Asphodel, Fortia City, Upper Hive,
District Nine, Residential Sector Eighteen, Thirty-Third Street,
Zhou Yun stood beside the broad street, looking at the exquisite metal street sign.
According to Lena, District Nine was an old district in Fortia City's Upper Hive, with a history stretching back more than ten thousand years.
This district also marked the boundary between the Upper Hive and Lower Hive. The two of them had entered the Upper Hive through the massive gates at the district entrance.
Even though it was an ancient district and the one closest to the Lower Hive, its streets were still broad and its buildings neat.
The surrounding air still carried the scent of chemical purifiers, but compared to the Lower Hive, it could still be called fresh.
The lights were bright enough to replace the sun. Straight arched bridges, walkways, and corridors connected the buildings, studded with brilliant lights that looked like a field of twinkling stars at a glance.
Beneath these buildings stood rows of shops and private workshops, while orderly roadside stalls sold the products of those workshops.
After living among the cramped alleys of the Lower Hive for so long, Zhou Yun felt a little dizzy when he suddenly arrived in the Upper Hive.
It even reminded him somewhat of the city where he had lived in his previous life.
Zhou Yun followed Thirty-Third Street eastward, looking over the goods sold along the way.
Asphodel's major factories mainly produced military goods, while everything sold on these streets came from private workshops.
These private workshops purchased raw materials from merchant ships arriving from other worlds, processed them into goods, and sold them by the roadside.
The prices of these goods were enough to make any Lower Hive resident go pale and tremble.
But Zhou Yun had money.
Big Dummy Lena—no, Lena—had bought two Upper Hive passes from him.
At four times the price, and one of them had belonged to Zhou Yun.
Yet when Zhou Yun received the passes from the PDF guards watching the Upper and Lower Hive entrance,
Lena's eyes had still widened as she repeatedly exclaimed in amazement.
On one hand, she was amazed that Zhou Yun knew such an important figure that even the PDF would obey; on the other, she was amazed at how worthwhile the money had been.
It made Zhou Yun's conscience feel a little uneasy.
But the moment he accepted that enormous sum from Lena, his conscience immediately settled down.
After arriving in the Upper Hive, Lena did not take action.
Instead, she almost expertly found a roadside stall and sat down, seemingly waiting for someone.
While Lena waited, Zhou Yun wandered around the nearby streets.
Although he had quite a bit of money in his pocket, it was ultimately just local Asphodel currency. It would not be very useful once he left Asphodel.
The Imperium was too vast. Almost every planet had its own currency system, or formed a shared monetary alliance with several nearby star systems.
The Asphodel system's currency was anchored to the bloodstones in the Governor's warehouses. Every Asphodel coin could be exchanged for a certain quantity of bloodstones.
They were blood-red gemstones commonly produced on Baal, resembling the Blood of Sanguinius. Even the Blood Angels often used them as ornaments.
Asphodel's currency was therefore called Blood Coins.
Zhou Yun exchanged seventy percent of his money for bloodstones, including the money from the automatic infantry rifles and the two passes.
He then stuffed the bloodstones into the Fourth-Dimensional Pocket and sold them, earning a total of six hundred and sixty thousand.
Zhou Yun's savings had also reached 1.4 million.
He kept the remaining thirty percent in Blood Coins for daily expenses.
Zhou Yun stopped at a roadside stall.
It was a food stall.
Asphodel's local sun had radioactive toxicity, making it almost impossible to grow normal crops.
Its food supply came almost entirely from nearby agricultural worlds, from endless seas of farmland wrapped in thick yellow-green fertilizer atmospheres.
Nearly all the food sold at this stall was processed from melon crops.
There were unknown melons split into chunks, their yellow flesh glistening with oil like fat,
as well as huge roasted melon seeds, each as large as a palm.
Zhou Yun could roughly imagine how enormous these melons must have been.
They were most likely giant high-yield crops grown on agricultural worlds.
"Would you like some roasted melon seeds? Or baked melon flesh?" asked the Upper Hive woman tending the stall with a bright smile.
Zhou Yun glanced at her and found that she was clearly in much better spirits than the residents of the Lower Hive.
He took several Blood Coins from his pocket and bought a chunk of oily yellow melon flesh and a bag of roasted melon seeds from the woman's stall.
Carrying the bag of roasted melon seeds, Zhou Yun returned to the stall where Big Dummy Lena—no, Lena—was sitting and took a seat across from her.
"Want some?" Zhou Yun took a palm-sized melon seed from the bag, waved it at Lena, and asked.
He pushed the bag toward Lena, then cracked open the massive seed with his teeth.
The huge melon seeds were satisfying to eat, releasing the fragrance of plant oil in Zhou Yun's mouth.
Lena looked in surprise at the melon seeds Zhou Yun had handed her.
These melon seeds were enormous; there were only nine in a bag.
"I ate this kind of melon seed when I was little. If I remember correctly, it wasn't cheap for the Lower Hive."
Lena picked up a melon seed and hesitantly said,
"Sorry for making you spend so much."
It's fine. I scammed all this money from you anyway.
Zhou Yun chewed on a melon seed without saying it aloud.
He swallowed the seed and nodded at Lena. "Just eat."
"Back in my hometown, treating friends like you to melon seeds is a tradition."
At that, Lena even gave Zhou Yun a grateful look.
But before she could put the melon seed into her mouth, she suddenly remembered something.
"Wait, didn't you say last time—"
"—that the tradition in your hometown is to tease me for being an idiot, and buy melon seeds for idiots?"
Big Dummy Lena—no, Lena—immediately widened her eyes.
"Cough, cough." Zhou Yun coughed twice and calmly changed the subject. "What are we waiting here for?"
"Oh, we're waiting here for that actuary and mathematician."
Lena pried open the melon seed and nibbled at it in small bites as she spoke.
She was fooled that easily. Even easier to deal with than an Ogryn.
Zhou Yun glanced at Lena.
He found that Lena's intelligence was generally normal—perhaps even somewhat exceptional.
He had seen her handle gang affairs and calculate accounts with remarkable efficiency.
That at least proved that Lena was not an idiot in the physiological sense. In fact, she did not look like one either.
But... but when it came to certain matters, she seemed to possess a bizarre sort of slowness and stupidity.
This seemed more like a psychological issue than a physiological one.
Psykers were always easily influenced by the Warp and prone to falling into certain mental illnesses.
Such as mania, irritability, depression, autism, or obsessive inner conflict.
Perhaps Lena had already been deeply affected by the Warp.
But her symptom was... occasionally turning into a complete idiot?
Zhou Yun even suspected that these occasional bouts of idiocy were Lena's mind instinctively protecting itself, cleverly preventing her from falling into true madness.
After all, Ogryns were usually more resistant to Chaos corruption than other humans.
A mess of random thoughts ran through Zhou Yun's mind.
"Look, she's here—the actuary and mathematician I told you about—"
Zhou Yun looked in the direction Lena was pointing.
Before you continue