282: Chapter 282 Chen Tiezhu's Secret Observation

The moment Chen Qiaoshou's pen tip touched the paper, the wind in the workshop seemed to go still.

The sound of the paper being scored was crisp and steady, like raindrops hitting a tin roof, one after another, unhurried and calm.

He kept his head down, his shoulders and back held straight, his right hand moving the pen as if carving, while his left hand occasionally pressed down on a corner of the drawing to keep it from being lifted by the draft.

The sketchbook was clamped to the edge of the table, and a half-cup of cold tea sat beside it, untouched.

Chen Tiezhu stood three paces away, his heels still planted on the line he had stepped back to earlier.

He had intended to leave.

His sleeves were already flared, the fire in his chest making his throat feel dry, his mind filled with phrases like "seven great battles" and "personally forged three hundred mechs."

But the moment he turned, he heard the sound of the pen—it wasn't aimless scribbling, nor was it just for show; it had a true rhythm, as if every line had a purpose.

He paused.

His foot did not lift.

His eyes moved first.

He slowly turned back, making no sound, not edging closer, but instead retreating half a step diagonally to hide behind a support pillar.

With most of his body hidden, he revealed only one eye, staring intently at the drawing in Chen Qiaoshou's hands.

"Playing pretend," he cursed under his breath, his voice kept extremely low, as if afraid of disturbing something or being overheard.

Yet his eyes did not blink.

Chen Qiaoshou turned the page.

The new page depicted the linkage structure of the energy hub, the lines denser than before, with more annotations.

As he drew, he tapped a few times with his Spiritual Qi pen; a faint light flashed from the tip, and several pale blue streams of data emerged on the drawing, running along the energy conduction rails as if alive, before finally stopping at the furnace interface.

Chen Tiezhu's pupils constricted.

He had never seen this thing before.

It wasn't a rune array, nor was it a traditional craft diagram, but the energy flow... it actually made his heart skip a beat.

"How does this kid... know that the B-zone diversion valve is the most prone to clogging?" he muttered to himself, his brows knitted into a knot, "I've never even told anyone about that."

He couldn't help but shuffle half a step forward, poking out half his head.

Chen Qiaoshou did not look up, but his pen paused.

It wasn't a stop, but a brief pause, the kind one makes when hitting a critical point and suddenly thinking of something.

He rubbed his chin with his left hand, quickly wrote a few characters in the blank space on the edge of the drawing with his right, and continued drawing.

Chen Tiezhu couldn't see what was written, but the gestures—steady, precise, practiced—looked like they had been trained a thousand times over.

"Heh," he sneered, trying to bolster his own courage, "that's all the skill he has. No matter how good it looks, the machine won't recognize it."

Yet despite what he said, his feet didn't move.

He leaned against the pillar, one hand resting on the cold metal support, his fingertips tapping unconsciously, as if calculating something.

His mind involuntarily replayed those lines from just now: how the energy rails were routed, how the heat vents were opened, how the furnace provided segmented energy...

The more he thought, the heavier his heart became.

When his furnace exploded seven years ago, he investigated for three days afterward and concluded it was due to insufficient purity of the Materials.

But looking at this drawing now, he suddenly felt—shouldn't there have been a detection array back then? Shouldn't the diversion valve have had an automatic regulator long ago?

Once the thought arose, he was startled by it himself.

"Am I crazy?" he gritted his teeth, "How can I believe something from a newcomer?"

Yet his eyes remained fixed on it.

Chen Qiaoshou began drawing the fourth part: the intelligent control module.

As he drew, he muttered softly, "Predict peaks, divert in advance, avoid overload... AI needs to be fed data, needs manual calibration for the first three days..."

"AI?" Chen Tiezhu almost blurted it out, but swallowed it back, only snorting through his nose, "Feeding data? Do you think Artifact Refining is like raising chickens?"

Yet he kept listening.

That kid said this System could learn on its own, didn't need someone to watch it, and as long as it was given three months of operational records, it could calculate the optimal energy supply curve.

"Nonsense!" he roared in his heart, "Machines can learn? It doesn't know a damn thing about Spiritual Qi fluctuations!"

But then he thought—a few days ago, that "automatic inspection machine" Chen Wuwang made, didn't it run its own routes and record its own anomalies?

He had even seen it personally report the aging of the C-zone cooling pipe in advance, and upon inspection, it really did have a crack.

