"So there are even monsters this huge in Omen... Come to think of it, did this thing become an Omen after Male Fire Dragon crossed over, or did it become a Male Fire Dragon after devouring the corresponding element?"
As the wyvern swallowed an entire corpse in just a few bites, Feng Xue's thoughts drifted helplessly. In the end, he still knew far too little about Omen. But judging from the few Phantom Objects he had so far, the chances of something mutating after becoming an Omen seemed pretty high.
"But if that's the case, could becoming a Weird Tale affect your own state? Like, if a man became Kuchisake-onna, would he turn into a woman?" The thought made Feng Xue shudder. He warned himself to be very careful when condensing Tags.
While Feng Xue was thinking, the Male Fire Dragon finished eating the corpses outside the Giant Egg. It raised its head like a chick, looked around, then let out another ear-splitting roar. It flapped its wings and rose into the sky amid a frenzy of air currents.
Watching the huge figure gradually recede, Feng Xue finally breathed a sigh of relief. He tightened his hood and, keeping up Breath Concealment, cautiously left the woods. As he reached the edge of the Giant Egg, the high-tech wall unfolded, opening a passage just wide enough for two people to walk abreast.
"Phew..." Looking at the deep passage before him, Feng Xue instead felt relieved. At least he'd been right: entering another Landfill Area didn't require any special credentials. You just had to not be an Omen.
Still, he didn't let his guard down. He prepared himself for the possibility of finding a crowd waiting by the wall the moment he entered, then crossed the nearly twenty-meter passage.
The scene he'd imagined, with people staring at him, never came. When Feng Xue once again stood beneath the light cast by the wall, a sense of security suddenly enveloped him.
Although he hadn't faced any real danger, the mental strain had still left him exhausted. But before he could catch his breath, a vibration came from his pocket.
"Detected that you have left your work area. Bind a new workplace?"
Startled, Feng Xue looked at the prompt on his employee badge. He had no idea where to direct his complaints. Still, he managed to resist the urge to swear, tapped confirm, and began choosing a new home.
That was right: rebinding his workplace meant Infinite City had assigned him a new residence.
Opening the map, Feng Xue didn't make a decision right away. Instead, he checked the general layout of the Landfill Area. It was somewhat larger than his previous one, with a total area close to fifty square kilometers. Unlike the Administrator Gang in his last Landfill Area, whose name he'd never even learned, the administrators here had generously named their headquarters after their gang. So Feng Xue could tell the gang's name from the label on the map: "Cross Sword Guild Headquarters."
Based on his experience in the previous Landfill Area, Feng Xue still chose his new home diagonally opposite the administrators' headquarters. The Cross Sword Guild was in North of the City, so naturally, Feng Xue chose an apartment in South District.
But to his surprise, the first night after moving was unbelievably peaceful. Compared with his previous workplace, where he'd been sent on one or two corpse-collection missions almost every night, this place was almost unnaturally quiet.
Still, Feng Xue didn't believe the death rate here was actually that low. Otherwise, where had all those corpses the Male Fire Dragon ate come from?
In the morning, Feng Xue woke from his sleep. It was already six twenty. He wandered around the still-unfamiliar apartment twice, then opened the Room Door, ready to take a look at the Landfill Area he hadn't been able to inspect properly the night before.
To his surprise, although this Landfill Area still had the feel of a Southeast Asian slum, with corrugated-metal and prefabricated houses everywhere, its residents had access to Transportation Tools at a completely different rate from those at his previous workplace.
To put it this way, in his previous Landfill Area, Feng Xue had seen mostly people getting around on foot. But in this one, plenty of motorcycles were parked along the roads, and every so often he even spotted a car or two.
It was still a long way from the crowded roads full of cars back in the world he'd crossed over from, but the difference was undeniably huge.
"They're only a little over two kilometers apart. Is the wealth gap really that big? Or does the Cross Sword Guild here have people like mechanics?"
Feng Xue wondered, but had no way to ask. He could only stick to his plan and keep wandering around nearby.
If there was one place you should visit first after arriving in a Landfill Area, it was the local Garbage Dump. According to the information Feng Xue had gotten from Old Li, every Landfill Area had its own Garbage Day. But when Feng Xue reached the Garbage Dump, he suddenly realized why he hadn't received a corpse-collection mission the night before—
Because today was Garbage Day.
Seeing that the Garbage Dump was already packed with people, Feng Xue didn't linger. He immediately found a Locker Room. He didn't use the storage locker, though, and instead treated it as if he'd paid a hundred Tower Coins for a Scavenger Set. Old Li had said the storage lockers weren't all that secure. Rather than worry about leaving Phantom Objects in there, it was safer to keep them at home.
A short while later, Feng Xue appeared outside the Garbage Dump again, dressed in a Scavenger Set. He watched the clock tick by while keeping an eye on the Novice Guides milling through the crowd.
Old Li was a bit too fond of money, but there was no denying that he'd provided Feng Xue with a lot of help in surviving the early days. And the Novice Guide profession made it easy to come across all kinds of information, so it was perfectly normal to moonlight as an Information Broker.
Just as he was wondering whether he should find a Novice Guide who looked approachable and try to strike up a conversation, a piercing buzz suddenly rang out overhead.
The Landfill Area had changed, but the spectacle that accompanied the falling garbage was exactly the same.
Although he'd seen it once before, Feng Xue still couldn't help looking toward the deep opening that connected to another world. The thought even crossed his mind: If I could fly, could I follow that opening to another world?
But the thought didn't last long. A huge amount of garbage plunged down from deep within the clouds, and in an instant, Feng Xue felt a powerful sense of dissonance.
The garbage falling from this bank of dark clouds was fundamentally different from what he'd seen in the previous Landfill Area.
How different?
The art style! It was a different art style!
That was right. The art style.
The garbage that had fallen in the previous Landfill Area had been all kinds of things, with technology spanning past and future. There had been futuristic weapons like EVA Entry Plugs and Personal Power Armor, as well as ancient melee weapons like Hand-and-a-half Swords and Cross Swords. He'd even seen the corpse of a sniper in a Ghillie Suit and a building torn apart by a bomb.
But the garbage falling here was completely different. At a glance, there were all kinds of Transportation Tools. Bicycles and cars were one thing, but there were even high-speed trains and planes. What left Feng Xue most speechless, though, was that he even saw a Flying Saucer!
That was right, a Flying Saucer! The kind of thing aliens rode in, always showing up in kids' sci-fi stories!
"Is this some kind of Transportation Tool world? I wonder if I can scavenge a train robot..."
Before you continue