Zeng Haofeng stood at the rusted, chain-link gates of the city's largest scrapyard, a fortress of twisted metal and discarded ambition that stretched as far as the eye could see.
To the mundane eye, it was a wasteland of forgotten technology, a grave of a million broken things.
But to Zeng, the Unfettered Sword Saint, it was a spiritual mountain, a treasure trove of fallen artifacts waiting to be reforged.
The air was thick with a strange, powerful miasma.
It wasn't the clean, pure Qi of ancient peaks, but a chaotic, potent blend of ozone, burnt oil, and the slow, metallic decay of a million dying creations.
Zeng inhaled deeply, his senses, though weakened, still sharp enough to perceive the raw energy humming within the wreckage.
"The spiritual energy here... is savage," he murmured, his eyes narrowed in concentration. "It is the chaotic Qi of a dying era, the fragmented essence of forgotten creations waiting to be reborn."
Pixie, in her compact drone form, buzzed indignantly near his ear.
"It's called a landfill, Master. And that 'savage spiritual energy' is probably methane gas. Try not to get a buzz off of it. You've already got enough 'weird' in your system."
Zeng ignored her, a thoughtful expression on his face as he stepped over a collapsed fence.
He moved with a newfound purpose, his System-provided 'Street Adaptation' skill guiding him effortlessly through the labyrinth of debris.
He saw a pile of broken hard drives and saw, not data storage, but tiny, intricate formation arrays.
A shattered car battery was a raw, unstable spirit core.
A length of copper wire was a meridian, waiting for an energy flow to give it life.
Suddenly, a system notification chimed, clear and crisp in his mind.
[Hidden Quest Triggered: The Dao of Scrap]
[Objective: Discover the most valuable artifact in this junkyard.]
[Reward: Blueprint - 'Unfettered Sword Scabbard' (F-Rank)]
[Optional: Befriend the Scrapyard's Keeper (???)]
Zeng's eyes widened slightly. "A Scabbard blueprint," he said, a slow, determined smile spreading across his face. "This world may have no divine swords, but a cultivator's will can manifest one from anything. The Scabbard is the Dao of Restraint. It is the beginning."
"Or you could just find a big metal stick and call it a sword," Pixie deadpanned. "Look, there's a guy."
Zeng followed her gaze to a massive, burly man with a grease-stained tank top and a prosthetic arm that looked like it was made from salvaged hydraulics.
He was tinkering with an old engine block, his cybernetic limb whirring and clanking with rough precision. He looked up, his one good eye glinting with suspicion.
"You lost, old timer?" the man grunted, his voice like gravel. "This isn't a walking path."
Zeng stepped forward, his head held high.
"I am Zeng Haofeng. I have come to this sacred place to collect a divine treasure. Do not interfere with my path."
The man laughed, a short, barking sound that rattled the junk around them. "Sacred place? This is Junkie Jack's Scrapyard. And there's only one divine treasure here—my morning coffee. Now beat it."
[Warning: Scrapyard Keeper is suspicious. Charm level: -5. Danger level: Low.]
"I seek a core array of immense power," Zeng continued, undeterred by the man's hostility. "One that hums with the essence of pure energy, not just mundane 'electricity.'"
Junkie Jack's brow furrowed in confusion. "Man, you on something? The most powerful thing here is a decommissioned military server. It's a monster. Too big to move, and it's full of nanite scrap."
Zeng's eyes lit up like a supernova. "Nanites? You mean... tiny, automated soul-constructs?"
"I mean tiny machines that eat metal. It's a pain to deal with."
Pixie buzzed excitedly. "Master, that's it! Nanites! They're like self-assembling spirit formations! It could be the perfect material for your taser sword, a self-repairing, self-forging weapon!"
Zeng turned back to Junkie Jack, his demeanor shifting from arrogant cultivator to polite apprentice.
He bowed low, a gesture of respect he hadn't shown a mortal in ten thousand years. "Sir," he said. "I apologize for my initial arrogance. You are a true master of this domain. I humbly request to study this 'decommissioned server.' I will offer my services in exchange."
