The two cleared out a room.
Chen Linling looked hesitant the entire time, as if wanting to speak but holding back.
Xie Litang took a bite of compressed biscuit, looked over at her, and asked, “Do you have something to tell me?”
“Sis, I actually awakened an ability too. I can help you out from now on.”
“What ability?”
“Cyber Machinist.”
“That's pretty good.”
“But my ability is really useless. I can usually only craft simple stuff, and I can't even craft prosthetics—”
As if realizing something, Chen Linling quickly clamped her hand over her mouth.
Xie Litang's gaze turned sharp; she was positive she had heard the word "prosthetics" just now.
She opened her mouth.
In the end, she said nothing more.
Because the ultimate endgame of the Cyber Sequence was simple: the flesh is weak, embrace mechanical transcendence.
So what could Xie Litang say? Ask her not to grow stronger, not to abandon her flesh and blood, because she could protect her for the rest of her life?
Xie Litang sighed, hugged her, and said, “If you need anything, just tell me.”
Chen Linling breathed a sigh of relief and whispered, “Sis, thank you for understanding me.”
The two leaned against each other.
Thus passed their first night after arriving at the black market.
The next day.
A mute hunchback knocked on their door.
He pointed at the corpses on the floor and held up two fingers, asking if they needed a cleanup service for just two hundred.
Xie Litang paid him without hesitation. Leaving the corpses out for one night was enough to intimidate people; letting them sit any longer would just make them stink.
Holding a shopping list, Xie Litang hired the hunchback along the way to buy supplies.
They were mostly secondhand circuit boards, batteries, secondhand firearm parts, and the like.
These were all things Chen Linling needed to train her Cyber Machinist ability.
Once she reached One-Star Hunter, she could unlock blueprints for various cybernetic prosthetics and weapons.
Xie Litang went into closed-door cultivation, staring at the ten ant farms and saying, “I won't come out until I finish all ten of these.”
【CLANG.】
【CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG...】
Now that her health had broken ten thousand, each Heartsteel trigger boosted her Vitality by dozens of points.
Converted to attack damage, squishing an ant was equivalent to permanently gaining several points of attack power.
Three days later.
“I can't finish triggering Heartsteel.”
“There's simply no end to it.”
“Haha, hahahaha ahaha... No way, if I keep stacking this, I'm literally going to throw up.”
Averaging one and a half ant farms stacked per day, she hadn't even finished five in three days.
Xie Litang tore open a bag of crackers.
She tossed them into the cases to feed the ants.
She then rubbed her head and summoned her panel.
【Name: Xie Litang.】
【Ability: Teammate Sacrifice, Uses: 0.】
【Class: Swordmaster, Wind-Style Swordsmanship (Major Accomplishment) 3,256/100,000.】
【Vitality: 126,086, Spirit: 45.】
【Equipment: Heartsteel.】
【Gold Coins: 320.】
Now, every Heartsteel trigger dealt 3,782 true damage and permanently increased her Vitality by 378.
This speed was still too slow; if she hadn't been practicing her sword skill by poking ants with Wind-Style Swordsmanship to raise proficiency, that number would be even more insane.
Xie Litang found it hard to judge her current strength, but she felt pretty invincible.
“I feel like hardly anyone in Jianghai City could take a single Heartsteel hit from me now, right?”
“If I stormed back right now...”
“Bah, bah, bah.”
“Can't have dangerous thoughts like that.”
“That Namo Gatling auto-aim city defense cannon at the city gate fires 3,600 rounds per second.”
Xie Litang mulled over her words and whispered, “With my hundred and twenty thousand health, surviving three seconds would count as a win, right?”
Xie Litang shook her head. It wasn't that she was weak.
Rather, she hadn't learned any cultivation techniques, so relying purely on Vitality made her no different from a mountain of flesh.
Besides, current heavy sniper rifles could punch right through meter-thick steel plates.
If she took a hit, she didn't know if she would die, but she'd probably be crying for a long time.
So relying solely on health was definitely out of the question.
Cultivation techniques and equipment—neither could be lacked.
Xie Litang crossed her arms, stroked her chin, and said, “Looks like there's nowhere to get cultivation techniques for now, so I have to pay off my system debt first, then buy equipment from the system.”
“I need to find a place to farm gold coins.”
“Skin Corpses.”
“I wonder if they count?”
“Whatever, I'll know once I trigger Heartsteel on one.”
Xie Litang looked at Chen Linling, who was working hard crafting items, a worried look appearing on her face. “If I leave, what about her safety?”
Soon enough.
She came up with a solution.
Xie Litang built a wooden crate, packed up the wheelchair, and hid it inside the dense forest.
Loading up plenty of food, Xie Litang carried Chen Linling on her back and flew on her turbofan hoverboard toward Fumu City, over two hundred kilometers away.
Chen Linling pulled out her toolbox and repaired the vault of a bank that looked relatively intact.
Having awakened as a Cyber Machinist, repairing an Old Era bank vault door was no difficult task for her.
Xie Litang carried her inside and said gently, “Fumu City only has some Wandering Corpses roaming around. They can't break through this vault door. Wait for me for three days, okay?”
Chen Linling nodded sensibly and said, “Okay.”
Xie Litang had no choice. Compared to leaving her sister in a black market full of scumbags, she preferred locking her inside an Old Era vault.
“Sis.”
“What's wrong?”
“I set the vault door so that it can only be opened from the outside.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I'm not crazy. If I go out like this, I'll die anyway. So if you don't come back, Sis, having this place as my grave doesn't sound too bad.”
Chen Linling took a deep breath, bit her lip, and said, “Sis, you must come back.”
Xie Litang nodded solemnly. “Mhm, definitely.”
Chen Linling shoved a backpack into Xie Litang's arms. Opening it, Xie Litang saw a large pack of grenades.
“What are these?”
“I crafted plasma bombs myself. They can instantly release over 1,000 volts of voltage within a three-meter radius. My materials were limited, so please don't laugh at me, Sis.”
“How could I? Linling is the best.”
“In the future, I'll definitely craft the most powerful sniper rifle to help you, Sis.”
“Alright.”
Xie Litang didn't dare continue the conversation.
She slowly shut the door of the vault.
Walking several hundred meters away from the bank, Xie Litang stepped onto her turbofan hoverboard and turned the revving feature to maximum. The turbofan instantly let out a massive drone.
Then she flew forward slowly.
Continuing along the street for several kilometers...
Seven or eight Wandering Corpses were already following behind her, trailing all the way to the edge of the city.
Even then, there were only twelve Wandering Corpses in total. Xie Litang drew the longsword from her back and slashed down in one strike.
【CLANG.】
One Wandering Corpse's health bar was instantly wiped out.
Before long, she had cleaned out the Wandering Corpses, gaining 240 gold coins in revenue.
“Making so much noise with the revving feature should have drawn in almost all the remaining Wandering Corpses nearby. That should make Linling even safer.”
Xie Litang leaned forward slightly, and the turbofan hoverboard immediately began accelerating steadily.
Right now, all she owned was dry rations, potions, a longsword worth one hundred thousand, plus a set of modular battle armor worth over four hundred thousand.
That was her entire fortune. If she also factored in the turbofan hoverboard beneath her feet worth over two hundred thousand...
Xie Litang did a quick calculation and murmured, “Wait, it actually seems... pretty luxurious?”
Wearing over seven hundred thousand worth of equipment, rounded off, that was basically a million-unit gear loadout.
Two words.
Extravagant.
Rate on N.U.
