Chapter 3: Settled in Three Hours

Supervising Engineer Zhou stood before the mottled wall, his gaze sharp as a blade, locked onto Chen Zhuo in heavy silence. The afternoon sun cut through the gaps in the scaffolding, casting broken, jagged shadows on the ground, while the air hung thick with the cloying mix of cement dust and cheap tobacco.

“Who the hell told you to inspect that wall?” Zhou broke the dead silence, his voice flat and emotionless.

Chen Zhuo didn't even look at him. He kept his eyes fixed on the exposed section of the wall, his thumb rubbing slowly over the rough surface. His voice was dry. “The rebar ratio is off by eight percent. The tie spacing is too tight. The aggregate in the concrete is all fine sand—I barely see any gravel. Give this wall a month, and cracks will crawl all over it.”

Zhou’s brow furrowed deeper. He flipped through the folder in his hand, his fingers idly tracing the pages, his face as hard and cold as iron. Foreman Hu, seeing the supervisor staying quiet, gave a shifty look, stepped forward, and started spraying saliva.

“Zhou! This kid is a shady character brought in by Mr. Qian Shouren. You’re actually listening to his bullshit?”

Foreman Hu yanked Chen Zhuo by the collar, the grip tight enough to rattle his bones, kicking up a cloud of yellow dust under his boots.

“Cut the crap! I told you to fix it, so you fix it. Chisel out the concrete in this section and re-pour it! Don’t you dare show me any respect!”

Chen Zhuo didn’t struggle. He just let his head drop, staring at the rough lines of his own palm. In the corner of his vision, those pale blue numbers flickered: 02:47:15.

The countdown was still ticking. In a little over two hours, the elite memories in this body—about architecture, about mechanics, about pure instinct—would wash away like the tide, leaving behind a blank slate. The terror of losing that total control twisted into a bizarre, eerie calm.

Wang Tiezhu shot into the alley on his e-bike, the tires shrieking against the pavement. He hadn't even stopped when the sound got ahead of him.

“Chen Zhuo! Su Wantang is breathing down your neck! They're about to dismantle the beams in that old house over there, and they're waiting on your magic touch. If you dare drag this out, forget about the money. If you can't keep Su Wantang’s trust, who the hell else is going to believe you?”

Foreman Hu let out a cold laugh, loosening his grip. He patted Chen Zhuo’s chest with the back of his hand, the gesture dripping with mockery.

“Hear that? Rush job. If you want to keep your neck, you work through the night. If it’s not done by tomorrow morning, I’m docking half your pay and kicking you out!”

Chen Zhuo rubbed the red mark on his collar and spoke with a thin, flat tone. “Article 3 of the labor agreement: once the probation period ends, the employment relationship is automatically terminated. At 2:50, I hand over the keys and leave. Any second past that is unpaid labor.”

Foreman Hu’s face turned beet red. He jabbed a finger into Chen Zhuo’s nose, sputtering, “You’re spitting in your own soup! Before I even make a move, you’re already dragging me down the drain?”

“Qian Shouren!” Foreman Hu bellowed toward the alley entrance.

The smiling tiger Qian Shouren waddled over, two walnuts spinning between his fingers. He wore a genial smile, his leather shoes crunching softly on the gravel.

“Oh, Foreman Hu, don’t get so worked up. Little Chen, right? I just saw your qualifications were a bit thin and got worried you’d fail. So I specifically arranged a cert to boost your profile. But if you refuse to work overtime, I’ll take that cert back. I’ll even call the association and report you for fraud. Then you’ll never work in this industry again.”

Chen Zhuo didn’t look at Qian Shouren. His gaze settled back on the damaged wall.

His fingertip touched the exposed rebar. A strange, tingling numbness crawled up his arm. He could hear the subtle stress inside the steel, like a stethoscope pressed against a heartbeat; every misaligned molecular structure was crystal clear.

