novelhk Chapter 3 Accumulation
Chapter 3 Accumulation
When Liu En woke up the next morning, the first thing he did was to verify a thought that he hadn't had time to confirm the day before.
He picked up the laser gun, his fingers touching the barrel. His consciousness entered that dimensionless space, and within seconds the entire gun transformed into a cloud of atoms—copper, iron, plastic steel, ceramic steel, rare elements—automatically categorized and archived. The gun vanished.
Then he closed his eyes. Shaping. Atoms were taken out one by one from the warehouse. Barrel, main body of the gun, capacitor assembly, resonant cavity, optical focusing system, excitation medium chamber, trigger assembly... Each component took shape in his consciousness, and the atoms combined according to the arrangement in the information, forming a unified whole.
When the last atom was placed in the correct position, Liu En opened his eyes.
A brand-new laser gun lay in his hand. Not the dusty, old weapon from yesterday, but a pristine gun, its metallic surface gleaming with a cool gray sheen, the grip's anti-slip texture sharp and clear. He crafted a standard energy pack, pushed it into the gun, and heard a crisp click. He switched the safety to the cocked position, and the small indicator light on the gun lit up, a stable green.
He aimed the gun at the pump station wall. It was made of ceramic steel, about half a meter thick. The gun's power parameters had already been determined during the analysis—it could penetrate a ceramic steel plate about half a centimeter thick from a distance of 100 meters. Liu En switched the safety back to the off position and leaned the laser gun against the wall beside him.
Beyond weapons, another urgent need arose: food. His current physical condition was appalling. The original owner of this body suffered from years of malnutrition, coupled with the potential additional strain during the transmigration process, resulting in fragile bones, atrophied muscles, and chronic internal organ damage. He needed real food—something rich in complex vitamins, trace elements, and healthy fats.
He needs to go to the market.
The body's topographical memories pointed to a direction: west from the pumping station, through three main channels, past an abandoned pipeline area, then south for about four kilometers. There, a relatively open intersection stood, a semi-fixed trading point where people gathered year-round. The inhabitants of the bottom nest exchanged goods, tools, and information there. The memories also included precautions: avoid conflict with anyone, don't linger at the same stall, don't spend the night at the market, and leave before dark.
The market was dangerous. It was a melting pot of people: gangsters, scavengers, and fugitives. He—a thin, alone boy with nothing to trade—would either be preyed upon or captured and sold off.
He needed a disguise. It started with his appearance. He couldn't go to the market in the tattered clothes that this body originally wore. He needed a relatively complete, less conspicuous outfit.
He rummaged through the material reserves in the warehouse. On the first day, he had dissected several pieces of coarse cloth clothing from the corpses, and the warehouse had a sufficient reserve of the atoms of those organic materials. More importantly, he had already obtained information about the material composition of the coarse cloth. That rough, grayish-black textile material—the information was in the database, down to the precise arrangement of each fiber.
He recalled the information about coarse cloth in his mind and began to sculpt it. A dark gray coarse cloth coat, dark trousers, and a pair of thick-soled boots—the soles were made with a slightly denser structure, while the rest of the boots maintained the softness of the cloth. The material was no different from the everyday clothing of the inhabitants of the bottom nest. He then sculpted a hood that could cover most of his face, and then smeared some gray-black grime scraped from the wall onto his face.
Then there's the "currency" used for transactions. He doesn't have an official Imperial currency. In the Deep Nest, the only things that matter are goods—parts, ammunition, medicine, clean water filter cartridges, and anything that can extend a person's life by a few days.
He salvaged several relatively intact mechanical parts from the warehouse: gears, bearings, and bolts. These were in high demand at the Underground Market—gangs needed standard parts to repair weapons and equipment, and making them themselves was extremely difficult. He used information on standard parts extracted from discarded machinery; the dimensions were precise, and the materials were up to standard.
He put the parts in a cloth bag he had made himself and hung it around his waist.
