The sudden crash of something heavy hitting the ground gave Jiang Qi quite a scare.
A collapse in a large garbage heap was no joke. If your luck was bad enough, getting buried alive was entirely possible.
Fortunately, this collapse was not too severe, and it had happened some distance away from him.
Still, it served as a reminder.
Getting to the dump site right after the trash fell did not just mean opportunity and first-mover advantage—it also meant hidden danger.
At a time like this, the structure of the garbage mountain was unstable. The chances of cave-ins and slides were much higher than usual.
Only after carefully checking the surroundings and confirming it was safe did Jiang Qi cautiously move toward where the heavy object had landed.
Based on his experience as a scavenger, whatever had fallen just now sounded like a huge chunk of metal. That meant it was very likely valuable. And since it had landed not far in front of him, there was no way he could just ignore it.
Even though it was close, Jiang Qi moved with great care.
A garbage mountain was still a garbage mountain. The ground was littered mostly with useless household waste, and the real problem was that those trash bags could easily be hiding sharp objects like broken glass or shattered ceramic.
The soles of Jiang Qi's shoes had been reinforced, so stepping on them was not a problem.
What he truly feared was slipping, twisting an ankle, and falling onto the heap. If he got injured and the wound became infected, dying from it was far from impossible.
After walking for quite a while and using the trash tongs he carried with him to sweep aside a large pile of garbage bags full of kitchen waste, Jiang Qi finally found the fallen object.
The instant he saw it clearly, his pupils contracted sharply, and his Appraisal ability activated on its own.
"Holy shit..." He swallowed with difficulty. "Did I just hit the jackpot?"
Back inside Jiang Qi's shack.
He took off the helmet and set it aside, then looked at the thing on his workbench—the object he had hauled back at top speed on his handcart—and his emotions were complicated.
The information window generated by Appraisal was still floating in the air.
Even now, staring at its contents, Jiang Qi still felt an intense sense of unreality.
[Model: Yunting Competitive Combat Android · Valkyrie Generation No. 99 (Prototype)]
[Codename: Galaxy · Glaxia]
[Status: Severely Damaged]
[Body Integrity: 37% | Core Integrity: 78%]
[…]
[Repair Plan…]
[Required Materials…]
The densely packed list of required materials was enough to make anyone dizzy. But even more than that, what truly shook Jiang Qi was the name of this ruined machine—
Galaxy Glaxia.
And not just that.
A prototype.
Jiang Qi raised his head and looked toward the wall beside him.
Many different posters were pasted there.
These were all posters he had picked up while scavenging—ones in relatively decent condition—which he had used to decorate his room.
And the star of one of those posters was none other than Galaxy Glaxia.
Judging from what was printed on it, it seemed to be a commemorative poster celebrating her eight consecutive championships in the Yunting Mecha Tournament's 1v1 division.
Yet looking at the heroic, dazzlingly beautiful silver-haired Valkyrie on the poster, Jiang Qi found it very hard to connect that image with the shattered machine body in front of him, which barely had a single intact section left.
That once-beautiful silver hair was now marred by large patches of scorch black.
The entire lower half of her body was completely destroyed.
Of the upper half, only the chest cavity and the left arm could barely be called intact. Everything else was mangled beyond recognition.
The surface material on the left side of her face had also been destroyed, exposing the cold metallic structure underneath.
And according to the further details returned by Appraisal, even her visual system—in other words, those two artificial eyes—had already been completely ruined.
And yet, despite being in such a miserable state, the very bottom line of the information window, under the field marked [Operational Status], still displayed four unmistakable words:
[Currently Running]
In this world, people seemed to be extremely enthusiastic about a kind of mech combat competition known as the Mecha Tournament.
At least, among all the posters Jiang Qi had found while scavenging, half of them had something to do with Mecha Tournaments. The other half were promotional posters for songs, films, and the like.
Judging by sheer poster volume alone, Mecha Tournaments seemed to make up half of Tiangong's entertainment industry.
And it was not only popular in Tiangong—even the wastelanders enjoyed Mecha Tournaments. Deadwood Town had its own mech-fighting club.
Apparently, nearly every mechanic in town had a mech of their own for mech combat.
Of course, Jiang Qi was sure of one thing:
None of them had ever seen anything this top-tier.
It was just that...
The damage on this one...
Repairing it anytime soon was simply impossible.
But...
Jiang Qi's gaze shifted to the arm that was still relatively intact.
The slender arm was fitted with a bracer-like outer shell, almost like armor.
But obviously, something installed on a combat android of this level could not possibly be some medieval-style piece of cold-weapon armor.
Hidden inside that bracer was a complete light single-soldier firepower system.
This was on an entirely different level from the Flying Crow Gang's junk guns that jammed every other shot.
This was a genuine killing machine.
Even Jiang Qi, a total country bumpkin who had only recently arrived in this world, had heard Yunting Technology's name enough times for it to thunder in his ears.
That was Tiangong's top-tier military tech company.
It was said that White-Claw Crow owned an old-model smart pistol made by Yunting Technology—and that gun alone was what had allowed him to become the boss of the Flying Crow Gang.
Yes.
Just one smart pistol.
And the customized infantry weapon system mounted on Galaxy Glaxia, no matter how one looked at it, could not possibly be inferior to White-Claw Crow's outdated handgun.
If Jiang Qi could dismantle it and use it himself...
Hmm.
All right, probably not.
The technological level of this thing was just too high. It was also integrated with Glaxia's full system package. With Jiang Qi's current skill level, modifying it was practically impossible.
You could not expect an elementary school kid who had just learned addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to suddenly start solving advanced calculus.
Still, considering that the machine in front of him was technically still in an operational state...
If he could carry out some basic repairs and get it to work for him, then even if the only thing that could move was a single arm, this wrecked combat android would still be a terrifying weapon.
And that, obviously, was exactly the kind of thing Jiang Qi had been looking for.
Something with the potential to change his situation.
But first, he had to determine whether this machine would actually be willing to help him.
He had heard that the high-end tactical humanoids used in Yunting's Mecha Tournaments were equipped with extremely powerful AI cores, granting them intelligence and reasoning ability comparable to humans.
There were even rumors that they could understand human emotions—and that their emotions were purer than human ones.
Jiang Qi had no idea how credible that rumor was.
But one thing was certain:
He should, in theory, be able to communicate with the machine in front of him.
Except...
[Visual System: Offline · Severely Damaged]
[Auditory System: Offline · Severely Damaged]
[Olfactory System: Offline · Severely Damaged]
[Vocal System: Offline · Damaged]
[Tactile System: Abnormal · Damaged]
[…]
Looking at the long string of glaring red abnormal-status warnings in the appraisal window, Jiang Qi felt his head begin to ache.
It had to be said—top-tier combat androids really were absurdly well equipped.
They even came with a full set of humanoid five senses.
The bad news was that apparently not a single one of them still worked.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 120)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 100)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 100)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter89)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter86)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter63)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter75)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 53
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 57
From Junkman to Wasteland 35
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