Bacteriophage Robot

Yang Ning had rented this place precisely because of the river in the training grounds.

First, it made washing the tank convenient.

Second...

By the river, his water-control ability worked better, and a few kilometers away, children were always tossing things into the river.

After a hard day of training, Yang Ning could not be bothered to go back. He would lie by the river, listening to its tranquil flow as he drifted into sleep.

Seeing how carefree he was, Ning Rong and Su Bai joined him as well, apart from Xun Hu, who had to return to school.

As long as they flattened the grass, it became a ready-made bed. The nights were not cold this season, and Seacloud City had no mosquitoes either.

"Where the heart finds peace, there lies home!" Yang Ning sighed.

"Do you miss home?" Ning Rong asked.

"No!" Yang Ning shook his head. He felt nothing for his parents in this life. From the moment he was born, they had regarded him as a burden. He had heard no end of cold words and cruel remarks. If he had not invented the Curved Shaft Plow and earned their notice, he would have been sold off long ago!

The local magistrate had also seen that his parents were unreliable, so he took Yang Ning away when he was two. Yang Ning had never gone back after that.

This home was not that home!!

Ning Rong's heart clenched. She actually missed home. She had thought Yang Ning might share the same longing.

For some reason, her initial feelings toward Yang Ning had been curiosity mixed with a little admiration. Once she learned more about him, she discovered that not only was his talent for poetry astonishing, he was also gifted in cultivation.

But the more she learned, the more she found that he was really a strange person with nothing but artifact forging in his head.

Today, she had finally managed to regain a little fondness for him, only for it to vanish in an instant.

Forget it. Time to sleep.

Su Bai fell asleep even earlier. The cultivation technique he practiced consumed an enormous amount of stamina. Pedaling a fifty-ton tank forward with only four people was exhausting too.

Fortunately, they were cultivators and possessed great strength.

As for Yang Ning...

His consciousness had already reached the riverbed three kilometers away.

A stream of water carrying his consciousness quietly curled around the parts children had thrown into the riverbed. It first gathered them together, then, like a pair of deft hands, assembled the components.

In the end, more than thirty different parts had been assembled into a rod.

Yet in an instant, the rod could come apart, transforming into a mechanical creation with six legs, a head, and a neck, resembling an octopus.

Yang Ning had based its appearance on an E. coli bacteriophage, so he ultimately named it the Bacteriophage Robot.

The bacteriophage's head was a hollow quartz crystal. Once electrified, it could produce ultrasonic waves.

Its neck ring was an eddy-current generator: a fan drove a magnet, with copper wire wound beside it. When water flowed through it, it generated electricity, which was also used to emit Electromagnetic Waves.

Its neck was a superheterodyne receiver—in other words, a crude antenna.

Its six legs each had different functions: a water-jet cutter, pliers, an adjustable wrench, and a screwdriver.

The pliers took up two legs.

The existence of all these differently functioning devices turned this robot into a super robot integrating prospecting through Electromagnetic Waves, mining through water jets, metallurgy through ultrasonic sonoluminescence, processing through water jets, and assembly through pliers, wrenches, and screwdrivers!

Of course, judging by its appearance alone, no one would believe this robot was so badass. It looked more like a child's toy.

The current produced by that generator was nowhere near enough to make the quartz crystal produce ultrasonic waves powerful enough to heat ore. The Electromagnetic Waves generated by that current could be used for prospecting, but the crude antenna could not decipher the reflected waves at all.

As for the pliers and water jet, that was even more laughable. Calling it a water jet was generous—it was really just a water gun, and its spray was slower than those fifty-cent water guns sold by roadside shops. As for the pliers, their two legs lacked the strength to drag even a large chunk of ore.

But this was not a world of science. This was a world of cultivation.

Once Nightmare Energy was injected into this robot, everything changed.

The water jet could now effortlessly cut through any Mortal Mineral, and the pliers could lift it.

The antenna could not decipher Electromagnetic Wave signals, but it could fully record them. The one truly deciphering those signals was Deep Blue.

The ultrasonic waves produced by the quartz crystal in its head could also heat water bubbles to two thousand degrees Celsius—a temperature sufficient to melt any metal!

Research had always been easy when adding and difficult when subtracting. Yang Ning had designed this minimalist robot after combining the conditions at hand with Jiang Yunhao's processing capabilities.

Not only was it minimalist, it was highly secretive. Overall, it looked like nothing more than an iron rod with a stone stuck into it. Even if someone fished it up, they would think it was trash and casually toss it back into the river.

