This child is a genius... right?
However, Lin Fuque said she wanted to go to a nearby hypermarket to take a look, as if she needed to buy some hardware.
Lin Shiyao glanced at the time. "I'll call someone to go with you."
The person she called over was a guy who was 1.9 meters tall, wore glasses, and had a somewhat dry temperament, resembling an old bamboo stalk.
"You can call him Brother Xiao Wen. He also lives in our neighborhood and happens to be going shopping. He can drop you off on his way home."
Lin Shiyao was quite familiar with him. He was also from the physics department. After starting his postgraduate studies, he rented an apartment in the neighborhood and was well-acquainted with the other professors.
However, Lin Shiyao called him because he happened to be "very" free: Xiao Wen's former supervisor had just resigned. It happened so suddenly—the supervisor became a monk. Before that, he had been out of contact for half a year, leaving his students like homeless little birds.
Xiao Wen hadn't found a new supervisor yet and looked a bit disheartened.
But Lin Shiyao's research direction was different from his, so she couldn't offer much guidance.
It all depended on whether Xiao Wen could contact a suitable supervisor, or how the college would arrange things.
Lin Fuque obediently greeted him, "Hello, brother."
Xiao Wen smiled and said, "Hello."
The sun at the end of July was quite fierce. When leaving the cafeteria, Brother Xiao Wen seemed to want to hold an umbrella for Lin Fuque, but after rummaging through his bag, he gave up.
Lin Fuque: "?"
Xiao Wen: "My umbrella... seems to have been stolen the last time it rained."
Fortunately, the hypermarket wasn't far from there, and he had a small electric scooter. The two of them sped through the scorching sun to the mall. Lin Fuque wandered around for a bit, finished tapping on her phone's calculator, and took a deep breath. "So expensive."
Xiao Wen glanced at her. Lin Fuque should have just graduated from elementary school. She looked much more well-behaved and quiet than his nephew of the same age. She didn't swear or make a fuss. Coming to the mall, she probably just wanted to buy some snacks and toys. If she didn't have enough money, he could quietly pay for her—
Wait, why is there a rice cooker?
He widened his eyes, realizing that the notes on Lin Fuque's phone were not about snacks and toys at all, but some strange things. A rice cooker was one thing, and a hole puncher was understandable. A whole bunch of different types of screws could be explained away as her wanting to do some crafts, but what on earth did she need to buy transistors for?
After taking a look, he couldn't help but remind her, "Do you have to buy all these things brand new? How about checking out some second-hand options?"
"Ah!" Lin Fuque looked up at him. "Is that okay? But I don't know where to buy them."
In fact, she had also thought about shopping online, but since she couldn't see the items in person, she couldn't judge whether the quality met the standards. Besides, there were too many odds and ends, and online shopping delivery was too slow.
Xiao Wen squatted down and studied the list with her for a while, picking up the meal replacement bread he had bought. "Follow me. There's a second-hand market right in our school."
The two of them got back on the small electric scooter. Riding against the wind, through Brother Xiao Wen's introduction, Lin Fuque learned that this second-hand market was actually run by a senior student at the school. He had seized the business opportunity of students clearing out their daily necessities from their dorms upon graduation every year. He rented a warehouse near the school and bought goods at low prices from several nearby universities. Leaving quality aside, it was truly cheap.
...And there was definitely the rice cooker Lin Fuque needed.
The small electric scooter bumped its way to the warehouse. The shelves here were very high, but there was only one air conditioner installed. Dust floated in the sunlight, and there was a damp and stuffy smell in the air, but the prices of the items were truly cheap.
It was the senior student in charge's girlfriend who received the two of them. When she found out that he was bringing a child to buy things, although they chatted in low voices while Lin Fuque turned her head away, Lin Fuque still saw the speech bubbles above their heads—
["I don't really want to do business with minors... Her family won't come asking for a refund, will they..."]
["Probably not. Um, this is Professor Lin's daughter."]
["Oh, then be careful, it's quite dusty here... By the way, the dog we have here is quite fierce, and it doesn't like being touched by kids..."]
["It's fine, it's fine. I'll keep an eye on her."]
While they were talking, a big black dog lying next to the electric fan raised its eyes, glanced at the guests, wagged its tail, and continued lying there.
Lin Fuque glanced at the lv4 above Brother Xiao Wen's head, and then at the lv5 above the big black dog's head.
She tugged at his hem, gesturing for him to stay away from the dog too, and clearly showed no intention of going near it herself. Under this atmosphere of mutual understanding, the two of them began to... go on a shopping spree!
