The tailor shop was surprisingly efficient, but its prices were predictably steep. When Feng Xue pulled the brand-new False Thing leather boots, imbued with the two traits [Durable] and [Comfortable], over the Boots of Silence on his feet, the last jarring note in his outfit finally disappeared.
"A pair of shoes worth 2,000 Towers..." Feng Xue lightly tapped the ground with his toe. They felt unexpectedly comfortable, and he could barely tell he was wearing two pairs.
What Feng Xue didn't know was that the Boots of Silence, as a Phantom Object, were actually acting as a lubricant.
The traits of a False Thing usually had no effect on their own. Only when they came into contact with Phantom Objects, Weird Tales, or Omens would their traits take effect on them. Since Feng Xue was wearing a Phantom Object, he could feel such comfort. Put simply, it wasn't the [Comfortable] trait taking effect; it was the Phantom Object known as the Boots of Silence that had "been made comfortable."
Though Feng Xue didn't yet understand how the traits of a False Thing worked, that didn't stop him from enjoying his comfortable new shoes. He pulled up his hood, entered a low-presence state, and began practicing the knowledge granted by the [Assassin] Tag.
The Corpse Collector Tag had given Feng Xue more than just techniques for handling corpses and corpse-type Omens. It had also provided knowledge of dissection and autopsies, which overlapped somewhat with what the Assassin Tag had taught him.
Using what he'd already learned as a starting point, Feng Xue quickly settled into study.
Perhaps because all the knowledge granted by the Tag had already been imprinted in his mind, Feng Xue encountered few obstacles as he studied. After all, he'd skipped the most tedious stage—the memorization. With the relevant material always available for review, understanding it wasn't especially difficult.
But that only applied to theory.
It hadn't taken Feng Xue long to learn all the vulnerable points of the human body. He knew how to take someone's life quickly and easily, and even understood how to kill a target quietly or inflict the greatest possible pain.
But when he moved from theory to practice, he found it difficult to hit the right spot.
The human body was an intricate system. A hair's breadth could mean the difference between success and failure. Press the right spot lightly, and someone would fall into a deep coma. Miss by even a little, and they wouldn't pass out, even if you broke their neck.
Fortunately, as a Corpse Collector, Feng Xue had no shortage of cadavers to practice on. At least before moving on to live practice, cadavers were enough to familiarize himself with human anatomy.
Life continued in a slow rhythm of study and work. Once again following the directions on his work badge, Feng Xue arrived at a warehouse. Seeing corpses strewn across the ground, he expertly picked out a few that looked relatively intact and tossed them onto his handcart.
After working for some time, Feng Xue had collected nearly all the common traits found on corpses. Unless he came across an especially rare type, he generally chose relatively intact bodies so he could study them before processing them.
"Money or food?" the gang member asked, as usual, eyeing the corpses piled on Feng Xue's handcart like layers of puff pastry.
Feng Xue was long accustomed to the sight and didn't say much. He took the bricks the other man handed him and checked that each contained more than 100 Towers. Then he absorbed them as he dragged the cart away.
After half a month, he'd gotten to know the Landfill Area well enough. Taking a winding route through the night, he soon reached an unoccupied condemned building with the corpses. He'd turned it into a makeshift dissection room a few days earlier. Once the surgical lights came on, Feng Xue tossed a corpse onto the dissection table and began wielding his knife.
Although this was a kind of data-based world, these "trash people" from other worlds had flesh and blood, to Feng Xue's surprise. Their hearts, livers, spleens, lungs, and kidneys were all right where they were supposed to be. It made him wonder whether this place connected to a multiverse or merely a few parallel worlds.
But then he thought of the punk he'd seen wielding a sci-fi weapon, and decided he might just have been narrow-minded...
After all, there were at least eight or nine hundred Landfill Areas in the Infinite City, and that number was constantly growing. Perhaps each Landfill Area connected to a different world?
"So if I go in from this angle, I can get it to open right up... Though maybe this guy just had a bigger kidney. Better write that down and try it on someone else later."
The extraneous thoughts quickly faded as he practiced, and Feng Xue soon became absorbed in his studies again. One corpse after another was used up, then turned into tiny particles that merged with the world. Feng Xue could also clearly feel the power flowing to him from his Tags.
Just as Old Li could gain the ability to expand space from the [Hermit] trait possessed by [Hidden Rich], both [Corpse Collector] and [Assassin] had traits capable of granting their holders power. Feng Xue had only obtained his Tags recently, though, so the feedback he'd received was pitifully small.
But as he processed more and more corpses, the [Corpse Collector] Tag finally gave him his first trait—
[Hauling].
This trait improved his strength and stamina, letting him move corpses more efficiently. It didn't look like a particularly dramatic improvement, but the body was the foundation of everything. Only with a stronger body could he consider anything else. Otherwise, no matter how outrageous his abilities were, he'd still be a glass cannon—powerful, sure, but liable to shatter at the slightest touch.
"Should I say my proficiency leveled up and unlocked a new skill, or that this is an improvement brought by the Acting Method?" Feng Xue wanted to scratch his head, but seeing the gloves soaked in blood, he gave up on the idea.
He carried another corpse onto the dissection table and found it far easier than before. If it had felt like lifting a bag of rice before, now it was no harder than picking up a bottle of water.
Of course, some of that might have been an illusion caused by his sudden increase in strength. Even so, Feng Xue couldn't help getting excited. If he kept training steadily like this, he believed he'd soon be able to protect himself in this Landfill Area!
He turned his attention back to the corpse on the dissection table. The first thing he tried was the kidney-strike trick he'd discovered on the male corpse earlier. To check whether gender might make a difference, he'd specifically chosen a female corpse this time...
Assassin training was much faster than a proper dissection. In just ten minutes, the corpse was already riddled with holes. He casually wiped his hands on the dead woman's clothes and was about to Smelt the body, as he usually did, when he was stunned to find the Smelt button had turned gray.
At the same time, the traits on the corpse in his eyes suddenly began spinning wildly...
"Shit! It's undergoing Corpse Transformation!"
Before you continue