Moreover, Yang Ning was not afraid of anyone copying it. The computational power of the Spirit Realm, Deep Blue's control, and Nightmare Energy's all-purpose power were all unique to Yang Ning and irreplaceable.

Even if someone wanted to replace them, forget about the high-precision chips needed for the robot—no one could even make batteries with far less technical content.

Of course, while building the robot, Yang Ning also discovered something: he did not need to activate every creation himself before Nightmare Energy could function.

For the same item, such as a Barrett Sniper Rifle, Nightmare Energy would remember it after he had used one. Later, even if he injected Nightmare Energy directly into a Barrett Sniper Rifle that had never been activated, it would still work.

Yang Ning had already tested the Bacteriophage Robot's effects in the Spirit Realm. Thus, once this Bacteriophage Robot assembled underwater took shape, the moment Yang Ning injected Nightmare Energy into it, it stood upright in the water, like a dead thing suddenly given a soul.

A Nightmare Energy robot stood forty centimeters tall and used far fewer materials than a Barrett Sniper Rifle. But since it needed to generate electricity and heat, perhaps because of its high energy consumption, it required three points of mental power.

Yang Ning directly injected two hundred and forty points.

But having more mental power did not make the robot transcend the ordinary; it merely prolonged its operational lifespan.

At a thought, the Bacteriophage Robot became like a newly born fish. It first tried swimming, then tried walking along the riverbed.

A lump of iron naturally could not swim, but the mental power on its body was equivalent to Yang Ning being there in person. Naturally, it could manipulate the water currents and force itself to float.

However, that consumed too much energy. After trying it out, Yang Ning gave up on making the robot swim and had it walk along the riverbed instead. Its six legs were not slow anyway.

As the robot began moving across the riverbed, its two detectors—ultrasonic waves and Electromagnetic Waves—began operating as well. Yang Ning also opened up a new space in the Spirit Realm and began constructing the riverbed's layout based on the signals fed back by the Bacteriophage Robot.

Swimming fish, seaweed, river sand, minerals, and... sunken ships!

"So many sunken ships!" Yang Ning had only scanned for a little over ten minutes, yet he had already found five!

They were piled one atop another, and they were not empty ships either. They carried plenty of minerals!

"One ship was probably loaded with silk; it has all rotted away. One ship's porcelain is perfectly preserved. One ship carried Hua Mu? That has all rotted too. There's another ship filled entirely with white paper. This paper is unusual—it is actually waterproof? And one more ship... huh?"

Yang Ning was startled. The ship at the very bottom was loaded with grain, which was nothing special, but one of its cabins was packed to the brim with silver!

Electromagnetic Waves reflected after striking metal, and different metals reflected different waves. Based on this principle, one could detect ores and metals. Naturally, Yang Ning could recognize silver.

He sent the Bacteriophage Robot over. After it climbed up and down for a while, Deep Blue finished counting.

There were twenty-four million taels in total!

"Fuck!" Yang Ning was stunned. How could there be so much?

And more importantly, no one had salvaged it?

There were Sea Monsters in the ocean, but there were no worthwhile Demon Beasts in rivers, especially not in the rivers of Seacloud City. Shouldn't they be cleaned out eight hundred times a day?

Even if the ship had sunk deep, it could not stop highly cultivated Body Refinement Realm cultivators!

Yang Ning immediately searched for related information and soon learned the reason.

All the rivers, large and small, in Seacloud City actually had owners. Anything that fell into them automatically belonged to the owner of that waterway!

Fishing in the river was fine, since fishermen could not catch many fish anyway.

But salvaging ships from the river was not allowed. Even if the ship was yours and immensely valuable, it was still not allowed!

Unless, after salvaging it, you bought it back at market price.

Then what the hell was the point of salvaging it?!

Unless it was something essential, such as a parent's keepsake or a gift from a lover. That was permitted.

"Huh?" Yang Ning suddenly thought of something.

"You want to salvage items from the riverbed?" Deep Blue said. "I do not think that will work. Those Lineages probably know what is on the riverbed. If they have not salvaged it, perhaps they are preserving some foundations for their Lineages. Once too many things go missing, they may notice!"

"No!" Yang Ning said. "The principle of prospecting with Electromagnetic Waves gave me an idea. Electrons are much smaller in mass and volume than atoms, so based on the shapes of Electromagnetic Waves reflecting after striking metal, could we not determine what atoms look like?"

"Huh?" Deep Blue froze, then immediately began experimenting.

Before long, the entire Spirit Realm was filled with unrestrained laughter!

The Spirit Realm's observation scale had officially reached the atomic level!