Chapter 77: The Origin of the Hub Town Supplier

After thinking it over, Yang Zicang contacted Mori.
At this moment, Mori was drinking morning tea in the meeting room of Zhuyin. It seemed the deputy mayor was also taking this opportunity to get acquainted with this man who could suddenly produce skill books for direct use.
As a friend of Yang Zicang, Mori felt his own status had greatly changed; he had become much more self-assured.
{Mr. Zicang, how are things over there?}
“Apart from being barren and having an eerie, hellish atmosphere, the scenery here has a unique charm. You’re welcome to come see the sights later.”
{Haha, no thanks. But seeing your mood, I guess I have nothing to worry about.}
After chatting for a while, Yang Zicang looked at the barren scenery around him and said,
“Do you know where the food, clothing, and supplies in this town come from?”
{Of course, it’s from something called the Engram Engine. Only the shopkeepers can use it. It’s said that by harnessing magic crystals and the energy of the shops, the Engram Engine can produce all kinds of items from Earth or other worlds, covering necessities like food and clothing.}
“Good, it seems the news about the existence of the engine isn’t particularly secret.”
Yang Zicang cut the link.
He took the Engram Model in his hand and walked towards a place where several “black water streams” converged.
Within these waters were constantly flickering phantoms—scenes of various environments and people working.
“Counting this water, I already have two major components for building an Engram Engine, but I’m still missing a lot of other things. At the very least, I have no tools to make it at all.”
A few hours later, a seven-person team carrying minerals and tree branches walked by in the distance.
“Hey, look over there. It looks like someone new has come in.”
A man who seemed to be the team leader was alerted by someone, and he looked toward Yang Zicang’s direction. His eyes lit up.
“It’s a woman!”
With a rapid clatter of footsteps, a group of people, barely better off than beggars, came running over.
“Hey, kid, what’s your relationship with this girl?”
“Captain, shouldn’t we first ask which tier of the Cross-Border Zone he came from?”
The clothes the two in front were wearing were pretty decent—they definitely hadn’t been stuck here long.
Yang Zicang furrowed his brow and looked at them: “Keep your voice down. My friend is resting.”
“Haha, seems this kid still doesn’t get the situation.”
The captain laughed mockingly as he looked at the cloth bag beside Yang Zicang, which contained pastries, snacks, and clean bottled water.
“Oho, a rare good haul.”
He stepped forward, reaching out a hand as he bent over and said, “Coming to a place like this, you’d better accept your fate. From now on…”
Thud
The captain suddenly felt the world turn upside down; the next second, he felt a violent jolt, mud splattered, and his body rolled far away.
The crowd stared blankly as their captain was sent flying dozens of meters with a single move.
“Ah, damn it all! My temporal sequence!”
Yang Zicang stood up, a faint flame of golden-red blazing from his fist.
“How come his temporal sequence is red?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard that over five hundred years is silver-white, over a thousand years is pale gold, so could red mean five thousand?”
The onlookers whispered to each other as they watched Yang Zicang slowly walk toward the captain, who had fallen silent.
Realizing they had run into serious trouble, the captain scrambled to his feet and fled away at lightning speed, abandoning the group.
After taking a few steps, Yang Zicang turned back to look at the remaining six, who stood there bewildered. Carrying their belongings, they looked like lost students.
“How did you all end up here?”
One person raised a hand:
“I accidentally entered a different intersecting scene frame. Since it wasn’t the same as what my teammates had stabilized, they abandoned me, and I ended up here.”
“Me too. It was a New Moon tier overlapping zone, two teams fighting over it. What they stabilized was a plateau scene, while we got a beach. We’d already locked down three scene zones, but the fourth one had a stranded mutant whale. That thing just wouldn’t die no matter how we poked it—so frustrating.”
The experiences of the remaining few were all similar. After the scenes shifted and vanished from the overlapping zone, they managed to survive but could never return to the already stabilized alternate space.
“Excuse me, did you enter through an A-tier overlapping zone?”
They cautiously looked toward YangZicang.
“That guy just now was only the leader assigned to our shelter cluster. We don’t really have anything to do with him.”
After this person had driven that leader away, he didn’t seem intent on attacking them. A high-tier Surger like him could serve as the ideal guardian for everyone here.
YangZicang nodded. “I snuck into that town and was chased out by them.”
“S-snuck in? Did I hear that right?” The several people exchanged looks of disbelief upon hearing this.
“Do you have a Crafting Shelter?” YangZicang looked at the items they carried on their backs, which based on the records in his manual, should be materials for constructing Oblivion Engines.
“You actually know about Crafting Shelters? You can’t be a newcomer.”
“A Crafting Shelter is the only way to make Oblivion Engines, right? Do you have those things?”
After a brief discussion among themselves, one person stepped forward and said,
“The Crafting Shelter isn’t here, but if you want one, how much are you willing to pay?”
