58: Diagnosis of a tech fanatic

The smell of disinfectant mixed with the cold air conditioning, forcefully dragging Old Chen out of the quagmire of his hangover.

He snapped his eyes open, seeing not that damned open-air iron cage, nor the gray sky filled with coal soot.

Instead, he saw a medical Shadowless Lamp so bright it was piercing, and surrounding alloy walls so white they caused him physical discomfort.

"Where is this... is the decor in Hell so minimalist nowadays?"

Old Chen muttered as he sat up, his bones protesting with a series of crisp "crack-clack" sounds.

He subconsciously reached for his waist—

That was where his only possession, the stainless steel rice bowl that had been with him for three years, usually hung.

He felt nothing.

Not just the bowl, but even the flat flask containing watered-down alcohol was gone.

"Fuck!"

Old Chen was instantly wide awake, jumping off the bed like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, shouting curses at the surveillance camera in the corner:

"Give me back my bowl! You uncultured bandits!

Kidnapping is one thing, but you're even stealing a beggar's bowl?

Do you have no humanity? No law?"

The airtight door slid open with a "hiss."

Jiang Ran walked in with his hands in his pockets, followed by Su Qingyu holding a tablet computer.

He had changed into civilian clothes, and the suffocating scent of gunpowder on him had faded slightly, but his gaze remained as cold as ice.

"Awake?"

Jiang Ran pulled over a chair and sat down, sizing up the old man who was still hopping mad:

"You seem to be in good spirits, so I guess there's no need for a stimulant shot."

"Cut the crap!"

Although Old Chen only had one hand he could move flexibly, his momentum was undiminished.

He pointed at Jiang Ran's nose: "I'm telling you, if you want me to build dirty bombs or refine high-purity uranium for you...

Or help you bandits blow up some settlement, not a chance!

I'd rather have that rice bowl melted down than tighten a single screw for you!"

He had been tortured for three months in the Furnace Gang without breaking; he still had that much backbone.

Jiang Ran wasn't annoyed after hearing this; instead, as if he had heard a joke, the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.

"Dirty bombs?"

Jiang Ran leaned forward, his oppressive aura instantly enveloping Old Chen: "Do you think a nuclear submarine with magnetohydrodynamic thrusters and deep-sea stealth coating..."

"...needs children's toys like firecrackers?"

Old Chen froze.

Nuclear submarine? Magnetohydrodynamic propulsion?

These terms were like heavy hammers, instantly shattering the wild thoughts in his head.

He had dealt with these things his entire life, so he could naturally hear the weight in the other man's tone.

"Then why did you kidnap me?" Old Chen looked at him suspiciously.

"To fix the ship."

Jiang Ran pointed at the floor beneath them: "This ship's heart is sick, and you're the only one here who can understand its medical records."

Before Old Chen could speak, Jiang Ran added another sentence, his tone as flat as if he were discussing taking out the trash:

"Of course, you have the right to refuse.

If you can't fix it, or don't want to, I'll put you back in that cage and send you back to the Furnace Gang.

After all, they wasted quite a few of my bullets looking for you."

Old Chen's Adam's apple bobbed.

This wasn't a negotiation; this was clearly holding a gun to his head to make him sign a labor contract.

"Fix the ship? With you bunch of scavengers?"

Old Chen let out a cold sneer from his nostrils, his face full of disdain: "Don't think I don't know the ways of you wasteland warlords.

It's nothing more than welding some steel plates onto a sand barge, stuffing in a tractor engine, and daring to call it a warship.

Industrial trash like that makes my eyes sore just looking at it."

He plopped back onto the bed and turned his face away: "Kill me or skin me as you please, but don't use that junk to insult my profession."

Jiang Ran didn't argue; he simply snapped his fingers at the air.

"zero, show him."

"Command received."

The originally bright infirmary lights suddenly dimmed.

Immediately following, countless beams of eerie blue light shot out from the surrounding projectors, weaving and reassembling in the center of the room.

In just two seconds, a massive, structurally precise 3D holographic projection of a nuclear reactor floated in mid-air.

It wasn't a crude pressurized water reactor, but one that only existed on top-secret blueprints from the old era—

A Liquid Metal Cooled Fast Breeder Reactor.

Beside it was a matching magnetohydrodynamic propulsion circuit as complex as a work of art.

The path of every pipe and the layout of every valve were filled with the ultimate beauty of mathematics.

To an ordinary person, this was just a bunch of glowing lines.

But to Old Chen, it was no different from a peerless beauty standing naked before him.

Old Chen's tilted neck instantly stiffened.

That disdain and arrogance vanished without a trace, like snow melting in the sun.

In its place was a near-obsessive, even somewhat pious, fanaticism.

He stood up involuntarily.

His one good hand reached out tremblingly toward the projection in the air.

