The Cross Sword Guild was no different from the Administrator Gang at his previous workplace. Once the dark clouds in the sky vanished, the routine screening began. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Feng Xue sidled up to a Novice Instructor he had just spotted and asked quietly:
"Hey, man, you seem to know quite a bit?"
"Sure thing!" The elderly-looking man gave Feng Xue a friendly smile. But when he got a good look at Feng Xue's Scavenger Set, he furrowed his brow slightly. "You don't look like a newbie, kid. What do you want to know?"
"No, no, I've only been here for less than a month! I just learned my lesson after getting ripped off last time, so I'm dressed like this now." Feng Xue waved his hands, trying to show with his innocent eyes that he was a total newbie.
The Novice Instructor thought Feng Xue might be hiding something, but didn't pay it any mind. Most people working as Novice Instructors also moonlighted as Information Brokers. After a moment's thought, he asked, "What kind of information are you looking for?"
"What's worth the most?" Feng Xue asked bluntly, then added with a helpless sigh, "The stuff I picked up last time was obviously rare, but that old man at the entrance insisted it wasn't worth anything. I had to collect bodies twice just to make it to today..."
Seeing the sympathetic look on Feng Xue's face, the Novice Instructor relaxed and smiled. "Ah, you have to understand, in Infinite City, everything depends on [Shi]. Those Item Cards may be powerful in their original worlds, but here they're no better than wastepaper. You'd make more selling the metal from a few junked motorcycles!"
"Item Cards?" Feng Xue's interest was piqued, but he played along. "Tell me about it! Sigh..."
Watching Feng Xue lay it on thick, the Novice Instructor caught on and chuckled. "All right, you probably can't afford much anyway. I'll draw up a Loan Contract for 1,200 Tower. Pay me back when you get out. How's that? If you want to buy the information outright, it's 1,000 Tower. But then I'd be taking the risk that you might not make it out. What do you think?"
"Sure. But how do we sign the contract?" Feng Xue still looked like a newbie. The Novice Instructor simply pulled out his guild badge and tapped in a string of commands. A moment later, a Loan Contract certified by Infinite City appeared.
It was worth noting that the contract wasn't made of words. Like the knowledge embedded in Tags, it appeared directly in Feng Xue's mind. It eliminated all ambiguity and even had an appraisal function: once the contract was signed, the Novice Instructor would have to provide information about scavenging worth more than 1,000 Tower. If Feng Xue successfully made it out of the Garbage Dump alive, Infinite City would take 1,200 Tower from him and pay it directly to the Novice Instructor.
"Why doesn't my guild badge have this function? Could the other guy have some kind of [debt collector], [lending], or similar element or Tag?"
Feng Xue was curious, but signed the contract first. As soon as the confirmation that the agreement had been fulfilled appeared, the Novice Instructor began explaining:
"The most common things you'll find in this Garbage Dump are all kinds of Transportation Tools. Unless they're in especially good condition, don't bother picking up motorcycles. They're not worth much. If a car is intact, you can get some money for bringing it out, but not much. Unless it's some particularly expensive luxury car, one's only worth around 5,000 Tower. That's the appraisal price, though. You'll only get 500 Tower. Still, if you're just trying to survive, bringing out two cars will make the trip worthwhile."
The Novice Instructor paused briefly, but the contract clearly wasn't complete, so he had no choice but to continue.
"If you want to make money, keep an eye out for robots. Engineering robots show up in this Landfill Area pretty often. If they're mostly functional, or just missing an arm or a leg, they're still worth a lot. Besides that, watch out for gems. The Guild is always buying them at inflated prices, all kinds of gems. No one knows what they're for, but we do know someone found a Pink Diamond about the size of a fist three months ago and traded it for 200,000 Tower!"
"So its appraised value was two million? Are you sure it wasn't a Phantom Object?" Feng Xue asked in disbelief. Two million! That was enough for someone to live in Infinite City for fifty-four years without doing a thing!
Feng Xue knew the person who got that fortune might not even have survived until the next day, but the appraisal had to be accurate!
After all, appraisers in the Garbage Dump were also bound by Infinite City's rules. If they made up prices, having their Tags stripped would be the least of their worries.
At Feng Xue's question, the Novice Instructor shook his head, wearing the same baffled expression. "Didn't I say they buy gems at inflated prices? The Cross Sword Guild offers twenty percent of the appraised value. Even so, that gem was worth a million! Of course, it couldn't have been a True Thing. Otherwise, it would've been eaten right away. And it probably wasn't a Phantom Object, either. A gem that big would've been exposed as one long ago."
"That's true..." Feng Xue committed the gem to memory, then realized the Novice Instructor had stopped talking. The contract in his mind also showed that it had been fulfilled.
There was no doubt about it: the information about the gem had already met the 1,000 Tower requirement.
Realizing that asking about Phantom Objects might have given something away, Feng Xue said no more to the Novice Instructor. He activated Breath Concealment and slipped away right in front of him.
He wasn't wearing an Assassin Set, but in the dense crowd, he quickly managed to hide himself. Surrounded by people wearing Scavenger Sets, Feng Xue soon vanished from the Novice Instructor's sight.
The Novice Instructor felt a little regretful, but didn't dwell on it. He glanced around a few times and quickly found his next target.
Feng Xue, having concealed his presence and blended into the crowd, had no intention of looking back. He wondered what kind of world could have so many motorcycles, but then he realized something odd—
Logically, a single Landfill Area ought to be connected to more than one world. Otherwise, that earlier Garbage Dump couldn't have contained weapons from the cold weapon era, the modern era, and the high-tech era all at once.
But the trash in this Landfill Area seemed remarkably uniform. Was there some special pattern behind that?
"Cards, gems, Transportation Tools..." No matter how he looked at it, Feng Xue couldn't fit these things into a single world. In the end, he could only set the question aside for now and wonder what kind of gem could be worth a million Tower.
"Could the Cross Sword Guild's leader have a Gem Dragon?"
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