Lin Fuque was buying original components based on the materials marked on the "Butterfly Ring Camp Autonomous Recharging Miniature Monitor Blueprint." However, there obviously wouldn't be perfect crafting materials in a college student's second-hand warehouse, and it seemed she could only buy the recommended substitutes. Therefore, Lin Fuque needed to buy other products first, dismantle the raw materials from them, process them a second time, and then find a way to assemble them.
Even more fortunately, Lin Fuque originally thought that the [Item Identification (Activated)] function was useless, only handy for finding damp cookies. But once she got her hands on the blueprint, the floating information on the items became more detailed, and it even indicated in green text whether the item could serve as a substitute for the materials needed for the blueprint.
After picking and sorting for nearly three hours, Lin Fuque finally bought all the materials.
"Although some are substitutes for substitutes..." she thought, "Making do with them isn't impossible anyway, right?"
Even though they were cheap second-hand goods, and the warehouse gave her a 12 percent discount for Professor Lin's sake, it still cost Lin Fuque over three hundred yuan.
Perhaps because she had paid, even the attitude of the big black dog at the door improved a lot. It stood up, sniffed the hem of Lin Fuque's clothes, and wagged its tail.
And Brother Xiao Wen also bought some tools for cleaning his room, and he sped back to the neighborhood with Lin Fuque.
The sun was so hot that the ground was burning, and there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. He watched Lin Fuque enter her home and then turned to leave, but the little girl popped her head out again. "Brother Xiao Wen, do you want to eat some ice cream?"
For some reason, Lin Fuque always felt that this friendly and gentle brother had a bitter expression on his face: it must be because his umbrella was stolen and the sun was too glaring!
He might as well have some ice cream before leaving.
-
Brother Xiao Wen's full name was Wen Ce.
Wen Ce had never been to Professor Lin's house before, but the layout of the apartments here should be more or less the same. Professor Lin's home was also a two-bedroom apartment with a living room. One bedroom was large and the other was small. Lin Fuque's bedroom was slightly smaller, but the sliding door connected to the balcony, giving it the best natural lighting.
He himself shared an apartment with someone. He had met his current roommate on a mechanics forum. The two of them lived together quite harmoniously, and they even had a small workshop at home.
But because Lin Fuque's door was open, he discovered that there was actually a small workbench in her bedroom as well. Sitting in the living room, Wen Ce could see Lin Fuque seemingly "doing crafts."
She sat in front of a narrow and long workbench, with that large bag of what looked like junk placed at her feet. From time to time, she would reach in and take something out. By the time Wen Ce finished his ice cream, he noticed that the object (such as the inner pot of the rice cooker) had disappeared, and some metal piece-like items had appeared on the table.
Do elementary school students on summer vacation also get assigned craft projects?
Believing his own skills were pretty decent, Wen Ce noticed Lin Fuque frowning and sitting motionless, so he knocked on the door. "Is there anything you need help with?"
"Ah," Lin Fuque pinched her cheek and replied in passing, "It's actually almost done, but the margin of error from the blueprint is a bit large."
Figuring that a large margin of error was no big deal for a handicraft that even an elementary school student could make, Wen Ce comforted her. "It must be your first time making it, right? It's completely normal to have a large margin of error your first time. You're not an expert."
"Mhm..." Lin Fuque brought out the "finished product" from the table. "But the blueprint requires the margin of error to be no more than 0.002 millimeters. Not a single one of my parts passes."
Was this a blueprint meant for a master machinist?
Moreover, Lin Fuque's setup wasn't a professional mechanic's workshop at all; it was just a small home workstation.
"There's... there's no problem with it, right?" Wen Ce squinted, trying hard to identify the object. "Did you make a little swallow kite?"
Lin Fuque: "...It's a butterfly."
She blinked and opened her interface to take another look.
[You are crafting [Butterfly-Ring Camp Autonomous Recharging Miniature Monitor]...]
[You have obtained [Butterfly-Ring Camp Autonomous Recharging Miniature Monitor (Self-Modified Enlarged Version - Unfinished Product)] x1]
[Submitting data.]
[You have gained Mechanic EXP x2]
[Current Mechanic Class Level: Lv1 (2/100)]
The thing in Lin Fuque's hands definitely could not be called a "butterfly monitor." It looked more like a large, fat, flat bird with uncoordinated proportions.
"I originally wanted to follow the blueprint..." But the monitor on the blueprint was simply too small, about the size of a normal dead leaf butterfly. Even with the help of a workbench, trying to cram in so many parts that she had to manually grind and cut herself felt impossible to Lin Fuque. "The blueprint was too difficult, so I scaled it up proportionally myself."
She figured she just needed to adjust the measurements, right? However, she found that the quality of some raw materials fell short of the blueprint's requirements, and some parts couldn't be polished to perfection no matter how hard she tried. She pieced them together anyway, ultimately ending up with an unpainted "Butterfly Monitor (Large)" that was about the size of an adult's head.