“Zhou,” Chen Zhuo finally spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the alley’s noise. “If you don’t believe my word, then inspect the work. I fix this section. You check the results. If it’s not up to spec, I walk and you keep the money. If it is, you sign the off-the-record sheet, and I leave with my cut.”

Zhou stared at him for three seconds. He pulled a fountain pen from his tape measure case, checked a box on the folder, and the nib scraped lightly across the paper.

“Fix it.”

Chen Zhuo crouched down. The hammerhead fell.

No thunderous crash, just crisp, rapid taps. Every strike landed precisely where the concrete needed to be removed. The excess concrete flaked off like butterfly wings. His movements were too fast to track clearly; sweat slid from his forehead, hitting the cement floor and evaporating instantly, leaving dark stains.

The surrounding workers stopped what they were doing, eyes wide. They’d never seen this rhythm. No brute force, no hesitant pauses—just pure, flowing technique.

Foreman Hu snarled from behind him, “Slow down! That’s money! Think you’re cleaning a toilet?”

Chen Zhuo ignored him completely.

00:01:00.

The final hammer blow landed. The cut surface was smooth as a mirror. He grabbed a nearby trowel and smoothed the last edges. The motions flowed like water. The moment he finished, it was as if a thousand-pound weight had lifted off him. The crowd’s noise around him seemed to suck into a vacuum, leaving only a deathly silence.

00:00:00.

The interface vanished.

The bone-deep sense of mastery disappeared in an instant. Chen Zhuo’s hand froze in mid-air, his fingers trembling. The muscles that had just controlled perfect force were now sluggish and alien. He tried to clench his fist, but he couldn’t feel the resonance of the hammer strike anymore. He felt like a clumsy imitator.

“It’s over,” he murmured.

Foreman Hu lunged forward, snatching his hard hat and shoving it into Chen Zhuo’s arms.

“Get lost! Take your hammer and get the hell out! I’m docking half your pay!”

Chen Zhuo didn't take the hard hat. He just pulled a wrench from his tool bag and slotted it neatly onto the iron rack. The click of each tool returning to its place was light as a sigh, the metallic aftertaste lingering in the air for a long, slow fade.

He turned and walked through the stunned crowd, heading straight for the alley entrance.

In his vision, faint golden light points slowly began to rise.

[Work Clearance: Initiated]

[Client Satisfaction: 60% (Half-day pay deduction)]

[Peer Review: 85% (Supervisor Engineer Zhou’s approval rating: High)]

[On-site Witnesses: 42]

[Witness Bonus: Active]

The numbers fluctuated, then locked in.

[Tenure Coin +37]

[Note: If nobody sees it, it doesn't count.]

Chen Zhuo stopped and looked back at the repaired wall. The setting sun was slanting through the alley opening, hitting the fresh concrete cross-sections. It gleamed with a cold, hard luster, standing in stark contrast to the dim, weathered buildings surrounding it.

The corner of his mouth twitched, but he didn't stop walking. He vanished into the twilight.

The wind at the alley entrance hit him face-first, thick with dust, sweeping away the last trace of metallic echo clinging to him. He stood on the line between shadow and light, fingertips still trembling with that faint residual vibration, like electricity zapping through dry nerve endings. The feeling of "knowing how" from earlier was just an empty husk now, hanging on his bones, light as a feather, impossible to grab hold of.

"If nobody sees it, it doesn't count."

The phrase spun around in his head like a barbed wire, digging deep into the calm he’d just managed to achieve. Forty-two witnesses. While repairing the wall, he had deliberately widened his movements, making sure the young apprentices and old-timers could see every move. Foreman Hu had cursed like a trooper, but there was a complex awe in his eyes—an instinctive respect for the craft, even if his mouth was all bark. Engineer Zhou had even wandered over, tapping a new brick joint. That dull thud had hit harder than any compliment.

Turns out, in this trade, skill isn't a secret to hoard. It's a public performance. The better you do it, the more people watch, and the thicker the Tenure Coin payout gets. The loneliness of grinding your skills in the dark felt pathetic under this mechanism. Chen Zhuo gave a bitter smile and patted the hard hat in his pocket. The greasy, oil-stained old one Foreman Hu had shoved at him had become a symbol of sorts.

