Chapter 10

The black market of the Bottom Hive had a very fitting name: the Rust Bazaar.

It consisted of thousands of stalls built from scrap iron, tarps, and holographic billboard signs.

The air was perpetually filled with the scent of ozone, roasted meat skewers, and aged sweat.

Though chaotic, it was the lifeline of the entire settlement.

You could buy anything here: from gang-made improvised guns to smuggled-in hallucinogens from the upper hive, or even illicit mechanical prosthetics.

Li Wei wrapped the moth-eaten coat he had stripped from a corpse tightly around himself, trying to conceal his face as much as possible.

He walked very slowly, not only because his legs hurt, but more because he was observing.

As a modern man, the business model here looked laughably crude in his eyes.

There were no clearly marked prices; everything depended on sizing up the customer.

There were no quality guarantees—once bought, it was yours, and if it broke, tough luck.

Most importantly—there was a severe knowledge gap.

He saw a scavenger holding what was obviously a high-energy battery pack, yet treating it as a common "luminous brick" and trading it for only two moldy loaves of bread.

He saw a stall owner selling a precision optical sight as a telescope, and because the owner installed it backwards and couldn't see through it, selling it at a discount as defective goods.

Gold everywhere, Li Wei's eyes glowed in the shadows, all gold, yet this group of fools treats it like scrap iron.

He touched the laser pistol in his pocket that was running out of charge.

He needed a battery, real food, and antibiotics as well.

He also had to get money.

Li Wei stopped in front of a stall hanging a sign that read "Grot High-Tech Recycling".

This stall was large and piled high with all sorts of electronic junk dug out from the ruins.

The stall owner was a short, fat, bald man with a cheap prosthetic mechanical eye, shouting himself hoarse at a thin, weak scavenger.

"Scram! Get lost with your garbage!" The bald stall owner waved a square-box-shaped instrument in his hand. "This damn thing has been screaming! It's possessed by an evil spirit! It almost deafened my ears just now! Are you trying to get me killed?"

That scavenger shrunk into a ball in terror: "But boss... I dug this up in the old temple district... It's still glowing, it has to be valuable..."

"Valuable my ass! It's cursing everyone who gets close!" The stall owner raised the square box as if to smash it onto the ground. "This bad-luck piece of junk!"

"Hold on."

A pale hand reached out and intercepted the stall owner's arm.

The stall owner turned his head angrily: "Which one of you has a death wish..." Before he finished speaking, he froze.

Standing before him was a young man with a pale complexion and cold eyes.

At that very instant, the stall owner felt a strong, physiological revulsion.

It was like swallowing a live fly, or suddenly being plunged into an ice cellar.

This hair-raising aura made his raised arm stop dead in mid-air.

"Who are you?" The stall owner's voice trembled slightly, instinctively feeling that the person before him was dangerous. "Don't touch me! You make me sick!"

Li Wei did not back down; instead, he stepped closer, using his Aura of Aversion to exert further pressure. "I'll take this thing."

He pointed at the square box in the stall owner's hand.

That was an auspex—meaning a military handheld scanner in the Warhammer universe.

Only right now, extremely piercing, high-frequency static noise was emitting from this instrument's speaker, and the red light was flashing frantically.

"You want this cursed object?" The stall owner looked at him as if he were a lunatic. "It's gone mad! The Machine Spirit is screaming! You'll have bad luck if you hold it!"

"It's not screaming." Li Wei took the heavy instrument from the stall owner's hand.

He glanced at the jumping waveforms on the screen.

To these superstitious natives, this was a curse of evil spirits.

But to Li Wei, it was merely an incorrect sensitivity setting.

The gain knob on this scanner had been cranked all the way up, causing it to capture all ambient electromagnetic noise around it—from the electrical hum of neon lights to the magnetic field of the nearby generator, everything was being amplified and played back.

This was called audio feedback.

"It's just crying because it can't find a master who understands its language." Li Wei began to spout nonsense.

In this world of religious fanatics, you had to act like a fanatic.

He pulled out the half-eaten piece of corpse-starch from his pocket and threw it on the counter. "Take it. This meat in exchange for this 'curse'."

The stall owner glanced at the bitten, low-grade ration, then looked down at the burning-hot noise box in his hand.

"Deal! Take it and get lost! Don't let it blow up on me!"

Li Wei picked up the auspex and turned, walking toward a dim corner beside the stall.

