First Lesson in the Underhive

Pain.

This time it was not just a headache, but every joint in his entire body screaming.

Li Wei dragged his right thigh, which felt as though it had been scorched by fire, and trudged laboriously through the knee-deep sewage.

This was a true "sewer," with the so-level-called civilian sector located several kilometers directly above.

There was no law here, no light, and only the filth discharged by the entire city.

This was actual, literal excrement, industrial waste, toxic chemicals, and countless human body fragments washed down through the pipes.

Li Wei stopped by the side of that turbid underground dark river.

His throat was so dry it felt as though it were smoking, and every breath felt like swallowing sandpaper.

He looked at the oily black water beside his feet, where a bloated dead rat drifted past from time to time, and instinctively wanted to cup his hands and take a drink.

Yet he held back.

His sanity as a modern man saved his life.

Drinking raw water here was probably more agonizing than taking a bullet directly.

I need to find... somewhere with people, Li Wei muttered to himself, his voice so hoarse that even he could not recognize it.

He checked his only reliance on his person—the las pistol.

The gun body was covered in sludge, and the scale resembling a battery indicator flickered with a faint yellow light, showing the remaining energy: 34%. This was the countdown to his remaining lifespan.

Suddenly, a faint glimmer of light appeared in the dark fog ahead.

That was not an electric light, but firelight.

Someone was burning trash to keep warm.

A surge of joy rose in Li Wei's heart, but he immediately suppressed the impulse to rush forward and beg for help.

Having experienced the Inquisition's "backstabbing," he no longer trusted anyone.

He turned off the flashlight that had long since run out of power, and like an injured wildcat, taking cover behind pipes and ruins, he sneaked over silently.

That was a temporary camp located at the exit of a huge sewage pipe.

Rather than a camp, it resembled a garbage dump.

A few rusted sheet-iron panels barely managed to piece together a windbreak, and in the middle, an iron barrel burned some kind of solid fuel that emitted a pungent chemical odor.

Surrounding the fire were three..."people."

Li Wei narrowed his eyes to observe. Those were three scavengers wearing ragged leather and pelts of unknown creatures.

Their skin was as pale as paper, and their bodies were covered with strange pustules and nodules.

One person's left arm was noticeably longer than the right, hanging down to the ground like an ape's.

Underhive Mutant, or rather, deformed scavengers affected by long-term radiation.

At this moment, these three people were busy around a corpse that had just washed out from the pipe.

Their movements were hair-raisingly practiced.

That long-armed freak held a rusted saw and was sawing the corpse's thighbone.

Another was peeling the boots off the corpse.

The third and shortest one was holding a spoon, scooping something out from the corpse's cut-open abdominal cavity, and then stuffing it into his own mouth.

"This meat... is too old..." the short one complained incoherently, his hands not stopping, "tastes like engine oil."

"Shut up, cripple," the long-armed freak scolded. "Save the bone marrow; that can trade for two batteries."

Hiding in the dark, Li Wei felt a wave of intense stomach cramps, almost vomiting on the spot.

Cannibalism.

The people here truly ate human flesh.

And they did so as naturally as processing livestock.

He clamped his hand tightly over his mouth and turned to leave.

This sort of place was definitely not where he could seek help.

This group of people would dismantle a corpse for two batteries; for the Imperial Military Boots on his feet—which were ill-fitting yet intact—they would undoubtedly kill him without the slightest hesitation.

However, fate always loved to play jokes.

The very moment Li Wei turned around, he stepped on a loose sheet of iron.

Snap!

The crisp metallic clatter carried a long way in the silent sewer.

The three people by the fire instantly halted their actions.

Like hyenas that had caught the scent of blood, three pairs of turbid, yellowish eyes filled with greed and brutality snapped toward the direction where Li Wei was hiding in the dark.

"Who?!" The long-armed freak dropped the saw and pulled a makeshift spear sharpened from a steel pipe out from his waist.

The other two also quickly snatched up iron rods and chains.

Li Wei knew he could no longer hide.

Steeling his heart, he stepped out from the shadows.

He did not raise his hands in surrender; instead, he directly raised the las pistol in his hand, the pitch-black muzzle pointing at the strongest-looking long-armed freak.

"Don't move," Li Wei forced his voice to sound cold. "I'm just passing through. Get lost if you don't want to die."

Those three scavengers genuinely froze upon seeing the las pistol.

In the underhive, a real military laser gun was a rare commodity—it was a symbol of power.

Yet immediately afterward, something Li Wei had never expected happened.

That long-armed freak was not scared off by the gun.

