Holding Their Heads High

"Okay..."

This was probably the hardest word Zhou Jiang had ever said in his life.

Rather than hide like a turtle with its head tucked in, he might as well lay it all out openly and face the ridicule with dignity.

So what if they were poor!

Gritting his teeth, Zhou Jiang had his wife open her Star Brain and tap into her balance. Without even looking at it himself, he displayed it for everyone to see.

All of their savings were in his wife's account.

"I know my family..."

Zhou Jiang shut his eyes, not even daring to imagine the expressions on everyone's faces.

Mockery? Pity?

He wanted neither. Just as he was about to say something, his wife tugged hard at his hand twice.

"Hm?"

Zhou Jiang opened his eyes.

The atmosphere seemed a little different from what he had imagined?

The people who had spoken up for him earlier were all glowing with excitement, as though they were proud of him, though there was also a hint of envy.

Meanwhile, the one whose face had turned red was the arrogant man from before.

What was going on? What had happened?

Puzzled by everyone's expressions, Zhou Jiang pulled his wife's wrist back and looked at the number displayed on the Star Brain.

What met his eyes was a string of zeroes.

Zhou Jiang and Tang Ying had never seen that many zeroes in their account balance.

The two counted several times. There were a full hundred thousand Star Coins.

"So rich people come here to experience life too. How boring."

That garbage collector felt as though the string of zeroes had choked the breath from his chest. Humiliated and enraged, he wanted to spit out a few harsher words, but he also feared that the couple might truly have some powerful figure backing them, just as they claimed.

In the end, he could only leave behind a weak, harmless remark. He did not even dare mention his dirty clothes again, lowering his head in embarrassment before quickly pushing through the crowd.

The crowd found the sight immensely satisfying. They spat several more times at the man's retreating back.

"Brother Zhou, you and Sister-in-law are really keeping a low profile. You've got that much money, yet you haven't moved and still come to the garbage dump to pick things up?"

The onlookers had only spoken up out of indignation, with no way to back down once they had started. None of them had expected Zhou Jiang and his wife to have over a hundred thousand Star Coins!

Hadn't they said their family had fallen long ago? Sure enough, even a dead camel was bigger than a horse!

At that moment, Zhou Jiang and Tang Ying had no mind to care about anyone else's reaction. They checked the transaction records on the Star Brain.

Only after discovering that the transfer had come from their daughter did they see the message she had sent.

Back when the two had attended Huadun, they had been the sort to sleep through class and sleep after class. They could not understand at all how their daughter had earned so much money.

"Hehe, hehe, we're just here to get some exercise."

Though they could not understand how their daughter had made the money, they knew this was not something to flaunt. So they could only come up with a casual excuse.

Get some exercise...

The expressions in the onlookers' eyes changed as they looked at the couple. Over the past few days, no one had been more diligent at picking through trash than them. Rich people really were different.

Far away on another star block, Zhou Yi clearly had no idea just how timely her transfer of a hundred thousand Star Coins had been.

Because at that moment, her attention had been completely captured by the Alliance Mall.

The light screen projected from her Star Brain hovered before Zhou Yi's eyes as her fingers swiped across the virtual display, where a dazzling array of goods came into view.

For a moment, Zhou Yi even had the illusion that she was still on Earth, scrolling through Taotao on her phone.

"The universe's resources aren't scarce at all. It feels like only poor people are scarce on resources."

Countless products Zhou Yi had never heard of appeared on the screen, sorted into categories and waiting to be selected.

There were all sorts of foods and high-end Daily Necessities, even mechas, star treasures, weapons...

Zhou Yi even felt that as long as you had money, you could buy anything in this mall.

Everything was painfully expensive.

The Alliance Mall did not prey on the poor.

This was a membership-based mall. Only when it detected that a user's Star Brain account held more than a hundred thousand Star Coins would the mall option appear on their Star Brain.

Except...

A hundred thousand Star Coins was merely the entry level in this mall. It was nowhere near enough to buy what Zhou Yi wanted most.

What did Zhou Yi want most?

Of course, a mecha.

Even the cheapest D-rank mecha cost two hundred thousand Star Coins, let alone B-rank or A-rank mechas.

The highest-grade mechs sold in this marketplace only went up to A-Class, and there were clearly more options below, but they were grayed out.

Zhou Yi guessed that there was too little money in his account, so his current permissions only allowed him to see this much.

But this was already enough.

Zhou Yi did not bother looking closely at the D-Class and C-Class Mechs. He skipped straight to the A-Class Mechs.

The cheapest A-Class Mechs cost 780,000 Star Coins. With only 100,000 Star Coins in his pocket, Zhou Yi browsed those A-Class Mechs with great enthusiasm before finally settling on a Light Mech.

Light Mechs were relatively small. Their advantages were high speed, excellent agility, and strong mobility in combat. Even if they could not win, they could still run away.

Their drawback was equally obvious: they had a clear disadvantage in strength compared to medium and Heavy Mechs, which put them at a disadvantage in a fight.

But that was no problem at all for Zhou Yi. After all, he was a future Star Weaver Master, and among the Star Patterns he could draw, strength-enhancing ones were the easiest.

Agility, on the other hand, was limited by the mech's size, so Star Patterns could not do much to help with it.

"This one!"

Zhou Yi happily added the Light Mech he had picked out to his cart.

The pending payment immediately changed from 0 to 880000.

"Sometimes, I really admire this trait of yours. You're ridiculously optimistic. With that little money, you can't even afford one of that mech's arms, yet you're acting as if the mech is already yours."

Xiao Fu was truly having his understanding of humans refreshed again and again by Zhou Yi.

"Even though I don't have much money, it's not like I have no money at all. Don't I still have that treasure trove?"

Zhou Yi's optimism was not entirely blind. He had already checked—the Crystal Stones he had mined earlier were becoming increasingly pure.

He had looked it up. The Crystal Ore Alliance had specialized Crystal Stone shops that bought them back and exchanged them for Star Coins based on a set rate.

The raw Crystal Stones he had mined were large, and after being upgraded into Primary Crystal Stones under the influence of the Crystal Marrow, each one could be exchanged for at least 10,000 Star Coins!

One was worth 10,000 Star Coins. If he gathered eighty-eight of them, would he not be able to buy the mech of his dreams?

Besides, that was only the price of Primary Crystal Stones. If they were further refined and upgraded into intermediate Crystal Stones, their price would increase severalfold, if not more.

He had already asked Xiao Fu. At their current speed, it would take one day to convert low-quality Crystal Ore into Primary Crystal Stones, one week to convert Primary Crystal Stones into intermediate Crystal Stones, and at least three months to turn intermediate Crystal Stones into High-Grade Crystal Stones.

He could not wait three months, but one week was still acceptable.

Thinking of this, Zhou Yi sprang up from the bed.

"Time to get to work."