Train Expansion Hammer
Lin Mo's fingertips traced the cold, intricate patterns on the dark silver hammer head, marveling inwardly. The hammer head was wider than two palms, and the handle nearly half a meter long, yet it weighed only slightly more than a small bottle of mineral water.
Although the train could perform spatial folding, every time she entered, the carriage would materialize in real space. Last time, due to insufficient space, the living room was crushed into a mess when she exited.
Widening was impossible—it would directly smash through the house walls. Fortunately, the current 3-meter width was sufficient.
To lengthen the train, she would have to clear the dining room and yard, piling everything into the kitchen and bedroom. Lin Mo found a tape measure and measured: living room 4 meters, yard 3 meters, dining room 2 meters.
But the dining room wasn't wide enough. Expanding in that direction would only shatter the wall between the dining room and kitchen. That was a load-bearing wall; she couldn't turn the whole building into a dangerous structure.
"Looks like I need a bigger house... No, the train won't follow me. Changing houses is useless." She muttered to herself, "If only the train weren't deployed in this rental living room, I could rent a large open-plan apartment."
Finding a house for the train was absurd, but leaving it out in the open would make its abnormality obvious to anyone. What normal vehicle had star-like blue particles floating around it?
She suppressed the expansion idea for now, had the system retract the expansion hammer, and then guided the silver particles to collect the remaining paint, marble, wood boards, and tempered glass into building materials.
In terms of conversion rate, alloy was the highest, roughly 80%, followed by steel plates and tempered glass. Marble and paint were around 50%, while wood was the lowest, less than 10%.
[Stored 250kg of building materials]
Lin Mo calculated: enough materials for 8 cubic meters of expansion; the yard was about 9 square meters. She should buy more alloy and steel plates to round it up.
The system immediately updated a new task.
[Novice Task: Collect 100kg of Energy Materials]
[Available Material Determination: Oil, Gasoline, Diesel, Coal, Fission Nuclear Fuel, High-energy Compressed Fuel Blocks...]
Lin Mo pressed her forehead: "How did nuclear fission even come up? Nuclear plants wouldn't sell this stuff."
Leaving aside difficult items like nuclear fission and high-energy compressed fuel blocks, stockpiling liquid dangerous goods like gasoline and diesel in a residential area was like placing a bomb beside your pillow, inviting fire departments or even more troublesome investigative agencies. The scene of "being reported" was enough to make her scalp tingle.
Lin Mo immediately opened her phone and searched in DeepSeek: How can an ordinary resident buy 100kg of gasoline or diesel?
The AI's cold, merciless text popped up: Bring the "Oil Purchase Application" + ID to the local police station, fill in the "Bulk Gasoline/Diesel Purchase Approval Form," and after the police verify the purpose, obtain the "Bulk Gasoline/Diesel Purchase Certificate."
...
That was pretty much a no-go, right?
Lin Mo tentatively sent a WeChat message to Bai Jie: "How do you guys buy tons of coal briquettes?"
"There's a coal selling point in the village, and also mobile ones—when a big truck comes around shouting, the whole village knows," Bai Jie replied quickly.
Lin Mo sighed helplessly: "Alright, you can't buy that in Shanghai."
"What are you thinking? No matter how cold it gets, S City won't need to burn coal. You're a super big city! Super trendy!"
Lin Mo thought to herself: That's not necessarily true. Our trendy city suffered hunger during lockdowns. The denser and more populous the city, the greater the pressure it faces.
She searched and found that thankfully, Taobao had coal for sale, but the maximum was 100 jin. The seller cooperated with Deppon Logistics, slower than regular logistics by 2-3 days or more, and the merchant said they couldn't guarantee speed.
"Buy it for now. Whether it arrives is up to fate. It's only a few hundred yuan." She bought 100 jin of high-quality smokeless coal, along with an iron stove and a small iron pot with a wooden handle.
In northern rural areas, they used this for heating and cooking. Even if it couldn't be converted to energy materials, it could serve as emergency heating.
"And there's probably a conversion factor for these items, right?" Thinking about this, Lin Mo felt worse: "If the factor is 10%, then I'd need 1000kg!"
At this moment, she really wished she could teleport to a northern village and buy four or five tons of coal.
After some thought, she sent a WeChat to the young woman from today's building materials store: "Excuse me, do you have an oil siphon?"
"Yes, the kind with a large oil-resistant bladder, siphons fast. You can just come pick it up tomorrow, sis."
"Looks like I'll have to take an unconventional path." Lin Mo downloaded a car rental app on her phone, studied it for a while, and arranged a time to pick up the item at the store.
Just then, the doorbell rang. It was the ordered purified water. The delivery guy moved the water into the center of the living room. After he closed the door, Lin Mo continued studying the train's building material collection function.
