Things Had Changed

At the same time.

On the outskirts of City 61, Lower District.

Beside No. 4 Drainage Channel at the foot of the city wall stood the remains of an overpass.

Half the bridge deck had collapsed long ago during the Great Rupture.

The remaining half rested crookedly atop two concrete pillars.

The stench beneath the bridge was overwhelming.

What flowed through the drainage channel was not water, but domestic sewage from the entire Lower District, mixed with who knew what sort of industrial waste.

The fermented odor was enough to make people nauseous from thirty meters away.

But the people living here had long since stopped smelling it.

"Has Old Gambler come back yet?"

A skinny man wrapped in a tattered padded jacket crawled in from outside the underpass, carrying half a bag of expired bread someone had thrown away.

"Who?"

"That... Gan Ming."

The skinny man tossed the bread onto the ground and sat beside a fire pit surrounded by bricks.

"Didn't he go haul cargo today? I waited all afternoon and never saw him."

Old Zhou, wrapped in a ragged quilt beside the fire, was poking at the flames with a piece of wire.

Without looking up, he said,

"He left. He went to the Awakening Center downtown today to undergo Awakening."

The skinny man froze.

"Awakening? Is he crazy?"

Old Zhou tore off a piece of cardboard and fed it into the fire.

Whoosh!

The flames suddenly surged.

"Today was the day he chose himself. Before he left, he told me that whether he succeeded or failed, he wouldn't be coming back."

The skinny man stood there in a daze for several seconds.

"Then doesn't that mean... whether he lives or dies is unknown?"

Old Zhou fell silent for a moment, then poked at the fire twice with the wire.

"Everyone has their own ambitions. Let him go."

As soon as he finished speaking, the skinny man got up and crawled into the shack Gan Ming had built.

He rummaged around inside for a long time.

But there was nothing valuable.

In the end, he tore apart the cardboard Gan Ming had used as bedding, gathered up a stack, and stuffed it into his own shelter.

Room 403.

The phone rang.

Gan Ming rolled over, got out of bed, and picked up the receiver.

"Hello, sir. Your dinner is ready. Also, a Mr. Zhou has delivered a set of clothes. Would it be convenient to bring them up now?"

"Yes, bring them up."

"Certainly."

Gan Ming hung up, put on the hotel's disposable slippers, and tightened the bath towel around himself.

Two minutes later, there was a knock at the door.

A male waiter in uniform pushed in a dining cart.

Dinner sat on the upper level: two meat dishes, two vegetable dishes, a soup, and a bowl of rice. The portions were generous.

A plastic bag sat on the lower level, containing a neatly folded dark blue long-sleeved T-shirt and black trousers.

The waiter placed the dishes on the table one by one, then laid out tissues and chopsticks.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed the trash can in the corner.

"Sir, would you like these clothes disposed of?"

"Yes."

The waiter bent down and wrapped the unrecognizable bundle of tattered clothes in the trash can in a prepared black bag.

After tying the bag shut, he placed it on the lower level of the cart.

"Enjoy your meal."

The door closed behind him.

Gan Ming sat down at the table.

He picked up his chopsticks, grabbed a piece of ham, and stuffed it into his mouth.

The moment the juices spread between his teeth...

His eyes narrowed slightly in satisfaction.

At nine-thirty that morning, he had still been at the Awakening Center, gambling with his life while holding a heart.

Now, he sat in a hotel room that cost five hundred a night, eating delicious ham.

Not only that,

he also had one hundred seventy to one hundred eighty thousand in cash and ten Storage Rings in his pockets.

Gan Ming swallowed the meat.

Then he lowered his head and began eating in huge mouthfuls.

After finishing the last bite of rice,

the two meat dishes, two vegetable dishes, bowl of soup, and large bowl of rice on the table had all been wiped clean.

But his stomach still felt empty.

Not the kind of empty that came from not eating enough.

It was a hunger that seemed to seep from the gaps between his bones.

Gan Ming looked at his arm.

The muscle definition on his forearm seemed a little clearer than it had been that morning.

He had gained fifteen levels in one day.

Every time his level rose, his physical constitution was enhanced once.

With fifteen rounds of enhancement stacked together, his body's energy demands were on an entirely different level from that morning.

After thinking for a moment, he picked up the room phone and dialed zero.

"Bring me two more dinners."

"Two portions, sir?"

"Yes."

There was a brief pause on the other end.

"Certainly, sir. We'll arrange it immediately."

Twenty minutes later, Gan Ming finished off another two meals.

Only after three meals had gone into his stomach did that hunger seeping from his bones finally ease by seventy or eighty percent.

He wiped his mouth with a tissue and let out a long breath.

Back under the bridge, he had never dreamed that one day he would complain about food being served too slowly.

After savoring the feeling for a while, he finally stood and went to the bedside to retrieve the plastic bag Zhou Sheng had sent over.

The dark blue long-sleeved T-shirt and black trousers were folded perfectly neatly.

When he shook out the clothes, several things slid from an outer pocket.

One was a crumpled receipt from Shunfa Department Store beside Sixth Street.

It read: one men's T-shirt, 68 yuan; one pair of men's trousers, 79 yuan; one gray shirt, 58 yuan; two pairs of cotton underwear, 36 yuan; one pair of black athletic shoes, 89 yuan; total: 330 yuan.

Beneath the receipt were a one-hundred-yuan bill and a seventy-yuan bill.

Not a cent was missing.

Gan Ming laid the items out one by one.

The T-shirt and trousers had been folded crisp and straight, while the shirt was folded into sharp creases.

The underwear was packed separately in a plastic bag, and the shoes were at the bottom.

Though they were all ordinary department store goods,

he could immediately tell from the feel that the fabric was thick and sturdy, not the kind of cheap street-stall stuff that pilled after two washes.

This Old Zhou really knew how to make three hundred yuan count.

There was also a small hand-torn note stuffed inside the shoes, written in ballpoint pen in handwriting that looked like crawling earthworms:

"Sir, I bought the shoes in size 45."

"If they don't fit, call me and I'll exchange them right away. I won't delay your plans tomorrow. —Old Zhou"

There was another line added to the back: "Any time, no matter how late."

Gan Ming smiled and shook his head after reading it.

This Old Zhou... all he had said was, "Buy me some clothes."

Yet Old Zhou had taken care of the shirt, underwear, and shoes too.

He had even thought ahead about how to handle it if the shoe size was wrong.

There was also a business card tucked among the money.

Zhou Sheng.

It was identical to the one from that evening, except this one had a line of crooked ballpoint writing on the back:

"Sir, all the money is here. Please check it. If you need a car in the future, call me anytime. —Old Zhou."

For some reason, another Old Zhou surfaced in his mind.

The Old Zhou who lived beneath the bridge.

During winter,

Old Zhou would give him half of his own ragged quilt to cover himself with,

while Old Zhou wrapped himself in scavenged newspapers and huddled beside the fire.

Later, Gan Ming told him, "Take your quilt back. I can handle the cold."

Old Zhou had said, "You just got here. You can't handle the cold."

That had been two years ago.

Gan Ming sighed again.

No more thinking about it.

He got up and walked into the bathroom.

He gathered up all ten Storage Rings from the sink counter and returned to the table.

He put the receipt, loose change, and notes into his own ring.

Then, from left to right, he put the rings on his fingers one by one and began taking inventory.