Taking Money and Skipping Stones

"The serial killer has finally been caught, and Xivilas Field has finally preserved its last shred of dignity..."

"Oh, caught? I wonder if it's the real person or a scapegoat." Feng Xue glanced at the unoriginal headline on the front page of the Tasok Newspaper and casually flipped through it a few times.

However, the report was quite conventional, mainly describing how brave the police were, how cunning the criminals were, and how dutiful the officials were, completely lacking the satirical style that Tasok Newspaper used to have.

Feng Xue simply shook her head at this, and taking advantage of the fact that no one was around, she threw a [Book] element into the newspaper. As expected, the newspaper turned into a black ball and quickly dissipated into the air.

For some unknown reason, his Reforge work in Victoria was not going well. Although he obtained a lot of elements, he could only create a handful of Phantom Object. This made Feng Xue increasingly suspicious that there might be some kind of hidden rule for Reforge True Thing.

For example, the greater the information content and the higher the profile, the less likely one is to succeed.

Or perhaps the True Thing itself and the elements also have some kind of compatibility, and when compatibility clashes, a black ball is generated.

He opened his notebook, which contained records of every Reforge he underwent since this time travel.

This includes the type, volume, and shape of the substrate used, the amount of [knowledge] invested, the types of elements, whether new elements were generated, and so on.

However, even though such tables had filled most of the notebook, Feng Xue still couldn't find a reasonable pattern and could only attribute it to insufficient sample size.

Clap her hands to disperse the non-existent dust, Feng Xue took out a small carving knife from her pocket and began carving on a penny coin.

It wasn't that he was bored; rather, he was trying to rediscover a skill he had long neglected.

[Manufacture].

[Manufacturing] is an element that is both common and rare. Feng Xue possesses this element in his Tag such as [Chef], [Money Printer], and [Book Copyist], but he has always treated it as an accessory and has not brought out its true value, which is the so-called "Manufacturing Type ability".

In the Infinite City, only those who have activated the [Crafting] element are qualified to call themselves Manufacturing Type professionals. They can "process" various materials into corresponding finished products in ways that defy the laws of nature.

[Tailors] can turn rags, fibers, and coarse hemp into high-quality cloth, and [Blacksmiths] can turn various metal scraps into metal ingots. And these are just the "conventional" uses. In the process, these Manufacturing Type professions also have a certain chance of having a "flash of Spiritual Light" and creating a [Phantom Object] with all the necessary elements. This is the source of the vast majority of low-level Phantom Object in Infinite City.

Feng Xue's Golden Finger is a technical black box, without even a user manual. In his previous life, if he encountered such a problem in a game, he would ask other players for help on the corresponding forums, QQ groups, or Tieba. But now, he can only experiment on his own.

This is undoubtedly a process that requires exhaustive exploration. In order to reduce the difficulty of this process, Feng Xue decided to try to find a parallel, that is, to create a Phantom Object through "conventional" means, in order to explore the differences between his Golden Finger and the normal process of creating Phantom Object.

With her hands reinforced by multiple methods, Feng Xue was much more stable than she had imagined. She smoothed out all the patterns on the coin with almost no effort, and then began to outline her own design on it.

The obverse of the coin features an exquisite scale, with a heart on one pan and, instead of a mythical feather, a small pile of gold bars on the other. Although the penny coin can only be identified as a stack of metal ingots, in this image, no one would mistake them for iron or copper ingots.

On the reverse side of the coin, Feng Xue simply and plainly engraved a "1" with horizontal stripes, then surrounded it with a raised flame-shaped border.

Carving such a coin is no different from writing on clay with a twig with Feng Xue's current strength. In less than half an hour, the penny coin was completely transformed.

Because some of it had been worn away, the coin now felt somewhat sluggish in the hand, more like a piece of metal than a coin. Feng Xue tossed it casually, showing no disappointment whatsoever, as failure was entirely expected.

He had made dozens of similar coins, each one meticulously engraved, but none of them had transformed into the Phantom Object he desired.

The downside of training manufacturing skills in real life is that, because the materials are "True Thing," Feng Xue cannot accurately see the elements of these coins as she could when observing copied False Thing books. It's as frustrating as fighting a boss without seeing its health bar.

However, this was nothing to a seasoned Monster Hunter player. Feng Xue tossed the coin up and caught it again, and an [item] element was already entered into the coin.

"I clearly added too much [Knowledge] before, so I'll add less this time." Feng Xue casually added 5 points of [Knowledge], and with a twisting sensation, the coin began to change noticeably.

Upon seeing this, Feng Xue's lips immediately curled up. He could clearly feel the weight of the coin between his fingers, which meant that the Reforge had not turned it into a black ball.

So...

"It's done?"

Feng Xue waited quietly for the coin to finish transforming. Although it was called waiting, it actually took only a few seconds. When the transformation ended, the coin in Feng Xue's hand had turned into a round stone about 5 centimeters in diameter and 4 millimeters thick. Apart from the natural stone texture, there were no patterns or words on it. Even with Feng Xue's extensive knowledge, it would be difficult for her to tell what this thing was without reading any description.

When Feng Xue focused the Golden Finger's aim and saw the words appear, her face darkened.

Name: Phantom Object - Professional Skipping Stones

Elements: [Items], [Waste], [Valueless]

Description: Professional skipping stones for skipping stones, mass-produced by modern industry, priced at five cents, specifically sold to rich fools who have money to burn, truly a way to skip money on water.

Note: Although these are professional-grade skipping stones, the distance they can travel still depends on the user's technique.

"What the heck? Am I being mocked?" Feng Xue gripped the salt that had appeared in her hand without her noticing, feeling an urge to throw away the stone she was holding.

However, a sudden Spiritual Light struck him. Although it was inexplicable, he seemed to have gleaned a clue from the Tag on this Phantom Object —the key to creating Phantom Coin...

P. S.: Regarding AIDS Harry, this is an Urban Legend was once widely circulated in Europe and America, and its origin should be around the 1990s.

In the earliest days, a beautiful woman would fish in a bar, and after the night, she would give the man a small gift, telling him to open it when he got home. Inside the gift box was a small coffin with a card that read, "Welcome to the world of AIDS patients."

However, as the story progressed, Mary became Harry (perhaps feminists felt Mary was sexist?), and the initial coffin version was replaced with inexpensive items like coffee and envelopes. This might be because copycats didn't want to spend money on a coffin, or perhaps a custom-made coffin would attract the police?

In short, it's roughly an Urban Legend rooted in the fear of AIDS, but with the development of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) drugs, this Urban Legend has gradually faded from view.

PS2: While I did borrow place names from the mystery, calling it copyright and plagiarism is going too far. Bekeland is a misheard pun on "Back to London," and MI6 is a classic Victoria department. 007 is MI6, after all. In reality, Victoria's MI6 ranked in the twentieths during WWII; it was just merged after the war. What's wrong with using them? Similarly, I did borrow place names from Arknights, but Victoria and Colombia are real-world names used to refer to the UK and the US. It's like how Dongguo likes to reverse foreign names for characters. You can't say that Alucard from Song of Hell plagiarized just because Castlevania used Alcatel, right?