Researching the sub-brain was no easy task. As a highly intelligent race, the Mechanoids had naturally accounted for the possibility of their sub-brains being captured by others, so each one was heavily encrypted.
Fortunately, T33674’s race had long been dedicated to breaking the Mechanoids’ encryption systems. Once the sub-brain was successfully interfaced with, all it took was time to breach its defensive systems.
The process of cracking the defenses alone took over ten days. When T33674 finally accessed the sub-brain’s database, he couldn’t help but remark, “Good thing this sub-brain isn’t networked. Otherwise, forget cracking it—I’d likely be the one getting hacked instead.”
As the dominant force of the chaotic universe, the Mechanoids probably never imagined that a glitch like the Chaotic World could exist. Trapped in the Chaotic World, the Mechanoids lost their greatest support system and were reduced to being independent high-intelligence robots.
With the defenses breached, the next steps were to analyze and replicate the data, as well as filter for useful information. Since bringing the sub-brain back to the real world posed risks, T33674 needed to copy as much of the database as possible before leaving.
At this stage, T33674 fully demonstrated the Half-Mechanoids’ dedication and resilience. Ever since moving into the villa, he had not taken a single step away from the sub-brain. With his own energy source and no biological needs, he connected to the sub-brain and stood there like a motionless pillar.
This scene oddly resembled the immobilized mechanical giant after it lost its sub-brain. Given that the Mechanoids and mechanical giants were likely creations of humanity, such similarities weren’t surprising.
While T33674 was engrossed in analyzing and copying data, Shu Bao had teamed up with Fu Qing to dismantle numerous structures, including some uniquely designed floors.
As they approached the final stages, both lamented the limited capacity of their storage spaces. “If only we had more space, we’d move this whole city!” Shu Bao exclaimed. With time on their hands but not enough storage, the mouse clapped its paws together and declared, “Since we’ve got nothing better to do, how about we refine some storage rings?”
Fu Qing turned to the fluffy little mouse, ensuring he hadn’t misheard. The casual tone in which Shu Bao had said something so extraordinary left him stunned. “You can forge artifacts?”
His disbelief was understandable. Artifact refining required not only talent but also specific spiritual roots, with fire being the most ideal, followed by wood and metal. Water-based spiritual roots, for instance, would struggle to even ignite the alchemical flames. And judging by appearances, Shu Bao didn’t seem like a fire-element being.
Sensing his teammate’s astonishment, the mouse quickly clarified, “Specialized skills, remember?”
T33674, busy operating his personal system, raised his head and quipped, “I thought your specialty was mining?”
“It is. But after mining, you’ve got to figure out how to use what you’ve dug up, right?” Shu Bao replied, already rummaging through his storage space for useful minerals.
In the cultivation world, countless practitioners coveted treasure-seeking mice not just for their ability to find treasures, but because a truly skilled treasure-seeker knew how to utilize the heavenly materials and earthly treasures they uncovered.
As it happened, Shu Bao was a prodigy among treasure-seeking mice. He had dabbled in alchemy, artifact forging, talisman crafting, and formations. On top of that, he had a rudimentary understanding of human electronic technology, having once joined a hacker organization. Eventually, he realized cultivation was the true path and left the group.
Due to the restrictions of the live-streaming system, Shu Bao couldn’t retrieve his personal alchemical furnace. After some consideration, he decided to improvise by using the metal floors he had just dug up from the Mechanic City to craft one.
The peculiar metal’s extreme hardness and high melting point rendered the mouse’s spirit fire ineffective at first. Ultimately, Shu Bao resorted to using a phoenix feather to ignite a true flame. The intense heat immediately caught everyone’s attention, filling the villa with blazing brilliance.
Shu Bao expertly suspended the floorboard over the true flames. The metal, with its exceptionally high hardness, began to slowly melt. The mouse moved its little paws skillfully to shape and carve, its movements fluid and confident, clearly well-practiced.
Once the shaping was done, the most crucial step—gathering spiritual energy—followed. This required a massive amount of energy, so Shu Bao casually took out a dozen thick Earth Crystals from his spiritual space and laid them on the ground. He began to absorb their energy, showing no sign of hesitation or remorse. After all, he was a mouse with access to mines.
Fu Qing, observing Shu Bao’s actions, flicked his antennae. It seemed that besides the naturally gifted artifact-forging masters, some were wealthy enough to forge artifacts with their abundant resources. While Fu Qing didn’t know how to forge artifacts himself, he could certainly find a mouse who did.
With the excellent, unidentified metal combined with the rich energy of the Earth Crystals, Shu Bao successfully completed the alchemical furnace. The moment the furnace was finished, it burst forth with a dazzling array of colorful light, like a rainbow being birthed from within the furnace.
The light shimmered for a moment before fading away. T33674’s head was flashing a red exclamation mark non-stop. “Is there something wrong with my vision system? This shouldn’t be happening—I thought my species had transcended the limits of visual perception!”
“It’s not your problem,” Fu Qing replied. “Rare materials always give rise to phenomena. The most powerful ones can even summon lightning strikes from the heavens. Those who defy the heavens are rare and usually only one in ten survive at birth.” Although Fu Qing didn’t forge artifacts himself, he had heard of divine artifacts. But seeing one in person was a first for him.
