Chen Yun wrote fast, the pen skating across the paper as line after line of dense handwriting appeared. Time ticked by; the clock on the wall neared eleven.

“Phew.” He let out a long breath and stopped.

He picked up the page full of cramped notes — [Old House Base Renovation and Construction Plan] — and checked it carefully. After confirming there were no major omissions, he stood and walked to the center of the living room.

First phase, step one of the renovation plan: improve insulation and strengthen structure of the old house.

He scanned the rooms and shook his head — the living room felt too small despite being open. He pushed open the door and went out into the yard.

The summer night was deep. It was early in the lunar month; the moon was dim and stars were sparse. With no streetlights in the little mountain village, only a few far-off lights glimmered, and the world around him lay in near-total blackness.

Chen Yun stood in the dark and closed his eyes for a few seconds to adapt. When he opened them, the scene before him was no longer pitch black. The vision enhancement from the genetic serum had kicked in.

The darkness became a soft, discernible gray. He could make out the outlines of the courtyard walls and house, the texture of the blue-brick ground, the pile of firewood and coal in the corner — all showing as varying shades of gray. Not as clear as daylight, but enough for him to move about.

He lightly jumped onto the courtyard wall and looked around. Only five or six households clustered near his ancestral home. Besides Lin Wanwan’s place, the others had been vacated for years; their yards were overgrown.

He looked toward Lin Wanwan’s house. Its windows were black; no light, no sound. She had probably gone to sleep.

Making sure no one was watching his yard, Chen Yun jumped down and stood in the center. He slipped his consciousness into the system space and gestured. Piles of white insulation boards and rolls of thermal cotton appeared neatly on the ground before him.

He walked around the materials and came to the small two-story annex of his house. Pressing his hand against the wall, he summoned the system interface.

Intent: click [Reinforce].

[Would you like to perform basic reinforcement on the current base?] the emotionless synthetic voice asked in his mind.

“Yes.”

[Required points: 3,500. Insufficient points.]

“As expected, it’s a lot pricier than reinforcing a vehicle,” Chen Yun thought.

[Insulation materials detected. Consume insulation materials to perform targeted reinforcement?]

[Reinforcement direction: thermal insulation.]

[Required points: 250.]

“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate.

[Confirm reinforcement. Consume points: 250.]

[Reinforcing…]

A progress bar appeared on the screen and quickly filled. After a vague flicker, half the insulation materials in the yard vanished and the red-brick house before him changed color.

[Reinforcement complete!]

Chen Yun inspected the house. Its overall shape was unchanged, but the exposed red brick was covered with a roughly half-inch layer of fine-textured gray-white coating.

“So that’s targeted insulation reinforcement? Kinda less flashy than past upgrades,” he mused, touching the coating. “And being exposed—won’t it get damaged by external force?”

He decided to test it. From the space he drew a handheld spray torch and a fire ax. He swung the ax, hacking a few times at the coating in the same spot. When he stopped, the layer only bore a shallow white scratch.

“With my current strength, full-force chopping only left a mark. This coating’s defensive power’s pretty solid — without a power hammer it should be hard to breach.”

He lit the spray torch and set the coating aflame. After a minute he shut it off. The gray-white layer showed no change. Feeling it with caution, the scorched spot was only slightly warm — practically no heat compared to what he expected.

“Can’t measure insulation performance yet, but this thermal resistance is top-tier,” he concluded, satisfied.

Ding—! The system’s electronic chime rang.

[Daily points settlement commencing.]

[Settling…]

[Base points today: 24.]

[Survival assessment — environment reconnaissance (exploration): 50.]

[Base initial construction (survival prep): 100.]

[Settlement complete. Current survival points: 1,658.]

“So the survival assessment awarded 150 points today — same as the newbie pack,” Chen Yun thought. “No clue how the system rates these things. Renovating the old house gave 100 points, but a decade’s worth of supplies only gave sixty or seventy, and genetic enhancement tech just ten. Strange.”

He gave up trying to reason it out and focused on work. The insulation materials remaining in the yard were fewer now — apparently there was a cap to how much material could offset point costs. Or maybe the 250 points was just the system’s processing fee for the reinforcement. He stored the rest of the insulation into the space and pulled out cement, sand, and two steel ingots.

Back at the wall he pressed his hand and opened the interface again.

[Would you like to perform basic reinforcement on the current base?]

[Building materials detected. Consume building materials to perform targeted reinforcement?]

[Reinforcement direction: structural strengthening.]

[Required points: 300.]

“Yes.”

[Confirm reinforcement. Consume points: 300.]

[Reinforcing…]

[Reinforcement complete!]

He stepped back. The old house had transformed. The previous gray-white insulating layer had vanished; in its place the entire structure now bore a heavy, deep-gray surface, as if cast in one piece. The walls felt cold to the touch with a slightly sandy texture.

“What happened to my insulation coating? It was big and white—did the system eat it?” Chen Yun wondered. “System wouldn’t be that stingy, right?”

