Starting to Gain Experience from Push-Ups

Chapter 1461: Chapter 705

Fang Cheng weaved through the bustling crowd on the main street and turned into a secluded alley.

The alley was significantly quieter than outside, with all kinds of small shops crowding both sides.

The uneven shop signs were distributed along the street, and a faint smell of engine oil lingered in the air.

Relying on memories from half a year ago, Fang Cheng stopped midway down the alley.

Ahead was a shop facing the street, above which a wooden sign hung with five crookedly written characters—"Xinglong Welding Store."

However, the shop’s iron shutter was tightly closed, with a thin layer of dust settled on it.

Fang Cheng stepped forward and knocked on the shutter with his fingers.

"Bang, bang."

The sound of metal clanking echoed through the narrow alley.

He waited for quite a while, but there was no response from inside.

Fang Cheng raised his wrist to glance at his watch; the hands had just passed four thirty.

He thought to himself that on this island, small business owners usually closed shop according to their whims; they might have closed early today.

After a brief moment of contemplation, he turned around, planning to come back and check again the next morning.

"Young man, are you looking for Ahxing?"

A local-accented voice suddenly called out from the right side of the alley.

Fang Cheng turned his head towards the voice to see that it was the owner of the adjacent grocery store speaking to him.

He was a middle-aged man wearing a tank top and fanning himself with a big palm fan.

He was sitting in between piles of plastic basins, cooling off, with a TV beside him still playing the news.

Fang Cheng paused his steps and politely asked:

"Uncle, may I ask who Ahxing is?"

The grocery store owner pointed the handle of his fan at the closed shutter and replied:

"He’s the owner of this welding shop, Li Ahxing. Are you here to hire him for a job?"

"Yes, I wanted to order some custom work from him."

Fang Cheng walked up to the entrance of the grocery store and casually asked:

"Did he close early today?"

"Closed? His shop has been shut since last month, you know."

The owner shook his fan and shifted to a more comfortable position, his tone slightly teasing:

"A while back, people demanding payments were camping here daily, but he was nowhere to be found; if you’re looking to hire him for a job, forget about it."

Fang Cheng’s eyes flickered as he probed further:

"Closed? Did he move away?"

"No, not exactly."

The owner swatted a mosquito on his leg with the fan, pouting as he spoke:

"Before he left, Ahxing boasted that the True Thought Society invited him to work at the mountain resort."

Upon hearing this, Fang Cheng’s eyes shifted slightly, and he asked:

"Are you talking about the organization that specifically teaches tourists meditation?"

"Yes, that’s them."

The owner nodded, sitting up a bit more straight:

"I hear they’re building something big there, like a deep-sea detector or maybe a submarine."

"And it’s not just him; every skilled welder and blacksmith in town was scooped up by the True Thought Society, so much that now neighbors can’t even find anyone to make a burglar-proof window."

Hearing this, Fang Cheng couldn’t help but feel a surge of interest in his heart.

He was certainly not unfamiliar with this organization—quite the opposite, actually.

Half a year ago, he blended into a tour group to reach Yong’an Island, originally aiming to learn meditation through the True Thought Society.

In fact, it was thanks to that opportunity that he successfully mastered meditation, unlocking his Qi Gong Skill and making a qualitative leap in his own power.

Back then, the True Thought Society and the Noah Organization were at each other’s throats over the Ancient Relics in the deep sea.

That night, after completing his cultivation in the trench, he even lent them a hand by taking down a senior cadre of the Noah Organization.

"Building a submarine?"

Fang Cheng pondered for a moment and, following the owner’s lead, displayed just the right amount of curiosity on his face:

"Can a private individual make such a thing?"

"Ah, I’ve heard the provincial government is spearheading this deep-sea exploration project."

The owner spoke with enthusiasm, fanning even more vigorously:

"The province’s Industrial University teamed up with the True Thought Society for a research project, aiming to create the world’s top detector, which supposedly can reach depths below ten thousand meters in the ocean."

"I’m not sure about the specifics of high-tech stuff, but I do know they pay a lot."

"For a master craftsman like Ahxing, he can earn over a hundred grand a month! Once he heard that number, he locked up his shop overnight and cheerfully left for the mountains with two apprentices."

At this point, the owner looked around furtively, then leaned in closer, lowering his voice:

"If you ask me, there’s definitely something fishy here."

"With so much funding allocated from the top, those officials handling it at the county level must have pocketed quite a bit. Otherwise, how could the True Thought Society offer us ordinary workers such high salaries?"

Leaning against a nearby shelf, Fang Cheng pretended to chat casually:

"How does a local organization like the True Thought Society end up cooperating with a university on a deep-sea exploration project?"

The owner switched hands with the fan and shook his head thoughtfully:

"I’m just a simple man, how could I understand the minds of those educated folks."

"But from what the old tea-drinking fellows speculate in private, there’s a good chance there’s a sunken ship treasure under our local waters. The university knows the technology, and the True Thought Society is familiar with Yong’an Island’s maritime conditions. A perfect match, it seems."

Seeing Fang Cheng listening intently, the owner grew more enthusiastic, puffed out his chest, and elaborated:

"Young man, you must be a tourist from out of town, right? Although Yong’an Island is just a small vacation spot now, a few hundred years ago, it was a renowned pearl harbor and trade transit port."

"Back then, you couldn’t count the number of official ships heading north and south, not to mention the countless foreign merchant ships. The waters around here are complex, and there were possibly eighty to a hundred shipwrecks sunk by storms under the sea."

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