It was sheer nonsense!

Bill's expression changed constantly. He looked at me and then at the expert report, his eyes a mixture of doubt and shock.

Melody was completely stunned. She looked at me, and the last trace of contempt in her eyes vanished completely, replaced by an unconcealable shock and intense curiosity.

Bill remained grim as he broke the silence. "Talk is cheap. You said you can fix it, so do it. I don't care if you figured it out by hearing or touching. All I want is the result."

"Okay," I replied without any other comments, took off my coat, and wore only an old grey vest.

I took out several strangely-shaped tools from the brand-new Hoffman toolbox. Without a single blueprint or a maintenance manual, I began to disassemble the most crucial transmission component.

Every movement I made had a strange rhythm—loosening which screw, with what force, removing which component, and in what order.

Everything seemed to have been practiced countless times and had become integrated into my muscle memory.

My calloused and scarred hands were now moving nimbly, as if they were dancing.

The onlookers, initially just watching with amusement, pointed and whispered.

"Look at him pretending; it'll be funny when he takes it apart and can't put it back together."

"Exactly, this is Gorman-made. He messed with it without blueprints. He's asking for trouble."

However, the laughter gradually subsided. Everyone fell silent, their gazes shifting from mockery to silence, astonishment, and finally to a near-awe. My actions were utterly inconceivable to these experts.

Melody pulled out a thick, original Gorman repair manual from somewhere. She flipped through the pages rapidly, comparing them to my movements. Her mouth opened wider and wider, her eyes wide with disbelief.

"Gosh... Your operations..." she murmured, her voice trembling. "The manual's... emergency calibration method under extreme conditions... Even... Even our Gorman teachers said that this is only an optimal solution in theory; no one could do it in reality!"

This calibration method demanded an extreme level of skill, experience, and judgment from the operator; even the slightest mistake could render the entire core module unusable.

Without looking up, I focused on measuring the clearance of a ball screw using a special caliper.

I replied casually. "Theory? Twenty years ago in Honover, this is how the veteran DMG technicians taught me, step by step."

I paused as I wiped the sweat from my brow and looked up at Melody's shocked face before calmly revealing my identity. "20 years ago, at DMG headquarters in Honover, Gorman, I was among the first batch of trainees they invited from our country."

My thoughts were instantly transported back to that spirited era.

In my early 20s, I stood before the world's most advanced machine tool, dressed in brand-new blue overalls, my eyes gleaming with a thirst for knowledge.

Beside me were meticulous and rigid Gorman engineers and top technicians from all over the world.

With an unyielding spirit and extraordinary talent, I mastered all the technical points in the shortest time and could even discuss improvement plans with the Gorman masters.

Together, we drank beer, went through drawings, and stayed up all night. We gave each machine we debugged a name.

Back in the present moment, the blond and blue-eyed senior engineer named Klaus patted my shoulder in broken English and said, "Shaun! You're a genius! A true mechanical genius!"

I looked at the dusty machine in front of me, my eyes turning tender. "Back then, its model was still called DMC-60H. We all called it Ingrid. It was like an arrogant and precise Gorman girl. You must treat it with the gentlest and most understanding way, and it will show you its most perfect side. I just... met an old friend I hadn't seen for many years."

Melody was completely speechless. She looked at me, this middle-aged man with a slightly hunched back wearing an old vest, covered in grease stains.

She could not connect the person before her with the one she remembered—a former state-owned enterprise employee reduced to a lowly warehouse manager in a private company.

This stark difference left her mind blank.

"Who... Who are you?" she asked politely, her voice trembling slightly.

I smiled but did not answer. I turned and continued my work. I used a special and almost subtle technique to tap the locking pin of the calibration module. Each tap was executed with terrifying precision. The only sound in the workshop was the crisp, rhythmic tap.

This sound was like a series of heavy hammer blows, striking everyone's hearts. It also shattered the deep-seated arrogance within them that judged a person solely by their education and position.

