Doomsday Mechanic: My Train Can Be Modified Infinitely

At 6:45 a.m., the thin fog on the outskirts of Berlin had not yet completely dissipated, like a gray-white veil shrouding the railway marshalling yard.

Wang Zhengyang's fingers paused for half a second on the truck keys—it was the morning of the fourteenth day after his rebirth, sixteen days before his psionic energy would fully erupt. He turned the key, the diesel engine hummed steadily, and the dial needles jumped up one by one. The passenger door opened, and Lin Luo'er, bringing with her the cool morning air, sat inside.

Today she wore a beige cashmere sweater with a slightly loose collar, revealing her delicate collarbones. Her long hair wasn't neatly tied up as usual, but loosely pulled back, with a few chestnut-colored strands framing her face and dangling softly in the morning light streaming through the windshield.

"I've checked the list three times." She turned the tablet to Wang Zhengyang, swiping her finger across the screen. "The food is calculated based on the basic consumption of fifty people for twenty days, plus a 20% redundancy to deal with unexpected overtime. Daily necessities are configured to the minimum. For the monitoring equipment, I compared the quotes from two suppliers and chose the most cost-effective option, keeping the total budget around 5,800 euros."

Wang Zhengyang's gaze swept over the list. Seventy bags of rice (ten kilograms each), fifty bags of flour (ten kilograms each), fifty barrels of cooking oil (five liters each), canned goods mainly consisting of high-protein fish and meat, and dried goods including long-shelf-life mushrooms, wood ear fungus, and seaweed. The surveillance system included twenty-four industrial-grade high-definition cameras (with night vision and waterproof capabilities), five kilometers of Cat 5e network cable, one eight-channel NVR recorder, two 4TB dedicated surveillance hard drives, and ten additional miniature environmental sensors added by Lin Luoer.

"That makes sense." He nodded in agreement and smoothly drove the truck out of the marshalling yard gate. "Let's go to the food wholesale market in the south of the city first. The prices at the Chinese shops there are more reasonable."

The truck tires churning over the gravel road made a rhythmic rustling sound. A morning breeze drifted in through the half-open window, carrying the coolness of early autumn and the faint fragrance of wild chrysanthemums by the roadside. Lin Luo'er turned her head to look at the desolate scenery rushing past the window—rusty railway tracks, abandoned traffic lights, and overgrown weeds. Her fingers unconsciously tapped lightly on her knee, a habitual gesture she made when deep in thought.

"Zhengyang," she suddenly spoke, her voice very soft, "I had a very strange dream last night."

"What kind of dream?" Wang Zhengyang's gaze remained fixed on the road ahead, but his attention was now entirely focused on her words.

"I dreamt of a green light, like a tide surging from the ground, slowly engulfing the entire city." Lin Luo'er's tone was somewhat ethereal, as if she was still recalling the dream. "Buildings became blurred in the green light, streets melted, but plants... plants grew wildly. I saw roadside trees grow to the height of a dozen stories in seconds, vines climbing all over the walls like snakes. Then the steel began to rust, cars, streetlights, bridges, all rusting, peeling, and collapsing at a visible speed."

She paused, her breathing slightly rapid: "Finally, I heard crying. The crying of many, many people, coming from all directions, but I couldn't see anyone. Then I woke up in a cold sweat."

Wang Zhengyang's fingers tightened slightly around the steering wheel. This was a typical psychic prophecy dream—the green light represented psychic radiation, the rampant growth of plants was a sign of an amplified life field, and the rusting of metal was the corrosive effect of psychic energy on non-living matter. In his previous life, a week before the psychic eruption, three percent of the world's sensitive individuals reported similar dreams, and most of them later awakened supernatural abilities.

Lin Luo'er's life ability was quite powerful in her previous life, and it seems that her talent awakened even earlier in this life.

"It was just a dream." He tried to keep his tone as calm as possible. "It's probably because of the stress at work during the day, and my brain is releasing information at night."

"I know." Lin Luo'er forced a smile, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "Logically, I know it's just an absurd dream. But the feeling... it was too real. For a whole hour after I woke up, I could still smell that strange scent of grass mixed with rust from the dream."

