The black market of the Bottom Hive had a fitting name—the Rust Bazaar.
It was made up of thousands of stalls built from scrap metal sheets, tarps, and holographic advertising boards.
The air was perpetually thick with the smell of ozone, grilled skewers, and old sweat.
Though chaotic, it was the lifeline of the entire settlement.
You could buy anything here: gang-made pipe guns, smuggled hallucinogens that had trickled down from the Upper Hive, even mechanical prosthetics of questionable origin.
Li Wei pulled the musty coat he had stripped from a corpse tighter around himself, doing his best to hide his face.
He walked slowly, not just because his leg hurt, but because he was observing everything.
As a modern man, he found the business practices here laughably primitive.
There were no clearly marked prices. Everything depended on who was buying.
There was no quality assurance. Once sold, no returns—if it broke, that was your problem.
Most importantly, there was a severe knowledge gap.
He saw a scavenger holding something that was obviously a high-energy battery pack, yet treating it like an ordinary "glowing brick" and trading it for two pieces of moldy bread.
He saw a vendor selling a precision optical sight as binoculars. Since it had been mounted backward and he could not see through it, he had marked it down as defective merchandise.
"Gold everywhere." Li Wei's eyes gleamed in the shadows. "Nothing but gold, and these idiots treat it all like scrap metal."
He touched the nearly depleted Las Pistol in his pocket.
He needed batteries, real food, and antibiotics.
He also needed money.
Li Wei stopped in front of a stall with a sign that read "Grot High-Tech Recycling."
The stall was enormous, piled high with electronic junk dug out of the ruins.
The owner was a short, fat bald man with a cheap mechanical eye. He was currently screaming spittle-flecked abuse at a skinny scavenger.
"Get lost! Take your junk and get lost!" The bald vendor waved a box-shaped device in his hand. "This damned thing keeps screaming! It's possessed by an evil spirit! It nearly deafened me just now! Are you trying to get me killed?"
The scavenger shrank back in fright. "But, boss... I dug it up in the old temple district... It's still lit up, so it must be worth something..."
"Worth shit! It curses everyone who gets near it!" The vendor raised the box, about to smash it on the ground. "This cursed thing!"
"Wait."
A pale hand reached out and stopped the vendor's arm.
The vendor turned around furiously. "Which bastard wants to die—" Before he could finish, he froze.
Standing before him was a young man with a deathly pale face and cold eyes.
In that instant, the vendor felt a powerful, physical wave of nausea.
It was like swallowing a live fly, or suddenly being dropped into an ice cellar.
That bone-chilling presence made his raised arm freeze in midair.
"Who are you?" The vendor's voice trembled. Instinctively, he knew the person before him was dangerous. "Don't touch me! You make me sick!"
Li Wei did not retreat. Instead, he stepped closer, using his "Aura of Disgust" to apply further pressure. "I'll take that."
He pointed at the box in the vendor's hand.
It was an Auspex—a military-grade handheld scanner from the Warhammer universe.
At the moment, however, its speaker was emitting an agonizingly shrill high-frequency buzz, while its red light flashed wildly.
"You want this cursed object?" The vendor stared at him as if he were mad. "It's gone crazy! The Machine Spirit is screaming! Take it, and you'll have terrible luck!"
"It isn't screaming." Li Wei took the heavy device from the vendor's hand.
He glanced at the waveform flickering across its screen.
To these superstitious natives, it was a curse from evil spirits.
To Li Wei, it was merely an incorrect sensitivity setting.
The scanner's gain knob had been turned all the way up, causing it to pick up every bit of electromagnetic interference around it—from the electrical hum of neon lights to the magnetic field of the generator next door—and amplify it through the speaker.
It was feedback.
"It's only crying because it cannot find a master who understands what it says." Li Wei began making things up.
In this world of religious lunatics, he had to act like one himself.
He pulled out the half-eaten piece of Corpsestarch from his pocket and tossed it onto the counter. "Take it. This chunk of meat for that 'curse.'"
The vendor looked at the bitten piece of low-grade ration, then at the noisy box burning a hole in his hand.
"Deal! Take it! Get out! Don't let it explode in my stall!"
Li Wei picked up the Auspex and walked toward a dark corner beside the stall.