He summoned the interface again and mentally selected targeted reinforcement: insulation — advanced.

[Would you like to perform targeted reinforcement?]

[Reinforcement direction: advanced thermal insulation.]

“Advanced reinforcement…” Chen Yun thought. It appeared the structural strengthening hadn’t overwritten the insulation — the two had probably fused.

He knocked on the wall; it was solid and dense. To test its strength he took a hammer from the space, readied himself, and slammed it against the wall.

Clang—!

Sparks flew. A harsh metallic clang rang through the night.

The hammer’s rebound left his arms numb; the handle nearly snapped.

“Whoa.” He hadn’t expected such a loud metallic tone. He looked around, half-expecting someone to come running. Nothing but silence. Lin Wanwan’s windows were still dark; the neighboring yards slept.

He returned to the strike point — the deep-gray wall showed not a single mark. The hammer’s handle was nearly ruined.

“Impressive,” he muttered, waggling his numb arm. “System-made goods are top quality.”

He decided to stop for the night — making that much noise carried a risk someone might have noticed. He stored the battered hammer and went back inside. The furniture and layout were unchanged; only the walls had become deep gray.

He walked to a window and tapped the glass lightly. It trembled, and he realized the windows hadn’t been reinforced with the wall earlier. “Indeed, the reinforcements targeted the main structure only,” he said, and brought up the interface for the window.

[Would you like to reinforce the target item — window?]

[Cost: 40 points.]

“Forty points without material offset is acceptable,” he thought, and clicked yes.

[Confirm reinforcement. Consume survival points: 40.]

[Reinforcing…]

[Reinforcement complete!]

When the haze cleared the wooden window frames were gone, replaced by matte black-gold metal frames that fit the wall seamlessly. The dusty glass had become thick and bright; strikes left it unmoved. He opened and closed a window; the motion was smooth and silent, the latch snapping into place without a sound.

There were eight exterior-wall windows in total. He repeated the operation for each, spending a total of 320 points. He left interior partition windows for later to save points. Satisfied with the new windows, he glanced at the clock — it was past one.

“Too late. Rest for today.” He stretched, freshened up, and went to bed.

He fell asleep quickly to the faint summer-night chorus and slept through the night without dreams.

At dawn he woke with the first gray light. He dressed, washed, and went to the kitchen. The old brick stove had also been transformed; the tile-and-brick hearth was now the same deep-gray material as the walls, though its structure remained unchanged. It made sense — the stove was built from the same bricks and mortar and thus counted as part of the house’s main body.

He made a quick meal with an induction cooker and ate. Afterwards he stepped into the courtyard. The morning air was cool with dew. In daylight every detail of the reinforced wall showed clearly. Sunlight glinted off the deep-gray surface with a faint metallic sheen.

“No wonder the hammer sounded metallic — the wall has metal elements embedded,” he concluded, still surprised he hadn’t noticed that inside the house the night before.

He climbed atop the wall to survey the surroundings and, finding no watchers, went to the center of the yard and pulled bricks from the space.

He headed to the stone-covered corner — the cellar. This would be the underground portion of his renovation plan.

Placing his hand on the stone hatch, he called up the interface and mentally selected: targeted reinforcement, spatial expansion.

[Would you like to perform targeted reinforcement on the current cellar?]

[Reinforcement direction: spatial expansion.]

[Required points: 1,500. Insufficient points.]

“So it can expand directly, but it won’t accept building materials as a direct offset,” Chen Yun noted. He remembered how, when expanding a storage barrel before, the system used other empty barrels as material offsets. He reasoned that to expand a three-dimensional space, the system might accept other void volumes of similar form as offset.

If that were true, building hollow masonry cubes could function as offset materials. He decided to try.

He dragged two bags of cement and sand, took a shovel from storage, and opened the cement. Mixing at roughly one to five, he added water and stirred. Soon the mortar was ready. He grabbed a stack of red bricks and began building.

He didn’t soak the bricks, but they would stand long enough — they were just consumables. Laying mortar, he stacked the first bricks. Layer by layer the hollow cube took shape. Near the top he added thin rebar as a makeshift lintel and capped it with bricks.

In short order a one-cubic-meter hollow block sat in the yard, mortar still wet between the joints. He straightened and sighed. Then he went to the cellar hatch and pressed his hand to it.

[Would you like to perform basic reinforcement on the current cellar?]

[Detected hollow brick cubic block. Consume hollow brick cubic block to perform targeted reinforcement on the cellar?]

[Reinforcement direction: expansion.]

[Required points: 1,450.]

“It works,” he thought with relief. “A 1 m³ hollow brick block discounts 50 points.”

He built more blocks to test other volumes. A two-cubic-meter rectangular hollow produced a required points number of 1,420.

“Two cubic meters discounts 80 points,” he did the math. “Looks like the 1 m³ units are more cost-effective.”

He wiped sweat from his brow and prepared to make more hollow blocks when a knock sounded at the courtyard gate: “Knock, knock!”