Relic Vortex

After gliding for several minutes, the two landed on a medium-sized sky island.

This sky island was close to the giant tower. The buildings on the island were more sparsely scattered than those on the ground, most of them gray stone towers. Strong young men stood atop the towers, using cannon-barrel-like devices to fire white columns of water. Many bore scars that had only recently healed.

"Are they 'salvaging' relics?" Chu Hengkong asked. "It looks a lot like fishing."

The white water columns showed little movement, planted amid the tide of weapons like fishing rods. Then, a suit of armor "flowed" down from the sky into one of the columns. The young men murmured in alarm and adjusted their devices by the tiniest margins. Beads of sweat the size of soybeans hung from their faces; they were as tense as men carrying explosives across a single-plank bridge.

"You're right. They're waiting. The salvaging water columns are too powerful—if you're sucked in by accident while operating one, you'll die without even a corpse left behind. So salvage workers spend most of their working hours waiting for relics to naturally 'bite.'" Ji Huaishu explained. "Highly skilled salvage workers can actively hook relics, but most people here are outsiders just trying to make a living. They don't have that ability."

"That's an interesting job." Chu Hengkong was eager to give it a try, thinking that he ought to try it someday when he had time. "So the Workshop District's main business is salvaging and selling..."

"Salvaging, appraising, and selling," Ji Huaishu corrected. "This is common knowledge on every Dust Island. Relics must be appraised before they can be used."

As they spoke, the two arrived at a corrugated-metal warehouse. It looked like one of the Workshop District's logistics centers. Salvage workers frequently came and went with handcarts, hauling relics into the warehouse. Their destination was a red-brick house built against the warehouse's back wall. Its windows had been patched with tape, apparently broken only recently and not yet repaired. Upon entering, they found an entire brick wall to the right covered in cold weapons of every kind, while behind the counter opposite sat a short, plump middle-aged woman.

Chu Hengkong raised a brow. The place looked somewhat like a haphazardly renovated Iron Oar Shop, but the proprietress behind the counter interested him more. Her face was flat, and pale green scales grew over her skin. She did not look especially human.

"Hi, Mrs. Ansa," Ji Huaishu greeted.

Mrs. Ansa's eyes snapped toward them. Her tone was far friendlier than her appearance suggested.

"So happy to see you, little Huaisu." She slowly took two boxes from beneath the counter. "This is the newcomer who joined yesterday? Pretty tentacles."

"Your... scales are very green too," Chu Hengkong said, carefully choosing his words.

"Thank you, though we usually use words like 'lustrous.' My great-grandfather always said they were proof of ancient dragon blood, but we all think some slut in the family several generations back probably got tangled up with a lizard." Mrs. Ansa muttered as she opened the two boxes. Inside lay the Pendant and the Iron Ring.

"Come on, have a look at your goods."

Chu Hengkong picked up the Pendant first. Several glowing lines of text appeared in his mind.

[Pendant-type basic relic—Enhancement]

[Rating: Lowest Tier]

[Effect: By gripping the necklace, the user may enhance their perception for 1–3 seconds. The degree and duration of enhancement depend on the intensity of the user's emotions.]

The relic's duration was tied to emotion?

He then picked up the Iron Ring that enhanced strength, but this time the description differed from what he had imagined.

[Bracelet-type basic relic—Charge]

[Rating: Lowest Tier]

[Effect: When the bracelet is colorless, the user may actively store power within it. The more power it stores, the darker its color; it turns black when fully charged. The stored power may be actively released during an attack. The maximum amount released in a single attack depends on the intensity of the user's emotions.]

"Captain, you were right. Appraisal is a very important step." Chu Hengkong shook his head. "I actually thought this was a strength amplifier..."

The bracelet was now ivory white, indicating that the power stored within had been completely squandered. That idiot Hugos had completely misunderstood how to use the relic. This thing was clearly meant to deliver a killing blow at a critical moment, yet he had treated it as a threat to flaunt his might.

Mrs. Ansa chuckled. "It happens all the time. So many foolish boys try to save money by not getting craftsmen to appraise their relics, then trip over their own feet on the relics' effects. You wouldn't believe how strange their deaths can be. Every single one is a classic joke..."

Seeing that Mrs. Ansa was about to launch into one of her rambling stories, Chu Hengkong hurriedly asked what concerned him more. "Ma'am, if these two relics are so powerful, why are they only rated 'Lowest Tier'?"

Mrs. Ansa and Ji Huaishu both laughed.

