Chapter 121 Exploiting Child Laborer Xiao Bao
For a whole week, Zuo Shan and the others did not go out to collect anything.
She has had a good harvest recently and feels that the whole family should work together to properly process the harvested ingredients.
The mutated poisonous potatoes were still piled up in the corner, so she handed over the tasks of peeling, slicing, and soaking them to Pandora.
The mutant piglets are handled by Mao Li, who is responsible for deboning, cutting, mincing, and stuffing sausages; while she is responsible for cleaning the pig offal, rendering lard, and making the meat sauce.
The best piece of pork tenderloin should be reserved for stir-frying, but you have to wait until the lard is rendered. Without lard, there's no stir-frying.
Everyone had a clear division of labor, but seeing so many ingredients, everyone was very enthusiastic when they got busy.
Xiao Bao was overjoyed to see so much scrap metal piled up in the yard. Everyone else was busy preparing food, but Xiao Bao had nothing to do and was quite bored.
Now it's all good, it can finally show off its skills (and have some fun).
"Xiao Bao, first see if these two beds can be repaired?" Pan Duole reminded him while busy slicing poisonous potato chips.
Xiao Bao had originally gone for the pile of scrap metal, but when he heard her say that, he moved closer to the broken bed.
It unleashed its power at one of the bed legs, instantly melting it into liquid. The already unstable, broken bed collapsed completely with a loud crash.
Xiao Bao was bewildered. It had intended to remove the scratches and rust stains from the bed legs, so how did it end up ruining everything?
Seeing this, Mao Li quickly said, "Don't rush. Use the shape of the other leg to reshape this liquid metal into a leg. Take your time, you can definitely do it!"
Xiao Bao listened to his advice and patiently used his superpower to wrap the clump of liquid metal, then used his slightly clumsy little paws to pinch and squeeze it from a distance.
After a lot of effort, I finally managed to sculpt a bed leg, but I changed it from a cylinder to a cuboid.
Seeing its mournful face, Zuo Shan quickly praised, "Not bad, not bad. I think rectangular legs are sturdier and better looking."
Upon hearing this, Xiao Bao immediately perked up and melted the other two legs one by one, shaping them into two identical cuboids.
When it was bought, it was already missing a leg. Xiao Bao was not satisfied with the three legs, so he had a bright idea. He sucked some rusty parts from the pile of rusty scrap metal and sculpted a cuboid.
Looking at the four shiny new bed legs, Xiao Bao was so happy he rolled around on the floor.
Pan Duole also praised with a smile: "Xiao Bao is the best! I think we won't need to make any more furniture in the future, we can just use scrap metal to make brand new furniture!"
After a relatively successful first attempt, Xiaobao then liquefied the entire bed frame and reshaped it.
Unfortunately, his technique is still quite raw, and he only manages to create straight lines. The original curves and wrought iron carvings cannot be replicated, but this is still enough to make everyone happy.
The two broken beds cost less than a hundred yuan in total; if you were to buy new ones in a supermarket, they would cost at least a thousand yuan.
Saving money is the same as making money, and Pan Duole was so happy that he had a smile on his face all day, completely forgetting the pain of shopping at the supermarket.
The five metal basins that I originally bought for 60 yuan on sale are no longer worth it. My son just made five new basins, the really thick kind, with excellent quality.
Pandora weighed the five square basins; they weighed 2.5 kilograms. After deducting 0.5 kilograms for rust damage, the total cost was 10.5 yuan.
"Ahhh! What a loss! Sister, we'll never buy metal products from the supermarket again. We'll have Xiaobao make them all. They're cheaper and of better quality!" Pan Duole said regretfully.
The whole family was praising Xiaobao, but it was still not satisfied. It wanted to use metal carvings, like the wrought iron carvings on that broken bed, because it would be more beautiful with flowers.
These square-shaped things don't look beautiful.
So, the whole family was busy making food, while Xiao Bao was busy practicing carving with that pile of scrap metal.
When I was kneading the parts for the soy milk maker last time, it was in a strange state. Looking at the three-dimensional drawing that Mao Li gave it, I somehow managed to knead it exactly like the drawing.
But this time, it couldn't even create a flat wrought iron carving, which made it very angry.
An angry Xiao Bao inhaled half of the scrap metal in one go, and everyone saw ochre-red and gray-black powder falling down, while the scrap metal was visibly decreasing.
When Xiao Bao finally got tired of sucking, it felt as if it had entered that wonderful state again. It tried to change the shape of the bed frame it had just made and made wrought iron carvings on the headboard. And it was done in no time!
At this point, Xiao Bao finally understood that if he wanted to create whatever he wanted at will, he had to be full!
This "being full" doesn't mean eating enough vegetables and meat, but rather absorbing enough metal to reach this ideal state.
Looking at the remaining half of the scrap metal in the yard, it decided to wait until it wanted to make some precision parts before sucking it up. This was exactly the kind of "cheating tool" that Sister Fan had mentioned!
Actually, when Xiaobao was making soymilk maker parts last time, it was because it absorbed too many gold-devouring ants. The high-quality metal contained a lot of energy, which it had not been able to fully digest. Its body was full of metallic energy, so it could control metal at will.
However, it has hardly absorbed any metal recently, so its metal-type ability is somewhat lacking. It relies entirely on manually shaping metal, but its little claws are not that dexterous, so it can only shape straight lines.
Actually, it's because Zuo Shan lacks experience in feeding metal-type mutant beasts and doesn't regularly supplement its metal supply; otherwise, Xiao Bao wouldn't have experienced this feeling of "being powerless."
Taking advantage of the fact that metal sculpting is currently in his hands, Xiao Bao sculpted a folding double-layer steamer for the family. This was suggested by Zuo Shan, and Mao Li found the structural diagram in the database.
After successfully sculpting the first cooking utensil, Zuo Shan asked it to help sculpt a wok, a slotted spoon, and square and round spatulas.
Pandora added that he requested metal chopsticks, spoons, plates, and bowls.
Mao Li also added several tools for gathering, such as hoes, shovels, and hooks.
Finally, Zuo Shan remembered that tapioca flour could be used to make vermicelli, so she wanted a vermicelli machine, but she could only give a general idea: such as the feed inlet, extrusion device, and cutting device.
Based on her description, Mao Li searched through the database and unexpectedly found a schematic diagram of an old manual vermicelli machine.
After his improvements, he finally broke down the construction diagram into parts and drew a three-dimensional model so that Xiaobao could sculpt the parts according to the model.
After finishing shaping the final base of the vermicelli machine, Xiao Bao was completely exhausted. He climbed onto his newly made wrought iron carved bed and immediately started snoring.
Zuo Shan felt a pang of heartache and guilt, saying, "He's still just a cub! Aren't we exploiting child labor?"
Then she glanced somewhat guiltily at Pandora, who was meticulously slicing cassava chips. It seemed that he was also a child laborer, not even twelve years old yet.
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