Three hours later, the mechanical calibration was complete. I closed the last outer casing and tightened the last screw.

The whole process was seamless. After the hundreds of disassembled parts were put back together, there was not a single one left over or missing.

"It's done." I straightened up and let out a long breath.

The entire workshop fell silent. Everyone held their breath, waiting to witness a miracle.

Bill's fists were clenched tightly without him even realizing it, his palms sweaty and his face a mixture of anticipation, tension, and disbelief.

Melody looked at me, her eyes filled with undisguised admiration. She walked to the control panel, took a deep breath, and pressed the green start button with a slightly trembling hand.

Buzz... A steady, pleasant hum of electricity rang, and the machine tool's LCD screen lit up instantly. The various indicator lights flickered in sequence, indicating that the self-test program had begun.

"It's moving! It lit up!" A worker shouted excitedly.

Bill's face instantly showed an ecstatic smile.

It worked!

It really worked!

The piece of metal, condemned to failure by eight experts, had been resurrected by the unassuming warehouse manager!

However, this joy lasted less than ten seconds.

Beep... Beep... Beep...

An urgent, piercing alarm abruptly shattered the workshop's tranquility.

A barrage of red Gorman error codes instantly appeared on the LCD screen; a bold warning message at the top pierced everyone's hopes like a sharp sword.

[SYSTEM OVERLOAD! SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY!]

The alarm was so shrill that it was going to puncture eardrums.

The indicator lights that had just illuminated went out, and the code on the screen scrolled wildly before finally settling on blood red.

The lively atmosphere that had just begun to rise in the workshop was instantly doused with ice water, freezing solid.

Bill's smile froze, becoming more like a grimace.

How could this be? It was clearly fixed, so why did it suddenly set off the alarm?

Just then, hurried footsteps came from the workshop door. "Mr. Lamar! Mr. Lamar! I've brought Mr. Henry Lewis for you!"

Bill's assistant, John, strode in with a middle-aged man in a sharp suit.

It was none other than Henry, the expert Bill had regarded as an honored guest and had overseen the repairs.

The moment Henry entered, he saw me, the warehouse manager, standing beside the machine, and his expression immediately darkened.

"You're fooling around!" he roared, his voice filled with scholarly arrogance and an unyielding anger that did not allow anyone to violate his authority.

"Mr. Lamar, didn't I tell you? This equipment is incredibly delicate. Leaving it to an untrained person could cause devastating consequences! How could you let a handyman touch my 'patient'?"

He strode to the control panel, glanced at the blood-red error code on the screen, and his face immediately showed an agonized expression.

He slapped his thigh and pointed at the screen before saying to Bill, "We're doomed! We're completely doomed! Mr. Lamar, the motherboard is completely burned out! It was originally just a problem with the driver chip; we still had a sliver of hope for repair. After he messed around with it, the high-voltage current directly damaged the main control CPU! This machine is now just a pile of scrap metal! It has absolutely no value for repair!"

Every word Henry spoke struck Bill's heart like a hammer blow.

Bill's face instantly went from ghastly pale to ashen, then as black as the bottom of a pot. He whirled around, his eyes fixed on me. His gaze was icy cold, as if he wanted to devour me alive.

"Shaun... Zigger..." His voice seemed to come from hell, filled with the fury of being deceived and betrayed.

The life-or-death contract I had signed and the massive four million dollars in compensation crashed down on me like an invisible mountain.

In the workshop, gloating, sympathetic, and contemptuous glances once again wove together into an impenetrable net, trapping me firmly in the center.

I met Bill's murderous gaze and Henry's contemptuous and smug gaze.

I spoke, word by word. "He's wrong. This isn't an overload. It's a protection protocol. Someone deliberately modified the safety parameter thresholds in the system."

As soon as I finished speaking, Henry burst into laughter, furious. He pointed at me and said to everyone, "Absurd! Absolutely absurd! Listen, a warehouse manager who can't even read a circuit diagram is discussing safety parameters with me? It's utterly absurd!"