The next day.
Lin Fan slowly opened his eyes. As he stared at the shabby ceiling in front of him, his groggy mind gradually cleared.
"So everything that happened yesterday wasn't a dream."
He really had transmigrated.
Lin Fan shook his head, then called out in his mind.
"True Self."
In an instant, he appeared once more inside the Bronze Hall.
As he watched True Self endlessly practice in front of him, Lin Fan scratched his head.
"Is this thing just going to keep practicing? What does that have to do with me?"
As if sensing Lin Fan's thoughts, True Self abruptly stopped moving. Then, with a flash, it merged into Lin Fan's body before he could react.
In an instant, all kinds of understanding and insights into the 36 Basic Martial Arts Forms flooded into him.
It felt as if he himself had practiced all night. His body seemed to have developed muscle memory.
He even vaguely felt that his brain had gotten a little sharper, too.
"So that's how it works."
Lin Fan's eyes lit up as he looked at the True Self Clone that had re-formed in front of him.
"This is basically an AFK training cheat!"
Lin Fan clicked his tongue in amazement, then gave an order.
"Continue practicing the 36 Basic Martial Arts Forms."
At once, True Self began practicing again.
"Wonderful, wonderful."
Lin Fan withdrew his consciousness from the Bronze Hall and was just about to sit up when he reached a despairing conclusion.
No matter how well True Self practiced, the results only existed in his head.
True Self didn't consume energy, but his body still needed it. He'd still get hungry.
Lin Fan rubbed his growling stomach, then glanced at the pitiful balance on his phone and made a decision that went against his ancestors.
The academic affairs office.
The air reeked of stale tea leaves mixed with cheap tobacco, enough to make anyone's head ache.
Homeroom teacher Zhang was holding his chipped thermos and hadn't even had a chance to take a sip of something warm when Lin Fan slapped a piece of paper onto his desk. Zhang choked.
"Cough, cough... Drop out?!"
Zhang's eyes widened. He stared at Lin Fan as if he were an idiot, spraying spittle all over the desk.
"Lin Fan, did you get your head slammed in a door? The college entrance exams are a month away! And now you're telling me you want to go out and embrace society?"
"If you were a genius like Luo Feng, that'd be one thing. With grades like yours, what college in the world would take you? Maybe the University of Staying Home?"
"Why not just take the military academy exam and become a soldier?!"
Faced with Zhang's tirade, Lin Fan calmly pulled a crumpled tissue from his pocket and wiped the spit from his face.
"Teacher, I'm broke."
Those words stopped the ten thousand words of moral instruction Zhang had been about to unleash.
"Broke? You can apply for financial aid. If that doesn't work, I can lend you some..."
Zhang paused, his tone softening.
"It's not that kind of broke."
Lin Fan sighed.
"It's the kind of broke where if I don't risk my life, I might not live to see the sun tomorrow."
"...What do you mean?"
"I'm going to the Wilderness Zone."
"What the hell? The Wilderness Zone?! Are you going to deliver takeout?" Zhang laughed in exasperation. "With your build, the monsters would chew you up without even spitting out the bones!"
"I'm going to pick up trash," Lin Fan said honestly.
"You little..."
Zhang took a deep breath and swallowed the rest of what he'd been about to say.
He was about to keep lecturing Lin Fan, but when he looked into those unusually calm eyes, he suddenly felt that the kid might not be joking.
Zhang opened his mouth, then let out a deep sigh.
"Go on, get out of here! Sign it and leave!" Zhang waved him off. "Don't come crying to me when you die in the Wilderness Zone and there's no one left to collect your body."
"Sure thing. Thanks for letting me go, Teacher."
Lin Fan wasn't offended. He quickly signed his name and turned to leave.
Watching him go, Zhang sighed again.
"Kid, good luck."
As Lin Fan walked out of the school gate, he spotted Luo Feng nearby, chatting with a friend.