He closed his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them again, his gaze had changed.

It was no longer pure anger, but mixed with something else—doubt, and even... a hint of wavering.

"This kid... is he really not just bragging?"

He quietly inched forward half a step, almost pressing against the edge of the pillar, his neck stretched out long, wishing he could plaster his eyeballs right onto the drawing.

Chen Qiaoshou turned the page and began drawing the fifth part: detection array upgrade.

He drew a bit more slowly, each stroke exceptionally serious.

A circular array appeared on the drawing, marked "Deep Scan" in the center, with "Can detect internal stress, hidden cracks, energy residue" written beside it.

Chen Tiezhu's breath hitched.

He thought of that severely injured pilot.

That kid had checked three times before the test flight, and everyone said there were no problems.

But three breaths after takeoff, the mech's right arm exploded, and the whole machine crashed into the mine pit.

After it was dug out, they discovered a hair-thin crack in the energy conduction core that exploded during charging.

"If only... there had been something like this back then..." His lips moved, but no sound came out.

But once this thought emerged, it grew wildly like weeds.

He suddenly felt that the "experience" he had been so proud of all these years seemed... a bit insufficient.

"It's not that I'm not capable," he argued in his heart, "it's that I hadn't thought of these methods!"

But everyone knows that "not having thought of it" and "being unable to think of it" are two different things.

He looked down at his own hands—rough, covered in calluses, joints deformed; they were the marks left by years of holding a hammer and forging.

These hands had forged the strongest battle mechs in the Eastern Wasteland and repaired countless broken ones.

He relied on these hands to make a living, relied on them to establish himself.

But now, a young man, sitting at a table, holding a pen, drawing a few diagrams, was going to change all of this?

He refused to accept it.

Yet he was also afraid.

Afraid that he really... had been eliminated.

"I've worked here for seven years!" He gritted his teeth, his nails digging into his palms, "Seven great battles, which mech didn't I personally oversee? You, an outsider, with one word of 'outdated,' want to push it all away?"

Yet he couldn't help but watch.

Chen Qiaoshou finished the detection array and began connecting the final link: the linkage structure of the entire System.

He drew extremely fast, as if completely confident.

Four main lines—energy, production, detection, maintenance—were strung together by a thick line, arrows crisscrossing back and forth, the data flow clearly visible.

"A living production line..." he muttered, "Can adjust itself, repair itself, warn itself."

Chen Tiezhu looked up abruptly.

"Living?" He almost shouted, but forced it back, only letting out a muffled sound from his throat.

He suddenly remembered what his master told him when teaching him Artifact Refining as a child: "An artifact has a soul, fire is its bone, and the craftsman is its heart."

He had always felt that machines were dead and had to be maintained by people.

But what this kid was drawing was clearly letting the machine grow a heart of its own.

"Absurd." He cursed under his breath, but his voice was already weak.

He leaned against the pillar, his legs a little weak.

He didn't want to watch, but his eyes couldn't look away.

He wanted to leave, but his feet seemed rooted to the ground.

He stood there like an old man left behind by the times, clutching an old hammer, watching a new vehicle drive past, roaring deafeningly, yet not knowing how it moved.

Chen Qiaoshou closed the sketchbook, took a deep breath, and looked up at the lighting rune array on the workshop ceiling.

Light spilled onto his face, revealing a thin layer of sweat.

He didn't move or speak, just tucked the pen back into his waist, reopened the first page, and began checking the first energy structure diagram.

Chen Tiezhu was still behind the pillar.

He hadn't left.

Nor had he stepped forward.

He just stood there, his shadow stretched long, half hidden in the dark, half falling in the light.

Still muttering, "All show... nice to look at but useless..."

But those eyes—red, swollen, bloodshot—were staring fixedly at the closed sketchbook, as if trying to stare a hole through the thing.

He knew he shouldn't watch.

Yet he also knew he couldn't stop watching.

Chen Wuwang stood at the end of the corridor, leaning against the wall.

He didn't move.

Nor did he speak.

He only occasionally lifted his left eye, a blue light flashing, scanning the direction of the drawings, before quickly extinguishing.

He saw Chen Tiezhu's movement.

And he also saw his hesitation.

The corners of his mouth moved; he didn't smile, nor did he make a sound.

He knew the gears had already started turning.

Now, it only lacked one sound.