"Mr. Tentacles, do you really think these little things are impressive?" Nostalgia surfaced in Mrs. Ansa's eyes. "If you'd arrived in Dragon's Return City twenty years earlier, you wouldn't even have asked that question! Back then, our routes connected more than three hundred Dust Islands. The greatest geniuses came into the city with merchant caravans to exchange knowledge, bringing the most precious secret treasures from their homelands. Back then, the fires and lights of the Workshop District never ceased day or night, and appraisers could hardly catch a wink of sleep. Third- and fourth-tier relics weren't even worth our time. We saw halberds that tore heaven and earth apart, scepters that governed space and time, spiritual medicines that banished every evil... That was Dragon's Return City's glory..."

Mrs. Ansa's eyes shone with startling brilliance, as though she were depicting a flawless dream of gold. She tried her utmost to capture the dream's radiance, sketching a corner of the past with the most splendid words she could find. But suddenly, her voice fell low. She woke from her dream of the past, and what reflected in her eyes was no longer brilliance, but dust on the table.

"And all those incredible relics are gone, vanished in the great war alongside their owners." She sighed softly. "You're right. These things are the city's treasures now—the top tier of this age."

Ji Huaishu could not bear to listen any longer and took the initiative to change the subject. "Don't dwell on it, Mrs. Ansa. Things will get better eventually! Speaking of which, isn't there still one relic you haven't brought out?"

"Ah, that book..."

Mrs. Ansa smiled faintly. This time, she did not use a box, instead taking the Silver-Eyed Tome directly from a drawer. Chu Hengkong wrapped a tentacle around the book, and the new appraisal text made him freeze.

[Unknown]

[Rating: Unknown]

[Effect: Unknown]

[Note: Throw it as far away as possible.]

"The best appraisers all died in the great war too. A half-baked one like me can't make out its details." Mrs. Ansa sounded delighted; appraisers always liked strange objects. "The last line is my advice. Toss it away quickly. Anything of unknown origin is forever synonymous with ill omen and death."

"I'll consider it." Chu Hengkong stuffed the tome back into his coat and surveyed the assorted armaments around the workshop. "Do you happen to sell prosthetic limbs here?"

"You really are a newcomer." Mrs. Ansa's tone turned peculiar. "Relics like prosthetics and artificial hands are a 'hardest-hit area.' Never mind my shop—you could search the whole city and still fail to find a single safe prosthetic arm."

"...Why?"

Faint voices drifted in from outside the workshop. The salvage workers seemed to be arguing. Ji Huaishu edged closer to the door and said with a wicked grin, "The overwhelming majority of prosthetics are malicious traps, made specifically to swindle people who want to take shortcuts in their transformation."

"I want to become a Skillful Hand so badly! Don't stop me from fulfilling my dream!" Mrs. Ansa imitated the uniquely foolish tone of those young people. "Then, before half an hour has passed, that fool gets devoured clean by the 'bad thing' inside the prosthetic and turns into a freshly manufactured mud monster, robot, or something even worse. Take my advice—if you want to transform, you have to rely on yourself. Shortcuts are always roads to death."

This time, Chu Hengkong truly did not understand much of it. He only realized that getting prosthetics was probably not a viable path. He nodded and looked toward the battered window. "By the way, how's public security in the Workshop District right now?"

Ji Huaishu was concise. "Terrible. Duck."

Mrs. Ansa grumbled and immediately crouched beneath the counter with her hands over her head. The next second, the explosive crash of shattering glass broke the peaceful air. A thrown boulder smashed through the freshly patched window. A short man in a hood leaped in from outside, his eyes filled with greed and madness.

"One last job before going home—ah!"

Chu Hengkong shot out his right hand and effortlessly gripped the petty thief's face as if catching a chick. He swung him around and slammed him into the ground. The thief's face made intimate contact with the floor; his legs twitched, and he went silent on the spot.

"Going home?" Chu Hengkong raised a brow.

"Damn it, are those outsiders ever going to stop?" Mrs. Ansa fumed.

Chu Hengkong stepped outside the little house and looked around. His eyesight was excellent—excellent enough to make out what was happening beneath the distant Graystone Tower. Young salvage workers were fleeing in all directions while dozens of bandits armed with strange firearms seized the salvage tower. Coarse burlap sacks covered their heads, and amid the clamor of splashing Water Bullets came their fanatical chant:

"Break the curtain! Leave the city! Go home! Break the curtain! Leave the city! Go home!"

The bandits' Water Bullet guns possessed a strange power. One unlucky salvage worker had barely run two steps before a Water Bullet struck him. Upon impact, the flowing bullet transformed into a raging torrent that shot straight into the sky. The salvage worker was hurled upward in an instant by the surging force, nearly shredded by the weapons within the curtain of water.

Ji Huaishu had already rushed out first. "Temporary mission, move out!"

"Understood." Chu Hengkong extended a tentacle and plucked a small pouch of pebbles from the weapon wall.

"Temporarily requisitioned. I'll return it later."

And with that, the three-day streak of updates since the book opened was over. Starting tomorrow, updates would return to once daily~