Chapter 10

"Hey! What's going on here?" Li Kuan's heart skipped a beat, and he couldn't help but blurt out a sentence in Japanese.

'Low-energy carrier detected within fifty meters. Absorb? ' It was the same cold, mechanical voice, speaking directly in Li Kuan's mind.

"Wow! Happiness, don't come so suddenly, okay! Is this a golden leg falling from the sky?" Li Kuan confirmed he wasn't hallucinating, and excitement, agitation, fear, and other emotions surged in his heart, making him clench his fists and toes unconsciously.

"Big Brother, you're hurting me!" Li Lizhi's voice, that of a little girl, interrupted Li Kuan's madness.

"Sorry! Big Brother is about to make it big, hahaha..." Li Kuan was already babbling incoherently!

"Big Brother, what does 'make it big' mean? How are you going to make it big?" Li Lizhi tilted her head, looking at Li Kuan with her big eyes full of confusion.

"No, Big Brother means this is just too amazing. Big Brother has never seen a stone that can burn before!" Li Kuan reacted very quickly, changing the subject. At the same time, he asked in his mind, "What are you? Are you the golden leg sent by heaven?"

"I am the Super Exchange System. With energy, I can exchange for various items and technologies." The cold voice echoed in Li Kuan's mind again.

"Then how do you get energy? What did you mean by low-energy carrier earlier?"

"Energy is obtained by absorbing energy carriers. A low-energy carrier refers to a carrier containing no more than 50,000 calories of energy." The voice in Li Kuan's mind answered.

"50,000 calories? Is it calories? Dizzy, that Russian guy hasn't even been born yet!" Li Kuan grumbled in his mind.

"Here, 'calorie' refers to a unit of energy, with one calorie approximately equal to the total energy transmitted by the sun to the Earth in one solar day." The answer Li Kuan received startled him. One calorie was really too large, so there was probably nothing on Earth that could exceed the concept of a low-energy carrier.

"Then, are the low-energy carriers within fifty meters that pile of coal?" Li Kuan asked cautiously.

"If the coal you refer to is a low-grade fuel formed by the burial of organic matter, then yes." The mechanical voice answered.

"Yes! I'm really going to make it big!" Li Kuan roared in his mind, finally having a chance to survive!

Li Kuan communicated with this unknown thing in his mind, but on the surface, he continued to hold Li Lizhi's hand and walk through the small courtyard, watching the servants busily doing their work.

"Big Brother, look, this is where they throw the black stones in, and they start burning soon, and we can cook with them!" The little girl pointed to a large stove in front and explained to Li Kuan.

"I didn't expect that our ancestors used coal during the Tang Dynasty!" Li Kuan muttered.

"The host has thirty seconds to choose whether to absorb the low-energy carrier ahead. If not absorbed, the next time the same carrier is detected, there will be no reminder!" The mechanical voice sounded again, leaving Li Kuan in a dilemma. If he absorbed it, he was afraid of some dazzling golden light or energy storm. If he didn't absorb it, the next time he encountered coal, there would be no reminder. On the surface, it didn't seem like a big problem, but in the long run, it would be a significant disadvantage. Thinking about it, if there were coal mines within fifty meters underground, Li Kuan could discover and absorb them directly, making a fortune quietly. This would be much more cost-effective than buying coal and then absorbing it. Moreover, there were not many open-pit coal mines, and in an era without detection equipment, underground mineral deposits were almost impossible to find. If he had this ability, Li Kuan could travel to places rich in coal in the future, and energy would come pouring in!

So Li Kuan was very conflicted, afraid of being discovered but also afraid of missing this great opportunity.

"Final ten seconds, countdown begins: ten, nine, eight, seven, six..."

"Absorb!" What the hell, who cares if someone sees! This wasn't the later scientific era where anything unscientific would be labeled as superstition. This was an era when the worship of gods and Buddhas was flourishing. At that time, this might be seen as a game played by a bored deity. Future history books would record it, and Li Kuan thought he might even be remembered in history, which made him a little excited!

