face filled with seriousness. The star pirate hesitated for two seconds before giving her one.
When it came to Yuan Mu, the star pirate said directly, “You can’t operate a drilling machine, so in that case…”
The star pirate raised his gun. Beside him, Uncle Zhao hurriedly threw himself forward, shielding Yuan Mu beneath him.
“He can pick up stones,” Cheng Li said. She pointed at herself and Uncle Zhao. “The two of us will operate the drilling machines. He’ll be responsible for collecting the stones.”
“Right, right, I’ll operate the machine. I’m very good at it. My young master is especially good at picking up stones.” Uncle Zhao spoke incoherently in his panic.
The star pirate looked at Yuan Mu with undisguised contempt and mockery. “Then you’ll pick up stones. If I find out you’re slacking off…”
The star pirate gave the three of them a look that clearly said, ‘You know what’ll happen.’
The drilling machine was extremely primitive, a completely manual design that reminded Cheng Li of the walking tractors from her previous life. But when the one-and-a-half-meter-tall machine sliced through a gigantic boulder within seconds, the violent force nearly blasting her backward, she finally realized how narrow-minded she had been.
Never underestimate the “primitive tools” of this world.
The drilling machine could break rocks, but it could also shovel, haul, and transport. Cheng Li and Uncle Zhao operated their two machines side by side, while Yuan Mu’s task was to gather the fragments that fell to the ground.
The star pirate stood behind them watching for several minutes. Only after confirming that the three of them were not slower than the others did he finally swagger away with his quantum gun in hand.
The drilling machines buzzed nonstop for half the day. By the time night fell, several nearby mountains had already been cut in half by them.
The whistle sounded again. Dragging her sore, numb left arm, Cheng Li walked over to Yuan Mu. Just as she was about to crouch down and carry him, he supported himself with his hands against the ground and moved forward on his own. “No need.”
Cheng Li followed behind Yuan Mu. Right now, he looked remarkably like the gorillas she had seen at the zoo in her previous life, his arms long and powerful. If there had been vines here, he probably could have swung and climbed through them with nothing but his upper body.
As expected of the First Seat of the First Military Academy. Once he decided to do something, he always excelled at it with ease. Even without his legs, he was no slower than anyone else.
There was no water here. A thick layer of limestone dust had accumulated on the three of them, so they could only pat themselves off outside the shack before heading into the shelter they had built that day.
Dinner consisted of a bottle of nutrient solution each. After drinking it, they were too exhausted to even speak and immediately collapsed into sleep.
Yuan Mu and Uncle Zhao shared one room, while Cheng Li had a room to herself. The space was only a few square meters wide and didn’t even have a bed. The floor was neither metal nor plastic, and Cheng Li had no idea what material it was made from. It wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t especially hard either. For someone like her, who had once treated sleeping on the streets as an everyday occurrence, it was perfectly acceptable. Before long, she had fallen into a deep sleep.
When the whistle blew the next morning, she felt momentarily disoriented, as if she had no idea what day or time it was anymore. With no water available, there was no need to brush her teeth or wash her face. Cheng Li simply opened the door and walked outside.
Outside, Yuan Mu and Uncle Zhao were already waiting for her. Seeing her emerge, Yuan Mu merely glanced at her before heading off to assemble. Uncle Zhao, however, greeted her with a smile. “Good morning, Young Madam.”
Cheng Li smiled back at him. “Morning, Uncle Zhao.”
It was another day of nonstop labor. The parts of the mountain above ground had already been hollowed out and hauled away by them. Starting tomorrow, they would begin digging below the surface.
On the third day, the rocks became harder and harder to excavate. Suddenly, a loud bang rang out, followed by thick smoke billowing upward. Cheng Li jumped in fright and instinctively turned to look behind her. When she saw no star pirate holding a quantum gun, she immediately let out a sigh of relief.
“Lots of people’s drilling machines broke down today. Yours isn’t the first,” Yuan Mu said as he moved over to her machine.
Cheng Li and Uncle Zhao had been operating the drilling machines nonstop. The two of them had to handle the workload of three people, leaving them no time to pay attention to anyone else. But Yuan Mu was different.
From this morning until now, he had already seen eighteen drilling machines break down.
When Cheng Li heard that other machines had malfunctioned too, she looked surprised. “What’s going on? Are these machines secondhand?”
Yuan Mu glanced at her, his gaze cool. “You’re a student from the mech manufacturing department. Can’t you tell whether a machine is secondhand or not?”
