106: Chapter 106 Silver-haired Mature Woman

Lin Li's gaze swept up and down this woman with short silver hair and a cold, almost flawlessly perfect face.

"Is Hong your name, or your factory designation?" Lin Li couldn't help but ask.

"It can be a name, or it can be a designation."

Hong's voice was as calm as a machine, her silver eyes devoid of any ripples.

Lin Li nodded and moved his gaze, which looked as if he were observing a precious scientific specimen, away from her chest.

"Regardless of which production line in the Golden Age you came from, from now on, you are a member of the Fire Seed Shelter."

"We all share one ultimate goal: to restore the glory of human civilization from the Golden Age. In Shelter, you are free to move about and use most of the equipment."

He glanced once more at Hong's incredibly coordinated body and couldn't help but comment:

"However, I suggest you get some clothes first, lest you cause a commotion on the surface."

...

It was currently morning.

Most of the combat players on Shelter's surface had already gone out or were running trade routes.

In the square, only a dozen or so lifestyle players were clinking and clanking away at their crafts.

Players [Dai Dai Tape] and [Legend of Lu Shi] were squatting at the workshop entrance, sweating profusely as they worked together to pry apart a red mutated mushroom the size of a millstone.

"Put some muscle into it, Brother Lu! Why is this piece of junk so hard!"

As the two pulled, a thick layer of red fiber appeared between the two massive red caps, stretching longer and longer with incredible toughness!

"Whoa! There really is fiber!" Dai Dai Tape exclaimed.

"Hehe, not just fiber—wait for me!"

Legend of Lu Shi gave a mysterious smile, turned, and ran to the earthen stove at the Lao Ba Canteen, returning with a piece of firewood still burning with an open flame.

He thrust the burning wood directly beneath the red fibers.

An amazing scene unfolded.

The seemingly fragile red fibers did not ignite at all under the roasting of the high-temperature flame; there wasn't even a trace of soot!

"Holy crap! Not only is it incredibly tough, it's fireproof too?!"

Dai Dai Tape's eyes went wide. "Where did you get this good stuff? How much more is there?"

"I found it in a corner of a radioactive cave to the east while I was running a trade route. There's a whole patch of it inside!"

Legend of Lu Shi stroked his chin triumphantly.

"Hmm... from now on, this thing will be called Devil Mushroom. The fabric made from it will be called Devil Mushroom Cloth. How's that?"

Dai Dai Tape rolled his eyes.

"You're an old RimWorld player too, aren't you? That naming is way too lazy."

Just as the two were squatting on the ground discussing how to use this stuff to make fireproof and bulletproof vests to earn points...

From the corner of his eye, Legend of Lu Shi suddenly caught sight of a figure emerging from the underground elevator.

"Holy shit!"

The firebrand in Legend of Lu Shi's hand dropped straight to the ground, his eyes nearly popping out of his head. "A white-haired onee-san?!"

A woman with ear-length silver hair and a cold face was walking slowly toward them.

She possessed features as perfect as an ancient Greek sculpture and a body of golden proportions, radiating an ascetic aura that was a mix of classical and icy cold.

And the silver bodysuit she wore, full of sci-fi streamlines, pushed this visual impact to the limit!

The collision of classical features and cyber technology.

This extremely intense sense of contrast undoubtedly struck the 'G-spot' of these horny players right in the soul!

"A new NPC?! Definitely a key NPC for a hidden plot!"

Legend of Lu Shi immediately tossed aside the priceless Devil Mushroom and rushed over like a piece of sticky candy.

Without a word, he raised the brick-like Pip-Boy on his left wrist and started snapping photos of Hong like crazy.

Although the photographic quality of this terminal was touchingly pixelated—comparable to a kid's smartwatch on Earth—at least it could capture an image!

The veteran players around who had the pv terminals issued by Lin Li were in luck.

Those were genuine products of the Golden Age; the photos they took were all high-definition and uncensored!

Hong's appearance instantly caused a feverish commotion in the quiet camp.

Especially among the male players who had never even held a girl's hand in real life.

"Hey! You dogs in front, don't block me from photographing my waifu!"

"Get lost! I unilaterally declare that as of today, Rhine is no longer my waifu. This silver-haired big sister is my only true god!"

"Only kids choose; as an adult, I want them all! I want both Rhine and the white-haired girl!"

"Hey! You guy lying on the ground, you're going too far! Show some restraint!"

A player pulled up the wretched guy lying on the ground and asked in a low voice:

"Did you get the shot? What color is she wearing underneath?"

Of course, amidst the chaos, some players began to perform as usual.

One player stepped forward, looking at Hong with what he thought was a soulful gaze:

"Hello, big sister. Meeting for the first time, do you know what my shortcoming is?"

Hong stopped. Her metal brain, driven by a supercomputer, quickly searched its human language logic database and reflexively asked back according to normal social context:

"What shortcoming?"

The player flipped his bangs and gave a greasy smile: "I'm short of you!"

"..."

The surrounding players instantly lost it upon hearing this cheesy pickup line.

Some clutched their stomachs, rolling on the ground laughing; others rubbed the goosebumps that were falling off their arms.

"Damn! That's so disgusting! Brothers, drag him out and shoot him!"

Hong quietly watched this group of strangely behaving clones, a rare flash of confusion crossing her silver eyes.

