Chapter 114
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Chapter 114: Internal Tickets for the Zhuhai Airshow
“Hahaha, don’t rush! The bad news isn’t that bad; it just means your vacation will be shortened by a week. As for the good news, it’s actually tied to the bad news, so I’ll just tell you directly. The Zhuhai Airshow will officially open in twenty days, showcasing aircraft and even fighter jets from various countries. If you’re interested, I can get you some internal tickets!”
The airshow?! That means there will be all kinds of planes, right? Lin Mo’s eyes widened, and the phone screen started to flood with messages: “I want to go! I want to go! I want to go…”
Old Pan’s strategy was impressive; it struck straight at the hearts of both Lin Mo and the gold giant dragon Gold Coin, causing even Gold Coin to get excited.
“Lin Mo, Lin Mo, are you even listening?!” Captain Pan shouted a few times, perhaps not hearing Lin Mo’s voice.
“Uh! I heard you! Of course, I want to go!”
The reply did not come from Lin Mo but from Gold Coin, who had recorded Lin Mo’s voice patterns and was using some software to respond on his behalf.
“Wow, seriously?!” The represented Lin Mo gritted his teeth but didn’t dare to speak up, fearing Gold Coin would take the spotlight again, making it easy to be exposed.
“I’ll give you a contact number. It’s my old comrade in arms; he’s in charge of security for the exhibition. Just contact him directly. His last name is Shen, and he’s the security chief. His phone number is 13××××××××. Don’t forget it; I’ll text it to you later,” Captain Pan provided the contact information over the phone.
“Okay, thanks, Captain Pan! I’ll call him tomorrow. Thanks a lot!”
The response was still from Gold Coin, who was sweet-talking Captain Pan as if he were Lin Mo, making Old Pan dizzy with laughter.
Annoyed at being sidelined, Lin Mo sat quietly with a piece of bread, chewing on ham while letting his iPhone 5 entertain itself on the table.
After a while, Captain Pan finally ended the call. The iPhone 5 screen shimmered, the entire device seemed to lose its edges and morphed into a ball shape, then began to expand, transforming into a fearsome beast with a dragon’s head and a long tail, its robust limbs reminiscent of the first metallic creature that had leapt onto Lin Mo, now shrunk to about a foot high.
“Lin Mo, this is truly a stroke of luck for me! It’s a rare opportunity! I, Gold Coin, will definitely make great gains. I will uncover all the secrets of the aircraft and become the king of the skies. No one will ever shoot me down with missiles again,” Gold Coin, in its metallic beast form, strutted back and forth on Lin Mo’s dining table, tail swishing proudly. It seemed the past experience of being shot down by a fighter jet still haunted it deeply. Now, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge about electronics and mechanical technology, it was likely motivated not just by curiosity but by a desire for revenge—an enormous humiliation for a proud gold giant dragon.
Lin Mo thought this creature had almost forgotten the incident, but it seemed to remember it quite well and could be troublesome.
Lin Mo tugged at Gold Coin’s tail and popped the cap off a juice bottle. Bang! The lid flew off as Lin Mo took a big drink.
Gold Coin was furious. It was a lord of the battlefield, a weapon in the hands of the gods, a dragon of destruction, yet it was being used like a bottle opener! Its grand aspirations were being severely undermined. It jumped around, showing its teeth in frustration, “What’s your attitude? Try to show a little ambition!”
“But you are representing me now! What can I say? The moment I speak, you’ll be the one taking the hits!” Lin Mo protested non-violently, expressing his refusal to be forcibly represented. The creature needed to be tamed; otherwise, it might start acting up again like back in the other world.
“Lin Mo, if you don’t come with me, I’m breaking up with you! Agh, spit, spit, spit!” Gold Coin suddenly realized it had spoken incorrectly and spat out a bunch of metallic scraps in anger. It transformed back into a watch form, ignoring Lin Mo entirely. If this had happened in the other world, it might have swung its tail and knocked Lin Mo flat!
The next day, Lin Mo and Gold Coin acted as if nothing had happened. Gold Coin transformed back into glasses that hung on Lin Mo’s face while Lin Mo sat peacefully in the reading room of Zhejiang Library, but he wasn’t alone.
A cute and charming girl sat opposite him, quietly holding a book and reading alongside him. Qi Fei, a freelance worker, didn’t visit the library every day, but she happened to run into Lin Mo and brought a laptop to do her own work in the reading room for a few days.
However, Qi Fei had not encountered the Spada Codatronca again after borrowing it, and according to her understanding, such luxury cars couldn’t be driven casually; even a little scratch could cost an average person years of hard work.
