Chapter 1318 - 584: Are You an Unwanted Little Beater Car? Speak Up!

Chapter 1318: Chapter 584: Are You an Unwanted Little Beater Car? Speak Up!

"...Has the industry really gotten this severe?"

After quite a long time, the man finally understood what Liu Men meant.

Is it really this bad, where the factor of deciding about one’s own child is whether they are biologically related?

Just how big is this pit?

"Brother, I’m not trying to scare you, and I’m not worried about your son taking away my job. Hard work, exhaustion, dirtiness—these are all obvious. Right from the first day in this industry, you should be mentally prepared. It’s all basic stuff, and I don’t have any complaints."

"The most crucial problem is that this rice bowl is unstable, getting increasingly hot to handle."

Lin Li suddenly chimed in: "What a pity, Brother Liu, if you were Bao Wei, you wouldn’t be afraid."

Liu Men: "?"

Who’s Bao Wei?

But Liu Men didn’t care, raising his head to look at the man and pointing at the stream of cars passing by outside the shop:

"Brother, take a look at the cars running on the streets now. Are they the same as ten years ago, five years ago? Cars like yours, which run on gasoline, are fine; experience can still count.

But look at those green plates; originally on forums they should be used as cannon fodder, but now they’re synonymous with high-end.

Their hearts have turned into battery packs, motors, electric control systems.

The dense wiring and computer boards inside, they’re not the same as the carburetors and distributors we mess with in gasoline cars."

Liu Men picked up the old cylinder wire he had just replaced and shook it:

"Like this, it’s a common issue, so I can almost predict with accuracy. But with new energy cars, if the power systems have issues, the dashboard gives you a code, the original manufacturers have special diagnostic computers, encrypted programs, and backend data streams—but we don’t have anything.

No joking around, if during the previous iteration I didn’t quickly learn and follow the trend, I’d be like some of the old masters, getting drowned by chaotic punches."

"What’s life-threatening is, the original manufacturers are now offering lifetime warranty, meaning car owners will choose first to return to the 4S shops for even small problems during the warranty period.

Free and worry-free, roadside shops like ours can’t even catch a whiff of the soup’s aroma. After waiting so long for cars to outgrow warranty, the technology might have iterated again, forcing us to learn anew. If we can’t learn, we’re done for, waiting to be eliminated."

He pointed at himself, then at Wei Shuyun and Lin Li, who were still "silenced":

"We old folks have to ponder daily on how to keep up with the times. You tell a fresh graduate to dive into this, isn’t it akin to pushing them onto an ever-narrowing single-plank bridge? Purely like joining the National Army in 1949, brother."

"Repaired,"

Liu Men finished, picked up a clean cloth to wipe his hands, shrugged at the still bewildered driver, and summed up:

"—Feels worse than civil engineering."

Driver: "!"

The driver’s expression transformed from initial confusion and curiosity to heavy apprehension when the thunderous "worse than civil engineering" struck, eventually turning into a sigh.

"The sound of thunder... a great realization."

He checked his car, confirmed it’s repaired, and drove away.

"Wei, Lin Li and I will continue sorting the goods. Call us if there’s a customer."

Lin Li: "Sure."

Wei Shuyun: Stare—

"Brother Liu... master... mas... ter..."

"Can I still quit the National Army now... I don’t want to follow a bald head to the island, master..."

"What Sister Li painted for me isn’t like this..."

Wei Shuyun at this moment is very resentful.

He feels as if he’d just exerted all his strength to pull out an ultra-thick, ultra-long, unbroken golden python-sized poop, and in the middle of the groove, some damn superpower suddenly activated a time-reverse ability but only reversed the body and not the mind.

Thus could only feel it slowly return to his body...

If you understand the kind of despair and numbness that comes when poop defies you to roll your eyes,

then you might also understand Wei Shuyun at this moment.

And Liu Men, looking at his apprentice’s sky-fallen expression, merely chuckled. The heaviness and melancholy shown to the driver disappeared in an instant, instead, he laughed with no care showing his not-so-white teeth, patted Wei Shuyun’s shoulder, speaking relaxedly:

"Wei, why are you panicking? Young people need some resilience. What I said earlier was meant for outsiders, speaking from the standpoint of dissuading them! Listen but don’t take it to heart."

Wei Shuyun: "Mas...ter... Do I look like an idiot to you?"

Liu Men: "You do."

Wei Shuyun: "..."

What else to say, master, this time you nailed it.

"Ha ha," Liu Men chuckled for a while, showing an expression of ’you’re too young,’ shaking his head:

"That was just to fool that dude, so he wouldn’t steal our rice bowl. Xiling is so small; can’t afford to have another expert join.

Fast technology iteration, isn’t it a great fortune? It means our industry is always a sunrise one; there’s always fresh stuff to learn.

Imagine if cars stayed the same for a hundred years, and you became a master after three years—it’d be so unchallenging, really seeing the end, waiting to be replaced by robots!

Now it’s exciting, every day brings new knowledge, keeping the brain youthful! The more you use it, the sharper it gets, working longer raises your IQ.

Others tightening screws in factories are doing repetitive tasks, while we’re tightening screws on the cutting edge of technology!"

Wei Shuyun: "?"

"Original manufacturer warranty taking business? Talking nonsense! It’s helping us screen customers, and what do we have left? Older cars out of warranty, those with years under their belts, and smart owners who pursue cost-effectiveness and don’t want to be ripped off at 4S shops."