434: Chapter 434 Chen Qiaoshou Appears, Mysterious Blueprints Draw Attention

The morning light had just crested the ridges of the Qiming Plain, and the spiritual energy conduits in the workshop district were still humming, their residual warmth not yet dissipated.

Chen Wuwang did not return to the Main Hall, nor did he go to the dispatch office; he went straight into the old quiet room behind the Artifact Refining Workshop.

Once the door closed, the clamor was cut off as if by a knife, leaving only a few Jade Slips on the wall glowing faintly, casting mottled light across the tabletop.

He sat down and tapped his fingers on the edge of the table, one by one, the rhythm not fast, but steady.

What swirled in his mind was still that remark from the plaza— "Make the mechs smarter."

The words had been spoken, but how to make them smarter? What to rely on? At the moment, there wasn't even a prototype.

The clansmen's enthusiasm had been ignited, and this flame could not be allowed to burn out in vain.

Scattered on the table were several sketches, all drawn casually last night; the lines were messy, the annotations sloppy, with terms like "signal feedback delay" and "positioning node redundancy" written on them—he shook his head just looking at them.

These things were easy to talk about on paper but difficult to implement. They lacked a fulcrum, a fulcrum that could pry abstract thoughts into a concrete path.

He was staring blankly at one of the circuits when footsteps sounded outside the door.

They were unhurried and light, as if coming from someone who visited often. When the door pushed open, it brought in a wisp of wind, rustling an unweighted piece of paper at the corner of the table.

Chen Wuwang looked up.

The person who entered looked to be in his early thirties, wearing a faded gray cloth jacket with frayed cuffs and a small, bulging cloth bag hanging from his waist.

His face was not remarkable, his features were calm, but his eyes were clear and bright; the first thing he did upon entering was to lock eyes with Chen Wuwang, nod slightly, and remain silent.

"Qiaoshou?" Chen Wuwang recognized him. "Why are you here?"

"I heard you wanted to create something new." Chen Qiaoshou closed the door and walked to the table, his voice neither high nor low. "So I came."

Chen Wuwang raised an eyebrow. "Do you know what I'm planning to create?"

"Didn't you say it? You want the mechs to find enemies on their own."

Chen Qiaoshou pulled a roll of something from his bosom; it was neither metal nor paper, its surface shimmering with dark green patterns, like some kind of animal hide that had been tanned and soaked in medicinal liquid:

"I've been pondering for a few days and made something. Perhaps it will be of use."

Chen Wuwang stared at the scroll. "What is this?"

"A blueprint." Chen Qiaoshou placed the scroll gently on the table, holding down both ends with his hands, not rushing to unfold it. "I drew it myself. I haven't told anyone about it."

Chen Wuwang did not move; his Mechanical Prosthetic Eye activated automatically, a flash of red light scanning across the surface of the blueprint.

There was no fluctuation of Spiritual Qi, no reaction from runes, not even the most basic traces of a Formation.

Yet it was this "nothing at all" that made his eyelids jump.

"This blueprint of yours... what Materials did you use to draw it?"

"Insect tendons for the base, snake bile mixed with ink, and a bit of lightning-struck wood powder," Chen Qiaoshou said indifferently. "After drawing it, I let it air-dry for three days, and every day at the Zi hour, I dotted it with blood from my fingertip. That's how it was completed."

Chen Wuwang was stunned. "You used your own blood?"

"What else?" Chen Qiaoshou smiled. "This blueprint only recognizes my hand. If anyone else touches it, the words will vanish."

"Eerie." Chen Wuwang said in a low voice.

"In the Cultivation World, what isn't a bit eerie?" Chen Qiaoshou pushed with his fingers, and the scroll slowly unfolded, revealing a corner of the pattern.

Chen Wuwang's breath hitched.

What was drawn on the diagram was not a complete structure, but a cluster of nodes, dense and packed, like a star map, or perhaps like neural pathways.

Beside each node were tiny annotations: "Spiritual Energy Coupling Point," "Dynamic Positioning Array," "Triple Error Correction Circuit"...

What shook him the most was that these terms were almost word-for-word identical to the concepts that had popped into his mind last night.

"Where... where did you learn these terms?" he asked.

"I guessed," Chen Qiaoshou shrugged. "But I guessed correctly."

Chen Wuwang didn't ask again; he reached out and pulled the entire diagram open.

The more he looked, the faster his heart beat.

In the center of the blueprint was a ring structure, with seven branches extending outward, each connecting to a different functional module.

At the very core, three words were marked: "Main Control Nucleus."

This was not an ordinary circuit diagram, nor was it a rune array, but some kind of hybrid—half was the flow of spiritual patterns, half was the signal pathway, and the two intertwined without any sense of discordance.

"Can this diagram of yours... process data?" he asked.

"It can," Chen Qiaoshou nodded. "As long as you have an input source, it can output a path. The margin of error won't exceed three-thousandths of a breath."

"Three-thousandths of a breath?" Chen Wuwang looked up sharply. "You mean it can predict the next move before the enemy completes their action?"

