Pain.
This time, it was more than just a headache. Every joint in his body was screaming.
Li Wei dragged his thigh, which felt as though it had been burned by fire, and struggled through knee-deep sewage.
This was a real "sewer." The so-called civilian districts lay several kilometers overhead.
There was no law here, no light—only the filth discharged by the entire city.
Literal filth: excrement, industrial waste, toxic chemicals, and countless fragments of corpses washed down through the pipes.
Li Wei stopped beside the murky underground river.
His throat was so dry it felt like it was smoking, and every breath was like swallowing sandpaper.
He looked at the black water by his feet, slick with oil and occasionally carrying a bloated dead rat past, and instinctively wanted to scoop up a handful and drink.
But he held himself back.
The rationality of a modern man had saved his life.
Drinking raw water here would probably be more painful than swallowing a bullet.
"Need to find... somewhere with people." Li Wei muttered, his voice so hoarse that even he barely recognized it.
He checked his only means of support—the Las Pistol.
The weapon was caked in mud. A gauge resembling a battery indicator flickered with a faint yellow glow, showing remaining power: 34%. It was the countdown to the end of his life.
Suddenly, a faint glimmer appeared in the dark mist ahead.
It was not electric light, but firelight.
Someone was burning trash for warmth.
Li Wei's heart leaped, but he immediately suppressed the urge to rush over and ask for help.
After the Inquisition's "betrayal," he no longer trusted anyone.
He switched off his already dead flashlight and, like a wounded wildcat, silently crept closer under the cover of pipes and ruins.
It was a makeshift camp at the outlet of a massive sewage pipe.
Calling it a camp would have been generous. It was more like a garbage dump.
Several rusted sheets of iron had barely been assembled into a windbreak. In the middle, a metal barrel burned some kind of solid fuel that gave off a pungent chemical stench.
Three... "people" sat around the fire.
Li Wei narrowed his eyes and observed them. They were three scavengers dressed in tattered leather and the pelts of unknown creatures.
Their skin was pale as paper, covered in strange pustules and nodules.
One of them had a left arm visibly longer than his right, hanging to the ground like an ape's.
Underhive Mutants—or rather, deformed scavengers warped by prolonged radiation exposure.
At that moment, the three of them were busy around a corpse that had just been washed out of the pipe.
Their practiced movements made his skin crawl.
The long-armed freak held a rusty saw and was cutting through the corpse's thighbone.
Another was stripping the boots from the corpse.
The shortest one held a spoon, scooping something from the corpse's opened abdominal cavity and stuffing it into his mouth.
"This meat... is too old..." the short man complained indistinctly without stopping his hands. "Tastes like motor oil."
"Shut up, Cripple." The long-armed freak cursed. "Save the marrow. That can trade for two batteries."
Hiding in the darkness, Li Wei felt a violent spasm in his stomach and nearly threw up on the spot.
They ate people.
The people here really ate people.
And they did it as naturally as butchering livestock.
He clamped a hand over his mouth and turned to leave.
This was absolutely not somewhere he could seek help.
These people would dismantle a corpse for two batteries. For the intact pair of Imperial Military Boots on his feet, even if they did not fit him, they would kill him without hesitation.
Yet fate always loved a joke.
The instant Li Wei turned around, he stepped on a loose sheet of metal.
Crack!
The crisp clang of metal carried far through the silent sewers.
The three people by the fire froze instantly.
Like hyenas that had caught the scent of blood, three cloudy, yellowed eyes filled with greed and brutality turned in unison toward the darkness where Li Wei hid.
"Who's there?!" The long-armed freak threw down the saw and pulled a crude spear, fashioned from a sharpened steel pipe, from his waist.
The other two quickly grabbed an iron bar and a chain.
Li Wei knew he could not stay hidden.
With his heart set, he stepped out of the shadows.
He did not raise his hands in surrender. Instead, he lifted the Las Pistol directly, its dark muzzle aimed at the long-armed freak, who looked the strongest.
"Don't move." Li Wei did his best to make his voice sound cold. "I'm just passing through. If you don't want to die, get lost."
The three scavengers did indeed freeze when they saw the Las Pistol.
In the Bottom Hive, a real military lasgun was a rare treasure—a symbol of power.
But then something happened that Li Wei had not expected.
The long-armed freak was not frightened away by the gun.