He did not leave; instead, right in front of everyone, he began his "exorcism ritual".

The surrounding crowd—including the stall owner and the scavenger—gathered around with a mix of curiosity and fear, yet only dared to stand five meters away.

Li Wei made a show of drawing a few circles on the instrument's casing with his finger, which was actually just wiping away the grease on top.

Then, he reached his finger toward the adjustment knob on the side.

"Quiet," Li Wei commanded in a low voice.

His finger gave a gentle twist, adjusting the "sensitivity" from 100% down to 20%, while simultaneously flipping on the "squelch" switch.

Static... click.

The piercing scream vanished instantly.

The frantically flashing red light transformed into a steady, breathing green indicator light.

The waveform diagram on the screen recovered to a clear radar scanning interface, emitting a pleasant beep-beep prompt tone.

The entire place fell dead silent.

The stall owner's eyeballs nearly popped out of his head.

"The... the Machine Spirit has calmed down?" He pointed at Li Wei tremblingly. "You just touched it once? No holy oils? No prayers?"

Li Wei turned around and raised the military scanner, which was now operating perfectly in his hand.

"It's very well-behaved. You were just too noisy."

Li Wei looked at the stall owner, a trace of sarcastic a smile at the corner of his mouth: "Now, this is an intact, sacred imperial auspex. It can detect radiation, heat sources, and moving objects. An essential artifact for exploring the deep hive."

"Boss, do you want to buy it?" Li Wei placed the instrument back onto the counter. "This time, I don't want corpse-starch."

The stall owner's Adam's apple rolled violently.

A broken auspex was garbage.

A repaired auspex could buy a good gun, or enough rations to feed a family for a month!

Greed triumphed over fear.

The stall owner rubbed his hands together, his eyes burning with heat: "Buy! Of course I buy! But what I sold you just now..."

"Just now was just now," Li Wei interrupted him, his gaze icy. "Now is now. I don't want to hear nonsense. I want two standard laser cells, a dose of potent antibiotics, and fifty coins."

"You're robbing me!" the stall owner screamed.

"Then forget it." Li Wei made a motion to take the instrument away. "I'll go find another buyer. I believe the gun shop owner over there will be very happy to—"

"Don't! Give! I'll give it!" The stall owner immediately caved. He knew very well how much this thing could be resold for.

Three minutes later.

Li Wei walked out of the bazaar.

Hanging from his belt were two fully charged laser cells, his pocket held that life-saving antibiotic medicine, and his hand clutched a heavy pouch of coins.

He did not leave immediately.

He found an empty dead-end alley and injected himself with the antibiotic first.

As the medicine entered his bloodstream, he felt the low-grade fever that constantly accompanied him begin to recede.

"This is the power of knowledge," Li Wei tossed a gold coin engraved with the Emperor's profile in his hand. "Or rather, the power of common sense."

What he did not notice, however, was that deep within the shadows, a pair of eyes was staring at him.

That was not someone from the Inquisition.

It was a middle-aged man wearing an exquisite trench coat, holding a gold-inlaid cane, and accompanied by two fully armed bodyguards.

On his neck was a conspicuous tattoo—the mark of the "Guild".

In the Hive City, the guilds controlled trade, water sources, and corpse recycling, acting as the true local overlords.

"Who is that?" the middle-aged man asked the bodyguard beside him in a low voice.

"I don't know, boss. Fresh face," the bodyguard replied quietly, his voice tinged with discomfort.

The middle-aged man narrowed his eyes, watching Li Wei's retreating figure thoughtfully. "Someone who can make an angry Machine Spirit shut up, and even turn scrap iron into gold..."

"No, he's very useful." The middle-aged man twirled the gem ring on his finger, revealing a merchant's cold smile. "Go check his background. If he has no backing, then make him understand that doing business in this bazaar requires paying a 'protection fee'."

"And if he doesn't pay?"

"Then drag him here."

Li Wei had no idea that he had been targeted.

At that moment, he was immersed in the joy of making his "first pot of gold".

Yet he soon realized that while these fifty coins were not a small sum, they were merely a drop in the bucket for his true goal.

If he wanted to leave the Bottom Hive, or even leave this planet, what he needed were astronomical figures.

Furthermore, the data slate hidden inside his chest was like a ticking time bomb.

He had to find a buyer who understood the trade, but who wouldn't immediately report him to the Inquisition.

"I need to be even greedier." Li Wei tightened his coat and melted into the bustling stream of people.