She turned her head and looked intently at Wang Zhengyang's profile: "Zhengyang, do you believe in intuition? That kind of premonition that has no reason, but is absolutely certain?"

"I believe you," Wang Zhengyang answered without hesitation. Rebirth was the strongest and most inexplicable intuition he had ever had in his life.

The truck entered Berlin's ring road. The morning rush hour hadn't yet begun, and traffic was sparse. Wang Zhengyang kept his speed within the speed limit, glancing at his rearview mirror—no vehicle was following him.

Twenty minutes later, the truck pulled into the parking lot of the Chengnan Food Wholesale Market. The place was already bustling with activity; porters pushed carts loaded with goods between shops, and shop owners called out their wares in German, Turkish, Arabic, and Chinese. The air was filled with the aromas of spices, seafood, and vegetables.

Wang Zhengyang chose a wholesale shop run by Chinese people deep inside the market. The shop wasn't large, but the goods were neatly stacked. The owner was a lean Fujianese man in his fifties. Seeing his compatriot enter, he immediately greeted him in heavily accented Mandarin: "What would you two like? I have rice, flour, and cooking oil here, at very reasonable prices!"

"Use this list." Wang Zhengyang handed over the tablet.

The shop owner adjusted his reading glasses and looked carefully: "Seventy bags of rice, fifty bags of flour... Oh, and so many canned goods too. Is this a construction site canteen or a Chinese restaurant?"

"Project team meal," Wang Zhengyang replied briefly. "Give me a fair price; we want to make long-term purchases."

"Long-term purchase? That's easy!" The shopkeeper took out a calculator from under the counter and his fingers flew across the keys. "Rice is twelve euros a bag, flour is ten euros, oil is eight euros a barrel... What brand of canned goods do you want? Spanish ones are cheaper, but the taste is so-so. German ones are a bit more expensive, but the quality is better."

"It has to be made in Germany," Lin Luo'er interjected. "How much longer until the expiration date?"

"These are all newly produced this year, with a shelf life of three years." The shop owner looked through the shelves. "Canned fish, canned meat, canned vegetables... Shall I give you a little of each? That way, your nutrition will be balanced."

Wang Zhengyang nodded in agreement. The shop owner, while calculating the bill, continued, "Total... two thousand eight hundred and forty euros. I'll also give you two boxes of pickled vegetables and two bottles of chili sauce. It's not easy being away from home; have some familiar flavors."

When I scanned the QR code to pay, the shop owner lowered his voice and said, "Young man, do you have all the necessary permits for your project? They've been cracking down lately. Last month, a Chinese-owned construction site canteen was fined for employing illegal workers. Those German police..."

"We have proper documentation." Wang Zhengyang put away his phone. "Thank you for the reminder."

"That's good, that's good." The shop owner helped load the goods onto the cart and sighed, "When we Chinese do business here, everything has to be better than what the Germans do, and the prices have to be cheaper. Even then, it's not guaranteed that anyone will buy it. My shop has been open for eight years, and I lost money for the first three years, but I just gritted my teeth and persevered."

Wang Zhengyang and Lin Luoer loaded the goods onto the truck. The goods only occupied less than a third of the space inside the truck, and it did look like a typical team purchase, unlikely to attract much attention.

Back in the car, Lin Luo'er fastened her seatbelt, paused for a few seconds, and then asked, "What you just said about proper registration... is that true?"

Wang Zhengyang started the engine, and the truck slowly drove out of the parking lot: "The project is officially registered at the Sino-German Technology Cooperation Center in Berlin, and all the documents are complete. But some technical details," he paused, choosing a more precise way of putting it, "some implementation-level arrangements need to be handled flexibly and cannot be handled entirely according to the conventional process."

This was the most genuine hint he could give. Lin Luo'er nodded thoughtfully and didn't ask any further questions. She began to organize the shopping receipts, marking the categories on them with a pen—a good habit, as resource management in the apocalypse required precision down to the gram.