"More or less," Chen Qiaoshou's lips curled slightly. "It doesn't think, but it 'feels.' Just like a spider knows which thread of its web has moved, it can also know which way the enemy's Qi is shifting."

Chen Wuwang was silent for a few seconds, then suddenly laughed.

It wasn't a maniacal laugh, nor a cold sneer; it was a pure, irrepressible laugh.

"Qiaoshou, oh Qiaoshou, you've hidden your skills well." He pointed at the blueprint. "When did you start working on this?"

"The night you announced you were going to develop a navigation System," Chen Qiaoshou said. "I heard half of it outside the drill ground, and I started drawing when I got back."

"No one asked you to do this."

"I know." He looked at Chen Wuwang. "But I felt that you could use it."

Chen Wuwang stared at the blueprint, his finger tapping lightly on the "Main Control Nucleus" position. "Have you tested this structure?"

"I have." Chen Qiaoshou pulled a palm-sized black stone slab from his cloth bag; it had tiny grooves carved into it, identical to the core part on the blueprint,

"Last night, I tested it with a message-transmitting sparrow. Wherever it flew, the point on the diagram followed; it never lost connection the whole time."

Chen Wuwang took the stone slab and examined it over and over. The grooves were extremely fine, as if carved with a strand of hair; the edges were smooth, with no traces of burning or cracking.

"What tool did you use to carve this?"

"My fingernails." Chen Qiaoshou extended his right hand; the nail on his index finger glinted with a dark, metallic sheen. "Soaked in cold iron water for three years, they can slice through iron like mud."

Chen Wuwang looked up at him. "You, you're becoming less and less like a human."

"As long as I'm alive, it's fine." Chen Qiaoshou smiled indifferently. "Do you want to use this blueprint?"

Chen Wuwang didn't answer immediately.

He put down the stone slab and looked at the blueprint again, his gaze sweeping from beginning to end, and then back again. The scattered thoughts in his mind were suddenly strung together by a single thread.

The missing fulcrum had arrived.

"You said this blueprint only recognizes your hand?" he asked.

"Correct."

"And now?"

"Now?" Chen Qiaoshou paused. "Since you've touched it, it counts as yours now too."

"Oh?" Chen Wuwang raised an eyebrow.

"Because I said, 'Perhaps it will be of use to you.'" Chen Qiaoshou looked at him. "Once the words were spoken, the blueprint changed its rules."

Chen Wuwang was taken aback.

A moment later, he slowly exhaled, his voice low but clear. "This is it. This blueprint will greatly accelerate the research and development progress."

Chen Qiaoshou smiled; this time he couldn't hold it back, grinning until fine lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes.

"I knew you would say that."

"Feeling proud?"

"A little." He reined in his smile, but his eyes still held a glimmer. "After all, this is the first time I've truly, properly drawn out what was in my mind."

Chen Wuwang looked at him and suddenly felt that this man didn't seem like an artisan, but rather a madman—the kind of madman who knows he clutches a spark in his hand, yet waits calmly for the wind to arrive.

"Where did you work before?" he asked.

"Dongling Wen Family, and later I went to the underground workshop of the West Desert Sand Clan," Chen Qiaoshou said. "Before that, I don't remember."

"No wonder no one knows you."

"Most of those who knew are dead." His tone was indifferent, as if he were talking about how many bowls of rice he had eaten today.

Chen Wuwang didn't ask again. Some things, if asked about too much, would only ruin the unspoken understanding.

He pushed the blueprint toward the center of the table and pulled out a chair beside it. "Sit."

Chen Qiaoshou didn't stand on ceremony and sat down.

The two sat side by side, heads bowed looking at the diagram, neither speaking.

Sunlight shone in diagonally through the window crack, falling onto the blueprint; those fine lines seemed to come alive, shimmering slightly.

"Where to start?" Chen Qiaoshou asked.

"The Main Control Nucleus." Chen Wuwang reached out and pointed to the center. "Let's make that first. It doesn't need to be big, palm-sized is enough, as long as it can successfully run a closed-loop test once."

"What about the Materials?"

"I'll arrange for them." Chen Wuwang stood up. "What do you need?"

"Spirit Patterned Silver Thread, third-rank demon core powder, and a small segment of a Gold-Eating Insect's stomach lining."

"Stomach lining?" Chen Wuwang frowned. "That thing is too highly corrosive."

"That's exactly why I need its corrosiveness." Chen Qiaoshou looked up. "I want it to eat away the excess signal noise."

Chen Wuwang stared at him for two seconds, then suddenly laughed. "Fine, you're ruthless."

He turned and walked toward the door, pausing when his hand touched the door handle. "Qiaoshou."

"Hm?"

"This diagram... did you draw it alone?"

Chen Qiaoshou was silent for a few seconds, then said, "I drew it alone."

Chen Wuwang nodded and opened the door to leave.

The wind blew in from the corridor, rustling a corner of the blueprint.

Chen Qiaoshou didn't move; he simply reached out and gently pressed down on that page, keeping it from flipping over.

He knew that the real work had only just begun.