Several badly dismantled spirit-energy battery panels lay spread across the workbench. He’d traded three days’ worth of rations for them last week, hoping to repair them and make a little profit. Now that seemed like a laughably stupid idea.
“Where’s the money?” The scar-faced man stepped forward, his boot crushing a warped heat sink with a shrill metallic scrape.
Lin Chen’s gaze slowly swept over the shop.
In the corner were several piles of “crystal scraps” that had lost their spirit energy. On the table lay discarded spirit-pattern engraving knives, spirit-energy conduits that had stopped flowing, and dull alloy parts... He’d long ago sold off everything valuable, anything with even a shred of resale value, to buy the cheapest synthetic nutrient paste.
Finally, his gaze fell on the farthest corner.
A lump of spherical metal lay there, about a meter in diameter, its surface covered in thick, uneven rust, as if it had come down with a serious illness.
It was the only thing his mentor had left him before disappearing: an old M-7 model household robot.
Even the lowest-level scavengers considered it cumbersome, inefficient, and power-hungry, with no salvage value whatsoever.
