Chapter 83: Lost Thought Engine: The Well -2

With the addition of these minerals and earth transformed into energy, the sphere suspended in the manual workshop expanded slightly.
“Wow!”
Outside, a few people watched the pattern slowly rotating harmoniously within the sphere, and one exclaimed softly, “Such a stably rotating sphere is something we’ve never seen before.”
“Rumor has it that the more harmonious and natural the flow of the sphere, the better the quality of the Lost Thought Engine born from it.”
“With such ample preparation, I really think we can succeed!”
“Box Eight.”
Time passed bit by bit as box by box emptied out.
Gasps and exclamations rang out across the wild from time to time, as the crowd watched the spinning light cluster growing larger and more beautiful, with the illusions within the pattern gradually transforming into scenes of Yang Zicang digging a pit, laying its floor, and building its walls.
A hundred meters away, a sleeping person was awakened by the bursts of cheers that rose intermittently.
“Box Three.”
Zuo Feixian stepped closer step by step toward the lone, glowing workshop standing in the desolate wilds.
Out of the darkness, a figure suddenly emerged, startling the few present: “Zuo…”
“Shh.” Zuo Feixian raised his finger to his lips, signaling for silence so as not to disturb those inside.
He stared at the glowing mass, his expression a mix of confusion, reluctance to accept, and a sense of loss.
“Number two,” Yang Zicang said without turning his head from inside.
“We’re about to succeed. Just, a, bout, to, suc, ceed!” Qian Zhongsheng clenched his fists and shouted in a low, excited growl from his throat.
As the two carried in the stone box symbolizing the top layer of the wellhead—its exterior a mix of yellow mud mixed with gravel, and the interior lined with neatly arranged green stone slabs—and the green stones dissolved into mist and merged with the glow, all of Zuo Feixian’s remaining frustration faded away.
The harmoniously pulsating sphere of light was so beautiful that all he felt left was admiration.
A fist-sized engine occasionally flickered within it.
In fact, the well was already complete, but one last thing bearing the tag “Number One” remained.
Number One was not a box, but a stone-rimmed structure, equipped with an iron frame and green stones designed to prevent water damage.
“Heave-ho.” Qin Meng and the other two stepped up, and together the three of them struggled to lift the wellhead.
“Let me help too.” Zuo Feixian rolled up his sleeves, revealing clean but heavily calloused hands.
“Master Zuo, maybe you’d better not.”
“Do you want to die?” Zuo Feixian shot them a glare and scolded in a hushed tone.
The group chuckled, and Master Zuo grabbed Wang Chong, who was about to move the wellhead, dragged him behind, and took his place at the remaining corner.
The men flexed their arm muscles, bent down, and carried the wellhead into the shed. Yang Zicang, standing with his back to the crowd, was faintly visible and elusive in the chaotic light, like a divine being.
The glimmering fingers gently touched the gray stone wellhead, which then dissolved into light and merged into the luminous mass.
“It should have succeeded.” Yang Zicang used the model to confirm the completion of this Lost Thought Engine.
With the light receding into a crystalline three-cylinder mini engine, the engine fell from the air upon losing energy support, and Yang Zicang caught it with a single hand.
[I have obtained a new Lost Thought Engine. As a terrain-type engine, its rhythm can only pulse once.]
The chaotic glow faded, and Yang Zicang’s figure came into full view.
Inside the engine in his hand, a scene unfolded slowly: crystal water gushed forth from the bottom of the well. Even just holding it, one felt a cool, refreshing pleasure. Although the creation process left him as fatigued as after an all-nighter, the sense of accomplishment was immense.
The people watching tensely at the headquarters cheered excitedly:
{It worked, right?!}
To them, all of this felt unreal, as if guiding a wizard from a fantasy world in bringing a creation to life.
“It worked. It is perfect, a creation from the hard work of all of us.”
{Excellent! We must remember today’s process.}
{Xiao Yang, I’ll prepare five sets for you next—no, ten!}
{I really wish I could go over there myself; that’s where I belong.}
YangZicang looked at the person before him and the crowd in the Mental Link:
“Thank you, thank you all for your efforts. This engine, created together by us, can solve many people’s drinking water difficulties.”
He whispered softly in his heart to the engine in his hand: And thank you, you whose name I do not know.
The engine in his hand seemed to quiver slightly, as if sensing YangZicang’s thoughts, but on closer inspection, it felt like mere illusion.
YangZicang severed the Mental Link, shifting his focus to the here and now.
“Wow, Yang… Brother Jiazi, it worked, right?”
“Of course it did! Hehehe, we can drink clean water now!”
YangZicang stepped out and saw the newcomer who had appeared.