He wanted to touch those virtual lines, yet feared breaking this exquisite work of art.

"This... this is the core architecture of an S-5 'Abyss' Class Reactor... a liquid lead-bismuth alloy cooling circuit... and this, is this a Vector Magnetohydrodynamic Nozzle?!"

A dry gurgle came from Old Chen's throat, like an addict who hadn't eaten for three days suddenly seeing a mountain of gold.

He was almost pressed against the projection, a terrifying glint erupting in his cloudy old eyes.

"My god... this wiring logic, this heat exchange efficiency... it's simply a perfect masterpiece..."

He had completely forgotten he was a kidnapped hostage, and forgotten that the person standing before him was a "bandit."

At this moment, in this room, there was only a technical madman worshiping a peak industrial crystallization.

"This is the 'tractor' you're going to fix."

Jiang Ran looked at Old Chen's entranced state and added a dry remark:

"Now, do your eyes feel sore, or do your hands feel itchy?"

Old Chen snapped his head around, staring intently at Jiang Ran, his breathing as rapid as if he had just run five kilometers.

"Take me there!"

He roared, appearing even more eager than Jiang Ran: "Now! Immediately! Take me to the power room! I'll bite anyone who dares to stop me!"

The heavy lead-shielded isolation door slowly opened, and a unique scent mixed with ozone and high-temperature lubricant wafted out.

To an ordinary person, this smell might be nauseating, but to Old Chen, it was more intoxicating than aged Maotai.

He took a deep breath, and his originally hunched back straightened quite a bit.

His good right hand eagerly pushed aside the First Mate blocking the way as he stumbled into the power room.

In that dim blue light, the massive reactor stood quietly, like a sleeping heart of steel.

A low, rhythmic hum filled the entire space.

That was the sound of the majestic energy released by nuclear fission, flowing while bound within magnetic fields.

Old Chen walked to the reactor's observation window, his entire face nearly pressed against the thick radiation-proof glass.

His hand, covered in calluses and grease—

Tremblingly stroked the cold metal outer wall, his gaze as tender as if he were caressing a long-lost lover.

"Good baby... truly a good baby..."

He murmured to himself, a bit of cloudy saliva even leaking from the corner of his mouth: "This stability of power output, this silence of the cooling cycle... this is art, this is the diamond on the crown of industrial civilization."

However, this tenderness lasted for less than half a minute.

When Old Chen's gaze followed the reactor's main circuit downward—

And saw the several auxiliary pipes connected to the base and the nearby circuit control cabinet, his expression changed drastically.

That tenderness instantly transformed into fury, like seeing his goddess being doused in a bucket of slop.

"Bastards! Animals! What a waste of God's gifts!!"

Old Chen spun around, pointing his good finger at Jiang Ran's nose, his spittle flying high:

"Who was it? Which oxygen-deprived polio patient did this?!"

He rushed to the control cabinet and gave the external wiring a hard kick.

"Look at this wiring! It's as messy as a ball of yarn played with by a cat!

You actually dared to series-connect a civilian voltage stabilizer into a military-grade fire control circuit?

What are you trying to do? Blow up this ship?"

He then pointed at the several additional armor plates welded on to increase defense, his voice as shrill as nails scraping a blackboard:

"And this! Who told you to weld steel plates in this position?

This destroyed the original thermal expansion and contraction balance!

It's simply like forcing a Rolls-Royce engine into a smoke-belching hand tractor!

This is a crime! This is a desecration of industrial aesthetics!"

Old Chen was shaking with rage, his face flushed red, looking as if he wanted to pounce and bite Jiang Ran.

The surrounding crew members looked at each other, intimidated into silence by the old madman's momentum.

After all, most of these modifications were pieced together by them under Jiang Ran's command using limited resources.

They were ugly, but at least they worked.

But in Old Chen's eyes, this was an unpardonable sin.

"Finished cursing?"

Jiang Ran leaned against the doorframe, his expression still calm, showing no anger at the offense.

Because he knew that the more fiercely the old man cursed, the more capable he was.

"If you're done, come over and look at this."

Jiang Ran pointed at the glaring red warning area on the holographic screen: "See what terminal illness this 'Rolls-Royce' has contracted now."

Jiang Ran tapped lightly on the console, maximizing that fatal scan image.

"Secondary cooling circuit B4 elbow, micron-level crack.

zero suggests using Deep Penetration Laser Welding for minimally invasive repair."

Just as Jiang Ran finished speaking—

Before zero could even begin demonstrating that seemingly perfect repair plan, a sneer broke the serious atmosphere.

"Ha! Laser welding?"

Old Chen looked at the blue-glowing AI projection like he was looking at an idiot, his face full of contempt: "This is the common ailment of you modern people who rely on electronic brains.

No matter how fast you crunch the numbers, if you don't understand materials science, you're just a killer."

