Corpse Starch

Henry genuinely wanted to buy it.

The Alloy Plasteel material itself, as well as the individual combat vests made from it, had already shown him the enormous profits to be made.

Back in his hometown of Trash Town, he was just a traveling merchant, it was true. But he had ambitions beyond that. He was pursuing the status of an Agent.

Trash Town was a chaotic place, but also a merchant's paradise: rich in resources and home to a sizable population.

There, if your business was big enough, you had enough people working for you, and your force was strong enough, you could gain enough influence to become an Agent. In Trash Town's chaotic political ecosystem, Agents called the shots. Each controlled a business no one else could match, creating monopolies. They competed with one another, but also formed alliances, and wielded immense power.

Henry didn't have enough people under him, and his business wasn't big enough. But if he could really get his hands on the Alloy Plasteel business, he'd have a monopoly of his own. With the Waste Mine Society's support, if he could secure exclusive control of it, he'd quickly make a fortune.

The only problem left was money, and that would be easy to solve.

The title of Agent was already beckoning to him.

Honestly, if the Waste Mine Society didn't have that governor backing them, he'd turn around and leave right now. Then he'd find a way to gather a crew, wipe out the Waste Mine Society, and keep the Alloy Plasteel production facilities firmly in his own hands.

Unfortunately...

But that was all right. As long as he could secure the exclusive agency rights to this business, that would be enough.

Henry addressed Patel solemnly. "I'll take this entire batch. I'll give you the best possible price. We can also sign a long-term partnership agreement. Trust me, I can make these treasures bestsellers across the entire wasteland! We'll be the best of partners—as long as you sign an exclusive agreement with me."

"Wait... hold on a second."

"?"

Henry furrowed his brow. "Do you have any other conditions? Just name them!"

Patel quickly waved his hands. "I don't have any conditions, but this isn't up to me!"

Before Henry could say anything, he continued, "Everything here belongs to our great Governor. I wouldn't dare make any promises without his permission. If the Governor doesn't give the word, we can't sell you a single piece of Alloy Plasteel."

"The Governor..." Henry calmed down, but a headache was already setting in.

Convincing Patel might not be hard, but convincing the Governor...

He'd heard a few things about that Governor named Gu Hang. He was unconventional. After arriving, he hadn't taken over the Alliance government's power. Instead, he'd gone out to the wilderness to work on development.

Could development really save all of Nuxiao Planet?

Henry didn't believe it.

Even though the Waste Mine Society had undergone a complete transformation in a short time under the Governor's rule, changes on that scale were still nowhere near enough to alter the state of the entire planet.

In two years, Governor Gu would probably meet the same fate as his predecessors and be taken down by the Imperial tax authorities.

But until then, he was the Governor—the nominal ruler of the entire planet.

What did a little traveling merchant like Henry have that could possibly convince an Imperial governor?

Seeing Henry's hesitation, Patel had no idea how many twists and turns his old friend's thoughts were taking. He simply grinned and reassured him, "The Governor is a good man. As long as you serve him sincerely, you'll be richly rewarded."

Patel sounded honest and earnest as he spoke. But Henry couldn't help sensing there was another meaning behind his words:

"If you're not sincere enough, you're finished."

That had to be his imagination. What kind of schemes could Patel possibly have up his sleeve?

Henry took a deep breath and said firmly, "I'm going to meet the Governor right now!"

The great Governor Gu Hang was currently studying a corpse.

It barely resembled a living creature. It had four limbs and seemed to walk partly upright, a bit like a headless ape covered in abscesses, with wildly disproportionate limbs and an enormously swollen chest.

It was incredibly fast and ferocious, with sharp claws on all four limbs. After hunting, it would tear its prey's corpse apart, then use the abscesses on its body to corrode and dissolve the chunks of flesh before absorbing them into its own body.

The locals called this thing an Abscess Monster. It was a common wasteland creature.

At the time, he'd been dozing in his room when he suddenly heard a commotion outside. Zhang Chao then reported that more than a dozen Abscess Monsters had appeared at the expansion site on the outskirts of the camp and attacked the workers.

The soldiers guarding the camp had rushed over and wiped out the monsters, but three workers had still died.

Of course, casualties were a bad thing.

But this was the wasteland.

Gu Hang didn't dwell on what had already happened and could no longer be changed.

Looking at the monster's corpse before him, he asked a profound question:

"Can we eat this thing?"

"Uh..."

Yan Fangxu had no idea what the Governor was thinking, but he was deeply shocked.

Gu Hang was a little displeased by Yan Fangxu's reaction. He stressed, "The most important thing in the wasteland is food! Every day, the moment I open my eyes, I have to think about how to feed the several thousand people in our three camps. We can't just live off what we have. We need to find every possible source of food. This thing looks like it has potential. I hear there are lots of them in the wasteland, and there are things like Zombie Dogs, too. If they're all edible..."

"Governor, please wait..." Yan Fangxu said helplessly. "These monsters are covered in highly corrosive abscesses. How could this possibly look edible?"

"How would we know without trying?" Gu Hang remained stubborn. "Of course, I'm not suggesting we feed them to our people directly. I've heard that most Hive City planets have technology that can break down all kinds of organic matter and turn it into food. What do they call it... Corpse Starch? Anyway, they're starch blocks. I wonder if Nuxiao Planet has the technology. The Quintet definitely has it, so we should try to get our hands on it."

Yan Fangxu was even more exasperated.

Come on, I've eaten starch blocks too!

They were essentially a product of food processing technology. They took recycled organic waste—including old clothes and other textile scraps, scrap wood, industrial organic waste, plant fibers, animal limbs, and all sorts of other things—broke it down into smaller molecules, then refined and processed it into synthetic starch blocks.

There were a few Hive City planets that were so poor in resources and so densely populated that they really did recycle the bodies of the dead—and even their excrement. That was why people mockingly called it "Corpse Starch," but did you have to say it out loud?

After all, for the most part, synthetic starch was made of perfectly normal ingredients...

And the small amounts, the trace elements...

If we didn't say it out loud, we could still be friends.