"Then you... really are a genius."

Sang Hezheng opened his mouth, and after a long while only squeezed out this dry compliment.

"Don’t say that, Master Sang, those two boys of yours are the real geniuses." Cheng Ye smiled and rolled down the car window.

As the Void Mist continued to disperse, the temperature was rising quickly, up to around ten degrees.

A light breeze carried the dust from the roadside into the car, lifting his slightly long fringe and adding a bit of casual flair.

Different people require different ways of closing the distance.

These old masters from the Mechanical Bureau, for instance, many of them have been around since Happiness City was first founded.

After weathering so many storms over the years, they’re long used to human relations and the exchange of interests.

If you try to cozy up in some clichéd way, you’ll just end up mediocre and banal, becoming one more ordinary acquaintance.

But what he wanted was not that kind of relationship; he wanted a special one that people would remember, that would leave an impression.

Genius.

A pretty good label.

Since the two Sang brothers were already sharp, Cheng Ye simply decided to act a bit more exaggerated.

Looking at it now, that move had been the right one.

The next step was to give Master Sang an opening to start talking and quickly close the distance between them.

"Those two are okay, but compared to you..."

"You’re wrong, Master Sang."

Cheng Ye leaned back in his seat, his tone growing heavier. "In this world, people can’t really be compared to each other. I might be quicker when it comes to learning mechanics, maybe I can reach the same level as you in a short time, but I’m destined not to spend my whole life dealing with machines. Whether it’s research or further honing my skills, I don’t have what it takes, and I don’t have that much time. At most I can get familiar, know the general idea, and that’s enough."

"But Sang Tao and Sang Zhe are different. They can calm down and dig into the details, they can stare at a blueprint for half a day, studying the principles behind it—these are things I don’t have and can’t do. So, people shouldn’t compare themselves to others; if you must compare, compare with who you were yesterday. If today you know a bit more than yesterday, that’s a profit."

"Mm..." Sang Hezheng tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Happiness City doesn’t lack researchers. With their aptitude, they’re still not good enough to get into the Happiness Research Institute in the Inner City."

"Have you ever tried to have them apply for a researcher position?"

"No." Sang Hezheng let out a bitter smile, his expression complicated. "Once an ordinary researcher gets into that place, they can forget about ever getting out for the rest of their life. For some people, that’s a paradise where they can do research, but for our family, that’s a prison that locks a person down."

"I don’t want them trapped in a lab their whole life, needing to file a request just to see the sun."

"Right, you want the two of them to go in as top-tier researchers from the start—how is that possible?"

Cheng Ye chuckled. "Sang Zhe actually is suited for research, but Sang Tao, he must have thought about going out on his own?"

"He has."

Sang Hezheng nodded openly, his grip on the wheel loosening a bit, his tone carrying a hint of helplessness. "These years, this old man has saved up some Contribution Points. It’s not enough to move the whole family into the Inner City, but it is enough to scrape together money to open a small factory. That kid Sang Tao had that idea already two years ago, but I’ve never given the go-ahead."

That so-called "whole family" really was no small number.

Sang Hezheng had two spouses; Sang Tao and Sang Zhe were half-brothers with the same father, and they had two younger sisters below them.

Sang Tao and Sang Zhe had both married at sixteen. Now Sang Tao had a son and a daughter—seven and five years old—and Sang Zhe had a three-year-old daughter.

Counting the relatives on their spouses’ side, the Sang Family had more than twenty people altogether.

Even with Sang Hezheng having worked over ten years in the Mechanical Bureau and managing to skim some "extra income" here and there, there was no way he could just casually pull out twenty thousand Contribution Points like Matthew Lee.

But in Cheng Ye’s estimate, the savings in Sang Hezheng’s hands definitely wouldn’t be small; at the very least it should be over ten thousand, otherwise he wouldn’t even dare to mention opening a factory.

After all, just buying the technical license alone would cost a big pile of Contribution Points, not to mention buying equipment, renting a venue, and hiring workers.

"So what line did Sang Tao want to open a factory in?"

"What else could it be? Just mechanical processing, making a bit of small money."

It wasn’t that Sang Hezheng was intentionally vague; it was just that the family had never seriously discussed the matter of opening a factory, so naturally they hadn’t worked out any concrete plans, only a vague direction.

"Then better forget it." Cheng Ye shook his head, his tone serious. "You only make hard-earned money doing mechanical processing, it’s tiring and thankless. If you happen to run into a Satellite City’s core industry, a small factory simply can’t withstand the pressure; you could easily end up losing everything."

"Exactly." Sang Hezheng nodded repeatedly, then suddenly shifted the topic. "Now with so many Migrants coming in and more work in the Buffer Zone, he’s been going on in my ear every day about opening a factory, saying that we can earn more while things are lively."

The second half of that sentence was practically a direct hint.

Cheng Ye laughed inwardly, but kept a serious expression on his face. "Master Sang, really, don’t act on impulse. The situation is so unstable right now. There might be a lot of Migrants, but the risks are huge too. It looks like there’s money to be made, but in reality it’s easier to lose money."

He paused deliberately and drew the topic back to himself. "Like me setting up a caravan—putting out twenty thousand Contribution Points, to put it bluntly, is just testing the waters. If my luck is bad, that money could just disappear into the waves. I’ve already prepared myself to lose it."

He spoke of it lightly, but in Sang Hezheng’s ears it didn’t sit well at all.

The money he’d scraped together over more than ten hard-working years, and in this Inspector Cheng’s mouth it was just a stone used to ’test the waters.’

Sigh, truly, people can’t be compared—comparing will only make you furious!

The car suddenly fell quiet, leaving only the whooshing wind noise, tire noise, and the faint whine of the motor as it accelerated.