Junkie Jack blinked, utterly flummoxed by the sudden change. "Services? Like... you gonna clean my office?"
Zeng smiled a thin, confident smile. "I will restore your prosthetics to their prime. And maybe… enhance them."
[Skill Activated: Adaptive Engineering (Passive) + Technomancy Lv.3]
[New Quest Issued: Repair and Enhance Junkie Jack's Arm]
[Objective: Use scrapyard materials to create a functional upgrade for his prosthetic.]
[Reward: Nanite Core Access + 100 System Credits]
[Optional Bonus: Learn the Scrapyard's Secret (???)]
Junkie Jack looked from Zeng to his own clanking arm, then back to Zeng, a glimmer of intrigue in his eye.
"You think you can fix this hunk of junk? It's older than you are, man."
"Age is but a measure of experience," Zeng replied calmly. "Every crack and every worn part tells a story. I will simply give it a new ending."
Junkie Jack shrugged, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Alright, man. The server's in the back, but if you break anything, I'm making you eat it. And my coffee. I like my coffee."
Zeng, the Unfettered Sword Saint, grinned back.
This world was a puzzle. A strange, metallic, and illogical puzzle.
And the first rule of being a cultivator was simple, when a new challenge presents itself, you face it head-on.
He spent the next two hours completely absorbed. He worked with a focus that would have rivaled a grandmaster forging a divine artifact.
Junkie Jack's prosthetic was crude, its internal workings a tangled mess of old wires and corroded micro-gears.
But Zeng saw the energy flows.
He saw the weak points in the circuit board like a flaw in a sword's edge. He saw the potential.
He used his fingers, now overlaid with the faint blue light of his Technomancer's Glance, to gently prod at the wires.
To Zeng, they weren't wires. They were the meridians of the arm, carrying an energy flow that was sluggish and weak.
He used a soldering iron like a divine tool, its heat a form of elemental fire, carefully mending the breaks and reinforcing the connections.
He even found a small, discarded motor from an electric fan and repurposed it to improve the arm's grip strength.
"This is not just metal," he whispered, as he worked. "It is a body. A construct with its own will."
Pixie, hovering nearby, was in awe. "He's not just fixing it, he's... cultivating it."
When Zeng was done, the arm looked much the same, but the subtle hum of electricity was smoother, more powerful.
The clanking noises were gone, replaced by the soft whir of a finely tuned machine.
"Alright, let's see it," Junkie Jack said, holding out his arm. He flexed his fingers, his eyes widening as he felt the smooth, effortless motion. "By the Gods... that's incredible. It's like new."
Zeng, exhausted but triumphant, simply nodded.
"I did not make it new. I simply returned it to its true state."
He then focused his attention back on his creation, the arm, and his Technomancer's Glance detected something he hadn't noticed before.
A faint, almost imperceptible ghost in the machine. A line of code, old and corrupted, embedded deep in the arm's firmware.
[Scanning...]
[Source Code Fragment Found: Project 'Chimera']
[Origin: BaiTech Holdings (Obsolete)]
Zeng froze.
His mind, still humming with the electrical energy of the repair, connected the dots. The scrapyard. The nanite server. The old, obsolete code. And his rival, Bai Tianyu.
He slowly looked up at Junkie Jack. "This arm... where did you get it?"
Junkie Jack frowned, scratching his head with his non-prosthetic hand.
"This old thing? Found it a few years back. The whole lot it came with was a mess. A couple of old servers, some broken robots... It all had this weird logo on it. A double 'B' for 'BaiTech Holdings' or something."
Zeng's blood ran cold.
The man who represented everything modern, polished, and powerful was not just a rival—he had left his technological fingerprints everywhere, even in this wasteland of forgotten junk.
The server wasn't just a powerful core array. It was a relic of his enemy's past.
He had not just stumbled into a scrapyard, he had stumbled into a battlefield.
A battlefield of discarded technology and forgotten ambition.
The very thing he sought to master was rooted in the legacy of the one he planned to destroy.
This was no coincidence.
This was the Dao.
The Dao of circuits, code... and fate itself.