"Absorption begins. The host must not leave the fifty-meter range of the energy carrier during this period." The mechanical voice finished, and a progress bar appeared in Li Kuan's eyes: '...1%...2%...' slowly ticking.

"Big Brother, let's go back! It's too hot here." After watching for a while, Li Lizhi, the little girl, felt tired and said.

"Just wait a bit longer, let's watch a bit more!" Li Kuan couldn't leave now. If he left at this moment and something else happened, it would be troublesome.

"But it's not fun here!" The little girl had a short attention span, finding something interesting for a while and then losing interest.

"Then Big Brother will tell you a story!" Li Kuan tried to keep the little girl calm, determined to let the golden leg finish its first meal!

"Okay!" The little girl clapped her small hands in delight.

"Mother Duck was hatching eggs by the river..." Li Kuan told a story while keeping an eye on the progress bar. Watching the slowly rising progress, he felt very nervous and anxious.

As he told the story, Li Kuan found a clean spot to sit down, with the little girl snuggling in his arms.

"The ugly duckling looked at its reflection in the lake, and it was still an ugly duckling, clearly a swan!" Unconsciously, the story was finished. Li Kuan looked at the progress bar, which had reached 99%, and sighed inwardly: Why is this thing so slow!

"Big Brother, why do the other ducklings grow up to look like Mother Duck, but the ugly duckling becomes a swan?" Li Lizhi lifted her head from Li Kuan's arms, her big eyes full of confusion.

"Because the ugly duckling was always optimistic and lived happily! So we should be happy every day." Li Kuan looked at the little girl and smiled as he answered.

"But Big Brother, I think the ugly duckling hatched from a swan's egg!" The little girl didn't buy Li Kuan's explanation.

Li Kuan was taken aback by the philosophical words of this five-year-old girl. He knew the answer, but didn't children's worlds usually avoid such harsh realities? When he was a child, he believed the explanation that being optimistic and happy would turn you into a swan.

"Are ancient people so precocious? Or is it because royal children are exposed to too many dark and complex things, making their minds dark and realistic?" Li Kuan asked himself silently.

"Progress complete, the Super Exchange System is now activated!" The golden leg finally gave Li Kuan a satisfactory response when the progress bar reached the end. However, Li Kuan now found himself with no time to deal with the golden leg, as what was happening in front of him forced him to leave quickly.

Li Kuan took Li Lizhi and fled because he discovered that the system's energy absorption was very thorough. As soon as the progress bar was full, the effect was immediate: the coal in the stove, which was burning vigorously, suddenly went out, and the high temperature it had generated dropped instantly. If it weren't for the steam still rising from the pot, anyone would think that the fire had never been lit!

Not only that, Li Kuan also noticed another change. The coal on the ground, which was originally shiny and black, was now still black but much duller, as if its essence had been extracted.

So he immediately took Li Lizhi and left, and he began to recall whether any of the busy servants here recognized them. If someone said they were on the scene, he would need to think of an excuse.

Recalling this, Li Kuan realized that many people knew him. In the past two months, he had wandered around the prince's mansion, and many servants had come to recognize the second prince. This made him think about how to get away with it, and as expected, Changsun would definitely question him.

Thinking about making excuses, Li Kuan felt a headache. In the past two months, he had been constantly making excuses: using Arabic numerals in the ledger, which required an excuse; not being used to kneeling, so he made a makeshift chair, which also required an excuse; and when submitting a list to Changsun, he added punctuation marks out of habit, which also required an excuse. This made Li Kuan feel very tired, but fortunately, he had managed to push everything off until Li Er returned.

But Li Er would be in Chang'an in a few days, and Li Kuan still hadn't come up with a perfect excuse, or rather, a solution. He didn't know if the golden leg that suddenly awakened today could solve his immediate problem!

Although Li Kuan wanted to return to his small courtyard to study the newly acquired golden leg, he had to send Li Lizhi back first due to her insistence.

Waving goodbye to the curious little girl, Li Kuan finally had some free time and hurried back to his courtyard. In his mind, even if Li Er appeared in front of him or Li Yuan passed away, nothing was more important than returning to his small courtyard to study this means of survival.

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