When Feng Xue came out of the Locker Room, he had changed into canvas clothes. This outfit, which had cost one hundred Tower credits plus a Temporary Locker, wasn't comfortable to wear, but it was durable and hard to get dirty, making it perfect for scavenging.
Wearing a pair of work gloves, Feng Xue returned to the square and saw Old Li standing in front of someone dressed in a bizarre outfit, explaining something to them.
Seeing this, he didn't approach. Instead, he quietly turned his gaze toward the huge clock by the entrance to the Garbage Dump.
Six fifty-six.
The Garbage Dump wouldn't officially open for another two hours.
"Did I get here too early?" Feng Xue yawned widely. He felt a bit like one of those grindset students who showed up at school at five thirty for a seven-thirty morning study session—or maybe they'd come to finish their homework. But seeing the crowd around him grow larger and larger, he suddenly felt that maybe this was the norm.
After all, the amount of garbage that appeared in the dump was limited. The entire Landfill Area had a population of hundreds of thousands, and less than a tenth of them had jobs. Everyone else depended on the dump to survive. Arriving a little earlier meant getting closer to the front when they went in, and maybe scavenging a little more. Naturally, that would improve their chances of staying alive.
According to Old Li, tens of thousands of transmigrators came to this dump every Garbage Day. Feng Xue estimated that around two thousand people had died this week. Even counting the few days before he'd found a job, the death toll over those ten days couldn't have exceeded four thousand. In other words, for the Landfill Area to maintain a stable population of hundreds of thousands, at least six or seven thousand people had to die every Garbage Day.
Just as Feng Xue was wondering whether he should find somewhere to sit for a while, a piercing buzz suddenly came from overhead. His gaze instinctively shot toward the sky, and his eyes widened—
The sky, which since his transmigration had seemed to have no weather changes, was now covered in dark clouds. Yet just a minute ago, it had been as clear and blue as a tranquil lake.
In the thick clouds, which looked as if they might drag the sky back into night, flashes of blue and red lightning interwove. Something that might—or might not—be called a depression was forming at the clouds' center.
The clouds seemed to be changing from a mass of cotton candy into a doughnut. Amid the flashes of two-colored lightning, the depression slowly became a hole. In its darkness, an unseen storm seemed to be brewing.
Then, an enormous amount of—no, an immeasurable amount of—matter fell from the clouds.
Among it were people, plants and trees, great clumps of soil, sand and stone, and man-made objects like refrigerators and televisions. Every so often, even a truck came plummeting down. But none of that was the most outrageous part. Feng Xue even saw half of an apartment building, probably five or six stories tall, fall along with everything else.
In theory, objects falling from thousands or even tens of thousands of meters up should have had a tremendous impact when they hit the ground. But to his surprise, even after more than ten minutes, when the clouds had completely dispersed, no one outside the Garbage Dump had felt the slightest tremor.
"Quite a spectacle, isn't it?" Old Li's voice suddenly rang out. But Feng Xue had no time to dwell on it. He just stared at the clear sky, now cloudless for miles, and murmured,
"Did I fall like that, too?"
"Yeah. You could say everyone did." Old Li pulled a cigarette from somewhere, but didn't light it. He only held it between his lips and said in a slightly world-weary tone, "In Infinite City, human lives are worth nothing. No matter how many people die, they'll be replaced again before long. After all, this place is the dump for countless worlds, and to those countless worlds, humans really are just like garbage."
"Tsk..." Feng Xue clicked his tongue. Although he'd already learned that the population of this world was replenished, seeing it with his own eyes still left him feeling that it was all terribly unreal.
Just then, the Garbage Dump's gate suddenly opened. The people gathered around it immediately grew restless, but apart from a few hotheads, no one charged the gate. Those few who tried were knocked to the ground before they even reached it.
Some of the gang members in identical uniforms bound the rule-breakers to the execution platform outside the dump. The rest advanced in orderly ranks, slowly disappearing into the Garbage Dump.
"Bang!" With a dull clang of metal, the Garbage Dump's gate closed again. Only then did Old Li, who had suddenly fallen silent, speak up.
"The gang members will first give the garbage a rough sort, collecting most of the True Things. After that, it'll be our turn to go in."
Listening to Old Li, Feng Xue wasn't surprised. He simply asked, "By the way, what kind of garbage is worth the most?"
This question didn't really matter to Feng Xue, since he was no longer among those who needed to survive by scavenging. But since he needed a lot of Reforge materials, it was better to ask. After all, to take an item out of the Garbage Dump, you had to pay one and a half times its estimated value.
Hearing Feng Xue's question, Old Li once again put on a shrewd merchant's smile. Before Feng Xue could say anything else, he named his price.
"1,000 Tower credits."
"No problem." Feng Xue didn't hesitate. He pulled a thousand Tower-credit bills from his work badge and handed them to Old Li, who took the money and smiled with satisfaction.
"Actually, it's simple when it comes to value. True Things are definitely the most valuable, but there are very few that slip through the net. And even if you do find one, absorbing it yourself is more profitable than handing it over to the gang."
"Next are items that still work fully, like bicycles or electric ovens. As long as they're in working order, they're generally valued at market price. But finding them is mostly luck, and it's impossible to fully test whether many appliances work on the spot. You need a good eye and a bit of luck."
"If you want a steady income, you can't go wrong picking up Metal Garbage. The prices are stable, and it's easy to sell, but don't expect to make a fortune."
"I see." Feng Xue remembered the old television he'd traded for five bricks when he first transmigrated. It must have benefited from being fully functional. Thinking about it, should he choose items that looked more damaged? But would that affect the results of Reforge?
As Feng Xue pondered this, Old Li suddenly seemed to remember something and offered a warning.
"Oh, one last thing. No matter whether Supernatural Abilities exist in your original world, anything with supernatural powers will become a useless imitation once it gets here. Unless it turns into a Phantom Object, of course. But you're basically never going to find those in the Garbage Dump. The gang members aren't stupid. A True Thing might slip through if there are only one or two of them, but they won't let even a single Phantom Object get past them."
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