When he got home, Cheng Xu did not even bother to eat before he started his alchemy. The metal droplets swirling around him revealed his inner turmoil.
"It's done."
Looking at the 114 gram golden sphere in front of him, Cheng Xu could no longer hold back his excitement and stored it all in his dimensional pocket.
Although the 100 grams of gold did not belong to Cheng Xu now, the money and gold he had on hand were enough for 100 grams of gold. He was not willing to wait a few more days to complete the mission and unlock the reward.
"Mission Requirements: Acquire 100 grams of gold (completed)."
"Mission Reward: Mysterious Shop (unlocked) "
Cheng Xu could not wait to open the system panel when he heard the melodious prompt.
[Gold: 37.1 grams]
"As expected, they deducted 100 grams of gold from me, and it's not enough to just reach 100 grams."
Cheng Xu had thought of this possibility since the beginning. If it was just possession, he could complete the task by going to the gold dealers.
Then, he looked at the Mysterious Shop that he was most concerned about.
"Unlocking the Mysterious Shop for the first time has been detected. The host will be given an appropriate item as a reward according to the situation."
Cheng Xu was overjoyed. There were free rewards! If everything in the newly unlocked store had to be exchanged with gold, Cheng Xu would have gotten nothing and had to continue saving gold.
"Reward: Titanium-based composite material formula and production method"
Cheng Xu fell into deep thought as he looked at the system reward in front of him.
"Is this reasonable? Why is there such a reward?"
After much thought, Cheng Xu accepted this fact. After all, this damn system was unscientific in every way, but it also had a trace of science.
He had been thinking about this question since the beginning. Why did the system need him to collect gold? Was it because gold was valuable? Obviously not.
As someone who studied materials, he naturally knew about the history of gold. He knew that gold was actually a very rare resource in the entire universe.
It was first produced from the supernova explosion, and second from the metal element formed at the early stage of the big bang.
Therefore, he had always guessed that the system was a high-tech product of the future.
If that was the case, it made sense for the Mysterious Shop to reward him with new material science technology.
Moving his mind to the reward, Cheng Xu suddenly felt a huge amount of information pouring into his brain. If he had not been using his ability to train his mental strength, he would have fainted.
The information that was transmitted to his brain was not like the enlightenment that he had read in the novels, which made him understand and know everything at once.
Instead, it was as if an extremely clear memory had been stored in his mind. He could quickly extract every sentence and every piece of data, but he could not really understand the principle behind it.
Cheng Xu tried to learn this knowledge and found that there were many technical terms in it, which gave him a headache.
Cheng Xu, who was already in his third year of university, had naturally read a small number of professional academic papers. In fact, it was not something that you could understand just by putting it in front of you.
He often encountered situations where he had to spend more than ten minutes looking up information before he could understand a sentence with dozens of words.
"No, this thing can actually be like this?"
Cheng Xu found that when his mind was focused on a certain sentence, all the annotations and explanations of the terms in the sentence would immediately appear in his mind. The effect was like a machine reader who was moving step by step, and he could point out everything he did not know.
Cheng Xu, who had always loved to learn new things, felt as if he had found a treasure. He instantly felt that this reward was perfect for him.
He roughly scanned the properties of this new material. There were already some examples of this material in the materials science world. It originated from titanium alloys.
Although the performance of titanium alloy was very powerful in all aspects, due to the high temperature requirements when using titanium alloy, it could not play a good role in many situations. Therefore, now, the more powerful comprehensive performance of titanium-based composite materials had also received extensive attention.
Simply put, this thing was an upgraded version of the current materials used. It was stronger and had a lower manufacturing cost.
Even though the strengthening value was only about a dozen points, it was a major breakthrough in materials science. Not to mention, the manufacturing cost had been reduced.
Cheng Xu then looked at the other unlocked items in the Mysterious Shop.
[New graphene material formula and production method]
[Exchange: 1500 grams of gold]
...
He scrolled all the way down.
[Satellite weapon design plan]
[Exchange: 10000 grams of prysia]
[Controllable nuclear fusion project]
[Exchange: 50,000 grams of plutonium]
What?! He did not know much about polonium, only that it was an element. But he knew about plutonium, which was used to make nuclear bombs. He even checked its price, and a thousand grams of it cost about six million dollars.
"Forget it, I'm not looking anymore. Eating is more important. I'm going to be hungry if I keep looking."
Cheng Xu knew that it would not be a short while to fully grasp this information.
Of course, he could write down the information from memory, but it was easy to think about it. How was he going to explain it if he really took it out?
It was like solving a math problem but not understanding the process of the answer. The teacher did not need to think to know that you had copied the answer.
But where did the answer come from? How was he going to explain it? So, it was better for him to make this information his own.
The most important thing now was to quickly cook. He was already famished.
While watching videos of girls dancing, he ate big mouthfuls of rice. He had to say that it was the most relaxing when he did not need to use his brain.
"Work and rest should be balanced. I'll go wash the dishes after watching one last video."
An hour later, he yawned.
"Forget it, I'm a little sleepy. I'll wash the dishes after I wake up."
At night, Cheng Xu, who was already in bed, suddenly wanted to make a log and recall what he had done today.
"Let's see what we did today."
He started writing.
[Learned titanium-based composite formula and production method at 12:15]
[Cooked from 12:18 to 12:30]
[Ate and watched videos from 12:30 to 12:50]
He decided to map out the rest of his day as well.
[Take a nap from 13:00 to 16:30]
[Learn titanium-based composite formula and production method at 16:30]
[Play games until 17:50]
[Prepare food from 17:50 to 18:40]
...
Looking at his log at the end of the day, Cheng Xu could not help but feel a little satisfied.
"I really love studying. Half of my time is spent on studying these materials. Let's sleep. Tomorrow is another day full of hope."
As usual, Cheng Xu got up early, finished his run, took a shower, got a pot of water, and went to the yard to boil it with the coal stove. Compared to beverages, he was actually more used to drinking plain water.
He turned on the gas stove, boiled the water in the pot, put the noodles and eggs in it, cooked it, and added seasoning.
But before he could take two bites, he heard some familiar and nauseating sounds.
"There's really no end to it, again?"
As soon as Cheng Xu opened the door, he heard curses and the sound of the iron door being kicked open.
"Little b*stard, open the door for me. If you don't come out, I'll come and look for you every day."