Luo Feng seemed to sense something and glanced back.
Their eyes met for a moment, then Lin Fan looked away.
He tugged down the brim of his five-yuan baseball cap and turned, blending into the crowd of middle-aged women bustling along the street to buy groceries.
Two in the afternoon.
Lin Fan arrived in the northern part of Yi'an District, at a place that resembled a logistics hub.
The air was thick with black smoke from heavy trucks and the sour stench of various unidentifiable liquids fermenting.
There was a freight exit labeled C3 in the logistics hub. The scavengers called it the Rat Hole. It was a safe passage reserved for them.
Lin Fan stood at the end of the line. He wore cheap camouflage clothes he'd picked up at a general store, with a half-empty canvas bag on his back and a woven sack in his hand.
No matter how you looked at him, he didn't seem like someone preparing to head to the Wilderness Zone to scavenge.
A strip of white bandage was wrapped around the index finger of his left hand.
Beneath the bandage lay the Space Ring, worth enough to buy countless Earths.
Lin Fan touched the bandage and sighed inwardly.
The ring was far too conspicuous. Even if no one knew it was a Space Ring, its appearance alone made it clear that it was valuable.
So, for his own safety, Lin Fan had no choice but to cover it with a strip of bandage.
"Hey, you there, student! What are you spacing out for?"
A rough shout interrupted Lin Fan's thoughts.
Then a modified heavy truck covered in welded steel plates, looking like it had been cobbled together from junkyard scraps, pulled up in front of him.
The truck was covered in dark red rust. Or maybe it was blood that hadn't been washed off.
The man shouting at Lin Fan was a fatso with a face full of bristly flesh. He held a steel pipe and banged on the truck's metal side like he was herding pigs.
"Anyone headed to Outpost 023, get on! Two hundred per person! You're on your own if you die! Insurance won't cover you! Don't come haunting me!"
Lin Fan immediately took out the fare and paid, then slipped into the truck like a loach.
The truck was already packed with people.
Body odor, stinky feet, cheap tobacco, and the smell of scallion pancakes someone had brought along blended into a noxious gas that would have made even a bioweapons expert frown.
Lin Fan's eyes watered from the stench, but he endured it and squeezed into the farthest corner, clutching his canvas bag tightly.
All around him were grizzled veterans with fierce eyes and faces full of bristly flesh.
They looked at Lin Fan, a fresh-faced newcomer, as if he were a little lamb that had wandered into a wolf pack.
"Kids these days don't know how to study? Now you're here to take our jobs, too?"
A burly man with two missing front teeth sneered and bumped Lin Fan menacingly.
"Hey, kid, have all your hairs grown in yet? Do you even know how to write the word 'death'?"
Lin Fan kept his head down and said nothing.
He simply slipped his hand into the canvas bag and gripped the rusty fruit knife he'd bought at a two-yuan shop specifically to keep up appearances.
Calamity and Sky Splitter lay quietly in the Space Ring. With a single thought, he could bring them out.
But until he ran into danger, Lin Fan had no intention of taking either of them out.
For one thing, they were heavy to carry. For another, they were too conspicuous.
If someone set their sights on him, he wasn't sure he'd be strong enough to keep hold of them.
"Hello, sirs. I'm just going to pick up some trash and earn enough to eat."
Lin Fan looked up and flashed a fawning smile, his expression radiating "pure, innocent stupidity."
"Tch. Coward."
The big man curled his lip and lost interest.
"Rumble—"
The beat-up truck started up. Carrying a truckload of desperate men and Lin Fan, a "pauper" carrying a fortune, it plunged into the Wilderness Zone, a place full of death and opportunity.
Just then, Lin Fan's phone vibrated.
He opened it and took a look.
Your account ending in 3308 is overdue by 6,700 yuan. Please make your payment promptly.
Lin Fan closed his eyes, and a tear of poverty slid down from the corner of one eye.
Before you continue