Cheng Li choked for a second, then laughed awkwardly. “My skills weren’t up to par. Definitely not up to par.”
When Cheng Li saw Yuan Mu remove a small black box from inside the drilling machine’s body, she raised a brow. She had been using the thing for three days and never knew there was something like that hidden there.
“You know how to fix it?” Cheng Li asked.
“It shouldn’t be difficult.” Yuan Mu didn’t even lift his head.
Yuan Mu said it wasn’t difficult, but Cheng Li hadn’t expected it to be this easy. She merely glanced around at the people nearby, and by the time she looked back again, she heard Yuan Mu say, “Done.”
“So fast!” Cheng Li blurted out.
Yuan Mu only looked at her without speaking, but somehow, that single glance conveyed more than a thousand words.
He was definitely questioning her again: ‘You’re a mech manufacturing student, so why can’t you even handle something this simple?’
Cheng Li wasn’t angry. After all, she couldn’t exactly tell him that the person inside this body had already been replaced.
And it wasn’t just her who couldn’t do it. Clearly, nobody else there knew how either, okay? He was the only one who could.
Sure enough, just after Cheng Li’s drilling machine had been repaired, Uncle Zhao’s broke down as well. While Yuan Mu was fixing it, a star pirate happened to walk over. Seeing him repairing the machine, the star pirate remained standing behind him the entire time.
When Yuan Mu finished repairing it, surprise flickered through the star pirate’s eyes, along with a hint of newfound respect. “You don’t need to pick up stones anymore. Starting today, you’ll be responsible for repairing their machines.”
The star pirate pointed around at everyone present.
Yuan Mu became the repairman, and Cheng Li and Uncle Zhao no longer had to handle the workload of three people. Things became much easier. By the time work ended at night, Cheng Li even had enough energy left to chat with Uncle Zhao. “The rocks are getting harder and harder,” she said. She had already gone through more than a dozen cutting blades.
Cheng Li rolled her aching shoulders. Her grimy little face was covered in such a thick layer of dust that her original appearance could no longer be seen.
Uncle Zhao’s gaze was warm and kind. Looking at the young woman before him, who had lost an arm yet showed not the slightest bit of fragility, whose work speed rivaled even that of a fully able-bodied man like himself, the more he looked at her, the more he liked her.
“We should be getting close to the ore,” Uncle Zhao said. Blue Key Stone had extremely high hardness, and even the surrounding rock was far tougher than ordinary metal.
Cheng Li fell into thought. “No wonder the machines keep breaking down, and the star pirates aren’t even angry about it.”
A dark glint passed through Yuan Mu’s eyes. “Be extra careful from here on.”
From his words, Cheng Li sensed the feeling of an approaching storm.
Two days later, someone unearthed the first piece of Blue Key Stone.
That very night, Cheng Li heard the thunderous sound of an explosion.
She immediately sprang up from the floor and rushed out of her room.
In the other room, Uncle Zhao and Yuan Mu had also opened their door.
“Head to the mining area,” Yuan Mu decided immediately.
The mining area had already been excavated dozens of meters underground. Tunnels branched in every direction down there, and the rocks were harder than iron, making it an ideal place to hide. Most importantly, the reason these star pirates were fighting was very likely because of the Blue Key Stone. They probably wouldn’t risk damaging the mining area itself.
Cheng Li had come to the same conclusion. She immediately crouched down and said to Yuan Mu, “Get on. I’ll carry you and run.”
“Young Madam, let me carry Young Master. You lead the way up front.” Uncle Zhao grabbed Yuan Mu in one motion and swung him onto his back.
Outside was already complete chaos. Flames blazed everywhere as explosions erupted nonstop. Cheng Li focused her mental power to the extreme, weaving through the sea of fire and deafening blasts.
“We’re almost there, just ahead,” Cheng Li said. Suddenly, she heard the sound of something slicing through the air from the left. She whipped her head around. Before she could even think, her body moved first.
She lunged toward Uncle Zhao and Yuan Mu, dragging them down low with her.
The next second, something flew over their heads. Then came a massive boom as a heavy object slammed into the ground, smashing out a crater over a meter wide and half a meter deep.
The three of them looked over and discovered it was a metal block weighing over fifty kilograms.
Uncle Zhao’s face was filled with shock, lingering fear washing over him. If not for Cheng Li, both he and the young master might already have been dead.
Yuan Mu also looked at Cheng Li, his eyes carrying a trace of astonishment.