Chapter 86: Contract Signing

Chapter 86: Chapter 86: Contract Signing

Master Chang quickly drew up a contract template and got it signed with Xiang Yi.

He also told Xiang Yi that if he ever needed a place to stay, he was welcome to crash there.

Not that it was necessary.

The sewer hideout sounded grim, but it was actually pretty clean.

And all the supplies Xiang Yi had painstakingly scavenged were still there — no point relocating just for a place to sleep.

The next morning.

Xiang Yi made it back to the junkyard before the sun had fully risen.

Master Chang shuffled out, still bleary-eyed, unlocked the front gate, and led Xiang Yi toward his living quarters.

Stifling a yawn, he said, "Forgot to ask you something yesterday — how many types of Abnormalities have you actually encountered so far?"

"Four, I think. Blood Crystal, Dead Spirit Dust, Shuffling Monster, and Corpse Ghost. The only materials I’ve managed to collect are from the Blood Crystal."

"Shame. I’ll see what I can do about getting you samples of the others."

It might not necessarily produce anything like the Blood Crystal Laser, but the ability to work with Abnormalities was valuable no matter how you looked at it.

"Actually, I forgot to ask you something yesterday too." Xiang Yi said, catching himself a beat late. "Do you know anything about Living Iron? What it can do?"

"Living Iron? How do you even know about that?"

"Because I have a bit of it..."

The image that immediately flashed through Master Chang’s mind was Xiang Yi ransacking the prison’s storage warehouse during his escape.

"It’s a universal material — has this incredibly unique adaptive quality to it."

"Blend Living Iron into any other material and that material gets a performance boost. Build any device using Living Iron and the device’s core functions get enhanced to match."

"In high-end, push-the-limits applications it might not be the absolute best choice, but in terms of versatility, nothing beats it."

"And it’s extremely rare. If you’re going to use it, make sure you’re using it where it counts most."

"I see..."

Xiang Yi’s mind immediately jumped back to that moment when the Blood Crystal weapon’s laser had struck the Shuffling Monster and triggered that strange reaction — producing Living Iron.

But Shuffling Monsters were Abnormalities. Their appearances were unpredictable in both timing and number. Grabbing some Living Iron when one showed up was doable, but mass production was completely out of the question.

Maybe it was worth testing other Abnormalities? See if the Blood Crystal Laser triggered the same reaction on them.

Still turning the idea over in his head, Xiang Yi followed Master Chang inside and up to the study on the second floor.

The room had a desk, a low tea table, and bookshelves packed floor to ceiling on both sides.

It would’ve felt like a proper scholar’s retreat — if you ignored the fact that every single book on those shelves was about military tactics, command strategy, or maintenance manuals for various military equipment.

Master Chang gestured for Xiang Yi to sit at the desk.

A laptop sat open on it, already powered on.

It looked brand new and was completely out of place with the rest of the study — clearly it had just been brought in.

Master Chang patted the side of the screen twice and said, "Everything you need to learn is on here. I was going to walk you through it myself, but you know I’ve got to head out today, so you’ll have to self-study for now."

"I’ve already called ahead to the farm,"

"They raise three types of animals over there — pigs, chickens, and lizards. The pigs are the regular kind, bred all the way from Earth."

"The chickens are Celestial Feather Chickens. They mainly sell the tail feathers. The meat’s cheap, and they should be able to sell live ones too, just without the tail feathers."

"The lizard they carry is called the Yami Giant Lizard. The meat’s rich and flavorful, but it runs a bit pricey."

"The guy there also knows a bunch of small independent breeders with all kinds of other animals. I’ll bring back some samples when I come home."

Master Chang’s thinking was straightforward enough: figuring out which equipment and production lines would yield the most output required a professional. That took time.

But figuring out which animal produced the most Blood Crystals? That just took a pair of hands.

They could test the conversion quality and efficiency across different animals, then decide which one would become the go-to subject for large-scale Blood Crystal conversion.

"I should be back by noon. Ask me anything you’re stuck on when I get back."

"Got it." Xiang Yi answered, then added, "Hey... can I take some of the materials piled up outside?"

He still had the Living Iron Extraction Device repair in the back of his mind.

"Sure, but if you’re actually looking for parts, you’re better off going into the factory floor — where the robots work."

"You’ve already seen the assembly line. Just dig through the sorted pile, take whatever you need."

"And don’t forget to go through what I left on the laptop."

With that, Master Chang wrapped things up and headed out.

Xiang Yi didn’t waste any time. He opened the most prominent folder on the desktop right away.

Master Chang had left a lot of files inside, though the selection was remarkably narrow — almost everything was professional technical literature on mechanical maintenance and repair.

Judging by the content, these were likely the same technical manuals he had studied during his time in the military.

Military weapons and equipment, notably, were absent.

Which made sense.

Xiang Yi had tried searching for engineering and technical textbooks online before, only to come up empty — there wasn’t a single free resource to be found.

The only thing he’d turned up was a single site that aggregated academic papers and books from a wide range of disciplines, with plenty of professional technical literature and published research on offer.

All of it behind a paywall.

And not cheap, either — tens of thousands of Federation Coins for a single book was completely normal.

Access to a single paper could run anywhere from a few thousand to over a hundred thousand Federation Coins.

The Federation Coin had roughly the same purchasing power as the currency he’d grown up using back in his own world.

Even with this era’s more advanced production capabilities, these technical books were still far beyond what an ordinary person could afford.

If even standard technical manuals were treated this way, the fact that Master Chang had managed to track these down for him was already a big deal.

And it wasn’t just money standing between some books and their readers — certain titles required professional certification on top of that.

You had to pass the prerequisite certification exams proving you could comprehend the material before you were even allowed to purchase it.

This didn’t contradict the Human Federation’s pro-academic stance.

If you wanted to achieve something in a field, you had to first prove you were capable of learning it.

A certification was the cleanest way to do that.

And once you had the cert, government subsidies kicked in for any book that required it as a prerequisite — a title that cost tens of thousands could drop to a few hundred just like that.

Granted, books with hard certification requirements were relatively rare. If you had enough money, you could always just pay the full price outright.

The system gave everyone a shot. Whether they took it was another matter entirely.

For Xiang Yi, not so long ago, this had been all too real — no money meant going nowhere.

That said, he hadn’t banged his head against that wall for long. He’d quickly shifted gears and gone looking for Human Federation school textbooks instead.

And he’d actually found them — everything from elementary school through high school. He’d taught himself through all of it, patching up the gaps in his knowledge about this world.

But past high school, university-level materials were locked behind the same paywall as everything else. Not a single free copy to be found.

Students enrolled at a university could access them for free. For everyone else, the price tag was steep.

Fortunately, for Xiang Yi now, money was looking like it wouldn’t be a problem for much longer.

But for the moment, he needed to focus on what Master Chang had left him.

Xiang Yi closed his eyes and let himself relax for a moment.

When he opened them again, Spiritual Power gathered and concentrated in his mind.

His thoughts began to accelerate.