Seeking a Workaround

For most people, 220-volt alternating current was extremely dangerous.

Although Feng Jun was a liberal arts monk, he understood that much, even if he had not suffered much pain just now.

So when he tested it, he remained extremely cautious.

He carefully used the backs of both hands to touch the exposed copper core—there was a reason for doing this. When people encountered danger, their hands instinctively clenched, an involuntary stress response.

If he used his palms to grab the copper core, the outcome was truly too horrible to imagine... his hands would clench down!

In fact, when testing whether a cup of water was too hot, most people used the backs of their hands rather than their fingertips.

If they used the backs of their hands, they would instinctively jerk them away when danger struck.

The back of Feng Jun's left hand touched the exposed copper core first, followed by the back of his right hand...

The next instant, both of his hands flew away. Both hands had been thrown back!

Actually, he had just been overly nervous. Otherwise, having one hand recoil would have been enough.

Still, he was quite satisfied with this test, because he had genuinely felt the electric shock. His whole body had gone numb for a moment.

Yet it had only gone numb for a moment, and it had been within a tolerable range.

He tested it twice more with the backs of his hands and found that there really was no problem. There was some tingling, but it was only tingling, far from the limit of what he could endure.

Then he tried turning over his right hand, using one palm and one hand back.

Then, both palms...

When using both palms, Feng Jun did not grip the wires tightly. Just as he had done with that Spirit Stone, he first lightly rested the pinky of his left hand against it.

Fortune favored the bold! He actually found that same feeling he had when touching the Spirit Stone: heat in his left hand, coolness in his wrist.

However, that heat was incredibly faint, not even one-thousandth as strong as the Spirit Stone's, perhaps not even one ten-thousandth.

What delighted him even more was that the hundred-amp breaker had not tripped. Wasn't that a little too bugged?

Feng Jun could not be bothered to figure out why anymore. I'll just assume I have protagonist plot armor and the author gave me cheats.

He had already encountered so many unreasonable things. What was one more?

However, he soon discovered that as the pinky of his left hand pressed harder and harder against the wire, the heat gradually intensified. Eventually, even the sound of the generator changed slightly.

So that was how it worked. The firmer and closer the contact, the greater the generator's output.

The protective breaker at the generator's output was now rated at one hundred amps. By the numbers, even if a fifty-kilowatt generator were fitted with a two-hundred-amp breaker, it would not overload under normal circumstances.

But Feng Jun had no intention of doing that. He was overly cautious and felt that a hundred amps was already no small amount of current.

Damaging the municipal power transformer's public property was one thing. Damaging the generator would mean wrecking his own property.

Feng Jun finally realized with delight that he had found the correct way to charge up—not through the phone, but by directly touching 220 volts.

However, before long, he began to feel discouraged. This charging speed was simply too slow.

He had charged for nearly an hour and must have used ten or twenty kilowatt-hours of electricity, yet the mark of the Stone Ring on his wrist had not changed at all.

One thing was certain: the mark had definitely absorbed energy. Otherwise, where had all that electricity gone?

Since he could not see any change, it meant that this amount of energy was too little.

Feng Jun was the sort who liked to get to the bottom of things. At worst, I'll charge for longer. As long as I've found a reasonable way to replenish energy and can carry out my plan smoothly, all the waiting will be worth it.

He was good at persevering. Otherwise, he could not have successfully earned a Dual Degree.

As long as he had a goal and a path toward it, he was definitely one of those people who could persist until he achieved his goal.

But after twenty hours, he was starting to think about giving up—the charging was truly too slow.

During that time, aside from sleeping and eating, he had been charging, keeping at it for nearly twelve or thirteen hours.

Yet the energy gained was not even a single Energy Points. By his estimate, even if he tied both hands to the wires and charged while sleeping, he could gain at most one Energy Points in a full day and night.

Come on, if he charged for twenty-four hours, even at eighty amps, that would be sixteen or seventeen kilowatt-hours per hour. Over twenty-four hours, that would be nearly four hundred kilowatt-hours.

And Feng Jun needed at least five Energy Points to make a round trip into the storage space. In other words, he would need to charge continuously for five days and five nights, using nearly two thousand kilowatt-hours, just to go in and out once.

If he wanted to carry goods with him, it would consume even more.

I finally know why the transformer exploded, Feng Jun sighed sincerely.

What he lamented even more was, This charging costs way too much money... I can't afford it.

A diesel generator was certainly convenient, but the cost of generating electricity was too high. Even when a fifty-kilowatt generator ran under the most economical conditions, each kilowatt-hour cost more than one yuan. If he was the slightest bit careless, it would rise above two yuan.

How much would two thousand kilowatt-hours cost? At least four or five thousand yuan!

