Soul Engine: An Invention Capable of Changing the World! Please Bookmark! Please Vote!

Soul Engine: An Invention Capable of Changing the World! Please Bookmark! Please Vote!

"Did this count as a success?"

In a scenic mountain village surrounded by white clouds in the Outskirts of Suotuo City, a handsome boy of around ten named Chen Hong stood before the workbench in his little Blacksmith Shop. His eyes flickered as he stared excitedly at the crude, face-sized metal creation in his hands.

Several gears of unknown purpose were exposed on the metal creation. Through its poorly sealed gaps, one could vaguely see grease-coated axles inside.

"Let's try injecting Soul Power!" Chen Hong muttered excitedly. He circulated the weak Soul Power in his body and poured it into the Mechanical Creation in his hands.

As Chen Hong's Soul Power slowly flowed in, the axle at the center of the previously motionless crude metal creation actually began to turn!

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

Its rotation was as slow as forcing an eighty- or ninety-year-old man to run a hundred-meter sprint. Before he could take more than a few steps, he would collapse on the spot and start cursing.

"Uh..."

After the "crude, shoddy, handmade, version 0.1 Soul Engine" in Chen Hong's hand clunked a few times and stopped turning, his face grew a little hot with embarrassment.

"It's fine, it's fine! The fact that it can turn at least proves I'm heading in the right direction! This miraculous Soul Power really does come with some kind of mysterious magnetic field. Spirit Masters can use it to move objects through the air and even fly against gravity, so naturally it can drive an axle too!" Chen Hong comforted himself. Although his Soul Engine project had only just begun, he felt its prospects were still brilliantly bright.

"Little Master Chen! You home? I'm here to patch up my hoe!"

Just as Chen Hong was contemplating how to further improve his version 0.1 Soul Engine, a rough male voice suddenly came from outside the Blacksmith Shop. Chen Hong immediately set down his "treasure," walked out into the storefront, and called back to the plainly dressed man outside, "I'm here, Uncle Wang! What treasure did you dig up this time?"

Chen Hong took the hoe with a large chunk missing from it from the uncle's hands. After giving it a quick look, he tossed the damaged part into the nearby furnace to heat it, then said, "Uncle Wang, the gap's too big. We'll have to soften it, cut off a section, and then it can still be used."

The villager known as Uncle Wang smiled honestly and hurriedly pulled a fist-sized stone from his clothes, handing it to Chen Hong. "It's no trouble, no trouble! Little Master Chen, take a look and see if you need this stone. I dug it up on the mountain today, and it even chipped my hoe. Didn't you say you wanted to collect ore in the village? See if this is any use."

The village where Chen Hong lived was called White Cloud Village. Its people were simple and honest, and its surroundings were beautiful. Ever since Chen Hong had been brought here by his father, Chen Lin, because of the war, they had settled down here.

Chen Lin was a Blacksmith and a Soul Elder in his thirties. He had settled down in White Cloud Village and started a blacksmithing business. Later, as Chen Hong grew up and displayed outstanding talent in blacksmithing, Chen Lin handed the village Blacksmith Shop over to Chen Hong for practice. Chen Lin himself took the boy's mother to Suotuo City to open a Blacksmith Shop and make money. Chen Hong was an exceptionally worry-free child, which was also why Chen Lin and his wife were willing to leave him behind and enjoy their life as a couple.

As the saying went, a spouse was true love, while children were merely accidents. Chen Hong found this utterly outrageous.

"Mm, let me see." Chen Hong took the ore from the villager's hand, inspected it briefly, tapped its surface with an awl, then tilted it beneath the sunlight to see whether its cross-section reflected light. Only then did he place it into a crucible nearby and tell the man, "It has a metallic luster, so it should contain metal. I'll smelt it later and see. I'll let you know once I have the results."

The villager laughed heartily. "It's useful, then! That's good! Little Master Chen repairs the tools we use to make a living for free. Now that I can help Little Master Chen a little, of course I have to help!"

Chen Hong repaired the farming tools of White Cloud Village's residents for free. No, they had been free since his father's generation. It was their way of repaying White Cloud Village for taking in their family all those years ago. This was also one of the reasons Chen Lin had eventually gone to Suotuo City to open a Blacksmith Shop. Chen Hong was grown now, and Chen Lin needed to save up some money for his son to marry a wife. He could not keep muddling along as he had before.

Of course, Chen Hong did not believe that at all. They clearly just thought Chen Hong was old enough that it was inconvenient to flaunt their affection in front of their "accident."

After chatting with Uncle Wang for a few moments, Chen Hong saw that the iron piece in the furnace had begun to soften. He removed it with tongs and placed it on the anvil beside him. Using iron pincers, he cut off a section from the edge, then held it steady with one hand and began hammering it bit by bit with a small iron hammer in the other.

Thanks to the nourishment of Soul Power and the exercise he got from daily life, ten-year-old Chen Hong was quite strong. Forging a hoe was more than easy enough for him.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The sound of the hammer striking iron was crisp and rhythmic. Any expert present would have noticed that the force and angle of every one of Chen Hong's strikes were remarkably precise and even. From such small details alone, his terrifying powers of observation and control clearly showed that Chen Hong was anything but ordinary.

Of course, Chen Hong owed this ability to two things. One was his Martial Soul, and the other was his brain.

If there had been a system panel, Chen Hong's data would have looked like this:

Character: Chen Hong

Age: 10

Martial Soul: Psychic Power

Soul Power: Level 11 (Innate Soul Power Level 3)

Soul Skill: *First Soul Skill* (Yellow) · *Mental Focus* (As for its effect, Chen Hong called this skill Sage Time.)

Fortunately for Chen Hong, the amount of Soul Power did not matter. As long as he had it, that was enough.

A person experienced three stages of growth in life. The first was recognizing their parents' ordinariness. The second was recognizing their own ordinariness. The third was recognizing their children's ordinariness.

Chen Hong had already gone through the first two. After breaking free of the fog of infancy at the age of three and gradually awakening the memories of his previous life, he no longer held any unrealistic fantasies about this world's "innate talent."

Of course, Chen Lin, who had Innate Soul Power at level five, said he had experienced all three stages of growth. Chen Hong had nothing to say to that.

It was worth mentioning that when Chen Hong underwent his Martial Soul Awakening, the Spirit Hall Spirit Master had nearly assumed that he possessed no Martial Soul. If his father, Chen Lin, had not insisted on trying a Soul Power Test, revealing that Chen Hong actually had Soul Power, the misunderstanding would not have been cleared up.

The Spirit Hall in Suotuo City had actually found Chen Hong's Martial Soul rather unusual. However, his Innate Soul Power was simply too low, so they did not insist on recruiting him. They merely registered his information and gave Chen Hong a place at Suotuo City Martial Soul Workers' School.

Six-year-old Chen Hong spent one day at that Martial Soul School before packing up and leaving.

Because he discovered that this world's future was damn dark.