He looked up toward the construction site of the "Tianshu" project in the distance. Massive cranes stood like silhouettes against the dying light, the roar of concrete mixers drifting faintly from there. In his skill tree, [Precision Masonry] and [Stress Prediction] had just hit max level, ready to trigger the next tier. According to the system prompt, the next refresh required entering a higher-tier construction site and completing a more challenging task.

The problem was, Foreman Hu had just fired him.

"Old Chen, what are you standing there for?"

A hoarse voice came from behind him. Chen Zhuo didn't turn around, just paused. It was Master Sun from the neighboring courtyard, an old bricklayer with gray hair. He'd spent twenty years at a state-owned factory before retiring, back when his temper was short and nobody was worth his time. Now, Master Sun leaned on his cane, shuffling to his side with a tremor in his step. His cloudy eyes stared at the new wall, then at Chen Zhuo's empty tool bag.

"Foreman roughing you up?" Master Sun asked, blunt and direct.

Chen Zhuo nodded. He stuffed the hard hat into the side pocket of his backpack, the motion so smooth it was a bit startling. His skills might be fading, but muscle memory was more honest than conscious thought. It was a scary inertia, a dangerous dependency.

"No place to go." Chen Zhuo told the truth.

Master Sun was silent for a moment. His cane tapped a monotonous rhythm on the paving stones. Suddenly, he patted Chen Zhuo’s shoulder. The pressure wasn't heavy, but it carried a stubborn streak. "Come with me. I picked up some private work—renovating a shabby old apartment. The foreman isn't confident, thinks my eyes are too dim. He insists on a young, strong partner. You... even though you got kicked out by that mad dog, I watched you perform that 'Flying Brick Return' from the building across. Saw every bit of it."

"Flying Brick Return?" Chen Zhuo frowned. That was the external manifestation of the system skill [Dynamic Balance Correction]. He’d simply been adjusting the angle of the bricks.

"Never mind what you call it." Master Sun cut him off. A spark lit up in his murky eyes. "To me, it's skill. Skill is afraid of nobody seeing it; it's only afraid of nobody daring to use it. You don't have a hammer in your hand, but I do."

He pulled a short-handled hammer from his pocket, polished to a bright shine, and handed it to Chen Zhuo. Two blurred characters were engraved on the handle, likely a souvenir from some year long past.

"You in or out? If you're in, meet me at the Old South City alley entrance at 4 AM tomorrow. Remember, don't cut corners on quitting time. The pay is low, but the work is fine-grained. It'll train your 'eye'. That countdown in the system doesn't match up with real-time光阴. Once you get used to the feel in your fingertips and step away from the panel, you're basically useless."

Chen Zhuo gripped the hammer. The coldness of the metal seeped through his palm and spread to his limbs. He thought of Foreman Hu’s reddened face, Engineer Zhou’s approving look, and that cold, sterile line of text on his system panel.

"Four o'clock." He agreed, simple and quick.

Master Sun nodded with satisfaction, then turned and strode off into the deepening night. Chen Zhuo stood rooted to the spot, watching the old man’s silhouette vanish around the corner of the alley before finally lifting his hand to look at his empty palm. The tremors had stopped, but a new kind of shiver had taken their place. It wasn’t fear of losing his craft— it was the anxiety of about to return to being just a "mortal."

He pivoted and headed for the subway entrance. His phone screen lit up, an encrypted message from the mysterious client, attached with a massive map marker pinpointed directly at the core zone of the Tianshu project. The message was just one line:

[High-potential talent leakage detected. Recruitment channel open. Salary: Negotiable. Cost: Unknown.]

Chen Zhuo tucked the phone away, the corner of his mouth curling into a cold smirk. Being seen meant value. So what if the price of becoming invisible was freedom?

He fell into step, merging seamlessly into the surging tide of the crowd.