“I—can I take a look at it?” Zuo Feixian stared nervously at the young man before him. It was something he had struggled long and hard to achieve without success, yet the other had created it.
“Of course, you can.”
How could YangZicang not guess that the person who had been tailing him for most of the day was the legendary well-known “Master Zuo”, instantly famous for his single touch.
Holding the Lost Thought Engine in his hands, Zuo Feixian was certain it was a well that could produce the finest springwater.
Glancing at the many empty boxes and some items on the ground, Zuo Feixian could perceive the maker’s meticulousness from the order of their labels. It seemed that while he had been asleep, these people had done a lot—really quite embarrassing.
“Responsible and professional, no wonder you achieved it so perfectly only disciple brothers. How do you plan to handle this water-well engine? Actually, Hub Town doesn’t have much need for it. I know I don’t have the right to say this, but I still hope… it can stay here in this barren land.”
“Why did Ning Yang choose you to build the well?”
“Huh?”
“You must have some outstanding qualities for him to let you manage twenty or thirty models? Not to mention that you’re so… ‘careless,’ yet he still chose you.”
Yang Zicang bent down to pick up a box. “I believe he can see through your character.”
“Hah, you really are something.” Zuo Feixian forced a stiff smile to appear on his face. “Of course I do. I have ‘that hand,’ which is why the shelter chief treats me with such respect.”
He handed the engine to the eager people around him, and they promptly took it and gathered in a circle, passing it among themselves with delight.
“What hand?”
“There’s a mound behind the shelter area, go take a look at what’s on it tomorrow. That thing chose me.”
“Why wait until tomorrow?”
After putting the small boiler fittings into Zuo Feixian’s stone house, the man with scattered hair, now dressed in a gray-black cotton coat that the shelter chief had recently given him, stuck his hands in his pockets and led only Yang Zicang to a small vacant lot behind a few stone houses.
In the dim daylight, a yellowish-brown oval stone covered a small mound, slanting on a small pile of earth. It was encircled by a wooden fence with strips of faded cloth hanging amid drifting winds.
This brownish-yellow stone, narrower than a stone tablet yet wider than a stone pillar, bore a vague, human-like outline.
Without the fence around it, it would have been dismissed as utterly worthless.
“A sculpture?” The young man speculated, looking at the relief-like mark, wondering if it was a type of bloodline sculpture.
He was still hankering after the legendary bloodline sculpture he hadn’t yet obtained in his dreams.
“A sculpture? No, actually it’s alive. Strange as it sounds, it once told me it was half a ‘person.’”
“Half a person…” Yang Zicang studied the blurry-outlined rock carefully.
Yang Zicang scrutinized the object, whose clear outline was no longer discernible.
“Can I touch it?”
“Yeah, but be careful not to damage it—or you’ll bring bad luck on yourself.”
He wasn’t one to leave his mark on ancient relics; Yang Zicang touched it lightly, but felt nothing.
Taking advantage of Zuo Xianfei turning aside to blow his nose, he secretly activated the White Shadow Thought-Dragon’s power, but the stone showed no psychic response either.
“You said you had ‘a hand,’ but I can’t see it from this outline.”
“Only someone who’s been chosen would know. That’s why most people, who can’t perceive it, just ignore it,” Zuo Xianfei said, stroking it too. “It helps me build successful engines more easily—even when materials are in short supply, it gives me a chance.”
“Really?” This unassuming object was actually a great treasure.
Master Zuo said with a cheeky grin, “You know I’ve built over thirty water well engines in the past two years, right?”
“I’ve heard plenty.”
“Pfft, you’re just humoring me. But really, every single one of them ‘succeeded’—they just didn’t produce spring water. Does that make sense if I put it that way?”
Master Zuo lifted his head with a hint of pride.
“So this is how you’ve been convincing yourself over the past two years?”
Yang Zicang naturally understood what he meant. Except when one insisted on drinking water, those thirty-plus engines were indeed all “successful.”
With that in mind, this rock really did have some merit.
“Something so amazing shouldn’t it be better protected?”
Zuo Feixian chuckled. “I think so too. But it doesn’t have a good appearance. If I hadn’t taken you here, you might not have even noticed it, right? That’s not the real main reason, though.”
“Oh?”
“Because similar stone tablets… well, let’s call them tablets, actually exist in many places.”
He raised his hand and pointed at the various shacks surrounding the small clearing, their backs turned to it.
“The reason people first gathered here is exactly because someone sensed this tablet back then, so they chose to settle here. Traces of them can be found in many places across this land, and in those places, shacks always gather to form settlements.”
“Hey, it’s cool enough here, and you still have the leisure to come look at rocks?”
From the small window on the second floor of a building a dozen meters away, Encampment Chief Ning Yang’s head appeared.