Chapter 52: Observe, And Realise How Much Your Master Spoils You
After his battle with Fang, Cillin would often receive challenge requests from military academy students, but he would only receive a single challenge each day due to lack of time. Although the Sector Championship was a pretty weighty contest for a lot people, to his mentor Mo Heng, the Sector Championship couldn’t even compare to a tiny, little assembly part.
Other than Mo Heng, there were also people like Ci Jincheng and Lung who did not hold the Sector Championship at great value. Ci Jincheng had gone out to the communication station on the nearby asteroid on an ‘errand’ once more; Lung on the other hand had gone to manage his business. Some of Seven Lights’ supply procurement came right from the Andrea Family, and since the Sector Championship was near, the demand for certain necessities had begun to increase sharply. More than half the necessities such as microcomputers, sensors and other goods were all supplied by the Andrea Family to Seven Lights before they were resold to the students. Lung was probably collecting money even in his sleep; to him a Sector Championship or whatever was purely a money earning tool.
During the first three days he registered and entered the Sector Championship platform, Cillin would discover a huge amount of challenge requests in his inbox every time he went online. Moreover, they all came from military academies’. On the first day, the Third Military Academy was still the only one who sent him challenge requests, but on the second day the rest of the military academies had all jumped out and joined in the party. Cillin simply chose one person at random to initiate versus battle, and once the battle was over, he would sleep all the way until the next day before heading to the research division to complete Mo Heng’s assignments.
These were also the only three days Cillin had fought in versus battles on the Sector Championship’s platform. On the fourth day, Cillin was ordered by Mo Heng to stay in the research division and complete the assembly of a large machinery. It would take him several days at least to complete.
To quote Mo Heng’s words, “It’s just a pre-game warmup; the hell are you wasting time screwing around with those people for. Quickly get down to business already.”
And this was rare euphemism coming from Sir Mo. If he was being any more direct, those hot-blooded students full of passion and fighting spirit would probably run their heads into a wall and commit suicide. This was because Cillin once heard Mo Heng mutter: It’s not like they’re gonna get any higher than fifth spot no matter how hard they work…
And so Cillin temporarily bid goodbye to the Sector Championship’s platform and immersed himself fully into Mo Heng’s grand scheme of machinery. That was to say that Cillin had only logged onto the Sector Championship’s platform for a total of three days; challenged one person and accepted two challenges; fought a total of three battles with a battle record of three nil.
Three wins and zero losses. If you judge from the battle record alone. it was nothing special. There were plenty of people who had hundreds of wins and zero losses. However, what’s special was that there were two special figures out of the three people Cillin had fought. One was the first person he challenged, the new Grade One student belonging to the Third Military Academy who ranked fifth in terms of individual combat strength, ID ‘Fang’; and the other was a Fourth Military Academy fellow whom Cillin had randomly selected with the ID ‘Invincible Brave’. He was not a new student.
It was exactly because of these two people that there were an unusual amount of Third and Fourth Military Academy students who challenged Cillin during the time after those victories. But of course, at the least Cillin was unbeknownst to these recent commotions. He had no heart to think about the Sector Championship while he was assembling machines.
Cillin’s current workplace was not his own workshop, but Mo Heng’s big workshop. At the moment, Cillin was staring at several categorised mountains of parts in a daze. This many?!
Meanwhile, Mo Heng sat leisurely on a chair not far away. He dropped his legs on the table, lifted his cup of tea and sipped.
“As punishment for your previous leave without cause, you shall finish these in my stead instead. There were ten piles to be assembled originally, but your master has specifically picked the most complicated pile for you. Observe, and realise how much your master spoils you.” Mo Heng laid there and uttered with a tone that demanded Cillin to kowtow and thank him for his kindness.
Leave without cause my ass! Cillin lifted the corner of his mouth and said, “Master, you… certainly spoil me so much that I can die!*” Cillin had especially emphasised the word ‘spoil’.
(*The chinese character of the word meaning ‘spoil’ can also be interpreted as ‘pain’)
“What can I say, you’re my disciple after all.”
Ever since Cillin learned that in this circle a research assistant was pretty much the equivalent of a disciple, and a direct disciple no less, he thought: the future is full of parts.
“Don’t just stand there, get working already. Don’t think i don’t know that you’ve eaten three large bowls of rice, a pot of noodles and a plate of roast chickens for breakfast; strength is the one thing you don’t lack right now. Also, since I’m your supervisor, don’t you even think of loafing on the job. If your overall accuracy doesn’t reach 99.96% of the theoretical value then you’ll have to strip it and start over.” Mo Heng slapped the monitor beside him. The programs were all set just waiting for Cillin to start and begin calculating his overall accuracy.
Cillin casted Mo Heng a helpless glance, “Thank you for your benevolence, master.”
“Hmm~ You’re welcome.”
If the students outside were to notice Mo Heng’s appearance right now, their jaws would definitely drop to the ground. Right now Mo Heng had completely dropped his usual mature temperament of a kind and smiling senior professor. Vice headmaster An Ding described this Mo Heng as his senior academic mode.
Cillin arrived in front of the pile of parts and gave it a rough look. First, he needed to assemble the categorised parts into components and modules. Moreover, there was a certain sequence behind the assembly of these components. He should first decide which pile of parts to assemble first, then he would be able to save more time when he actually began the assembly later.
Cillin only needed one glance to decide the best assembly order of the piles of parts. After choosing the correct pile, he then began assembling.
Mo Heng nodded in satisfaction. It appeared that his disciple was the better after all; those old fellows’ disciples did not have as much of a keen eye as Cillin.
Every finger, every muscle, every joint; the right strength, the precise timing, the lack of unnecessary movement. And yet they were as captivating as a perfect piece of art. The feeling Cillin gave off was that he only needed move a finger slightly to assemble a single part without effort. But in reality, at that instant, many actions were executed simultaneously. It’s just that it would be difficult for a normal person’s eyesight to capture those movements.
Every time Mo Heng watched Cillin assemble, he would have the feeling that the ‘Golden Point’ was just within reach. It was a very fine feeling. Cillin was Mo Heng’s hope; his hope to reach that legendary point.
The monitor beside Mo Heng showed that Cillin’s overall accuracy theoretical values were all 99.96%. These values were incredibly hard to maintain; not even the chief mentors of Seven Lights could maintain such a high overall accuracy for such a long time. This was the difference between constitution and concentration.
For a mechanical engineer, one’s constitution was also a vital factor.
Every time Cillin assembled, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should be able to assemble faster with higher accuracy. But no matter how hard he tried, his overall accuracy just maintained at 99.96%. It was like an invisible threshold that he could see to the other side, but not jump over.
Oh, never mind. It’s not a limit that can be forced anyway. If my hands accidentally shook and dropped the overall accuracy to 99.95% then according to Mo Heng’s standards, I’ll have to dismantle the whole fitting and reassemble…
Dismantle and reassemble?
Suddenly, Cillin felt as if there was a flash of blurry light across the darkness. Dismantle and reassemble. Dismantle… and reassemble…
At first, Mo Heng was watching Cillin assemble with great relish.One moment he was sighing over his disciple’s impressive assembling talents, and feeling smug and pleased at himself on the inside, and the next he saw Cillin’s hands suddenly coming to a pause, standing there immobile as if he had sunk into a daze.