Chapter 76: Everyone Who Has Used It Says It’s Excellent

The holographic helmets spread through No.3 High School with astonishing speed, rivaling the popularity of games like “Honor of Kings” and “Battle Royale”! The first batch saw thirteen students try them out, and every single one sang their praises. Five-star ratings poured in, and all the follow-up comments were brimming with enthusiasm—even those who were utterly defeated and left wailing in frustration.

What made the helmets the subject of almost cult-like admiration was this: after leaving the simulated environment and returning to reality, every participant found their skills noticeably improved.

How to put it? If real-life sparring was like casual gaming with friends—where the opponents and tactics were always the same, and training benefits quickly plateaued—then the high-intensity duels of the virtual environment were more akin to the focused, targeted drills of professional esports players. Admittedly, the AI opponents couldn’t come up with endless tricks, but the relentless attack rhythms, the unpredictable in-game coordination, and the ability to endlessly replay scenarios without worrying about stamina meant training efficiency soared.

So, after the first dozen students logged off, a long queue immediately formed in front of the helmets. Fortunately, Guan Junyuan had anticipated this and had the teachers set up a schedule in advance, thus preventing chaos.

Still, demand far outstripped supply—like trying to live large on a tiny paycheck. There were nine classes in the third-year cohort, totaling over three hundred students. With just twelve shared helmets, even if they ran non-stop all day and night, there wouldn’t be enough for every student to get even one hour per day.

And, of course, running them non-stop was impossible—teachers and soldiers needed them too.

These helmets didn’t fully belong to the school; Guan Junyuan had managed to acquire them through a combination of purchase and borrowing. Otherwise, even as a department head, he couldn’t have scraped together enough exchange materials for so many.

Given the excellent feedback and clear results, he immediately put the acquisition of more helmets on the agenda. After all, the college entrance exam was barely twenty days away—less time than it takes for a distant relative to visit, and it would pass in a blink.

If he could gather fifty helmets, each student could get two hours of machine time per day—that would be quite impressive. If he could push it to three hours, it would be flawless—like his own gleaming bald head.

So, there was still room for negotiation with the garrison, which always had a bit of extra “grease” to spare; items found in the wild were often quietly set aside by them, so perhaps more could be squeezed out. The police force was another avenue—though they didn’t conduct as many field searches, they frequently seized black-market contraband in the city, and there was undoubtedly extra to be had. Their training needs weren’t as pressing as the military’s, but the demand was still there. If the helmets were shared—used by the police and military during idle periods, and by students otherwise—a bit of careful coordination should solve any issues.

He could also rally the wealthier parents, or those willing to spend beyond their means for their children’s sake, like Fang Ju’s mother and father. Even if they couldn’t foot the whole bill, four or five families pooling resources would make it manageable.

There was even the possibility, after the college entrance exam, of the school buying the helmets back.

As long as the results were good, nothing was a problem—neither student test scores, nor his own dreams of promotion, a raise, marriage, and the pinnacle of life.

Guan Junyuan was immersed in these calculations, too busy to notice that the game his students were playing now was already vastly different from the one they played the night before.

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At last, freed from the routine affairs of the Imaginary Space, Ye Chao found time to craft the second batch of helmets. He then slipped into the school, quietly traded some of his own game time for a turn in the computer lab.

Alpha Ji had already linked Guan Junyuan to the chat client, so if any further trades or property data uploads for combat mode were needed, Ye Chao would be notified. Since there was no message at the moment, it was time to get down to business.

First on the agenda was a deep dive into electric motors—the equipment that converts his now-plentiful electrical energy into mechanical power. This was essential, even critical, for creating an Iron Man suit.

Ye Chao was still a bit unfamiliar with motors. One of the main reasons he’d never managed to imprint devices like phones, tablets, or laptops before was his lack of understanding about electric motors.

Flash drives were easy—their structure was simple, just a chip. External SSD drives were also manageable, but not traditional hard drives, which contained brushless DC motors powered by three-phase alternating current.

For phones, tablets, and laptops, it was even trickier. Adjusting the camera aperture, playing sound, or producing vibration all required at least one motor—sometimes more.

But those were all miniature motors running at low voltage, three or four volts at most. To support physical movement, he’d need something on the scale of a vacuum cleaner—no, a washing machine—no, more like an electric bicycle motor.

“Battle Royale” aside, the underlying principles were similar, but the materials for permanent magnets, stator pole specifications, sensor arrangements, and even the way enameled wire was wound—all were vastly different and needed to be learned from scratch.

Second, he needed more item data. He wanted to add as many objects as possible to the exchange list: printers, scanners, air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, even fringe devices like body fat scales, ATMs, coffee makers, and toasters. The more, the better.

In essence, Imaginary Space was like a massive recycling plant—any item understood by either him or Alpha Ji could be reclaimed and broken down into raw materials.

The more he knew, the more he could reclaim; the more he reclaimed, the more he could produce.

It was a snowball effect—knowledge determined the speed of the snowball’s growth.

He also had to thank Alpha Ji’s palace in the Imaginary Space: a trove of relics from the old world, dazzling and diverse, had greatly broadened Ye Chao’s horizons. Without it, it was hard to imagine just how far people’s laziness had gone before the cataclysm.

In truth, despite all the complexity and technical jargon, his core tasks were just two: copying the data of his chosen Fire Seed weapon into the Imaginary Space and waiting for the loading bar to finish, and then—studying electric motors.

DC, AC, three-phase;

Synchronous, permanent-magnet, electromagnetic, reluctance, hysteresis;

Series-wound, parallel-wound, separately excited, compound wound;

Asynchronous, induction, AC commutator, shaded-pole, repulsion;

Capacitor, squirrel-cage, wound-rotor…

The more he studied, the deeper the field became! All those prefixes barely covered the rough classification of motors, and randomly combining a few would still yield valid types.

“Hey, you’re here again?” Suddenly, a female voice sounded outside the helmet.

Ye Chao didn’t even need to look to know—it was his programming teacher, the fair-skinned, beautiful, and strikingly well-endowed Hai Lili.

“Ye Chao, your mental strength test results from a few days ago were already at three stars. Your ability to visualize and your focus were both excellent. At this point, there’s really…” No more benefit for you here—it’s just a perfect score, nothing more.

The key was that his abilities didn’t actually help improve physical fitness or support combat training.

Hai Lili spoke, but left the rest of her sentence hanging.

Ye Chao switched on the front camera and glanced over. She was staring in fascination at the external monitor display. “Is that… an electric motor? Are you trying to design a powered exoskeleton?”

!!!

The saying “big-chested but brainless” definitely didn’t apply here—Hai Lili was one of the rare few at No.3 High School who could keep up with at least half of Ye Chao’s thinking.

But like Ye Chao, her intellect was devoted entirely to academics and learning; her ability to read people or situations in daily life was practically nonexistent.

Yet just from seeing Ye Chao’s motor schematics, she’d guessed he was working on a mechanical exoskeleton—almost supernatural insight!