Ancient Coin

Half an hour later, every iron tool aboard the Sea Wolf, even every iron nail and iron band on the hull, had been transformed into Mechanical Insects. Even Nie Yun's Black-Haired Person had been consumed without a trace.

"Mm, excellent!" Nie Yun stood on the beach, admiring the Sea Wolf, which gleamed silver from stem to stern, inside and out. A satisfied smile crossed his face, but a moment later he began to worry. It certainly looked impressive, but it was a little too flashy!

If he took the boat out like this, the coast guard would probably impound it in no time.

"If only I could change its color." Nie Yun frowned in thought.

Then, in the next instant, a miracle happened. The Mechanical Insects covering the boat flashed, all returning to the colors of the tools they had originally been. The Sea Wolf before Nie Yun's eyes seemed to have been run through Photoshop, its style changing in a rapid flicker. It went from a futuristic silver vessel to a shabby, old fishing boat, its prestige plummeting straight back to earth from the clouds.

"Uh... what..." Nie Yun gaped at the scene in disbelief.

Then, when he came to his senses, he burst out laughing. "Hahaha, well done, children! This saves me the cost of paint, too! But it seems there's still a communication gap between us, father and children. Come on, let your father bring out your full potential!"

A thought crossed his mind, and he held out his hand. A fist-sized silver-white ball suddenly bulged up amid the Mechanical Insects devouring the sunken ship. Then, like a ball of modeling clay, it bounced toward Nie Yun and landed precisely in his palm. It felt slightly heavy.

Like a child with a fascinating new toy, Nie Yun made the silver ball in his hand turn into a frying pan, then a delicate little knife. He even squeezed it into all sorts of shapes, as if it were modeling clay.

At his command, the ball's color changed too, turning pure black, pure white, then a dazzling array of colors.

"Hahaha, this is fun! Turn into a long sword!" Nie Yun had gotten carried away and wanted to indulge in a little youthful wildness.

This time, though, the Mechanical Insects did nothing. A question even came to him in his mind: "What's a long sword?"

Nie Yun gestured for a long time, describing a long sword as a long thing with a handle, but the Mechanical Insects remained utterly confused, rolling around in his palm.

"Uh, you can't make one? Could it be that you can only turn into things you've eaten?" Naturally, there were no swords in the Sea Wolf's cabin.

Nie Yun spent quite a while communicating with the Mechanical Insects before he finally understood what was going on.

The Mechanical Insects were not merely a kind of repair fluid. Each one was an ultramicroscopic robot, which meant it had storage capacity. A single Mechanical Insect could store very little, but as their numbers grew, their storage capacity increased exponentially.

When the Mechanical Insects devoured an object, they stored a virtual model of it. That was how they could use their own bodies as material to reconstruct objects. The principle was similar to 3D modeling.

The models of all the objects the Mechanical Insects had devoured so far used less than one ten-thousandth of their total storage capacity. It was easy to imagine that as their numbers continued to grow, their storage capacity would reach astronomical proportions. As long as they had a physical template to devour, in theory, there was nothing they couldn't copy and reproduce!

"Holy crap! That's incredible! Does that mean if I feed you an aircraft carrier, you can build me an aircraft carrier?" Nie Yun was stunned. Given that his ambition was to become an honorable fisherman, the idea hit him even harder than the prospect of encountering something made by aliens!

At least until today, he'd thought of the Mechanical Insects mainly as a tool—or perhaps more of a toy—for repairing the Sea Wolf.

He'd suddenly realized, Holy crap, this son of my father is about to make it big!

At last, the discovery made him understand what kind of creation the Mechanical Insects really were!

The wonders of an advanced civilization from the universe were beyond the imagination of a poor, backwater fisherman from Earth—even when all he had was residue from some spacecraft repair fluid.

Of course, Nie Yun's fusion with the Mechanical Insects and the resulting mutation were also factors, though he had no idea about that.

Still, the surprise was only a surprise. Nie Yun just wanted to stay with his Sea Wolf and live his quiet little life. As for using the Mechanical Insects to do something? He had absolutely no idea what.

After their "father-and-children chat," Nie Yun had nothing to do. Watching a glutton devour food could sometimes be a real pleasure, especially when the glutton was a beautiful woman. But watching a pile of Mechanical Insects eat and eat wasn't particularly interesting.

Nie Yun yawned, feeling bored, then lay down on the deck to bask in the warm sunshine and catch a few more winks.

For some reason, he liked basking in the sun more and more. It seemed that without the sun, he felt uncomfortable all over.

"Could this be what they mean when they say that two people who live together for a long time start to look more and more alike?" Nie Yun glanced at the Mechanical Insects beside him and let his imagination wander.

His eyelids grew heavier and heavier, and Nie Yun dreamed that he'd turned into a six-legged Mechanical Insect, frolicking alongside countless identical siblings...

Not until the sunset had painted half the sky red did Nie Yun rub his bleary eyes and wake up. He held his head and muttered, "That was one super awkward dream! At least put some clothes on!"

The Mechanical Insects: "..."

He looked around. The Mechanical Insects had devoured most of the sunken ship, and the part of the hull above the water was completely gone.

The Mechanical Insects seemed to have increased in number again. Just then, a clump of them rolled up in front of him. Their surface was still wet, clearly showing they'd just been working underwater. Then the clump unfolded, revealing a coin nestled inside—!?

Holy crap, an antique! Nie Yun instantly snapped to attention. He grabbed the coin and used an appraisal skill on it!

The coin looked quite old, its surface dull and dark. He didn't know what metal it was made of, but it definitely wasn't iron. If it had been iron, there was no way it would have made it into his hands. Nie Yun was one hundred percent sure of that.

"It looks like a silver coin." Nie Yun rubbed it between his fingers and examined it closely.

The front of the coin bore the words "Made in Guangdong Province" at the top and "Weighing One Tael of Kuping Silver" below. A bat was engraved on either side, and "Guangxu Yuanbao" was in the middle. He turned it over to find a pair of dragons cast on the back.

"Guangxu? Sounds like the emperor of some dynasty. The Song? Or the Ming?" Nie Yun racked his brains, trying to remember which dynasty Guangxu belonged to. But with his meager knowledge of history, he soon gave up.

It was enough to know it was an antique. It had to be worth a lot, and Nie Yun, now completely broke, could suddenly see the light at the end of the tunnel—and a plate of red-braised pork.

He happily stowed the coin away. It felt great to wake up and have someone deliver a treasure right to him!

He examined the spot where the sunken ship lay. Its hull had been filled with a great deal of silt, and the Mechanical Insects must have found the coin there. Otherwise, Nie Yun would never have gotten so lucky.

Nie Yun noticed that as the Mechanical Insects grew in number, they seemed to be getting smarter too. Now they even knew to turn in their spoils. It was almost unbelievable. Could this be the wisdom of the collective?

What he didn't know was that the two, having already fused together, weren't simply affecting one another in one direction. The influence went both ways!

Nie Yun felt that he was becoming more and more like the Mechanical Insects. They, in turn, were also being influenced by Nie Yun, becoming more humanlike—more "Nie Yun"!