Chapter One: Apprentice Mechanic, Crimson Prosthetic Eye!
“This damned weather.”
Su Cheng glanced up at the mist-shrouded sky, as if it were veiled in a layer of yellow gauze.
Dirty rainwater trickled steadily down from above.
Faintly, the outline of a colossal phantom could be glimpsed in the sky…
Rubbing his hollow right eye, Su Cheng bent down and picked up the battered floor sign with half its lights broken.
The words “Prosthetic Repairs” flickered uncertainly in the dim light.
Beneath, the word “Beginner” was scrawled in tiny charcoal script.
Underneath that, an even smaller line read: “Repairs not guaranteed—at your own risk.”
He had been teaching himself prosthetic repair for eight years now, ever since he was twelve, guided only by the manuals his father had left behind.
Rainwater pooled and flowed across the filthy ground, reflecting the scattered, sparking signs and the battered heating pipes and grimy walls along the street.
Splash.
A rusted metal foot stamped into a puddle, sending droplets splattering onto a rotting corpse in the alley.
A few junkies, high on electronic hallucinogens, stood in the rain like zombies, oblivious to life or death.
This was Earth—the old world abandoned by the New Humans!
They were all exiles, left behind by the new era.
Carrying the sign inside his shabby hut, Su Cheng carelessly shut the door behind him.
Clang, clang…
The scavenged world clock hanging on the door swung with the motion, displaying: New Era, Star Calendar, Year 811, February 9th.
He walked to his game table, slumped into a threadbare sofa, and gulped the last half-bottle of cloudy green, low-quality nutrient fluid before powering up an old PS5 from the previous century.
Ape God, activate!
“Damn, playing Black Myth again? You’ve been stuck on that big-headed freak for three days!”
At that moment, the mechanical voice of a robot shaped like a rectangular box sounded beside him—a heavily accented Guangxi Mandarin filtered through a synthesizer.
The robot’s rusty limbs gestured wildly. “Isn’t there any other boss in this game?”
“What do you know? I’m practicing my skills,” Su Cheng shot back with a glare.
The repair assistant, “No-Brain,” was a first-generation household AI robot from eight centuries ago, heavily modified by Su Cheng.
He’d found it amidst the ruins after the war, with only a broken shell and a primitive eight-digit sequence photon brain.
“Damn, you’re mad again! If you’ve got the skills, why not beat that big-headed guy?”
“See, you died again—cousin, are you really up to this?”
Su Cheng glared at the monstrous ghost with its oversized head that had just killed him with a single blow.
And this wasn’t even the first boss—just an elite monster!
How did players in the old era ever get past this?
“Honestly, you’re terrible and yet you keep playing. Oops, down you go again.”
Bang, bang, bang!
Suddenly, someone knocked at the door.
“Not taking clients today, I’m in a bad mood,” Su Cheng called out casually. “Come back tomorrow—one day’s delay won’t kill you.”
Bang, bang, bang!
But the knocking persisted.
Su Cheng frowned, glanced at the protagonist who’d just turned back into a tuft of monkey fur, then checked the monitor above the screen. Sighing, he set aside the controller and went to open the door.
“Su—Su big brother, please save my mother. I beg you…”
A petite girl with a mechanical right leg covered in cat doodles stood at the threshold, struggling to support a disheveled woman on her back.
Her bright eyes brimmed with tears, pink shoulder-length hair in wild disarray, half her face hidden.
Both were drenched by the downpour.
Su Cheng looked coolly at the bedraggled pair; the woman was barely clinging to life.
He stepped aside, leaving the doorway open.
The little girl hurried in, still supporting her mother.
Su Cheng gently lifted the woman off her back and carried her to the crude surgical table.
His body was unmodified—no prosthetics—so he lacked the strength of augmented humans.
No-Brain immediately rolled over, pulling out repair tools from its chassis.
Though old, each tool gleamed from meticulous care.
The girl felt the burden lighten and quickly came to the table, wiping away her tears, her young face full of worry. “Three bad men beat my mom. Will she—will she ever wake up?”
“Don’t worry. She will,” Su Cheng replied calmly, examining the woman’s wounds as he spoke.
He knew this mother and daughter—the woman, Judy, worked as a hostess at the Loli Island Bar in the ruined city. She’d sold almost all her organs for survival, keeping only those between her knees and waist.
After the Great War, disease and scarce food made flesh-and-blood bodies a liability. Many exiles replaced their organs with machines—cheaper to fix than to heal.
The girl, Zhu Shaner, was fifteen and worked as a cleaner at the bar. Aside from her right leg, she was otherwise unmodified—a rare thing in the old world.
Shaner’s big eyes trembled with grievance. “They tried to make Mama undress. She refused, so they beat her. I couldn’t pull them off.”
She stubbornly wiped away fresh tears.
“They’re bad people.”
Su Cheng murmured agreement as he undressed Judy.
Her body was covered in bruises. In her abdomen, a low-grade D-10 power unit made by LightTech Corp was visible through cheap synthetic skin, amid pools of cut-rate biogel.
