Obtaining Treasure

Although Zhou Yi had completely forgotten her, Lu Xiaoxiao was not upset at all and introduced herself to Zhou Yi once again.

"Ah, sorry. I'm not going back to the dorm yet. You go on ahead."

Why go back to the dorm? How could she possibly be in the mood to return there now? She wanted to see the mechs!

"Then where are you going? Sightseeing around campus? Let's go together."

Your classmate Lu Xiaoxiao extended an enthusiastic invitation.

"No, I'm going to work."

Ah, so he was a child from a struggling family.

Watching Zhou Yi's thin, frail figure recede into the distance, Lu Xiaoxiao's eyes shone with maternal affection. She silently resolved to treat this hardworking classmate from a poor background a little better from now on.

When Zhou Yi arrived at the library entrance, Qi Lan was, as usual, sprawled in a chair basking in the sun.

"Aunt Lan, the opening ceremony is over. I'm here to report in."

Zhou Yi smiled brightly. On one hand, she was sincerely grateful that Aunt Lan had given her such an opportunity to get close to mechs.

On the other hand, she was naturally displaying the awareness expected of a worker, getting into character early and beginning to curry favor with her boss.

Hearing her, Qi Lan opened her eyes from where she had been lazily reclining and glanced at the Star Brain on her wrist.

"This opening ceremony was a little long. It only just ended?"

Was an opening ceremony that lasted two short sentences really long??

Zhou Yi silently complained inwardly.

"The ceremony ended in two minutes. Dividing us into majors afterward took some time."

Zhou Yi explained. Two minutes was already more than she had needed to say.

"The majors have all been assigned? What did you choose?"

Qi Lan asked with interest.

"Mech Infantry." Zhou Yi had decided on that long ago.

"Oh?" Qi Lan raised an eyebrow.

She had gone upstairs afterward to look at those books. Every textbook related to Mech Masters had been neatly arranged on a separate bookshelf.

She had thought the child had merely mentioned choosing Mech Infantry casually. Since she was so interested in the Mech Master textbooks, Qi Lan had assumed she would definitely choose to become a Mech Master in the end.

That really was an unexpected choice.

"The mechs on the third floor are all scrapped. If you want to use them for combat practice, I'm afraid that won't work. How about you reconsider whether you still want this job?"

"Of course I do!"

Zhou Yi could barely stand hearing the word mech now. The moment she heard it, her eyes lit up, and she became too excited to stop herself.

Scrapped mechs were even better. They would be convenient for her to dismantle, assemble, and study in detail.

"Fine, then I'll take you up."

Seeing Zhou Yi like this, Qi Lan became even more interested.

Mech Infantry and Mech Master...

Would the little girl before her make the same choice as that child from before?

"I've already handled the paperwork and sent it to your Star Brain. I told you about the working hours: you need to come at least four days a week, four hours each day. As for your pay, it's twenty Star Coins a month. Any other questions?"

Twenty Star Coins a month really was pitifully little.

At the price of one Star Coin per tube of Nutrient Solution, it was probably enough to cover Zhou Yi's food for a week.

But that was not important.

"Are the mechs here?"

Qi Lan led Zhou Yi to the third floor. This was Zhou Yi's first time going up there, and it was not entirely filled with books as she had imagined.

Instead, there were only a few bookshelves and a huge locked warehouse.

The warehouse was enormous, taking up nearly two-thirds of the entire floor.

"Yes, right here."

Qi Lan took out a key and unlocked the door.

As the door opened, the smell of dust and rust rushed at them.

Zhou Yi instinctively covered her nose and mouth, opening her eyes to look at everything inside.

The warehouse was enormous, probably several hundred square meters.

The center was completely empty, while the areas along the other three walls, excluding the wall with the door, were piled high with huge objects.

Intact and broken mechs were stacked there layer upon layer like garbage, and all kinds of shattered components littered the floor around them.

A few particularly intact units still stood near the center.

The open space in the middle had been left exceptionally large, like an arena deliberately set aside for matches.

Unfortunately, the machines in the warehouse were devoid of life and could no longer take part in any competition.

"So many..."

Zhou Yi was dumbfounded.

She had thought the third floor only held a few scrapped mechs. She had never imagined there would be so many.

"This isn't much. Huadun has been running for so many years. In the beginning, every student received a mech upon enrollment. Between those damaged during Mech Infantry training, those ruined by Mech Masters during repairs, and those that had become unusable with age, all of it ended up here."

After all, Huadun had been established for several hundred years, and all the discarded things had accumulated here.

"If they can't be repaired and have been scrapped, why not throw them away?"

Zhou Yi did not understand what use there was in keeping so much scrap material.

"Perhaps they're waiting for a miracle."

Qi Lan spoke thoughtfully.

"You're not the only one who has come here."

"Enough. Here's the key. From now on, this warehouse is under your care. Your job is to clean the entire third floor of the library from top to bottom, sort the books by category and arrange them neatly, and clean the warehouse too. The dust is so thick no one can even get inside."

Qi Lan tossed the key to Zhou Yi with distaste and walked out.

"I'm going out to sleep. Don't come looking for me unless there's something important."

After saying that, Qi Lan went downstairs, leaving Zhou Yi alone in the middle of the vast warehouse, surrounded by countless mechs.

"Is this... heaven?"

Zhou Yi had grown up on D71 Star Block and truly had never seen much of the world. To her, all these intact and broken mechs were like glittering treasures surrounding her.

What others saw as trash was priceless treasure in Zhou Yi's eyes.

She approached the mechs and gently placed her hand on the arm of a rusted red mech, feeling the chill seep into her fingertips.

"Then... let's start here."

That miracle would begin here.

Zhou Yi went to the second floor and carried the books she had found difficult to understand into the warehouse.

These were among the highest-level books here. Even few third-year Mech Master students could understand them, much less put their contents to use.

After graduating, Huadun's mech students practically said goodbye to the word mech forever.

Mech Infantry with insufficient Star Force were meaningless to the Alliance, while talentless Mech Masters only knew the basics, and no team would use them.

Of course, in all Huadun's years, there had been a scattered few children from lower-level Star Blocks whose star pattern levels were low but who possessed exceptional talent or determination.

However, such children generally made a name for themselves during the second-year Hundred Schools Alliance Competition, then were ruthlessly recruited away by schools on higher-level Star Blocks. They never graduated from Huadun.