The Strongest Brain in the Interstellar

After ending the conversation, Jiang Hui got busy with something else again. She was occupied well into the night, and only after exiting her mental space did she wash up and go to bed. Another dreamless night passed.

She woke up naturally the next day, took her time organizing her things, and used navigation to head to the agreed meeting point.

She thought she had arrived quite early, but as soon as she got there, the other four all looked at her in unison—it seemed they had already been waiting for a while.

Jiang Hui was momentarily stunned and couldn’t help checking the time on her lightbrain. Was she late?

Xierman came up and patted her on the shoulder. “You’re not late—we just got here early.”

Among them, he was actually the one who arrived the earliest.

Xierman was still young. When he was a child, due to certain reasons, his parents were always busy and had no time to take care of him. His childhood was rather lonely, with little interaction with kids his age. His cousins were far away in the central star system, so he never really had any childhood friends.

He hadn’t expected that upon entering the intermediate academy, he would suddenly make quite a few friends. This was actually his first time going out with peers for an activity. Though he appeared calm on the lightbrain, after ending the conversation, he was so happy he couldn’t stop talking about it with his father—who happened to be home for once.

Early this morning, he asked his family to drop him off, and then wandered around the area alone for a while, eventually running into Zhou Xiuwen and Clarens, who had also arrived early.

Huan Xian didn’t come too early; he arrived just a bit before Jiang Hui, which made her the last to arrive.

Once Jiang Hui realized she wasn’t actually late, she finally let out a breath of relief and casually asked if everyone had already eaten breakfast.

Since they had, and although it was still a bit early, there was no need to waste time here. They decided to head straight to the recycling center and spend more time looking around.

The “Youqi-Meiqian” secondhand market was located on a relatively quiet street in the second ring of the city. Well—“quiet” only in comparison to how bustling the second ring usually was.

From Jiang Hui’s perspective, the place was huge. How to describe it… The libraries and large malls she’d been to before didn’t seem much bigger—some weren’t even as tall as this building. If she hadn’t known it was a secondhand recycling center, she would’ve thought it was just an older-looking shopping mall.

Everyone in the group was pretty proactive, and they all followed the crowd into this somewhat unimpressive-looking shop from the outside.

But to their surprise, while it looked dull and grey on the outside, inside it was buzzing with life.

Just the first floor alone, at a glance, was packed with shelves full of goods, neatly arranged in rows. There were lots of people, lots of stuff, bright colors everywhere, and voices overlapping in lively chatter—it was almost overwhelming to the eyes.

“This…” Jiang Hui was a little stunned.

Was interstellar secondhand shopping really this popular? It even felt livelier than the actual malls. She had previously visited a big offline mall, but it had been almost deserted. That made her think interstellar shopping had become so convenient that everyone just did it online. She never expected the secondhand recycling market to be this bustling—it felt livelier than many parts of the second ring.

“The official site said there’s a special sale today. Most of the items on the first floor are commonly used goods in 80 to 90 percent new condition, all half off, so the prices are really attractive.”

Eighty to ninety percent new, and half price—no wonder there were so many people. Jiang Hui looked over at the rows of merchandise and even started to suspect that many of the items were practically new, barely used at all.

Then, the second floor was almost entirely filled with large items—big furniture and such—which none of them were interested in.

The third floor had all sorts of miscellaneous goods, a bit of everything, and also quite a crowd, so the group simply skipped it.

They finally arrived at the fourth floor, and that’s where they started to slow down. Half of this floor was filled with new and used books—it was a secondhand book sale area.

Even though there were still a lot of people, there were also a ton of books. The books weren’t just on shelves; many were scattered directly on the ground, laid out over large sheets of fabric, piled up in stacks like worthless scrap paper. Most people just scanned over the piles—if something caught their eye, they’d toss it into their basket; if not, they’d move on without a second glance.

Seeing Zhou Xiuwen head straight in without hesitation, Jiang Hui immediately figured this was probably the “very interesting place” he had mentioned. She really hadn’t misjudged him—he was a true book lover. The moment he saw books, he couldn’t walk away.

Clarens followed right in after him.

But Jiang Hui and the others didn’t make a decision right away. Since they’d each found a place they were more interested in, there was no need to stick together. They all nodded and went their separate ways.

Jiang Hui hesitated for a moment. She was actually quite interested in the book area too, but she hadn’t forgotten the main reason she came.

This recycling center had dozens of floors, with each floor containing two to three themed sections. It was packed with stuff—so much that even spending ten days here wouldn’t be enough to see it all.

It was her first time here, and since she had a specific goal in mind, naturally she prioritized that first.

When she came in, she had briefly looked over the floor index at the entrance, and she remembered seeing that the mech-related sections were marked as being on floors seven through nine. So, she simply took the elevator straight up to the seventh floor.

The seventh floor was still crowded—or rather, there just didn’t seem to be a single place here that wasn’t. Jiang Hui had already gotten somewhat used to the constant flow of people, so she just followed the crowd, squeezing her way forward to browse.

After a while, she finally realized something—this place had absolutely no sense of order. Items were grouped with no regard for purpose or condition—some large and small items were thrown together, some areas had vaguely similar-use items lumped in one spot, and most of it was just a chaotic heap sprawled across the floor, an utter mess with everything mixed together.

Jiang Hui swore, if it weren’t for the number of people seriously digging through the piles, she would’ve thought this was some massive junkyard.

Still, despite the chaos, the recycling center didn’t seem too concerned about theft. That’s because the use of space buttons or any similar storage items was strictly forbidden here.

You could take things out of your personal storage space, but once something was out, you couldn’t put it back in—so every customer picking through items here had to use the purchase baskets provided by the recycling center. Each basket cost 2.5 interstellar credits to use. Given the daily foot traffic, just from this rental fee alone, the center was probably making a decent profit. Pretty savvy way to make money.

At first, Jiang Hui wasn’t quite used to it, but later she learned how to squeeze in shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else, gradually getting into the groove—and ended up picking out quite a few odd things.

There’s this… and even that… it’s ‘this’ cheap? This thing… this might actually still be useful… Isn’t this exactly what she had been looking for earlier?

Oh, this damn recycling center was absolutely amazing.