Finally, there was the weapon. He couldn't bring the laser gun—it was too conspicuous; a fully functional laser gun would cause a stir at the Underhive Market. He needed a less conspicuous means of self-defense. He quickly designed a short knife in his mind—similar to the previous one, but smaller, and concealable in his sleeve. He sculpted the blade from ceramic steel and the handle and sheath from plastic steel. The total length was less than fifteen centimeters, strapped to the inside of his forearm.
Everything was ready. He chose to set off at dawn—a time when the market was less crowded and the light was dimmer, making it ideal for infiltration and observation.
Liu En removed the blocking plate at the entrance of the pumping station, and a grayish-yellow smog poured in. He pulled his hood up tight and stepped into the passageway.
Moving cautiously along the route I remembered, I stopped to listen at every turn and observed carefully before entering any open area. Weapon attachments were concealed on the inside of my forearm, ready to slide out at any moment. The parts in my cloth bag jingled softly.
After walking for about an hour, he heard a commotion. Dozens of people were talking at the same time, mixed with the clanging of metal, the occasional argument, and the buzzing of some kind of machine whose purpose he couldn't figure out.
Liu En stopped at the corner of the passage, pressed himself against the wall, and slowly poked half his head out.
A massive intersection appeared before them. The passages of the bottom nest converged here, forming an irregular oval space, about twenty meters high and forty meters wide. The surrounding walls were equipped with rudimentary lighting devices—miner's lamps and homemade light sources—emitting a dim, yellowish, or pale, cold light. The ground was covered with mats and stalls made of various materials, piled high with spare parts, tools, weapons, cloth, unidentified machinery, and small animals confined in cheap cages.
There were many people. Men and women, young and old, all dressed in coarse gray-black cloth, their faces covered with dust masks or simply bare. Some had obvious mechanical implants—metal arms, exposed tubing, and even their entire jaws had been replaced with some kind of metal structure.
Some people wore red headscarves. Weapons—live-fired pistols, machetes, and even laser guns—slung across their waists. Their posture and gait were different, as if they were surveying their own territory. Gang members, the ones who controlled this market.
Liu En pulled his hood down further and walked into the market with his head down. He didn't look around, didn't linger at any stall, and didn't make eye contact with anyone. His gait deliberately imitated that of the inhabitants of the bottom nests—slightly hunched over, with quick, short steps, as if he were in a hurry.
He walked past the first stall: spare parts. The second: fabric. The third: weapons. He was looking for food.
The fourth stall. Several cans were haphazardly laid out on the stall, their surfaces rusted so badly their original color was almost unrecognizable, and the weld marks at the seals were bulging and deformed—Liu En recognized these things from his memory: Ant Cow canned goods, deadly stuff that was at least a hundred years past its expiration date, relegated to the bottom of the market precisely because of its high risk.
He crouched down, pretending to look through the other items on the stall. The stall owner was a thin man with an old scar running from his forehead to his jaw, and one ear was missing halfway. He sized up Liu En with his cloudy eyes.
"How do I change it?" he asked in low Gothic.
The stall owner raised his eyelids and glanced at him. "Twenty-five parts per can."
Twenty-five parts per can wasn't cheap, but it wasn't exorbitantly priced either. Liu En didn't haggle. He poured dozens of plastic-steel parts, of various sizes, from his cloth bag. The stall owner picked them up one by one to examine them, squinting as he pondered for a while, before finally nodding and pushing all three cans toward him.
"Let it burn in the fire a little longer," the stall owner added expressionlessly.
Liu En stuffed the canned goods into his cloth bag and continued wandering around for a while. He then traded his last two parts for a stack of synthetic starch blocks—grayish-white hard blocks, purified starch mixed with salt and minerals. He then mingled with the crowd leaving the market, broke away from the flow at the first fork in the road, and turned back into the passage he had come from.
On the way back, he quickened his pace but remained vigilant. He stopped every few dozen meters to listen and make sure no one was following him. After making two turns and passing through an abandoned pipe, he finally returned to the access road where the pump station was located.