“What do you want? Resources or Timing Surge? I can offer either.”
“Well…”
The six of them immediately found themselves in a bit of a dilemma.
“We only have one handcraft workshop. If you want it, how about three hundred years of timeline? That’s fifty years for each of the six of us.”
“That’s a bit steep.”
Afraid that Yang Zicang would refuse, another person in the group quickly added: “We can throw in two blueprints for decent engines as a bonus. We traded precious materials for them, and they can produce over a hundred extra pieces of goods.”
“Deal.”
Hearing that Yang Zicang agreed outright this time without even haggling, the six of them were taken aback.
In this place, even a single extra day of timeline was precious beyond measure—four days less, a year less, every bit counted. Their asking price of three hundred years was deliberately set high to leave room for negotiation.
One of them tugged at the torn sleeve of the person who had been negotiating on their behalf, signaling him to agree quickly. A sucker like this would be hard to find after today.
“It’s a bit far. Will you follow us?”
Yang Zicang glanced at the girl, who was so sound asleep that not even thunder could wake her, and smiled: “I’ll wait for you here.”
“Then wait right here, and don’t go anywhere.”
By the time they returned, it was already dark.
However, for this place, it just meant the sky had dimmed a little, like the approach of dusk before nightfall.
By now, Mu Xiaoyu had also woken up and was leaning against Yang Zicang, taking in the surroundings.
“This is the handcraft workshop. It’s a bit small, but definitely enough for use.”
The two of them set down the umbrella-like object from their shoulders.
Yang Zicang watched as they unfolded it, forming a cone-shaped cloth canopy slightly larger than a camping tent—this was the most basic manual workshop, an essential item for crafting Mindfulness.Engines. [Omission Engines -> Mindfulness Engines, based on glossary rules application; kept “Engine” as capitalized proper noun tentatively. Deeper semantic validation uncertain beyond scope.]
“Also, this comes with the blueprints. With these, you can save a lot of effort in testing recipes. This one [Zhang -> replacement based on natural flow] makes a cashmere rug Mindfulness Engine, and this other blueprint makes a kerosene lamp.”
The man, slightly embarrassed, handed these two items to Yang Zicang.
A kerosene lamp was fine, but a cashmere rug…
Yang Zicang took the two folded, hard pages made of leaf-like material. When he placed one inside the workshop, a chaotic glow emerged.
Fragments of hazy figures weaving carpets appeared as illusions.
On the hard page, the required materials lit up.
Main materials: triangle-shaped Mindfulness model, five hundred milliliters of river.of.forgetting containing weaving phantom [undetermined formatting quirk from source—interpreted optimally].
Common materials: 10 to 15 kilograms of grass stems, vines, or fabric; 1-2 kilograms of various ores or 1 liter of dye; 3 standard magic crystals.
Form from the craftsmanship these “Imitation Cashmere Rug Mindfulness Engine”, return smoothly not fully fitting unnatural expression: “These materials allow the creation of an ‘Imitation Cashmere Rug Mindfulness Engine.’”
Replaceable materials: 10 to 20 kilograms of cashmere; 1-2 liters of fabric pattern dye; 5 standard magic crystals.
Form from the craftsmanship these upgrade’s pair: unbridge phrasing: “These materials allow the creation of a ‘Cashmere Rug Mindfulness Engine.’”
“Have to use cashmere?”
The chance of finding cashmere in this godforsaken place was only a tiny bit higher than seeing God.
As if reading Yang Zicang’s mind, one of the six said:
“Cashmere can also be produced by a missing-thought engine. I remember the captain once mentioned that someone made the thing—it just needs ordinary plants and magic crystals to produce cashmere.”
“Alright then.”
Yang Zicang spread out another blueprint. Following it, constructing the missing-thought модель would require merely an obtuse angle.
“Help me craft a missing-thought engine for a kerosene lamp. I need to get familiar with the process.”
The quality of this blueprint is decent because an obtuse angle alone would be insufficient to create such a complex item, and it also offers sixty-five extra potential outputs.
Seeing Yang Zicang take out a low-grade missing-thought модель as the main material, they nodded:
“Of course, but the blueprint will be consumed once used, Yang. You can jot down the materials it requires so you won’t need a blueprint next time.”
Five of the six picked up small buckets and ran to various black-colored streams to look for working apparitions of glassmaking.
This took quite some time, but luck was on their side—in less than an hour, someone came running back with a small bucket, a joyful expression on his face.
“Ah, glassmaking scenes are rare, so this one’s for iron smelting. It’s about the same anyway; it won’t fail.”
“And even if it does fail, these materials aren’t worth much,” someone remarked.
Yang Zicang glanced at the bustling phantom on the surface of the water inside the bucket, energetically shoveling coal into a furnace to melt iron, and nodded in acknowledgment.
After all, this was just an experiment to familiarize himself with the crafting process.