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

"Does it hurt?" Lu Chen asked.

Lin Qi raised his hand and touched the subcutaneous sensor at the junction of his left shoulder and shoulder: "The pain threshold is set to 0.5%. It doesn't hurt. But there are air bubbles in the heat dissipation pipes, and my heart area is hot."

Lu Chen put down the oil bottle, took out a flathead screwdriver from his pocket, and placed it below her collarbone.

Press the tip of the screwdriver against a tiny, dark red pressure relief valve and twist it gently.

Chi-

A stream of hot steam, smelling of engine oil, shot out from the valve and landed on Lu Chen's chin, carrying a slightly warm, moist mist.

Lu Chen raised his sleeve and wiped his chin: "Eat less hard food usually. Your body is made of carbon fiber die casting, not the divine alloy of before, so it can't bite through iron."

Lin Qi remained silent.

She looked down at her chest.

At the edge of the elastic tube top, a gruesome scar was visible. It was a mark left by the gamma-ray burst of Protocol Zero six months ago. The high-energy radiation completely carbonized her dermis, and the current skin was made of desensitized pigskin, making it much darker than the surrounding skin.

Lin Qi's mental processes are as follows: Objective: Check his own hardware wear and tear. Current status: Main power supply has 47% remaining charge, backup capacitors are aging, and the left hydraulic arm has a 5-millisecond response delay. Lu Chen's vital signs are deteriorating more severely; his cardiopulmonary function is only 70% of a normal person's. Conclusion: It is necessary to maintain the current low-power lifestyle and avoid triggering further intense physical interactions.

The water in the basin was indeed cooling down.

Lu Chen stretched out his right hand and placed it on the edge of the plastic basin.

His palms were slightly red, and the capillaries under his skin trembled slightly at a frequency imperceptible to the naked eye.

The Brownian motion between water molecules is forcibly accelerated.

A hot bubble suddenly rose from the surface of the water, which had been almost calm, and the water temperature rose again at a rate of two degrees per second.

A fine layer of cold sweat appeared on Lu Chen's forehead.

His breathing became a little heavier, and his heartbeat was somewhat erratic under the old clothes on his left chest.

Lu Chen's mental processes were in motion. Goal: Stop energy output. Assessment: Insufficient myocardial blood supply; the microscopic thermodynamic manipulation placed an unexpected burden on the mortal body. Action: Cease.

He withdrew his right hand, letting it hang at his side, his fingers trembling slightly.

Lin Qi scooped a handful of hot water from the basin and poured it on her shoulders. The water slid down her pale neck, past her collarbone, and soaked her gray tube top. The thin fabric absorbed the water, clinging tightly to her defined contours, revealing the dark edges of the metal frame stitched to her flesh underneath.

"Don't use your hands to heat it up in the future," Lin Qi said in a low voice.

"The electric kettle plug burned out. I'll have to buy a new one at the hardware store tomorrow; it'll cost 1.2 yuan." Lu Chen sniffed. "My arm is still usable; heating a few liters of water won't kill me."

Just then.

A very faint sound of a tile cracking came from the roof.

pat.

The sound was very soft, like a wildcat stepping on weathered asbestos tiles.

But then came a suppressed gasp from a woman's throat.

Lin Qi's body tensed up instantly.

She didn't even reach for the mechanical arm on the table. With her only remaining right arm, she pushed herself up from the water basin like a cheetah in ambush!

His wet legs left two water streaks on the ground, and his right hand, with its five fingers forming a claw, pierced directly through the single-layer plastic roof above the courtyard, which was used to keep out the rain, with a whooshing sound!

Whoosh!

The plastic sheet was torn in half.

The asbestos tiles on the roof collapsed completely, and amidst the flying debris and dust, a gray figure cried out as it fell from mid-air.

Lin Qi adjusted his center of gravity in mid-air, swung his right elbow horizontally, and directly blocked the falling person's throat, using the force of gravity to slam the person hard onto the blue brick floor of the courtyard!

A muffled thud.

Mud and water were splashing everywhere on the ground.

The person pinned to the ground kicked his legs desperately, his work pants rubbing against the mud and water, and his multi-functional belt scattered all over the ground.

Zhao Lingling.

Her face was covered in grayish-black ash, her lips were purple, and her neck was tightly gripped by Lin Qi's cold, hard right hand, preventing her from even coughing.

She was also clutching a miniature infrared night vision thermal imager in her hand.

The screen was shattered, flashing a blinding white light.

Zhao Lingling's mental state. Objective: Gather evidence of the repair shop's nighttime energy metabolism. Current situation: Carotid artery compressed, oxygen supply interrupted, will lose consciousness within three seconds. The woman before her has only one right hand, is almost naked, but her muscle explosive power exceeds the limits of a military exoskeleton. Conclusion: The intelligence was seriously flawed; the opponent is a highly dangerous modified biological weapon.

Lu Chen sat on a small stool and finally finished his cigarette.

He stubbed out his cigarette on the bench leg and looked at Zhao Lingling, who was lying on the ground in a disheveled state.

"Engineer Zhao." Lu Chen stood up, picked up the old cotton-padded coat from the ground, and draped it over Lin Qiguang's bare back. "The roofs of these old houses have been in disrepair for years. If you step on a tile and break it, the hardware store will charge you 80 cents. You broke three tiles."

Lin Qi loosened his fingers by half a millimeter, allowing Zhao Lingling to take in half a breath.

Zhao Lingling was breathing heavily, her chest heaving. The zipper of her work clothes had been torn open halfway during the fall, revealing a black quick-drying vest underneath.

"You... are not... human at all..." Zhao Lingling squeezed out a few words through gritted teeth, her eyes fixed on Lin Qi's bald left shoulder.

There was no blood seeping out; only metal gears turning in the dim light, and a few broken optical fibers protruding into the air, trembling with each breath.

"Lin Qi is a human being, he has a disability certificate issued by the Second People's Hospital of Jiangcheng." Lu Chen walked over and picked up the broken thermal imaging camera from the mud. "But Engineer Zhao, he climbed onto someone's roof in the middle of the night to spy on them taking a shower. The rules of the provincial research institute are really quite special."

Zhao Lingling's face flushed instantly, whether from suffocation or embarrassment and anger, it was hard to tell: "I wasn't watching the shower! I was monitoring for gravitational wave leakage! You just suddenly increased the water temperature from twenty degrees to forty-five degrees, and the infrared spectrum within a two-hundred-meter radius was completely distorted!"

"My hands are hot, is it illegal to warm them up?" Lu Chen took out the battery from the thermal imager and stuffed it into his pocket. "This 18650 lithium battery is in good condition; it can be put in a flashlight."

Zhao Lingling bit her lower lip hard, tears welling up in her eyes.

Throughout her life, from special training classes to research institutes, she has always been a top expert. Never before has she been forced to be treated like this, like a petty thief.

"Kill me if you want." Zhao Lingling closed her eyes, tilted her head back, revealing a taut expanse of white skin. "Zhang Kuang dared not report it, but I have already sent the scheduled email to the provincial department. If I don't go back to clock in at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, the armed special police will block off Jianshe Road."

Lu Chen sighed.