A Lively Scene with Connections

After getting a rare good night's sleep, Feng Xue followed the outer wall of the Garbage Dump to the East District. Half an hour had already passed, and the corpse he was supposed to handle had long since vanished. It made him wonder whether he needed to buy a bicycle.

Mm, that was right. Although this was a slum, bicycles were actually sold here. The models were just a bit old, with no gears or suspension—those postman bicycles that had been popular in the fifties and sixties.

And this thing cost 2,000 Ta.

In other words, it felt like exchanging twenty days of lifespan for a bicycle.

But that was not how Feng Xue understood the issue. After all, Infinite City residents did not need to eat or drink, nor did they need to use the toilet or wash up. Their only fixed daily expense was 100 Ta, covering the equivalent of electricity, water, internet, gas, clothing, food, housing, transportation, and so on back on Earth. As a result, most things that required Tower Coins could be classified as luxuries, creating an extreme imbalance between income levels and Consumption Level.

With no corpse around, Feng Xue could not be bothered to linger. Though the wasted trip annoyed him, Happy Lane in the East District was clearly not somewhere he could afford.

Mm, Happy Lane was naturally that sort of place. But judging from the price lists displayed outside the storefronts, even the most basic services started at two or three thousand Ta. For a young man like Feng Xue, who had only just solved his survival problem, he was not yet in a position to think about that sort of thing.

However, just as he was considering finding a grain shop and turning his 900 Ta wages into life-sustaining [Shi], he heard a string of urgent bells coming from afar—the kind of bell mounted on the handlebars of old-fashioned bicycles.

There was still some time before dusk. The sky remained bright, and pedestrians could occasionally be seen on the street. But as the ringing drew nearer, Feng Xue Noticed that quite a few of the people around him had voluntarily moved to the roadside.

Seeing those who had not reacted immediately begin to follow suit, Feng Xue promptly stepped to the side as well and turned his gaze toward the source of the bells.

Soon, dozens of men in standard uniforms rode their bicycles through the intersection in a rush, then disappeared around the corner to the south.

Only after the bells gradually faded did the pedestrians by the roadside resume moving as though nothing had happened. Now and then, though, a complaint could be heard.

"What was that? A biker gang?" Feng Xue muttered, though he did not truly think so, because he recognized the uniforms those people wore—

They were the uniforms representing the Landfill Area Manager's faction.

As an organization managing the Garbage Dump and the road leading to the so-called Residential Area, having a group of people racing bicycles around was simply too absurd. Instinctively, Feng Xue felt that something major had happened.

After thinking for several minutes, Feng Xue immediately changed direction and headed south.

He certainly could not catch up with those bicycles now, but his simple reasoning told him that if there was a big commotion, corpses might appear. And if there were corpses, his work badge would notify him.

After walking for five or six minutes, Feng Xue's work badge really did vibrate. The message was as concise as ever—

"A corpse has appeared at Kangxin Clinic in the South District. Please proceed there immediately."

"Kangxin Clinic?" Feng Xue looked at the red dot on the map and immediately quickened his pace. It might have been a medical accident or someone dying from severe injuries, but with his current strength, he was going there to watch the excitement anyway. If he followed the corpse, then even in the worst-case scenario, he could earn some money collecting it.

With that thought in mind, Feng Xue, who was already close to the South District, quickly arrived at the location of the corpse. But unlike what he had Imagined, the entire clinic had been surrounded by uniformed gang members. A person dressed like a doctor lay sprawled on the ground, and Feng Xue could tell at a glance that the man was already Died.

It was not because he had fully integrated the knowledge granted by his two Corpse Collector tags. Rather, it was because his Golden Finger could already see the information on that corpse—

Name: Corpse (Man)

Elements: [Human], [Male], [Death], [Doctor], [Treatment], [Suturing], [Rescue], [Cutting], [Puncture], [Blood Loss]...

More than I Imagined... Is it because he had already Taken Office? Looking at the doctor's corpse, which possessed more Elements than the previous corpses, Feng Xue silently thought to himself. But he had no intention of approaching. The wary looks on the gang members' faces made it obvious that people could not casually get close. Fortunately, there seemed to be quite a few onlookers. From their fragmented conversations, Feng Xue vaguely caught words like [door] and [Outsider].

But the people speaking seemed to have many reservations. They usually offered only one or two incomplete sentences, making it difficult for Feng Xue to obtain any concrete information.

He gazed with the crowd at the clinic in the distance. Before long, a woman with golden curls who looked to be in her thirties was dragged out by several gang members.

"Who are you people? Where exactly is this? Don't hurt me! I can give you however much money you want! My family has plenty of money!"

The woman being dragged kept letting out panicked cries, but Feng Xue Noticed one issue: this woman was far too normal.

She wore a complete office outfit, light makeup, and clutched a handbag of an unrecognizable brand. In every respect, she looked like a standard career woman. From her Words, he could also tell that she did not seem to be a resident here. Instead, she seemed more like someone who had just transmigrated here.

But According To what Old Li had said before, the residents of this world were all "garbage" unwanted by other worlds, and thus appeared in the Garbage Dump on Garbage Day. Yet there were still six days until Garbage Day, making Feng Xue doubt Old Li's explanation.

"No, maybe I was thinking about it the wrong way... Besides garbage, perhaps this world also has humans who aren't garbage."

Thinking of the term "Outsider" he had heard earlier, Feng Xue immediately used his Tag Ability to look at the woman. But as expected, he could not see anything. As for his Golden Finger... it could not be used on living things.

"No tags..." Feng Xue narrowed his eyes. Though he had seen nothing, that was precisely the biggest point of suspicion.

Ever since transmigrating here, the impression the gang members had given him was that they acted decisively and without mercy. If they said they would kill your whole family, they killed your whole family. Whether it was desperate slum dwellers storming a warehouse or doctors with official professions, they killed them whenever they pleased. Only those who broke rules inside the Garbage Dump were hung on execution racks as warnings to others.

But now, a woman without tags was being treated so "kindly" by them. That was clearly unreasonable.

Either this woman had concealed some rare tag, or she was the kind of existence that simply could not produce tags.

Of course, it was also possible that the woman had violated some taboo and was meant to be hung on an execution rack.

In theory, the Elements his Golden Finger saw on corpses and False Things all had a large amount of Garbled Code after them. But writing that out every time would inevitably pad the word count and look ugly, so from now on, he would just use ellipses. Everyone just needed to know there was Garbled Code.