The Strongest Brain in the Interstellar

In truth, Jiang Hui had only just started getting into mechas, and her understanding of mecha materials was still purely theoretical. To say she was skilled enough to pick out the most suitable materials from the overwhelming variety would be pure nonsense—even she couldn’t believe it herself.

Calling it “selection” was a stretch; in reality, she was just casually picking things that looked like they might be useful, tossing them into the basket for later checkout.

She planned to sort through everything properly once she brought it all back. After all, the stuff here really was cheap—priced by weight, essentially scrap value—and most items were still 30 to 60 percent new. It was perfect for a beginner like her to practice with. Even though it was her first time here, Jiang Hui completely understood why so many people crowded into this place.

So in just one morning, she had already gotten carried away, making several trips and checking out four or five full baskets.

Even at scrap prices, it probably added up to tens of thousands of interstellar credits. But there was a bit of everything in there—even items she didn’t currently need, she grabbed some as backup. With this haul, Jiang Hui likely wouldn’t have to worry about running out of materials for quite a while—not that she was really thinking about whether she’d actually use it all in the end.

Originally, everything had been going smoothly today, but toward the end, someone suddenly gave Jiang Hui a shove from behind for no reason, causing her to fall into a pile of unwanted goods in a corner—she nearly got her leg crushed.

To make things worse, after falling, she couldn’t find her way back, getting trapped in the crowd with no way out. She had no choice but to wait by that pile for a while. Out of boredom, she absentmindedly picked through a few small items, and only after a good while was she able to slip through a gap in the crowd and escape. Even now, thinking about it, her hands and legs still ached.

Feeling a bit resentful, Jiang Hui dragged along several baskets she had linked together and followed the flow of people toward the checkout area.

Mecha materials were generally large and bulky, so the baskets used here obviously couldn’t be too small. To make bulk purchases easier, the baskets could be linked together into a single unit and then separated again at the front desk for individual checkout.

But perhaps due to some flaw in the tech’s algorithm, while the contents were compressed with spatial folding, the baskets themselves didn’t lose any weight. Once linked together, they were insanely heavy, weighing down her arms painfully. With the crowd being so dense, Jiang Hui nearly got pushed out several times—basket and all.

God only knew how many people were packed in here. She now truly believed the saying “People can get crushed to death by a crowd.”

She struggled her way through the most packed section, pushing forward with her loaded baskets toward the checkout counter, her heart nearly stopping a few times from the pressure of being squeezed.

When she finally saw she was almost at the register, she let out a small breath of relief.

Suddenly, someone tugged at the handle of her basket. Jiang Hui immediately turned with full alertness, radiating the fierce energy of a tiger defending its food.

But when she saw who it was, her tense expression relaxed slightly—it was Huan Xian.

He nodded at her, then reached over to help lift the baskets a little, as if offering to carry them for her.

Jiang Hui wasn’t so weak that she needed help like that—she had gone through military training after all. Carrying some heavy things was nothing; she’d just been thrown off by the chaos of the crowd. Even though she didn’t need him to carry the baskets, his brief assist shifted the positioning enough that the crowded people around her loosened up a little.

Finally, she could carry the baskets properly, no longer stuck awkwardly with them half-floating, half-dragging while being pushed around. She gave him a quick thank-you and took the baskets back.

Though he was standing in the same line, he didn’t seem to be carrying a basket or anything himself—completely empty-handed. He didn’t look like he was here to check out… Was he here specifically to find her?

But Huan Xian didn’t say anything about it—he simply continued moving along with the crowd.

When it was Jiang Hui’s turn to check out, and he saw her struggling to dump out the piles of items from her multiple baskets, he finally stepped forward to help her pack everything up.

She had so much stuff that even the scale was straining under the weight—it turned out to be even more than she had estimated. The girl overseeing the checkout looked at her with a slightly strange expression, like she was watching some reckless, wasteful spender. It made Jiang Hui feel a little awkward and even start to wonder if she’d bought too much.

But the rule here was clear: once something was in your basket, it couldn’t be put back. So you had to be sure about what you were picking, otherwise there’d be disputes at the counter.

Fortunately, Jiang Hui had enough money. This whole pile came to just over ten thousand credits, and the checkout process went smoothly with no unexpected issues. There was simply too much stuff—she had to use a large space button and still had to divide it into several groups to fit it all in.

In the end, it was only with Huan Xian’s help that the two of them managed to finish the checkout and leave with relative efficiency.

Huan Xian didn’t ask why she was buying so many mecha materials—he only reminded her, “You’ve bought a bit too much. If anything doesn’t suit your needs, it’ll be hard to return things from a place like this.”

Jiang Hui had definitely gone over budget on this trip, but she didn’t feel like she’d made any impulsive purchases. The sheer quantity made it look excessive, sure, but the actual cost was less than half the price of just one part she had inquired about at the mecha repair shop.

It’s just that in the interstellar world, everyday expenses—food, clothing, housing—were fairly cheap. And unawakened students received subsidies for school. Without extra spending, some could get by on just a few hundred credits a month. So for someone like her, who hadn’t really started earning yet, to blow tens of thousands in one go definitely seemed a little wild.

But researching this kind of thing always took money and effort. Jiang Hui couldn’t possibly expect to learn everything just by practicing in her mental space. Materials and tools were essential—and this was already the bare minimum cost.

She figured she must’ve been mentally scarred by those outrageously priced items at the repair shop. Her sense of spending had clearly been skewed if she was starting to think tens of thousands of credits was a good deal.

She’d thought Huan Xian might ask a few more questions after seeing all that, but surprisingly, he just calmly gave that one warning earlier and then reminded her: if she planned to bring all of this back to school, she needed to double-check that nothing she’d bought counted as contraband—otherwise, if it got flagged during a school inspection, she could lose points.

That was something Jiang Hui hadn’t thought of—good thing Huan Xian reminded her.

The school did, in fact, have an entire page listing all kinds of hazardous materials and radiation-related tools. And the stuff she had just picked out came in all types—some of it, she wasn’t even sure what it was exactly. It was entirely possible that some of it was on the school’s prohibited list. If she took everything back without sorting it first and got caught during the next campus inspection, she might just become the next infamous figure on campus.

Looks like she’d need to make a stop at the auto-sorting station later, have the machines help filter out anything banned, and maybe even organize the rest while she was at it.