Ziye snapped back to reality, her expression blank. “That’s my line. Is that how you repay kindness, by biting the hand that feeds you?”

An Junlie’s mind raced, immediately latching onto the subject most concerning to him. “You mean the mecha?”

“It’s right behind you. See for yourself.” Ziye suppressed the urge to punch the bridge of his nose, stating coolly, “The variable deformation at the tail end of the engine developed a crack; it’s unusable and needs recasting. Parts from the left arm were used to patch the engine; the remainder has been disassembled for other damaged areas. This isn't something that can be fixed in a few hours. I’ve moved several components back to the workshop.”

An Junlie turned around. The mecha stood there, and as she said, apart from the missing left arm, everything else appeared intact from the outside.

Thinking it over, he realized that for a mecha to be gutted internally yet still hold its outward form so perfectly that no one could notice the damage—this person certainly had the talent of a thief. Just as Ziye was looking at him, he suddenly felt completely seen, and blushed slightly. “I apologize.”

He wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for his previous high-handed attitude or for the impolite thought that had crossed his mind.

“Apologize for crap!” Ziye gestured to the hand gripping her neck. “Would you mind letting go?”

“Oh, my apologies.” An Junlie awkwardly withdrew his hand. As a seasoned fighter, he was accustomed to acting decisively when necessary, forgetting that the person before him was merely a junior technician.

Ziye turned her back, her voice completely level. “Everyone has moments where they grip someone else by the neck. I understand.”

An Junlie sensed the barb hidden in her words and scratched his head self-consciously, following her without a word.

He was tall, and standing behind her, he completely obscured the light, making him impossible to ignore. Ziye walked into the room and noticed he followed her in. She stepped back outside, and he didn’t lag behind. If he were a dog, fine, but he was a grown man—what was he up to?

Ziye’s patience finally evaporated. She spun around and glared at him. “What exactly do you want?”

An Junlie awkwardly averted his face, staying silent. Ziye pinched the bridge of her nose where a vein was threatening to pop; she desperately wanted to beat him up, and not even apologize afterward.

How could she have ever idolized him? Her brain must have been malfunctioning!

An Junlie’s expression could only be described as lost. “Is there a restaurant nearby?”

Ziye breathed a sigh of relief. “You should have said so earlier. People are at their most useless when they’re hungry! There are no restaurants nearby. The closest one requires a two-hour airship ride.”

In an era where one could jump from one planet to another in mere minutes, a journey measured in hours was astonishing to An Junlie. “That far?”

Ziye suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for him; he’d been brought to this place inexplicably and knew nothing. Although he had been a bit harsh to her yesterday, considering he was once her idol, she decided to clear up his confusion. “No outsiders come here, so running a restaurant isn’t profitable. The entire planet has fewer than ten restaurants combined.”

An Junlie was profoundly shaken by that statistic. “I have to go all the way there just to eat?” What kind of backward planet had such a pathetic situation? This wasn’t a gap of a few hundred years, but several millennia!

Ziye shot him a cool glance. “Restaurants only accept Silver Talismans. Do you have any?”

Silver Talismans?

What? An Junlie’s eyes snapped wide open, his mind instantly going blank. He couldn’t hear a single word Ziye said after that. He was utterly lost, as if he had suddenly stumbled into a labyrinth only to find a dead end. In a maze, even a dead end offered a chance to turn back and find a new path, but on Silver Talisman Star, there was no such opportunity.

Silver Talisman Star = Interstellar Dead Zone. Even a three-year-old understood that equation.

An Junlie felt a wave of dizziness, unsure if it was from hunger or the side effects of the Gamma Baseline. Seeing his distress, Ziye sighed and ushered the little sprout indoors with her. Seeing how pitiful he looked, she decided to fix him some breakfast; otherwise, him starving to death on her doorstep would only cause trouble.

She absolutely refused to admit that she had gone soft.

Ziye instructed the domestic robot to steam a basket of buns and brew a pot of rose tea for him as a proper meal, then stated, “I’m heading to Workshop One to repair the mecha. Make yourself at home.” Without waiting to see if he heard her, she entered the workshop. In the span of one short morning, An Junlie’s image in her mind had completely crumbled. She wouldn't be surprised if he did something foolish now.

Conversely, the little sprout seemed worried. “Is he really okay? I just measured his heart rate as 8% lower than normal, and his brainwave frequency is also off. Is some part of him damaged? I can run a diagnostic scan.”

Ziye glared at it. “He’s a person, not a mecha.”

The little sprout immediately felt that its master was also in a foul mood and wisely fell silent.

Ziye used voice commands to direct the robot through the preparation work. After a moment, she let out a quiet sigh, muttering gloomily, “Someone is here to keep me company. I should be happy about that, so why am I still unhappy?”

The little sprout looked at her blankly, the tiny sprout on its head drooping into a question mark. Why? It wasn't human; it couldn't understand that question.

Ziye gently squeezed its fuzzy body, trying to muster some energy. “Let’s begin. Today, we study its engine structure.”

A humanoid mecha was like a pair of shoes a person wore; high quality might not be apparent immediately. But whether they were comfortable or durable—these aspects tested the shoe’s performance. Often, you had to cut the shoe open to discover the internal craftsmanship.

Mechas were the same.

The engine was the most critical component of a mecha, so research had to start there.

After scanning the structure, Ziye meticulously disassembled the engine layer by layer, conducting deep, detailed analysis starting from the metallic elements. No single type of metal could produce material with both high strength and high toughness. Almost every part was an alloy composed of multiple elements.

Detecting how many alloys were present and the percentage of each metal, along with the fusion method, was easy. The difficult part was isolating each metal individually, then running simulated fusions to determine the optimal blending percentage, comparing it against the mecha’s existing alloy to see if improvements were needed.

The resulting sequence of data showed that An Junlie’s mecha had the best elemental combination, with an error margin of no more than 0.01%. This fact alone was enough to reveal the professionalism of the armor smith.

The little sprout was right; this mecha warranted deep investigation.

After finishing the buns, An Junlie’s hunger subsided temporarily, and the throbbing in his head seemed to ease. However, one basket of six buns was far from enough to fill him. As a newcomer with no money, he felt too embarrassed to ask for more, especially after how angrily he had cursed at her yesterday.

A wave of guilt washed over him.

He thought for a moment and decided he needed to apologize to her.