Master of Kaidan
Chapter 144 Spending Money Like Throwing It Into Water

Chapter 144: Chapter 144 Spending Money Like Throwing It Into Water

"The serial killer has finally been apprehended, and West Vila Field has managed to preserve its last shred of dignity..."

"Oh, caught at last? It’s hard to tell whether it’s the real offender or just a scapegoat." Feng Xue looked at the unoriginal headline on the front page of the Tasoke Newspaper and skimmed through casually.

However, she found the report to be quite standard—the usual narratives of how heroic the police were, how cunning the criminal was, and how diligent the officials had been—altogether lacking the usual satirical tone of the Tasoke Newspaper.

Feng Xue just shook her head at this and, seizing the moment when nobody was around, she cast a "Book" element into the newspaper. As expected, after investing 100 Tasos, the paper turned into a Black Ball and quickly dissipated into the air.

For some reason, since arriving in Victoria, her reforge work had been less than smooth. Despite acquiring a massive amount of elements, the number of Pseudo Artifacts she managed to create was disappointingly few, leading Feng Xue to increasingly suspect that the reforging of True Objects might still be subject to some hidden rules.

For instance, perhaps the greater the amount of information or the higher the notoriety, the more difficult it was to succeed.

Or maybe True Objects and elements had certain compatibilities; when there was a conflict, a Black Ball would be generated.

Opening her personal notebook, she recorded every reforge she had attempted since her journey began.

This included the type, volume, and shape of the substrate used, the amount of "Identity" invested, the type of elements used, and whether any new elements were generated, among other details.

Yet, even though most of the notebook was filled, Feng Xue still couldn’t identify any clear patterns and ultimately chalked it up to an insufficient number of samples.

Dusting off her hands as if to rid them of nonexistent dust, she pulled out a small carving knife from her pocket and began to carve on a Penny coin.

This wasn’t because she had nothing better to do, but rather she was trying to tap into an ability she had long neglected—

"Manufacturing."

"Manufacturing" is an element that’s both common and rare, and Feng Xue had tags like "Chef," "Money Printer," and "Copyist" that included this element, but she had always treated it merely as an accessory, never unleashing its true "manufacturing capability."

In Infinite City, only professionals who had activated the "Manufacturing" element could claim to be in manufacturing professions. They could process various materials in ways that defied natural laws to create corresponding products.

"Tailors" could turn scrap cloth, fibers, and coarse hemp into high-quality fabric; "Blacksmiths" could revert assorted metal scraps back into Metal ingots. And these were just the "standard" uses. During this process, these manufacturing professionals also had a chance of an "epiphany," creating element-rich "Pseudo Artifacts," which were the source of most of the low-level Pseudo Artifacts in Infinite City.

Feng Xue’s Golden Finger was a technical black box, lacking even basic instructions. In her previous life, if she encountered such an issue in a game, she would go to the relevant forum, QQ group, or Tieba to seek help from other players. But now, she had to conduct her experiments alone.

Undoubtedly, this was a process that required exhaustive trials. In order to lower its difficulty, Feng Xue decided to attempt a roundabout approach—creating a Pseudo Artifact through "conventional" means in order to explore the differences between using her Golden Finger and the normal process of crafting Pseudo Artifacts.

Her heavily augmented hands were steadier than she had anticipated. Without much effort, Feng Xue smoothed out all the engravings on the coin and then began to etch a design of her own making onto it.

On the face of the coin, she carved a refined Libra scale. On one side of the scale, she placed a heart, and on the other, not feathers as in myths, but a small pile of gold bars—even though the coin could only show a stack of Metal ingots, no one would expect that to be iron or copper ingots, not in that context.

On the back of the coin, Feng Xue simply carved a plain "1" with horizontal lines and surrounded it with raised Flames patterns.

Carving such a coin was nearly effortless for Feng Xue, with her current power being akin to writing on putty with a twig—a mere half-hour later, the Penny coin had completely taken on a new appearance.

Due to having shaved off a portion of it, the coin felt somewhat unsubstantial in her hand, more like a piece of iron than a coin. Feng Xue casually tossed it, exhibiting no sign of disappointment on her face because failure was expected.

She had already produced dozens of similar coins, each meticulously carved, but not a single one turned into the Pseudo Artifact she desired.

This was the drawback of practicing manufacturing in reality—since the materials were True Objects, she couldn’t observe their elements as precisely as with copied Pseudo Object books, making it uncomfortable not to see the boss’s health bar.

Nonetheless, for an experienced monster hunter player, this wasn’t an insurmountable issue. Feng Xue casually tossed the coin into the air and caught it effortlessly, adding a "Tool" element into it with a flick of the hand.

"Last time it was clearly too much ’Identity’ added; this time, let’s try with less." Feng Xue casually inserted 5 points of "Identity," and with a sense of distortion, the coin visibly began to Transform.

Seeing this change, the corners of her mouth tipped upwards; she could feel the weight of the coin between her fingers, indicating that the reforge hadn’t turned it into a Black Ball.

So...

"Success?"

Feng Xue quietly waited for the coin’s transformation to finish. Though she described it as waiting, in reality, it all happened in a matter of seconds. By the time the change completed, the coin in her hand had become a round stone about 5 centimeters in diameter and 4 millimeters thick, bearing only the natural patterning of the stone and none of the carved designs and text. Even with Feng Xue’s extensive experience and knowledge, she would find it difficult to identify just what this thing was without a description.

However, when Feng Xue focused the crosshair of her Golden Finger on the stone and saw the text that appeared, her face inevitably darkened—

Name: Pseudo Artifact· Professional Skipping Stone

Elements: "Tool," "Waste," "No value"

Description: A professional stone designed for skipping on water, mass-produced by modern industry, priced at fifty cents, specifically sold to fools with too much money and nowhere to spend it, the true essence of "throwing money into water."

Note: Although it’s a professional skipping stone, how far it skips still depends on skill.

...

"What is this? Am I being taunted?" Feng Xue clenched the suddenly appearing salt in her hand, feeling an urge to throw the skipping stone away.

However, she quickly had an epiphany. Although it was without reason, the tags on this Pseudo Artifact seemed to hint at something, perhaps the key to crafting the Pseudo Artifact coin...