Chapter 2

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Dong! Dong! Dong!

“Open up. Third Brother, are you in there? Open up.”

Soon after placing his order, Lin Yu heard knocks on the door. It was Xu Zhaoyang’s voice.

Lin Yu closed his laptop and opened the door. As he looked at his roommates chattering outside the room, he asked them, “Why are you guys back this early?”

Xu Zhaoyang and four others had left the dorm room past 9pm. They would usually come back at around 11pm or 12am by jumping over the wall, or if they felt like it, they would spend the whole night at a cyber café. However, it was just past 10pm at the moment.

“Sigh, let’s not talk about it. A car factory nearby caught on fire while we were eating. The entire Supper Street was sealed off by the police.”

2Lin Yu was just asking casually. He did not expect Xu Zhaoyang to reply sullenly with such shocking news.

Xu Zhaoyang walked in as he spoke. He handed the plastic bag to Lin Yu and said, “Here, your chicken wings and fried rice. Lucky for you, I placed your order with the boss beforehand. The bottle of Coke is courtesy of me.”

“If that’s the case, I shall take it with pleasure.”

Lin Yu took the bag with a smile and sat on his bed. He started gobbling up the fried rice together with the chicken wings and the bottle of Coke.

The other roommates crawled back into their beds. However, perhaps because of the alcohol they had drunk, the chatter still went on. They were all still discussing the fire.

“Hey, don’t you think it’s a little weird? If it’s just a fire at the car factory, why was there a need to seal off the whole of Supper Street? On top of that, there have been quite a lot of news stories about peculiar incidents lately, right? It seems like there’s a few in the local news every day.”

3“What’s so weird about it? The fire was dangerous and it’s all factories for cars and electronics nearby so an explosion could have happened.”

“Politician Wei, what are you haranguing about?”

“I suspect that there is some confidential project going on that has been hidden from the world.”

4“Pfft, I could say that there was a rejuvenation of spiritual energy. A fire-type superhero could have appeared in the car factory and committed the crime.”

4“Second Brother, stop reading so many online novels. Spiritual energy rejuvenation, my *ss.”

“Why wouldn’t a spiritual energy rejuvenation be possible? The frequency of these incidents has been increasing since last week and there are so many unsolved mysteries in the world. How sure are you that there is no spiritual energy? Even scientists have said that unobservable energies exist.”

1“That’s just a hypothesis, stop being a crank.”

1The roommates discussed the fire excitedly.

The one who started the discussion was Zheng Wei, but everyone in the dorm room called him Politician Wei1 because of his peculiar love for news broadcasts and interviews.

2Zheng Wei’s opinion attracted Second Brother Zhou Jie, who was a longtime bookworm, to join the discussion before the others chimed in as well. The discussion finally ended in the hands of the resident contrarian and conversation killer, Fourth Brother.

…

‘[The Rookie Post] Your parcel has arrived…’

Three days later, Lin Yu received a message on his phone in the afternoon.

‘Finally.’

Lin Yu glanced at the message after pulling out his phone. He got dressed quickly and headed out.

He did not shop online often. On top of that, he had been saving up for his video production that it was impossible for him to have purchased anything. The delivery message must have been for his Charge Blade parts.

However, the cutting factory was pretty deceptive as they did not bother sending the huge items to his doorstep and left it at the post office instead.

‘Speaking of which, there have been quite a few news stories like this recently…’

Lin Yu arrived at the entrance of The Rookie Post after walking for about seven or eight minutes from the college. He stopped in his tracks and glanced at the car factory nearby.

The Changhai Vocational College was located in the suburbs and surrounded by some other universities and colleges. There were also various factories and school district-associated business areas.

A few buildings of the car factory near Supper Street had turned into black and broken walls. Although it was no longer sealed off, the buildings themselves were barricaded with blue metal plates, with a construction crew working inside.

“Hi, I’m here to collect my parcel.”

Lin Yu shook his head to stop himself from thinking about it and walked straight into The Rookie Post’s office.

Although he was familiar with online novels, he was still capable of telling illusions from reality.

8“Hi, please give us your tracking number or show us the delivery message…”

An employee of The Rookie Post greeted Lin Yu speedily and he successfully collected his parcel. It was a square-shaped box about three palms thick and one meter long in both length and width.

The box sank into his hands. Lin Yu, who had the body of a decadent otaku, immediately turned a little green. He wobbled for nearly half an hour while carrying the box before finally getting back to his dorm.

His roommates were not in; they had all skipped their classes to have fun at the cyber café. It was a perfect opportunity for Lin Yu to shoot his video.

After setting up his Huawei P30 which he had bought because he could not afford a camera, Lin Yu began dismantling the box.

As for narrating the video, he usually did it in post-production. He was usually distracted while working, and as someone who was not that great at talking, it was easy for him to mess up.

Ssst!

The brown cardboard was ripped off in a rough manner. Wooden boards that were about one square meter in size popped out of the box and each of them had cut lines on them.

This was basically the same as assembling a model, except this model was designed by himself.

Since he did his own design, he knew the structure like the back of his hand. Lin Yu skillfully squeezed the parts out from the wooden boards and began assembling them systematically.

Over half an hour went by.

Lin Yu seemed as if he was reliving the times when he assembled toy cars as a child. He unconsciously indulged in it and before he knew it, a large shield with flat sides and a large blade assembled from multiple wooden boards were born.

‘Wooden boards aren’t that light either. I shouldn’t have used solid wood.’

Straining himself, he wielded the large shield and blade. Lin Yu was a little dissatisfied, but he still went on with filming the weapon transformation demo.

It was quite simple anyway. The large shield was the highlight; it had thin edges on both sides, and there was a rectangular slot in the center of the shield that was shaped like a scabbard.

The first half of the blade was slightly narrower than the second half of it. First, slide the blade into the scabbard and open up the two blade points assembled by movable triangles. With this, the shield would be fixed on the blade and would then become a double-edged axe.

“The Charge Blade in games seemed to have the shield slid to the middle of the blade, and you could push it to blade point while rattling it. The sides of the shield could also be popped out further as well. If this video does well, I’ll create an upgraded version of the blade.”

Lin Yu thought about it. He redemonstrated the Charge Blade replica in action, also using the shield and blade separately when the two weapons got taken apart. He finally stopped filming and panted as he exported the video from his phone and began editing it.

As he was busy editing and narrating the video, his gaze occasionally landed on the Charge Blade that was leaning against his bed.

It might have been an illusion, but there seemed to be blurry white spots looming on the Charge Blade. However, when he focused his gaze on it, he could not see anything.

‘I’m not sitting under strong light, am I getting eye floaters again? Have I been staring at the laptop for too long?’

He shook his head in confusion and pinched himself between the brows. Lin Yu tried his best to ignore the tiny shadows in his eye and continued to concentrate on editing.