She had been a bit disdainful of it at first, but it was something she had made herself, after all. After looking at it a few more times, Lin Fuque started to feel that it was actually pretty good. With Wen Ce trying his best to offer a few words of praise from the side, she nodded reservedly, feeling that she could let it go to her head just a tiny bit.
"Brother, let's go downstairs and try flying it!"
Wen Ce: And you said this isn't a kite =_=
But this thing didn't look like it could fly at all, and if it fell from the sky, it could easily become a dangerous high-altitude projectile. Wen Ce followed Lin Fuque downstairs and watched her fumble around under the "butterfly's" wings a couple of times before pressing its abdomen. This ugly contraption... actually started to glide!
Lin Fuque: "Wow!"
Wen Ce: "!"
When the large butterfly glided out of her palm, Lin Fuque noticed a numb sensation in her fingers from overusing them earlier. She recalled the item description:
[The "Butterfly-Ring Camp Autonomous Recharging Miniature Monitor" features intelligent camp coordinate recognition, self-concealment, and low-altitude environmental monitoring... The monitor has low energy consumption, is easy to charge, and will automatically return to the camp to recharge...]
It acted like a mobile surveillance camera, transmitting high-frequency footage of the outdoor environment to the system interface. In just a few minutes, Lin Fuque discovered that several moving yellow dots had appeared on the system interface, complete with name and level labels.
Recharging it was indeed convenient. Because she had enlarged its size, Lin Fuque had simply tinkered with it to run on electrical power, such as a button cell battery.
Normally, popping in a single button cell battery would allow it to run for a week.
But not long after taking off, the large butterfly flew lower and lower. Then, under the intense gazes of Lin Fuque and Wen Ce, it descended to a height of about thirty centimeters above the ground. Its wings tilted to the side, and it began to fly at a slant.
Lin Fuque blinked. "Ah! It seems to be because the two wings weigh differently..."
Actually, the blueprint had suggested casting a mold first, but Lin Fuque didn't have that much money, so she could only hammer and tinker with it by hand.
Lin Fuque felt that her interface was like a central control computer. She selected the "Large Butterfly" from the mechanical products list on the interface and commanded it to return. The large butterfly then clung to her calf, its wings flapping slowly. Although its shape was wrong, its movements alone really resembled a real butterfly. It was clearly trying its best to camouflage itself.
Wen Ce's eyes widened, though he tried his best to keep his expression looking normal. Other people had also noticed the "Large Butterfly," and he heard them murmuring, "Is this a new toy?" and "It must be really expensive, right?" Indeed, if he hadn't seen with his own eyes how Lin Fuque turned that pile of secondhand junk into this contraption, he probably would have thought it was some new toy imported from abroad too. Even though it looked ugly, its automatic return flight was clearly genuine intelligent recognition and homing!
While Wen Ce stood there in a daze, Lin Fuque had already released the large butterfly again. She followed it at a moderate distance, looking as if she were out walking a dog...
Except that other people walked dogs, while she walked a butterfly.
Although this butterfly couldn't fly very high, only managing to maintain an altitude of about thirty centimeters above the ground, it was clearly the coolest kid on the block down in their residential area.
Wen Ce could guarantee that if Lin Fuque weren't a child but an adult like him, a bunch of adults would have already come over to ask, "What is this?" and "Where did you buy it?"
Wen Ce himself was itching with curiosity but felt too embarrassed to ask Lin Fuque directly. He stared at the back of the little girl's round head, inexplicably sensing the aura of a great mind hiding behind a foolish facade... Perhaps she was a little genius...
Just then, he noticed Lin Fuque suddenly lift her head and look toward the three large green trash cans by the side of the road:
The large butterfly changed direction and flew straight behind the trash cans, forcefully flushing out a yellow shadow.
It was a large orange tabby cat. It looked dirty but had a very fierce expression. It let out two yowls and turned to run into the bushes.
Only Lin Fuque could see what was floating above the cat's head:
[Little Yellow]
[Level: Lv. 6]
[Hostile]
[Little Yellow has initiated attack mode against you!]
The tabby cat delivered two solid punches to the large butterfly.
So, Little Yellow was the cat's name. The only enemy around her camp was a cat!
Even though the large butterfly had taken a beating, Lin Fuque's eyes sparkled: As long as she defeated this cat, she could pilot a mecha!
Lin Fuque waved her hand heroically: "Butterfly, after it!"
Left behind, Wen Ce watched helplessly as Lin Fuque controlled the butterfly to chase the cat: "..."
He must have guessed wrong. How was she a little genius?
She was clearly just a brat ==
