A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

After the match burned out, the flame did not go out. It hovered in the air for two seconds before turning into a tiny wisp of grayish-white powder and falling into the ashtray.

Zhao Lingling's breath hitched for a second.

That wasn't combustion. It was the carbon atoms that make up the wood fibers undergoing natural decay in a very short time.

Zhao Lingling's mental process was as follows: Objective: Reassess the threat level of the person before her. Current situation: The middle-aged man before her wore a tattered green cotton-padded jacket, his fingers were rough, and his fingernails were filled with black engine oil grime. But his action of unplugging the device just now caused the peak value of the void gravitational wave on the instrument to completely drop to zero within a thousandth of a second. Classical mechanics cannot explain this operation. Conclusion: The other party is not an ordinary technician; he possesses an unknown device that can directly interfere with the weak interaction force.

"Deputy Captain Zhang." Zhao Lingling turned to look at Zhang Kuang, her voice a little strained.

"Yes, Mr. Zhao," Zhang Kuang quickly replied.

"I'm taking the high-energy isotope detector off the vehicle so I can perform a three-dimensional tomographic scan of this room."

Zhang Kuang stood rooted to the spot, not moving an inch.

A frenzied mental process was at work. Goal: Survive. Current situation: Zhao Lingling was going to use radar to scan Mr. Lu's house. If even a reflection of the dark golden divine body behind Mr. Lu were to be seen, the entire Jiangcheng would be studying black holes in physics textbooks tonight. Conclusion: Play dumb.

"Engineer Zhao, that instrument... it got bumped on a speed bump when we were leaving the city, and the fuse blew out. It won't turn on," Zhang Kuang said without changing his expression.

Zhao Lingling gritted her teeth: "That's a fully solid-state, military-grade package; there's no fuse inside!"

"That means the motherboard has a cold solder joint." Lu Chen exhaled a puff of bluish-gray smoke, and casually pulled Aunt Wang's broken induction cooker in front of him. "Let me fix it for you, eighty yuan. Replacing it with an original chip will cost an extra forty."

Zhao Lingling stared at Lu Chen, her eyes unblinking.

The air inside was stuffy.

Lin Qi stood by the counter, the tungsten steel slice in her hand silently retracting into her knuckles. Her mechanical arm hung slightly at the side of her chest, and the hydraulic pressure relief valve at her elbow emitted a very faint hiss.

Lin Qi's mental process: Objective: Eliminate unstable factors. Plan 1: Break Zhao Lingling's seventh cervical vertebra and fake her slipping and falling to her death on a watermelon rind. Plan 2: Format Zhao Lingling's personal device and inject a high-voltage arc to burn out the sensor chip. Assessment: Lu Chen did not issue an attack command just now. Conclusion: Stand by, continue cutting sweet potato chips.

Lin Qi extended his metal fingers, picked out a large piece of dried sweet potato from the bag, snapped it in half with a crack, and handed one half to Lu Chen.

Lu Chen took it and put it in his mouth to chew.

"If Mr. Zhao has nothing else, close the door behind you." Lu Chen picked up a Phillips screwdriver, precisely wedging the tip into the groove on the bottom of the induction cooker. "Old-style induction cookers have high-voltage capacitors. If they leak electricity when you take them apart, I won't pay for medical expenses if someone gets electrocuted."

Zhao Lingling stood still, her lips pressed tightly together.

She glanced at Lin Qi's gleaming alloy prosthetic leg, then at the purplish-red fracture scar on Lu Chen's right wrist.

After a long while, she turned and walked towards the door.

The legs of the work pants rustled softly in the wind.

Zhang Kuang let out a long sigh of relief; his jacket was completely soaked and clung tightly to his skin.

"Mr. Lu, then I'll... take her to the guesthouse to settle in first." Zhang Kuang bowed slightly and said cautiously, "The official document from the province won't be issued until next week. I'll keep an eye on her these next few days and make sure she doesn't go to Jianshe Road again."

"Take the broken batteries off the door." Lu Chen didn't even look up. "Used lead-acid batteries, the scrap collector will give you five yuan. Consider it your errand fee for today."

Zhang Kuang quickly bent down, picked up the heavy battery, grabbed his briefcase with one hand, and ran out of the alley.

The SUV engine roared at the alley entrance before quickly disappearing into the distance.

The alleyway fell silent again.

He lifted the plastic bottom cover of the induction cooker.

Two dried cockroach corpses were lying on the circuit board inside. The copper foil circuit was corroded by oil and turned dark green. The main filter capacitor in the middle had a large bulge, and the explosion-proof valve at the top was cracked.

Lu Chen stretched out two fingers, pinched the bulging capacitor, and flicked his wrist slightly.

No soldering iron was used.

The solder detached directly at room temperature, and the two leads were pulled out of the circuit board cleanly.

Lu Chen's mental process was in motion. Goal: Find a 400-volt, 5-microfarad film capacitor to replace it. Current situation: The parts box in the drawer is empty. Conclusion: Go to the inner room and dismantle that broken microwave oven.

"Lin Qi".

"exist."

"Go inside and drag that Galanz microwave oven out from under the bed." Lu Chen threw the old capacitor into the trash can at his feet. "Keep the high-voltage diode, cut off the copper coil inside. Aunt Wang's woolen pants are almost finished being knitted, but she's missing two more coils of stretcher."

Lin Qi turned around, lifted the faded floral curtain, and went into the inner room.

It got completely dark.

In the old town, streetlights are only lit every thirty meters, their dim bulbs covered by a thick layer of black veil, filled with the corpses of flying insects that died in summer and autumn.

The repair shop's door was closed, and a thick wooden bolt was inserted from the inside into the two greenish wooden doors.

The main lights were not on inside; only a 12-watt energy-saving light was lit on the worktable.

The inner room connects to a small courtyard, where a red brick pool is built against the wall, next to which sits a large oval plastic basin. Originally used to drain wastewater from an old-fashioned washing machine, it is now clean and filled with warm water.

A few wisps of very faint white steam floated on the water's surface.

Lin Qi sat on a small plastic stool next to the basin.

She had taken off her black hoodie and draped it over a bamboo pole next to her. She was only wearing a gray stretchy sports bra close to her upper body, and her skin below her straight collarbone had an unnatural, cold white color.

There is a metal connector about the size of a bowl on the left shoulder.

Six high-strength titanium alloy bolts are fixed to the edge of the scapula, and the nerve connection wires inside are like a cluster of colorful thin optical fibers, soaking in transparent synthetic machine oil.

The robotic arm was disassembled and placed horizontally on the old wooden table next to it.

Lu Chen sat on another small stool, holding a long-spouted oil can in his hand and a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth.

The pointed spout of the oil can was inserted into the gap of the robotic arm's elbow joint and gently squeezed.

Dark red hydraulic oil dripped in, producing a faint lubrication sound.

Lu Chen's mental process was in motion. Goal: To thoroughly clean the fine grit from his joints. Assessment: This afternoon, while cutting dried sweet potatoes, a few hard candy pieces got stuck in the gear gaps, causing the servo motor's load current to increase by three percent. Conclusion: If it's not cleaned properly, the hydraulic cylinder's seals will be damaged when lifting the rice cooker tomorrow.