Time flew by.
[System notification: Vehicle upgrade successful.]
A crisp system chime rang out, easing Su Ye's tension as sweat poured off him. He collapsed onto his back on the floor, panting heavily.
"Whew... fifty-five minutes are up."
Su Ye struggled to get up. Though his body was utterly exhausted, a smile remained on his face.
His physique stat had not increased by 0.1 yet, but he could feel a faint warmth slowly building inside him.
"If an hour isn't enough, I'll keep going in a bit."
With that thought, Su Ye left the Training Room for the time being.
Back outside, the white light surrounding the car had faded.
Without delay, Su Ye took the last Function Module out of his Storage Ring.
Hum!
White light enveloped the Vehicle once more as another round of upgrades began.
[Vehicle upgrading... integrating Function Module: Radar.] [Estimated time required: one hour.]
"An hour isn't long, but now that the Vehicle has reached the first tier, it's using up quite a lot of materials."
Su Ye glanced at his Storage Ring. The iron, copper, rubber, glass, and other materials he had scavenged and traded for were dwindling at a visible rate.
"With my current stockpile, I can manage at most three more levels. I might even run out after two."
"And fortunately, Vehicle upgrades only need large quantities of basic materials right now. If future upgrades require rare special materials, like high-energy crystal cores or special alloys, I won't be able to upgrade with basic materials alone."
"Luckily, Great Xia will supply me with those resources once the Beginner Period ends, so I don't need to worry too much."
With that in mind, Su Ye entered the Training Room again and resumed training.
Soon, another hour passed.
[System notification: Vehicle upgrade complete.]
Su Ye emerged from the Training Room again. The level 12 Vehicle had undergone no particularly dramatic changes in appearance.
Its streamlined body still gleamed with a cold metallic sheen, though the seams in certain places were now more tightly fitted.
[Vehicle]: Gale Ranger [Level]: 12 (first tier) [Durability]: 100% [Fuel]: 1,402 units (each unit allows 22 kilometers of travel) [Maximum speed]: 730 kilometers per hour [Vehicle weapons]: None [Function Modules]: Energy Saving, Sprint, High Speed, Hard Armor, Sealing, Camouflage, Weather Forecast, Temperature Control, Autopilot, Radar, Repair. [Vehicle Building]: Training Room
"The level 12 Gale Ranger's top speed has already reached 730 kilometers per hour. At five times that speed, it can reach 3,650 kilometers per hour. At that kind of speed, I probably couldn't handle it even after reaching the first tier."
Su Ye considered it briefly and decided to try tomorrow. At the very least, he could not let himself get dizzy from driving again.
As soon as he sat in the driver's seat, Su Ye noticed the changes to the console.
Two brand-new function icons had appeared on the light-screen panel.
[Repair] and [Radar].
Setting Repair aside for now, as long as he had enough materials, the car could restore itself after taking damage. On this perilous highway, that was undoubtedly a lifesaving ability.
What interested Su Ye more at the moment was the faintly glowing Radar icon.
He reached out and tapped it.
"Hum..."
With a soft electronic buzz, a holographic projection sprang from the center console. A pale blue circular scanning display hovered in midair.
Su Ye studied the Radar's description closely, and a gleam flashed in his eyes.
Its scanning radius actually reached three thousand meters.
"Looks like before level 10, every Vehicle level adds a hundred meters to the Radar's scanning range. But once it breaks past level 10, every level adds a whole thousand meters."
The level 12 Gale Ranger had complete visibility within exactly three thousand meters.
Su Ye looked at the holographic radar display, where rings of light continuously spread outward.
Within that three-thousand-meter radius, all potential monster targets were marked as glaring red dots.
Even the terrain ahead and changes in road conditions were reconstructed as a highly precise three-dimensional map.
"This is practically a god-tier support tool tailor-made for autonomous driving."
"Let's turn on Autopilot and give it a try."
Su Ye immediately activated Autopilot, and the Vehicle began moving along the dim highway.
At first, Su Ye did not set it to maximum speed. Instead, he capped it at fifty kilometers per hour to see whether Autopilot could work with Radar to avoid the obstacles on the highway.
The darkness outside the windows drifted backward at an unhurried pace.
Before long, a glaring red light flashed at the edge of the radar display.
Up ahead, a thick concrete wall a full three meters high stood squarely in the middle of the broad highway.
Dried, blackened blood covered its surface, and passage was only possible on either side.
Under Su Ye's watchful gaze, the car began changing lanes smoothly while still far away, easily avoiding the concrete wall and continuing forward.
There was not the slightest hitch throughout the process.
The car continued steadily onward.
Later, it encountered large pits, broken stretches of road that abruptly ended over empty space, and even tire spikes.
But with Radar's help, Autopilot avoided all those obstacles well in advance, without a single mishap.
Su Ye nodded in satisfaction and began increasing the Autopilot speed.
One hundred kilometers per hour!
Two hundred kilometers per hour!
Until it reached the maximum speed of 292 kilometers per hour!
Under the Radar's high-frequency scans, the steering wheel made constant minute adjustments to correct the driving route, successfully navigating all kinds of complicated road conditions.
"Excellent. Now the car can keep moving while I train in the Training Room."
With a thought, Su Ye vanished from the car and appeared in the Training Room, where he resumed training.
The lights in the Training Room were somewhat dim. Without pausing for even a moment, Su Ye walked straight to the heavy equipment and began pumping iron.
His muscles stretched, and his sweat flowed.
Time slowly passed, and another two hours went by.
In the middle of lifting, Su Ye's expression suddenly changed, and his body froze in place.
He felt the warmth inside him suddenly intensify.
That heat surged through his blood, washing wildly through every part of his body. Wherever it passed, his muscle fibers felt as though they were being torn apart and woven back together.
At that moment, the system's voice rang out.
[Congratulations, player. Training has increased your physique stat by 0.1.] [Both of the player's stats have exceeded 10. Tier advancement will begin in ten seconds. Please prepare.]
Delight spread across Su Ye's face, and he set down the equipment in his hands.
"I finally gained 0.1 physique."
"It takes about four hours of training to gain 0.1 physique. If I train twenty-four hours a day, I can gain 0.6."
Su Ye thought to himself.
That was already a considerable increase. After all, this was a way to keep raising his stats indefinitely, and the gains would be substantial over time.
Su Ye immediately put those thoughts aside and sat cross-legged, waiting for his tier advancement.
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