When he sealed the pump station entrance with plastic steel plates, his back was covered in cold sweat.
But he succeeded. A stack of synthetic starch blocks, three cans of AntCow food. These samples were enough for him to construct information about safe, nutritious, and infinitely replicable food.
Liu Enxian set the starch block aside and picked up a can of ant-beef. He didn't open the can. The moment his fingers touched the can, his consciousness entered that dimensionless space. The can opened everything to his senses—iron atoms and the preservative coating, and then the contents inside: ant meat, fat, broth, and seasonings.
Then he saw the flesh-burrowing worms. Not just one, but thousands. Worms at different life stages—eggs, larvae, dormant adults—were embedded in the gaps of the fleshy fibers, almost invisible. Their bodies were almost fused with the ant-cow's muscle tissue. High-temperature cooking couldn't completely destroy them.
But Liu En's abilities operate at the atomic level. In that dimensionless space, he unfolded the material composition information of the ant-cow canned food layer by layer. The information of muscle tissue was preserved, the information of adipose tissue was preserved, connective tissue, minerals, vitamins—all were preserved. Then he began to peel away layer by layer: the eggs of the flesh-boring worms, peeled away; the larvae, peeled away; the dormant adults, peeled away; the chitinous remains of the worms' bodies, peeled away; their metabolic toxins, peeled away; even those tiny tissue fragments tightly embedded in the worms' bodies, which might carry toxic proteins, were peeled away as well.
What remained was a pure, complete information record of the meat's composition, devoid of any dangerous components. The amino acid sequence of proteins, the triglyceride structure of fats, the distribution of trace elements and vitamins, the organization of muscle fibers—everything beneficial to Liu En's body was preserved intact. The information was entered into the database.
He began cooking. He heated a metal plate using the laser gun's low-power heating mode. Retrieving atoms from the warehouse, he sculpted a strip of ant-beef tenderloin, about two fingers wide and one finger thick, based on the pure meat information. The deep red meat was interwoven with white marbling. He placed the meat on the scorching metal plate, and it immediately sizzled.
A rich aroma of meat filled the pumping station. He used a short knife to turn the meat, ensuring both sides were heated evenly. The surface of the meat turned a deep brown, and clear juices seeped out from the cuts. He grilled it for about five minutes, until the entire piece was fully cooked.
Then he picked the piece of grilled meat off the metal plate and took a bite. It was hot, slightly charred and crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, the fat exploding in his mouth. His stomach responded. This wasn't some paltry supplement like glucose water; this was real energy.
Liu En didn't stop. He continued shaping, roasting, and eating. Piece after piece of ant-beef tenderloin sizzled on the metal plate, falling into his stomach one after another. The synthetic starch block was also roasted on the metal plate, becoming crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. He ate half a kilogram of roasted ant-beef and two hundred grams of roasted starch block until his stomach was bloated. The feeling of fullness was something he had never experienced since coming into this world.
Starting today, he will no longer drink raw or cold glucose water.
Liu En opened his eyes, looking at the empty cloth bag and the several boxes of disintegrated canned food beside it. His gaze fell on the pile of unprocessed plastic waste in the corner of the pumping station. A few hundred kilograms of warehouse reserves—before today, he thought it was a lot. But now he didn't think so. A few hundred kilograms would only be enough for him to eat for a month or two. If used to make weapons or tools, it would be negligible. A laser gun plus an energy pack weighed less than five kilograms. A few hundred kilograms could only make a few dozen guns. He needed more.
And the Bottom Nest is where this goal is achieved. This enormous, abandoned empire's junkyard, with its centuries-old accumulation of industrial waste, scrapped equipment, building ruins, and even entire abandoned factories and workshops—these things constitute his mineral veins.
Liu En stood up and patted his coarse cloth coat. He slung the laser gun over his shoulder, clipped the empty cloth bag to his belt, and removed the sealing plate at the pump station entrance. The plastic-steel material was transformed into an atomic return warehouse. Grayish-yellow smog poured in. He stepped into it.