The others didn’t fully understand Fu Qing’s words, but they all concluded that the furnace was something extraordinary.
Shu Bao walked around the black furnace and stopped in front of it, where he had carved his name: Shu Bao’s Furnace of this Journey.
Seeing this, Fu Qing raised an eyebrow, immediately feeling that the mouse’s naming skills left much to be desired. “You’re naming it that?”
Shu Bao, looking serious, replied, “It’s the full name. The nickname is This Journey, to commemorate this unforgettable adventure.”
Fu Qing: “…” After a moment, he decided it wasn’t so bad after all—not the worst name.
With the furnace now completed, Shu Bao took advantage of the lingering true flames, still aided by the Phoenix Feather, and resumed forging. The mouse, with its vast resources, even planned to make storage spiritual artifacts for his beautiful teammates, T33674 and Tesla. As for Yu Lingqi, the system bracelet would be enough—he just needed to ensure the space contained food, so he wouldn’t get hungry and unable to run.
With this thought, Shu Bao spared a moment to cast a reassuring glance at Yu Lingqi, who was eating nearby. Yu Lingqi immediately felt a shiver and nervously asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Shu Bao said kindly, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, I’m not the type of mouse to abandon a useless teammate. Besides, your role is important, so keep at it, and trust in yourself.”
Yu Lingqi: “???”
Although he didn’t quite understand what Shu Bao meant, Yu Lingqi suddenly felt a strong sense of unease and quietly decided to work even harder at dismantling walls and moving things. The lazy fish didn’t realize that he was no longer the same idle fish as before.
After comforting the bait, Shu Bao turned his focus back to forging. This time, the main material for forging was once again the floorboards taken from Mechanoid City, as they were the most suitable metal for crafting storage rings.
To save time, Shu Bao decided to forge three storage rings at once, making the most of the Phoenix True Fire. For an experienced artifact-forger, this wasn’t difficult. After all, the cultivation world was no stranger to twin, paired, or multi-functional spiritual artifacts.
Of course, during the forging process, the delicate mouse not only mixed in pigments to adjust the colors but also had a sudden idea to add some special ores. Fortunately, these ores, extracted from the floorboards of Mechanoid City, were exceptionally unique. They could accommodate all attributes and no explosive accidents occurred during the process.
Due to the metal’s extremely high hardness, Shu Bao could boldly and confidently carve out new space within it. Moreover, thanks to the metal’s remarkable toughness, the space the mouse created this time was exceptionally vast, even surpassing the jade bracelet he had obtained earlier.
Shu Bao hadn’t expected the properties of this metal to be so strong—it seemed capable of containing all things in the universe and even had the power to create new worlds within itself. As his consciousness expanded, the space inside the ring appeared to stretch infinitely, almost becoming a boundless new world.
In this pitch-black space, Shu Bao suddenly had a strange thought: Could this space grow on its own, develop by itself? Perhaps in thousands, millions, or even billions of years, this place could evolve into an entirely new universe.
With this thought in mind, the alchemical furnace began to absorb the surrounding spiritual energy at an incredible rate. Shu Bao snapped back to reality, realizing that the ring was absorbing spiritual energy on its own! The mouse didn’t dare to waste time and quickly pulled out more Earth Crystals.
The ring absorbed all the Earth Crystals Shu Bao had pulled out, so he took out dozens more, only to see them absorbed just as quickly. This cycle continued until all the Earth Crystals Shu Bao had brought with him were completely consumed.
Yet, the ring showed no signs of stopping. Just as Shu Bao was lamenting that these three rings might be stuck at this stage, Fu Qing suddenly took out a large quantity of Earth Crystals from his own space.
As a partner in the tavern and the early travels, Fu Qing naturally had his own share. He placed all the Earth Crystals down and said calmly, “Just return them to me later.”
Shu Bao felt incredibly touched—his beautiful teammate was not only reliable but also generous. With the additional supply of energy, the three rings in the furnace continued to absorb energy fervently. They began to entwine and rotate around each other, forming a classic three-body motion.
Unlike the stability of yin and yang pairs, the three-body motion had no predictable pattern. However, this very chaos could create countless possibilities. Shu Bao had no idea what the final result of this entangled motion would be. It might turn out to be mundane, or perhaps it would give birth to a miracle.
When Fu Qing’s Earth Crystals were almost completely absorbed, the furnace’s energy gathering finally stopped. Shu Bao looked at the three rings inside and noticed that the colors he had mixed in had made no difference. The rings remained pitch black. The energy gathering had happened so suddenly that he hadn’t even had time to leave a name or shape them.
After a moment, the alchemical furnace’s energy settled and slowly lowered to the ground. Shu Bao waited and waited, but the seven-colored glow never came. The mouse was so frustrated that it hopped up and down in place, “After absorbing so many Earth Crystals, not even a trace of white light? Not even a rainbow, huh?!”
Fu Qing, on the other hand, remained calm. When it came to forging, fate and luck were both extremely important—one could not force it.