"Warning: This plan is based on three million simulated calculations, with a theoretical success rate..."

zero tried to argue.

"Shut up, you artificial retard."

Old Chen interrupted it unceremoniously, his crippled knuckles thumping against the screen:

"Did your algorithm forget to calculate the 'Neutron Irradiation Embrittlement' variable?

How many years has this pipe been sitting next to the core?

Being bombarded by high-energy neutron flows every day, the crystal lattice inside that alloy has long been smashed to bits!"

He turned around, grabbed a spare metal pipe, and slammed it onto the floor:

"Listen, right now the metal at that crack looks like steel, but its physical properties are more brittle than a cracker.

You dare use a laser at several thousand degrees to burn it?

Once the thermal stress kicks in, if there's even a tiny temperature difference, 'BANG'! The whole pipe will shatter like glass!"

Old Chen made an exaggerated explosion gesture, a schadenfreude-filled sneer on his face.

"When that happens, high-pressure radioactive steam will spray out, and you people on this ship won't even have time to write your wills before you're cooked through."

The cockpit fell into a dead silence. The First Mate and Su Qingyu's faces turned somewhat pale.

They might not understand nuclear physics, but they understood the meaning of "shatter" and "cooked through."

"Then... what if we use other materials to patch it?"

The First Mate asked cautiously: "Like using a softer lead seal?"

"Quacks! All of you are quacks!"

Old Chen clutched his forehead in pain, wearing an expression of "you're beyond help":

"This is a high-pressure circuit! The pressure inside can compress water into a blade!

Lead seal?

You might as well use chewing gum to plug it!

In this world, any conventional dead metal, even aviation titanium alloy...

...once welded on, will lead to a dead end because of the different thermal expansion coefficients."

He let out a long sigh, looking at the crack, his gaze finally becoming serious.

"This isn't fixing a plumbing pipe; this is performing valve repair on a heart.

Conventional methods not only can't save it, they'll hasten its end."

"So, it's a terminal illness?"

Jiang Ran's voice remained calm, as if Old Chen hadn't just sentenced this ship to death, but some insignificant ant:

"If I wanted to hear the words 'no way,' I wouldn't have needed to snatch you back from that cage."

Old Chen glanced at him sideways.

His face, which had been flushed from excitement, slowly calmed down, and a strange smile curled at the corners of his mouth.

"Conventional methods are indeed a terminal illness, but this shitty world always evolves some things that don't make sense."

He tapped the edge of the console with his crippled hand, making a dull sound:

"Since dead metal won't work, then use something living."

"Living?"

Su Qingyu frowned: "You mean biological tissue? How could that possibly withstand the high temperature and radiation of the reactor?"

"Not ordinary flesh, but 'Living Memory Metal'."

Old Chen turned around and pointed at a deep-water area on the holographic map, located a dozen kilometers downstream from the black iron.

A massive shipwreck signal was marked there.

"That's a pre-war sunken Car Carrier, filled with thousands of new cars that never left the factory.

Down there, a certain type of mutated little creature has taken over—"

"We call them 'Iron-Eating Crabs'."

A greedy light flickered in Old Chen's eyes, the fanaticism of a researcher discovering a new species:

"These beasts feed on metal.

In the radiation and acid-filled depths, they've devoured thousands of tons of specialty steel from that ship.

After generations of mutation and evolution, their shells are no longer calcareous, but a semi-biological, semi-metallic chitin alloy."

He paused, his tone becoming somewhat eerie: "That kind of shell has the hardness of metal but retains living biological cells.

It can 'heal' like skin and automatically adapt to the surrounding thermal expansion and contraction.

It's the only material in this wasteland that can perform 'minimally invasive skin graft surgery' on this reactor."

"You mean, we're going to catch crabs?" The First Mate felt the world had gone mad.

"Not catching crabs, but committing robbery."

Old Chen corrected: "Those crabs have made that shipwreck their nest. Anything that dares to approach will be torn to shreds by their massive claws that can snip through rebar.

And..."

He looked at Jiang Ran with schadenfreude: "To fix that crack, ordinary crab shells won't do. It must be a 'Crab King' that has lived a long time, eaten the best, and has the thickest, hardest shell.

Only its carapace is worthy of this reactor."

Jiang Ran looked at the blinking red dot on the map and was silent for a moment.

He had thought it was just a simple mechanical failure, but he hadn't expected to end up back at the wasteland's law of the jungle—

To survive, one had to seize the flesh and blood of the stronger.

"Since there's a prescription, then it's easy."

Jiang Ran turned toward the weapon rack and began checking his gear:

"Whether it's a Crab King or a Dragon King, since I've set my sights on its shell, it's my spare part."

He looked back at Old Chen, who was grinning maliciously, and said coldly: "Prepare the operating table, Doctor.

I'm going to bring that 'living patch' back for you."