Her wounds oozed the white fluid, a burned electronic stench mixing with decay in the air.
Su Cheng slid a repair magnifier over his right eye socket.
No-Brain handed him a scalpel. “You’ve got no right eye—what’s the magnifier for?”
Su Cheng moved the lens to his left eye. “Put down the tools. Go get Shaner a blanket and dry her hair. I’ve got this.”
He cut into the woman’s body with the scalpel. The damage was severe—multiple mechanical organs broken, their error codes flashing, some even shutting down intermittently!
Cheap parts meant no self-repair or protection—this would be a tough fix.
But it wasn’t the worst he’d seen. His father’s manuals described far grimmer cases, detailing every mechanical structure and prosthetic.
Su Cheng worked swiftly and skillfully.
Off to the side, No-Brain dried Shaner’s hair with a blower and wrapped her in a blanket.
Suddenly, a jet of biogel sprayed from Judy’s body.
Without looking up, Su Cheng grabbed a micro circular saw. “No problem—everything’s under control.”
A tiny explosion sounded inside her, sparks leaping out.
He swapped tools without missing a beat. “Nothing major.”
But then Judy’s body jerked uncontrollably, her mechanical limbs twisting out of sync.
Su Cheng remained unruffled, picking up a precision surgical knife. “I’m just a beginner repairman—I promise to repair, not to guarantee results, or life. I said it: beginner.”
“I trust you, Su big brother. You did my leg—I love it. It works great,” Shaner blinked her pure, trusting eyes.
“Shaner, I’m way better than that junk dealer—ten times the skill!”
“I believe in Mr. Junk, too.”
“No, no, not Mr. Junk—I’m Wukong, get it? The Monkey King from old China’s legends, who raised havoc in the heavens! One day, I’ll smash that Future City in the sky!”
“Alright, Mr. Wukong is awesome too!”
“Heh, good girl.”
Hearing the exchange, Su Cheng’s hand paused for a moment.
Future City…
Never mind.
He shook his head, dismissing the thought, and kept working.
After a long while, Judy finally lay quiet on the table.
“There. Done.”
Su Cheng set down the laser welder, wiped the sweat from his brow, and turned to Zhu Shaner. “Your mom was badly hurt, but thanks to my skill, she’s as good as new.”
“But, but Su big brother…” Shaner pointed timidly at her mother’s chest. “She’s still leaking biogel.”
Su Cheng quickly turned back, sealed the wound with adhesive, taped it up, and dressed Judy. “Ahem.”
He held out a finger and waggled it.
No-Brain piped up, “This repair was extremely difficult—one hundred Alliance credits.”
“One hundred?!” Shaner hung her head, twisting her shirt nervously. “I—I don’t have any money.”
That much would keep them alive for a month.
No-Brain waved its arms. “How can you keep mooching like this?”
Shaner hurriedly pulled a red artificial eye from her pocket. “I’m sorry, I really have nothing. My boss hasn’t paid me, but I found this. I noticed your right eye hurts in the rain, Su big brother. I thought you might need it. It’s broken, though…”
No-Brain examined the eye. “This thing is completely useless, little—”
“It’s fine,” Su Cheng interrupted. “I need it. It’ll cover the repair fee.”
No-Brain scratched its head, only to remember it didn’t have one, so it lowered its mechanical hand.
Su Cheng took the artificial eye. “Take your mom home. Her backup photon brain was damaged—she won’t wake up yet. By tomorrow, she’ll reboot. Don’t worry.”
“Thank you, Su big brother!” Shaner gave him a deep, earnest bow. “I’ll repay you, I promise!”
She knew the eye was worthless.
With that, the frail girl struggled to lift her mother and stepped out into the rain.
Su Cheng watched until they vanished, then shut the door.
“Cousin, you keep on like this, how are we supposed to make a living? Sooner or later we’ll be picking through trash! If we catch Black Death Virus from the garbage and go mad, we’ll all be finished!”
Su Cheng raised an eyebrow and turned No-Brain off.
“You just…can’t…play…Shutting down.”
He carefully cleaned and organized his tools before returning to the table, where he slouched and inspected the red artificial eye.
A wasted day for this useless thing.
But the girl had done it for her mother.
Mother…
A flicker of memory crossed Su Cheng’s remaining eye.
Suddenly, the artificial eye lit up.
Before he could react, it wrenched free of his grasp and shot into his empty right socket!
“Shit!” Su Cheng leapt up in shock, clawing at the eye.
But to his horror, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t pull it out!
“What the hell is this?!”
A strange, electric whirring filled his head as the eye spun madly, then abruptly stopped.
A blood-red pupil glowed with an eerie light.
Su Cheng felt invisible tendrils reach from the eye, burrowing into his socket, probing into his brain!
Agonizing pain lanced through his nerves, but he gritted his teeth and endured.
Damn, what did that girl find?
Beep: Dimensional Eye fusion in progress.
Beep: Fusion complete. Current unlocked civilization technology level: Third Dimension.
Beep: Once the Dimensional Eye is activated, the host can synthesize and upgrade any two identical technological artifacts!
…