He did not leave. Instead, in full view of everyone, he began his "exorcism ritual."
The surrounding crowd—including the vendor and scavenger—gathered around with equal parts curiosity and fear, though none dared come within five meters.
Li Wei pretended to trace circles over the device's casing with his fingers, when he was really just wiping away the grease and grime.
Then he reached toward the adjustment knob on its side.
"Quiet." Li Wei gave the order softly.
With a gentle twist of his finger, he lowered the "sensitivity" from 100% to 20% and activated the "squelch" switch.
Bzz... click.
The piercing scream vanished instantly.
The wildly flashing red light became a steady green pulsing glow.
The waveform on the screen returned to a clear radar-scanning interface, producing a pleasant beep... beep... sound.
The entire place fell silent.
The vendor's eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets.
"The... the Machine Spirit has calmed down?" He pointed at Li Wei with a trembling hand. "You only touched it? No sacred oil? No prayers?"
Li Wei turned around and raised the military scanner, now functioning perfectly, in his hand.
"It's very well-behaved. You were just too noisy."
Li Wei looked at the vendor, a mocking smile curling at his lips. "Now, this is a fully functional, sacred Imperial Auspex. It can detect radiation, heat sources, and moving objects. An essential artifact for exploring the depths of the Hive City."
"Boss, are you buying?" Li Wei placed the device back on the counter. "This time, I don't want Corpsestarch."
The vendor's Adam's apple bobbed violently.
A broken Auspex was junk.
A repaired Auspex could be traded for a good gun, or enough rations to feed a family for a month!
Greed overcame fear.
The vendor rubbed his hands together, his eyes burning. "I'll buy it! Of course I'll buy it! But I just sold it to you—"
"That was then." Li Wei cut him off, his eyes cold. "This is now. I don't want to hear any nonsense. I want two standard Las Pistol batteries, one dose of strong antibiotics, and fifty coins."
"That's robbery!" the vendor shrieked.
"Then forget it." Li Wei made as if to take the device away. "I'll find another buyer. I'm sure the owner of that gun shop over there would be delighted..."
"Don't! Fine! I'll pay!" The vendor immediately caved. He knew exactly how much he could make by reselling the thing.
Three minutes later.
Li Wei walked out of the bazaar.
Two fully charged Las Pistol batteries hung from his belt, a life-saving antibiotic dose sat in his pocket, and he clutched a heavy bag of coins in one hand.
He did not leave immediately.
He found an empty dead-end alley and injected himself with the antibiotics first.
As the medicine entered his veins, the constant sensation of low fever began to fade.
"This is the power of knowledge." Li Wei flipped a gold coin engraved with the Emperor's portrait. "Or rather, the power of common sense."
What he did not notice was that, deep in the shadows, a pair of eyes was watching him.
They did not belong to the Inquisition.
They belonged to a middle-aged man in a well-tailored trench coat, carrying a gold-inlaid cane and accompanied by two heavily armed guards.
A prominent tattoo marked his neck—the symbol of the "Guild."
Within the Hive City, the Guild controlled trade, water supplies, and corpse recovery. They were the true local tyrants.
"Who is that?" the middle-aged man quietly asked the guard beside him.
"Don't know, boss. Never seen him before," the guard replied softly, discomfort in his voice.
The middle-aged man narrowed his eyes as he watched Li Wei's retreating back, deep in thought. "A man who can silence an angry Machine Spirit and turn scrap metal into gold..."
"No, he's useful." The middle-aged man turned the gemstone ring on his finger, revealing a merchant's cold smile. "Find out who he is. If he has no backing, make him understand that doing business in this bazaar requires paying protection money."
"And if he refuses?"
"Then bring him in."
Li Wei had no idea that he had already been targeted.
At that moment, he was immersed in the joy of earning his "first pot of gold."
But he quickly realized that while fifty coins was no small amount, it was merely a drop in the bucket compared to his true goal.
To leave the Bottom Hive, or even leave this planet, would require an astronomical sum.
And the Data-slate hidden against his chest was like a ticking time bomb.
He needed to find a buyer who knew what it was, but would not immediately report him to the Inquisition.
"I need to be greedier." Li Wei pulled his coat tighter and disappeared into the bustling crowd.
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