Lin Mo flipped through the books at a staggering speed, but this wasn’t his own true reading ability. Instead, it was Gold Coin reading, combining video and memory modules. For the gold giant dragon, reading was like taking pictures. Every few moments, Lin Mo had to switch to a new book, but his progress was still astonishing.
Gold Coin’s external module continuously fluctuated in size, growing larger to accommodate more electronic components and shrinking once it successfully analyzed and evolved those that it no longer needed. The discarded electronic components piled up high in several boxes, but it retained high-capacity storage chips, containing vast amounts of software and program drivers. If Gold Coin ever decomposed its storage, those programs would vanish simultaneously.
In just a week, Gold Coin managed to freely simulate and evolve a powerful high-performance computer, barely covering its debt by providing Lin Mo with a laptop. While Lin Mo slept, Gold Coin used its Wi-Fi module to hack into nearby networks, downloading all sorts of materials. This creature either stayed awake or slept for years at a time.
Computers could function through hardware or software. Hardware was costly, complex, and difficult to upgrade, but had high efficiency, while software could simulate functionality and was easier to upgrade.
After analyzing all the available integrated circuits and processors, Gold Coin began to focus on software development, revealing that the gold giant dragon did not possess a natural talent in that area and had to proceed step by step. It walked the road of combining soft and hard technologies.
Gold Coin was already able to simulate and evolve common household electronics. To Lin Mo, it was only natural to treat Gold Coin as a versatile tool and appliance, fulfilling its duty to warm up breakfast and the like.
As an active enthusiast, Gold Coin eagerly reached out to Chief Shen, the security officer for the Zhuhai Airshow, the day after receiving Captain Pan’s call. Although this was an aviation exhibition under the national industrial department, there were military shadows lurking behind it, and even major arms deals might be signed at the airshow. The transaction amounts and profits could not be imagined by ordinary private companies or state-owned enterprises.
“Qi Fei! I’m setting off tomorrow!”
“Uh-huh!” Qi Fei sat still, focused on her screen, continuously drawing on her tablet.
“Oh!” Noticing Qi Fei’s indifferent response, Lin Mo continued to read. The schedule for the airshow was finalized, and his time in Hangzhou would be correspondingly shortened.
Suddenly, Qi Fei paused her hands and, maintaining a calm expression, said, “Lin Mo! When you retire, come back to find me. Don’t go into civil aviation; flying in the air is too dangerous. I’ll start a company by then, and I’ll need hands!”
“Um, can I really?” Lin Mo thought. Did she mean piloting the aircraft or working as a hired muscle?
“Do industrial design and graphic work! I’ll personally give you some lessons. Or you could be a business manager, with a guaranteed minimum of ten thousand a month! Unlike that stingy Li Yuan.”
It was unclear what was going through Qi Fei’s mind as she suddenly announced her desire to recruit Lin Mo. Unlike other girls who were busy job hunting right after graduation, Qi Fei was strong in her personal capabilities and had chosen self-employment straight out of school, working hard for herself seemed far more driven and challenging than working for someone else.
“Alright!” Lin Mo couldn’t guess the girl’s intentions, so he just went along with it.
“It’s settled then! Hehe! Don’t complain when my company is small!” Qi Fei flashed a carefree smile at Lin Mo from behind the computer screen, then returned to being a carefree girl, extending her delicate pinky. “Come on, pinky swear!”
It felt like returning to the time of cosplaying the Divine Battle Squad.
Behind them was a landscape of steel industrial buildings, filling the whole view with towering structures that occasionally roared with loud sounds. Massive smokestacks emitted thick white smoke into the air, and thick pipes stretched far away, with various oddly functioning buildings scattered throughout the factory area, forming the sprawling steel processing plant of Baosteel in Shanghai.
“Old Chen, has the quality of the iron powder been subpar recently? Why is the steel yield so low? It’s down by five percentage points.”
“Is it possible that Rio Tinto is mixing in inferior products? If only we had other sources of high-quality ore, we wouldn’t be so constrained.”
“Let’s have the raw materials team check again. There must be something wrong with this batch of molten steel. There’s just too much waste.”
“Hmm, let’s ask around. It should be a raw material issue. Who would dare to embezzle steel from the furnace? If anyone dares to steal, they will become duck roast!”
“Haha, Old Chen, you’re getting funnier! Have you noticed that the workers seem much more attentive lately? The floor used to be scattered with furnace slag, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve remarked on it; it used to be a mess. But the floors have been spotless these last few days; it must be the fault of the new supervisor, Xiao Li. This young person is a clean freak and can’t stand untidiness. His enthusiasm since taking charge is impressive; he’s worth nurturing.”