But her powerful calculating brain immediately recalled what the Creator, Lin Li, had said to her before:

"The souls of these guys come from a miserable parallel world. Life pressure is high, they get PUA'd by their bosses every day, and they have sexual frustration from not being able to find a partner. So, their mental states are all a bit abnormal. Just ignore them."

Hong's logic circuits instantly cleared.

She immediately activated auto-block mode, ignoring the players' staring, photography, and cheesy harassment as she turned and walked toward the wilderness outside the camp with an expressionless face.

The players who followed her for a bit found that this cold NPC didn't seem to have an affection bar, nor could they engage in any interactive dialogue; not even an affection notification popped up.

Feeling bored, they scattered to their work, grumbling as they went.

Only a few paparazzi types who were truly bored out of their minds continued to observe from afar with high-powered scopes.

Hong stood on a high point outside the camp, overlooking this barren saline-alkali land.

"If we want to revive human civilization, the underlying architecture of food is of paramount importance."

Hong walked to an experimental field cultivated by the player [Penny Is My Wife].

She pulled up a mutated Sand Potato, looked at it, and then shook her head in distaste.

"This kind of low-quality tuber plant, which has undergone genetic mutation to adapt to extreme environments, has a high yield, but its internal gene chain has solidified. It is not suitable for secondary editing as a foundational staple crop."

She tossed the Sand Potato aside and scanned her surroundings.

Finally, she locked onto an unremarkable grass-like weed with hard leaves growing in a rock crevice by the road.

"The basic genetic sequence is primitive enough, and the plasticity is strong. You'll do."

Hong uprooted the weed and turned back to the B3 level gene laboratory underground.

For a Stone Man who mastered the peak biotechnology of the Golden Age, this low-level plant gene-induced editing was simpler than a human doing elementary school arithmetic.

She skillfully cut a slice of the grass stem and placed it into the gene editor.

In less than an hour.

The underlying genetic code of that weed, which could originally only barely survive in rock crevices, was completely rewritten!

It was modified so that it didn't need pure water or abundant sunlight.

It only required extremely faint starlight and could take root directly in saline-alkali soil, absorbing minerals from rocks by secreting special acidic fluids!

Most absurdly, its growth cycle was compressed to just a few days, and the fruit it bore was a super crop with a 64-fold polyploidy.

Not only was it highly satiating, but it was also rich in various high-purity proteins and carbohydrates required by the human body!

After dealing with the weed...

Hong's gaze turned toward the metal culture tanks in the corner of the lab.

Those were the deformed embryos that Flame Fist and the others had brought back from the ruins of the Gaobo Food Factory, which combined cattle genes with those of some photosynthetic plant.

"Attempting to give livestock the ability of plant photosynthesis. This research direction is very interesting."

Hong stepped forward, extracted an embryo in a dormant state, and placed it on the operating table.

"The idea is good, but the technical means of the human scientists responsible for this project were far too crude and backward.

There are a large number of redundant junk gene segments, leading to severe damage to telomerase.

Even if this embryo hatched, it would die in its infancy due to genetic collapse."

Hong's fingers danced rapidly across the holographic keyboard, performing surgery at the microscopic level.

She easily removed those lethal defective genes and repaired the telomeres.

She even conveniently optimized the embryo's muscle fiber structure so that once formed, it would produce high-quality lean meat with better flavor and higher yield.

Looking at the light-green cell mass on the operating table that had regained its vitality, Hong nodded with satisfaction.

She cultivated another plant from the plant slice and catalyzed the cell mass into several translucent fertilized eggs.

Subsequently.

Hong held these few shriveled plant seeds and those translucent strange eggs in her hands and took the elevator to Control Room No. 1.

"Creator, please look."

Hong placed the items on the table and reported the heaven-defying functions of these two things in a calm tone.

Lin Li was holding half a cup of tea, and his whole body instantly froze in place.

He stared blankly at the few unremarkable seeds on the table, his head buzzing; he didn't hear a single word of the professional biological terminology Hong explained afterward.

"No need for sunlight? Super wheat that grows by eating rocks? A divine cow that grows meat just by sunbathing and will absolutely never suffer genetic collapse?!"

A full half-minute passed.

Lin Li suddenly launched himself from his chair!

In his excitement, he directly picked up the cold-faced silver-haired Stone Man and spun around the control room three times!

*Mwah!*

Lin Li was so excited he lost control, lowering his head to give Hong a heavy kiss on her smooth forehead!

"You're practically my own father!!" Lin Li laughed loudly.

Then, Lin Li grabbed the seeds and translucent eggs from the table and rushed out of the control room like a whirlwind.

These two strategic resources, enough to completely solve the food problem, had to be put into large-scale production immediately!

After all, while synthetic starch was good, it required a lot of water and electricity; these things didn't. In places with scarce resources and backward productivity, they were king.

While running, Lin Li directly decided on the names for these two miracle creations in the system backend.

The super wheat that could absorb nutrients from rocks was mischievously named by him as:

[Jinkela No. 1]

And the green mutated cow that grew meat by sunbathing was named:

[Brave Cow]

Inside the control room.

Only the Stone Man, Hong, who had just been forcibly kissed on the forehead, remained.

Her powerful super-brain seemed to have fallen into a brief logical crash.

She stood there in a daze, touching her kissed forehead with her finger, her silver eyes filled with deep confusion.

"Are human ways of expression... always so lacking in logic and difficult to understand?"