She placed the new walnut shoe cabinet in the yard, then took a few planks from the broken old one. She backed toward the hallway, step by step, still able to select the planks for collection. Only when she reached the open space in front of the building did the star-like particles extinguish like a candle flame snuffed by an invisible hand, unable to cover the wood.
"The effective radius seems to be about three meters..." she murmured, her fingertips unconsciously tracing the faint glow on the system interface's edge.
But this was also good news. From now on, she wouldn't have to expend great effort to haul alloy and iron doors into the living room; she could use the "Collect Building Materials" function right in the hallway.
Following this line of thought, Lin Mo picked up a bucket of the freshly delivered purified water, intending to test consumables like food and water.
The storage methods for food/water and building materials were completely different. She had to hold her breath, focus her mind like a probe precisely piercing into the food, and form a solid mental link with the carriage before the silver particles would appear at her fingertips, wrapping around the water and sending it inside the carriage.
Taking a deep breath, Lin Mo again concentrated, and star-dust-like silver particles emerged at her fingertips. She skillfully drew a circle, and all the purified water in the living room vanished into thin air, completely absorbed into the train space.
"Getting smoother and smoother." A smile tugged at the corner of Lin Mo's mouth. Despite her mental fatigue, she decided to try something new.
She tiptoed outside, stood in the pitch-black hallway for a moment to confirm no one was around, and then focused again, attempting to send herself into the train space.
Her shadow vanished abruptly in the darkness. The next second, when Lin Mo opened her eyes, she found herself standing in the center of the train carriage.
She tested it several times and found that, like objects, she could penetrate walls, doors, windows, and other obstacles to enter the train, with the same effective distance of three meters.
"This skill is extremely useful. I wonder if I can extend the distance later." She pondered, raising a hand to rub her throbbing temples.
Though the ability was good, it was particularly draining. She now felt a sense of exhaustion like after running 800 meters. "Maybe I'll get used to it with more practice."
Lin Mo took an ibuprofen to prevent the headache from worsening. Then, forcing herself to stay awake, she briefly organized the carriage.
The things inside were piled up haphazardly. A few potatoes and a pumpkin were crushed under a bucket at the bottom, nearly flattened. For now, she could only roughly send supplies to the middle of the carriage, unable to position them precisely.
"Thank goodness that basket of grass-fed eggs is still in the kitchen, or they'd be shattered by now."
She lined the shelves along the windows, one row on each side. This way, the ten 14.8L buckets of purified water, dozens of jin of storable vegetables, cured meats, sausages, instant noodles, and seasonings that had been scattered on the floor were all placed on the shelves. Soon the left shelf was full.
The lower two tiers of the right shelf held the twenty 5L bottled water she had bought today. The top shelf was still empty.
The carriage was 4 meters long. The shelves on each side were 2 meters long and 35 cm wide, which wouldn't interfere with the opening and closing of the Basic Locker at the rear.
This left about 6 square meters of empty space in the middle. Future supplies collected by thought would likely appear here, not crushing other items.
Looking at the empty space, Lin Mo couldn't help scheming: If she put a cream-colored coat rack stand there to hang heavy winter clothes like down jackets and pants, it would be perfect.
But then she reconsidered: The system's ultimate task was to establish a human shelter. In the future, the carriage would need beds, tables, refrigerators, washing machines, and other furniture, right? 6 square meters was clearly far from enough.
Thoughts about arranging the carriage flooded her mind, tangled and disorderly. Lin Mo irritably grabbed her hair and let out a big yawn, tears nearly spilling: "Forget it, talk about it tomorrow. I'm dead tired..." This long day had already been too much.
It was already 11 PM, no wonder she was both tired and hungry.
The scallion pancake she had for dinner wasn't filling, and repeated testing had drained her energy. Now she felt a burning hunger.
Lin Mo picked up her phone and ordered crispy fried chicken from a nearby takeout place. After it arrived, she reheated it in the air fryer, the aroma filling the room.
Golden chicken legs wrapped in a uniform batter, the glossy skin shimmering with an amber sheen, with a few slightly crispy edges—clearly fried to perfection: crispy outside, tender inside.
After eating one chicken leg, she placed a small box of steaming fried chicken pieces into the Basic Locker. After a moment's thought, she also put in an ice-cold cola.
Thinking that these delightful, lively flavors would likely disappear after doomsday, she found the fried chicken in her hand even more deliciously absurd and ate with even greater relish.
After eating, she patted her comfortably full stomach and let out a long sigh. At last, she could get a solid sleep. Exhausted from a day of hustle, her eyelids felt heavy as lead, yet subconsciously she was still running through the long list of supplies she hadn't yet stockpiled, the chaotic thoughts circling in her mind.
She felt she had forgotten something, a thought that slipped away like a shadow, elusive: What was it?
But it had truly been a long day. A heavy drowsiness gradually rose, and soon Lin Mo's breathing became long and even.
Author's Note: None.