He twitched his sunken nose as if smelling something extremely disgusting.

His expression shifted from vigilance to extreme revulsion.

"Bah!" The freak spat a wad of thick phlegm onto the ground. "What kind of damn thing... why do you smell so foul?"

"It's not shit," another scavenger covered his nose, taking a step back with a disgusted expression. "It's this 'person'... looking at him makes you want to vomit. Like some... like some empty shell without a soul."

Li Wei froze.

This reaction again.

Pariah constitution.

This constitution not only dispelled demons, but it also made ordinary humans feel instinctive fear, disgust, and hostility.

In the eyes of these people, Li Wei was not a fellow human, but a monster exuding a "wrong" aura.

"Kill him," the short one suddenly screamed, his voice filled with inexplicable hatred. "Kill him! He's polluting the air here! Kill him and we won't have to feel so sick!"

This hatred lacked all logic, stemming purely from soul-deep rejection.

What might originally have been just a robbery had now turned into a blood feud.

"For the boots! For the gun!" The long-armed freak roared, charging forward with his spear raised.

His speed was astonishingly fast, looking nothing like a malnourished deformed child.

Li Wei's pupils shrank violently.

He was a law-abiding citizen of modern society; he had never even killed a chicken.

Yet at this moment, adrenaline took over his brain.

If I don't kill him, I'll die.

I want to live.

Li Wei's finger squeezed the trigger.

No aiming technique, relying entirely on close range.

Zzzt—bang!

A dazzling red laser beam instantly crossed a distance of ten meters.

No recoil, no gunpowder smoke.

Only the cracking sound of the air being instantly ionized.

The laser accurately struck the long-armed freak's chest.

It did not blow a hole through him as in the movies.

The high-temperature laser instantly vaporized and scorched the flesh, bones, and internal organs of his chest.

The steam explosion generated by the instant evaporation of water directly blasted a fist-sized charred cavity in his chest.

"Urgh..." The long-armed freak's charging motion stiffened.

He looked down at his smoking chest, seemingly not yet registering that he was already dead.

Then, he toppled into the sewage like a rotten log, making a dull thud.

The remaining two scavengers were terrified dumb.

They were not scared by murder, but by the sheer power of the laser gun.

"Get out!!" Li Wei roared, raising the gun once more, even though his hand shook like a Parkinson's patient.

The two of them shrieked, dropped their companion's corpse and the unfinished body, and scrambled into the dark pipes, disappearing without a trace.

The entire world grew quiet again.

Only the fuel in the fire crackled on.

Li Wei maintained his gun-raised posture and stood frozen for a full minute, until he was certain no one was coming back, before letting his arm drop limply.

He panted heavily, his heart hammering as though it would burst through his ribcage.

He had killed someone.

He had truly killed someone.

His stomach churned violently, and he leaned against the wall, retching several times, yet nothing came up—because there was only bitter water in his belly.

He looked at the corpse sprawled in the water.

If he had hesitated for half a second just then, the one lying there would be him, and his thighbone would have been sawed off by that saw to trade for batteries.

Li Wei wiped the sour liquid from the corner of his mouth, his gaze gradually turning cold and hard.

Sentimentalism was a luxury here.

He needed loot now.

Enduring his nausea, he walked over to search the long-armed freak's body.

There was nothing valuable.

A few rusted tools, a roll of moldy bandages, and... he felt a hard object inside the freak's waist pouch.

By the firelight, Li Wei saw clearly what it was.

It was an off-white, soap-like block wrapped in waxed paper.

Imprinted upon it was a faded Imperial Aquila emblem, along with a line of small text: "Recycled Corpsestarch Ration—Rosemary Flavor."

Li Wei's hand shook slightly.

This was "Corpsestarch"?

His sanity screamed: Throw it away! This is made of human meat! This violates ethics!

His body roared: Eat it! You need energy! You have to survive!

Li Wei looked at the grayish-white brick in his hand, smelling a faint hint of preservative and stale grease.

He looked down at his still-bleeding thigh, thinking of the ruthless Inquisitor and that damned mission.

To hell with ethics. Li Wei tore open the packaging paper and took a vicious bite.

The texture was like chewing a piece of air-dried candle mixed with grit.

The taste was salty to the point of bitterness, carrying an indescribable strange flavor—resembling spoiled lard mixed with chalk dust.

Excruciatingly unpalatable.

He forced himself to swallow, even though every single gulp felt like swallowing knives.

One bite, two bites, three.

He ate the entire block of corpsestarch.

He felt a warm current spread throughout his stomach; that was energy, the driving force to stay alive.