Caught Between Two Choices

As the saying went, people were made of iron and food was steel; skip a meal, and hunger would hit hard. Only then did Zhang Yi realize that his stomach was already growling in protest.

Just then, Zhang Yi's Mother walked in as well, carrying a plastic bag in her hand. Afraid that he would go hungry, she had specially brought him lunch.

"Mom! Why are you here? Mom, is Dad feeling okay?" Zhang Yi asked as he accepted the plastic bag from her.

Now that Zhang Yi's father, Zhang Ming, knew he would no longer be able to do heavy labor, his temper had been poor lately. After all, he was not even fifty yet, and he had spent most of his time lying in a hospital bed recently. The atmosphere in the hospital had not been good, so naturally neither had his mood.

"Mm! He didn't lose his temper today. His leg has gotten much better now, and since he's at home, he's in much better spirits than he was before," Zhang Yi's Mother replied.

"Mom! You should go back and take care of Dad first. I can handle things here." After taking the plastic bag, Zhang Yi told his mother to return. His father was exactly at the stage when he needed someone looking after him.

"Alright! Then I'll head back first. I'll leave this factory to you. If the business works out, keep it running. If it really doesn't work out, then forget it.

After all, even back then, your dad didn't make much money in a year." Zhang Yi's Mother said.

After saying that, Zhang Yi's Mother walked out through the door. Her meaning before leaving had been obvious: she did not trust Zhang Yi's skills. Even in the past, Zhang Yi had only barely been able to process some simple parts. Now that he had been away from machine tools for so long, his skills were easy enough to imagine.

After eating, Zhang Yi walked into the workshop and entered a small partitioned room in one corner. This little room was actually the office of their family's factory. It was only a few square meters, with nothing inside besides a desk, a chair, and the computer and documents on the desk.

Sitting in the office chair, Zhang Yi's thoughts began racing. Without the Scholar Hiring System, he would not have had the slightest confidence in keeping this factory afloat. But with the system as his cheat, he was absolutely confident that he could not only keep the factory going but also expand it into something greater. It might even become the leader of the machine processing industry.

He opened the Scholar Hiring System again. After examining it carefully, Zhang Yi discovered that the scholars he could currently hire were all relatively low-level Elementary Beginner Scholars in industrial fields. Short-term hires were slightly better, allowing him to hire Elementary Intermediate Scholars, but short-term hiring costs were extremely high—more than ten times the cost of long-term hiring.

For example, the highest-priced Elementary Beginner Scholar he could currently hire cost only around twenty Scholar Coins per month. But if he chose short-term hiring, a scholar of the same level would cost more than two hundred Scholar Coins a month. If he wanted to hire an Elementary Intermediate Scholar, the required Scholar Coins would be even higher, starting at two hundred Scholar Coins per day. The prices also varied enormously depending on race, with the highest reaching a thousand Scholar Coins per day.

Zhang Yi then opened the Genius Store, only to find that every item in it was grayed out and could not be purchased. Just then, he noticed a system notification at the top of the Genius Store.

The notification stated that the Genius Store could only be opened after he hired a scholar. After all, this was the Scholar Hiring System, not the Genius Store. The Genius Store within the system merely existed as an attachment to the Scholar Hiring System.

Furthermore, even after hiring a scholar, the Genius Store would only unlock the corresponding category of goods. For example, if he hired an Elementary Beginner Scholar in machine processing, the Genius Store would only unlock some mechanical industry blueprints of the corresponding level.

Although the system offered scholars from a great many races, with scholars from countless worlds, the range he could actually hire from was extremely limited. Earth's only intelligent race was humanity, so if he hired a non-human race, they would definitely be discovered by some special department the moment they went outside, then captured and dissected for research.

In reality, he could only choose from humans or races that looked very similar to humans.

Of the scholars currently provided by the system, there were only five races he could hire. The first race—and the one he most wanted to hire—was the Red Alert Trainee Engineer. However, the hiring price for a Red Alert Trainee Engineer was the highest among all Elementary Beginner Scholars.

So Zhang Yi was somewhat unsure. The Scholar Coins he had on hand were only enough to hire one Red Alert Trainee Engineer for a year. In other words, if he hired one, the annual cost in Hua Country currency would start at three hundred thousand. A tiny machine processing workshop like his family's simply could not bear that expense.

The second race was the Dwarves. Although Zhang Yi had no idea how skilled these Dwarves truly were, since they could be hired through the system and were called scholars, their skills could not be too poor. At the very least, Zhang Yi believed they should be far better than apprentice workers who had only just learned to operate a lathe. Otherwise, they would not deserve to be called scholars.

Most importantly, the system had clearly listed their racial talent as machine processing.

The third race was gnomes. However, their talent lay in precision machine processing, and Zhang Yi's workshop currently had no precision machining equipment or need for such work, so Zhang Feng did not want to hire them for the time being.

The fourth race was called the Giant Race. It was obvious from the name that this race possessed tremendous strength. According to the system's description, they could easily carry objects ten times their own weight, and their racial talent was large-scale machinery production and processing. However, they did not have very good tempers, so Zhang Yi temporarily ruled them out as well.

The final race was the Half-Elves. Although the ears of the Half-Elves differed somewhat from those of humans, the difference was not very great. After all, they were not pure elves. Though this race also possessed considerable talent in machine processing, they leaned more toward handicrafts and mechanical engraving, so Zhang Yi temporarily excluded them from consideration as well.

That left only two races for Zhang Yi to choose from. At this point, he was truly caught between two choices. Which race's scholar should he choose?

After all, with the Scholar Coins in his possession, he could only hire one elementary scholar. At the same time, his family's machine factory had only one machine tool, so they did not need too many people for now.

No matter how he thought about it, Zhang Yi could not make a decision. He decided to calm down and think about it again tomorrow. First, he needed to turn out Uncle Zhang's spindle. It was already past three in the afternoon, and if he did not start processing it now, he might have to work overtime tonight.

Since he had spent the past few years working elsewhere and had not operated a machine tool in a long time, he was actually a little worried about whether he could turn out this spindle before tomorrow.

With that thought, he immediately got up, left the office, and walked over to the old machine tool.

He first inspected the machine tool to see whether it could operate normally. It was already very old, and it had not been turned on for some time. If he failed to check it and something went wrong during processing, he could very well injure himself. There was no room for carelessness.