He twitched his collapsed nose, as though he had caught the scent of something utterly revolting.
His expression shifted from wariness to extreme disgust.
"Pah!" The freak spat a wad of phlegm onto the ground. "What the hell... why do you stink so bad?"
"It's not shit." Another scavenger covered his nose and backed away in disgust. "It's this 'person'... Just looking at him makes me want to puke. Like... like an empty shell with no soul."
Li Wei froze.
That reaction again.
His Pariah nature.
It could not only repel demons, but also made ordinary humans instinctively feel fear, disgust, and hostility toward him.
In their eyes, Li Wei was not one of them. He was a monster that gave off the aura of something "wrong."
"Kill him!" The short man suddenly shrieked, 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 anymore!"
There was no Logic to that hatred. It was pure rejection at the level of the soul.
What might have been a simple robbery had become a personal vendetta.
"For the boots! For the gun!" The long-armed freak roared and charged with his spear raised.
He was astonishingly fast, nothing like a malnourished mutant.
Li Wei's pupils contracted sharply.
He was a law-abiding citizen from modern society. He had never even killed a chicken.
But at that moment, adrenaline took over his mind.
If I don't kill him, I'll die.
I want to live.
Li Wei pulled the trigger.
There was no aiming technique involved. The target was simply too close.
Zzzap!
A blinding red laser beam crossed ten meters in an instant.
There was no recoil, no smoke.
Only the explosive crack of air being instantly ionized.
The laser struck the long-armed freak squarely in the chest.
It did not punch a hole through him like in the movies.
The high-temperature beam instantly vaporized and charred the flesh, bones, and internal organs in his chest.
The steam explosion caused by the sudden evaporation of moisture blew a fist-sized, blackened hole directly through his chest.
"Urgh..." The long-armed freak's charge stiffened.
He looked down at his smoking chest, seemingly not yet realizing that he was dead.
Then he toppled into the sewage like a rotten log, landing with a dull splash.
The remaining two scavengers were stunned.
They were not frightened by the killing itself, but by the power of the laser weapon.
"GET LOST!!" Li Wei roared, raising the gun again, though his hand shook like that of a Parkinson's patient.
The two screamed, abandoning both their companion's corpse and the half-eaten body, then scrambled into the dark pipes and vanished without a trace.
The whole world became quiet again.
Only the fuel in the fire continued to crackle.
Li Wei held his gun raised for a full minute. Only after making sure no one was coming back did he lower his arm weakly.
He panted violently, his heart beating so hard it felt ready to burst through his chest.
He had killed someone.
He had really killed someone.
His stomach churned. Leaning against the wall, he dry-heaved several times, but nothing came out—there was only bitter fluid in his belly.
He looked at the corpse lying facedown in the water.
If he had hesitated for even half a second, he would be the one lying there now, and his thighbone would have been sawed off to trade for batteries.
Li Wei wiped the sour fluid from the corner of his mouth, and his gaze gradually hardened.
Sentimentality was a luxury here.
What he needed now was loot.
Suppressing his nausea, he walked over and searched the long-armed freak's corpse.
There was nothing valuable.
A few rusted tools, a roll of moldy bandages, and... he felt something hard inside the freak's belt pouch.
By the firelight, Li Wei saw what it was.
It was a grayish-white block like a bar of soap, wrapped in greaseproof paper.
Printed on it was a faded Imperial Aquila and a line of small text: "Recycled Corpsestarch Ration—Rosemary Flavor."
Li Wei's hand trembled.
This was "Corpsestarch"?
His reason screamed: Throw it away! It's made from human flesh! This violates ethics!
His body roared: Eat it! You need energy! You need to survive!
Li Wei looked at the grayish-white brick in his hand and smelled the faint scent of preservatives and old grease.
He looked again at his still-bleeding thigh and thought of the cold Inquisitor, of that damned mission.
"To hell with ethics." Li Wei tore open the wrapper and took a savage bite.
It felt like chewing on a dried-out candle mixed with grit.
It was bitterly salty, with an indescribable strange taste—like rancid lard mixed with chalk dust.
It was revolting beyond words.
He forced himself to swallow, even though every swallow felt like swallowing a knife.
One bite, two bites, three bites.
He ate the entire block of Corpsestarch.
He felt a current of warmth spread through his stomach. It was energy. It was the strength to stay alive.
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