Feng Jun believed that his grand smuggling plan would definitely make money, and digging up his first pot of gold would be no problem.

But the problem now was that he was truly poor—so poor that one careless move could break his cash flow.

The thirty thousand yuan Wang Haifeng had paid him had already turned into a generator and various supplies. He had even put in some of his own salary.

Then there was the phone he bought and the house he rented. Of the eight thousand yuan he had received this month, less than four thousand remained.

Including the ten thousand-plus in his bank card, all his cash did not even add up to twenty thousand. And besides... smuggling required buying goods too, didn't it?

At a time like this, he truly did not want to spend four or five thousand yuan on diesel.

If things got desperate, should he borrow some from Wang Haifeng? Feng Jun felt troubled. I don't even work at the company anymore. How am I supposed to ask him?

He let out a long sigh. He truly did not want to contact his parents. He was already this old, yet he could not support them in return—that was unfilial enough. How could he keep making them provide for him?

As his thoughts grew more depressing, he unconsciously exerted force with his hand. Bang! The protective breaker tripped.

Let me take a break, Feng Jun thought as he stood up, stretched his sore and numb arms, and walked out of the room.

This was already the second time the protective breaker had tripped. Since he had kept the current carefully under control, the generator had not been damaged. After all, its margin of safety was more than double.

The key issue was that charging took far too long. Feng Jun walked outside with both hands in his pockets, his mind unsettled as wild thoughts ran through his head: charging up five points in five days and five nights was already pushing things to the limit.

If he wanted to keep this up long-term, charging five points over ten days would be more reasonable. That way, he could get enough rest.

So here was the problem: he would need to charge for at least thirty days before he could confidently bring goods into the space once.

Even without considering the cost of diesel, he could only transport goods once a month. The rest of the time, he would have to be charging.

At that thought, Feng Jun became unbearably depressed. I'm still young. These are supposed to be the best years of my life. I want to enjoy life too—am I supposed to drag a generator as tall as a person with me to the bar?

The charging time was far too long. It was a reality he sincerely did not want to accept. Even if he solved the money problem and climbed to the peak of life, this flaw would still seriously affect his quality of life.

Or... should he consider charging with 380 volts? The thought involuntarily popped into Feng Jun's mind.

The next instant, he hurriedly shook his head and threw that suicidal idea out of his mind.

Compared to 220 volts, 380 volts was not merely a little stronger. He would not even need to touch it; an electric arc could injure him.

Feng Jun did not reject taking risks, but risks had to be worth taking. He was no longer the poor kid he had been ten days ago. With this stroke of fortune in hand, enjoying life properly was the right path. Under these circumstances, he was even less willing to take pointless risks.

He simply needed to think of a few more compromise solutions.

Maybe I can find a place where I can secretly use municipal electricity without anyone noticing?

Thinking that, Feng Jun walked out the front gate. It was only a little after five. He rode a public bicycle and sped straight toward Li Dafu.

Li Dafu was a local jewelry store in Yang City. It also had branches in other cities within Funiu Prefecture, but it had not expanded beyond the province.

And the people of Funiu Prefecture trusted this old brand the most. Yang City was a major city, and jewelry stores of every major brand could be found throughout its urban area, with nearly ten internationally famous brands.

Yet Li Dafu had the highest sales by far. Other jewelry stores even complained that Funiu people were too exclusionary.

Naturally, Feng Jun went there to look at rubies... or perhaps other gemstones as well.

Li Dafu's saleswomen were very welcoming. They did not put on the sort of snobbish act common in novels just because he was poorly dressed.

They did business with people from this prefecture, and most of their customers came from the smaller cities below.

For Funiu people, having a set of Li Dafu jewelry for a wedding was a huge source of pride.

Even though it was nearly closing time, a young saleswoman still greeted him warmly.

Feng Jun made a circuit around the store but did not feel anything that could make his wrist heat up. Although he had already guessed that the ruby from the wilderness was definitely not a ruby from Blue Star, a deep sense of disappointment still welled up inside him.

In the end, he still had the saleswoman take out two rubies and one jade ornament so he could sense them again at close range.

There was still no reaction.

Watching him silently hand back the pendants, the saleswoman hesitated for a moment before speaking softly. "If you're not particularly picky about quality, there's an antique shop next door that recently got a batch of Black Dragon Jade pendants. They're relatively affordable."

Black Dragon Jade? Feng Jun's heart stirred. He had heard of it.

Black Dragon Jade had only been hyped up in recent years. It used to be sold by the ton, but now it was sold by the gram. In his view, the signs of speculation were obvious.

Besides, he did not know how to judge jade quality.

But none of that mattered. Didn't jade have all kinds of miraculous effects in online novels?