Courtyard House: A System Connecting Two Worlds, Resources for the Nation

"This is the spectrometer! Come here, I'll show you how to use it!"

Zhou Feng gently placed the handheld spectrometer on the octagonal table and waved to Bai Ling.

Bai Ling finally breathed a sigh of relief, patted her chest, and quickly approached the table, her almond-shaped eyes curiously examining the instrument she had never seen before.

"See this little screen? Watch closely, I'll demonstrate it for you!"

Following the steps in the instruction manual from memory, Zhou Feng pressed and held the power button. To Bai Ling's astonishment, the spectrometer was instantly activated, and the screen lit up with a soft, light green light.

Bai Ling looked at the English symbols displayed above and involuntarily leaned forward again.

"Look, here you can choose a mode. You can choose alloy mode, soil mode, or ore mode. Just choose the mode you need to explore."

"Aim this probe at the location you want to test, and pull the trigger! See, the screen shows 'Testing in Progress'!"

"If you're testing alloys, it only takes a few seconds; testing ores takes about thirty seconds. Once you release the trigger, the screen will show the content of various elements in the target you scanned! It will clearly list what elements are present and how much of each they contain!"

Bai Ling blinked her big eyes, her face filled with disbelief: "You...you didn't even touch that stone, and just...looked at it, and knew everything about what was inside?"

"This is called spectral measurement! It's high-tech; you wouldn't understand it in a short time even if I explained it to you."

Zhou Feng raised his chin with a hint of smugness and casually patted the file bag containing the blueprints next to him.

"Add this mineral distribution map I brought back from abroad, and you're all set! What do you think, Comrade Bai Ling? Pretty impressive, right?"

Looking at these things, Bai Ling naturally nodded excitedly in sync with his emotions.

However, beneath the smile on her face, the girl also muttered a few complaints to herself.

You even brought it back from abroad! You've only been gone for two days, and you still managed to bring back such cutting-edge equipment?

It wouldn't be this quick to get to Big Brother's place!

"Come on, come on, there are other accessories here too, I'll show you how to use them!"

Zhou Feng, having a rare opportunity to show off these "future technologies" to Bai Ling, even got a little carried away and casually took Bai Ling's hand, which was resting on the table, and led her to look at the voltage regulator and charging equipment.

Bai Ling's hand was slightly cool. When Zhou Feng grasped it, she paused almost imperceptibly, and a faint blush quietly rose on her face.

But she didn't pull away, letting him hold her, pretending to be completely absorbed in looking at the parts that Zhou Feng had arranged on the table.

She even pretended not to notice the barely concealed smirk on Zhou Feng's face, and cooperated by studying diligently with him.

These seemingly intimate gestures really do vary from person to person.

If a girl has feelings for you, even if you hold her hand or get closer, she'll just seem a beat slow to react.

But if someone looks down on you, even if you just walk a little too close to them, you'll get a dirty look.

"This is really good stuff!"

Bai Ling listened attentively to Zhou Feng's explanation, but suddenly sighed, "Comrade Zhou Feng, you've already gone all the way, how come you only brought back one? If you had a few more, we could have organized several exploration teams and started work together!"

Hearing her slightly regretful sigh, Zhou Feng stopped introducing himself, slowly turned his face, looked at her sideways, and showed an expression of disbelief.

"Get a few more? Do you know how much one of these costs?"

"Knife...music? What does that mean?"

Zhou Feng's exaggerated tone startled Bai Ling, who didn't immediately recognize the transliterated word.

"It's the US dollar!"

After explaining, Zhou Feng mentally calculated that the future 450,000 would be roughly 63,000 US dollars.

So he stretched out his right hand, made a "six", and then made a "three".

"Just this one machine costs this much! Sixty-three thousand dollars!"

"How much...how much?"

Bai Ling gasped sharply, her eyes widening in shock. Her hand, which had been caressing the spectrometer, trembled as she carefully placed it back on the table.

Sixty-three thousand US dollars!

What does this mean?

The entire foreign exchange reserves of the Dragon Kingdom amount to only a little over 80 million US dollars!

This seemingly unremarkable machine dares to charge nearly one-thousandth of the nation's foreign exchange reserves.

This is absolutely insane!

Putting everything else aside, she would never dare to utter a word like "give us more units" again.

What if this person takes advantage of the situation and says, "Since you want it, you can reimburse me for the foreign exchange!"

Even if you ransacked the entire Special Operations Unit, it wouldn't be worth this much money!