Chapter 199 - 88: Expensive Ergonomic Chair
The mysterious reward on May 11th was quite pricey, but to Chen Zhou, it might not be as useful as that box of lighters.
It was an ergonomic chair packed in a huge cardboard box.
The labels on the box were a string of unfamiliar English letters, translated as "Future Technology."
Differing from any well-known gaming chair brand Chen Zhou remembered, the English letters were followed by a simple Möbius strip-like logo, suggesting it was a niche luxury brand.
Upon opening the box, several parts could be seen stuffed into foam with pre-cut grooves, each part wrapped in a layer of shockproof foam cotton to prevent accidental scratches or dents.
The entire ergonomic chair consisted of several components like a headrest, backrest, lumbar support, cushion, armrest, and buffer footrest, and a gas rod.
It had all the components and features an ergonomic chair on the market should have and also covered some rare features that ordinary chairs seldom possess.
The angles of the headrest, armrests, lumbar support, chair back, footrest, and cushion could be freely adjusted, and it was equipped with various clasps, even having some automatic reset functions—an extremely intricate design.
The chair used a large amount of lightweight metal material, with a flawless, smooth finish. According to Chen Zhou's observation, it might be hollow titanium alloy.
Supported by the silver-gray metal body, the chair also used a bit of wood, natural rubber, plastic, fabric, and genuine leather.
The up-and-down adjustment of the cushion used a two-section pneumatic rod, providing excellent stability and tensile strength, with a larger stroke and smaller compression height.
The chair legs were star-shaped feet, and the workmanship of the casters was very exquisite. Aside from the wheel diameter being too short, they had all the necessary hub, bearings, and anti-slip locking designs, much like miniature car tires.
After taking out each part for inspection, Chen Zhou secretly lamented the waste.
Why use titanium alloy for an ergonomic chair? Even if the target user was a five-hundred-pound heavyweight, aluminum alloy would be ample. Plus, titanium alloy has an extremely low processing efficiency, and the time required to make such a titanium alloy chair could probably produce dozens of aluminum alloy chairs.
If these costly metal materials weren't made into chair legs, cushion supports, and armrest supports,
but instead were made into hand saws, planes, various chisels of different sizes, or even a few boxes of screws, they would have provided much more help for him.
"It's really like a dog riding Lu Bu, such good materials wasted in vain."
While wrapping the taken-out parts in shockproof foam cotton, Chen Zhou sighed.
Based on his understanding of luxury brands, this ergonomic chair might be the most expensive reward received so far.
The wood, fabric, and genuine leather used on it were not of ordinary quality. When combined with the craftsmanship and brand premium, the total price of the chair might have already reached a hundred thousand or even several hundred thousand.
For ordinary people, this would undoubtedly be an aesthetically pleasing chair with no cost-performance ratio whatsoever.
But for some of the upper-echelon, it was a symbol of status and position—perhaps also an intelligence tax.
After all, it neither had gemstones embedded, nor used real gold and silver.
Like some branded bags and cosmetics, the so-called high price has already been multiplied dozens or hundreds of times based on the value of raw materials, seeking not practicality, but mutual recognition within the elite social circles, or to satisfy some people's strange vanity.
...
After witnessing the true form of the reward, Chen Zhou moved the big cardboard box out, and as usual, started tidying up the wood and stone wall on the beach.
Then he stacked the cut wood and stone at the edge of the coastal forest for future use.
Cutting trees, stacking new walls, a day's time quietly passed by.
Before sunset, he cut open the box, took apart the person-high corrugated cardboard, and moved it to the camp. Then he fetched a carrying pole and wooden bucket, preparing to take the chair parts out of the foam and carry them back up the mountain.
The entire box was simply too massive, inconvenient for transport.
The outer packing cardboard easily got worn by stones or cut by branches during movement.
Previously, the outer packing boxes that came with rewards were nowhere near as gigantic as this one, nor as clean and sturdy as the cardboard this time.
Such a good find was rare. Chen Zhou wanted to keep it as a drawing board and didn't want the box to suffer unnecessary damage.
It was the dry season, with no wind or rain, and time was plentiful. So he chose this way, burdening his legs and making several more trips.
As for the foam that packed the chair parts, they were all pressed down by stones and left in the forest.
Foam isn't afraid of water, doesn't attract animals, nor has much practical value, so there's nothing to worry about placing it in the deserted island forest.
...
In the evening, after dinner, Chen Zhou went to the small wooden cabin and brought back the gains from setting the traps in the daytime after exercising the rabbits.
This time he caught a total of five wild rabbits, one of which still had an unhealed scar on its leg. That was from days ago when he shot it with a slingshot. It didn't hit the vital point, and this cunning rabbit got away.
Unexpectedly, it couldn't escape forever, and the rabbit eventually ended up in his hands.
During the dry season, animals decay quickly. In just over a day, the bodies of the five rabbits started emitting a foul stench.
This kind of rabbit meat, even after cooking, would have a putrid smell, making it hard to swallow.
Chen Zhou mostly skinned them, gutted them, chopped them into small pieces, minced them into meat sausages to feed cats and dogs, or cooked them directly for Lai Fu and the others to eat.