The End

The two gangs' battle had lasted three hours, and thousands of corpses lay at the very center of the battlefield.

After the Chemical Pigs entered the fray, they wrecked the entire battlefield. To deal with those things, the Fertilizer Gang had paid heavily in manpower and detonators.

At present, the leaders of both sides had withdrawn to the rear with several hundred trusted men. Those men all carried homemade guns; they were the gangs' last remaining assets.

The low-level grunts had all been wiped out. With only a few hundred gunmen left, both sides were considering whether to keep fighting.

If they stopped, it would be a draw, and the Reactor would remain undecided. But if they continued, they feared exhausting the last of their resources, leaving them unable even to control their own gangs when they returned.

Both bosses fell into a dilemma. Only the wounded men's screams remained on the battlefield, and that was a windfall for Li Qinwu.

Li Qinwu worked with Little Knife to lure out and shoot three Chemical Pigs. Then he stopped fighting and began harvesting the spoils.

He told the panting Little Knife to rest while he loaded ordinary rounds into his semi-automatic combat gun, preparing to search the battlefield for corpses.

He started with the three Chemical Pigs he had killed. Picking up a steel pipe lying nearby, he used it as a pry bar, wedging it into a Chemical Pig's Rage Spine and violently prying the whole thing off along with its pig helmet.

Then Li Qinwu opened the drug compartment on the Rage Spine and collected the Rage Drug inside.

After working for a while, he had gained three Rage Spines for the mission and fourteen doses of Rage Drug.

He was very satisfied, but his backpack was not full yet, and so many corpses remained unsearched on the battlefield.

He carefully crept toward the edge of the battlefield and reached a Chemical Dog corpse. After rummaging through its pockets, he pulled out a Poison Needle.

He pocketed the Poison Needle and moved toward the next Chemical Dog corpse. This time, before he could even reach out, the corpse suddenly coughed up blood.

"I... I'm still alive?"

Li Qinwu drew the dagger at his waist and drove it up through the man's chin into his brain.

"That's not possible. You're imagining things."

The Chemical Dog's legs kicked once, then went stiff.

Li Qinwu searched his pockets and found another Poison Needle and a few dollars before moving on to the next corpse.

After searching around, he had collected more than fifty Poison Needles and over three hundred dollars. He had nearly finished searching this area, so he headed toward the more central part of the battlefield.

There were even more corpses in the middle of the battlefield. Li Qinwu feasted on the loot, gaining another forty-odd Poison Needles. He also took dozens of doses of Rage Drug from the Chemical Pigs that Fertilizer Gang soldiers had died fighting.

While he was happily looting, Li Qinwu suddenly heard groaning behind a pile of building debris. He immediately became alert, raising his gun as he approached with careful steps. He quickly peeked out and pulled back, gathering information.

It was a Fertilizer Gang core member. He was severely wounded, with a huge hole torn through his stomach. His intestines were gone, and blood poured out in streams. He did not look likely to survive.

Li Qinwu spotted a large-caliber homemade gun beside the man, and his eyes lit up. He stepped out from cover and picked up the gun to inspect its condition.

It was a fully automatic homemade shotgun chambered in 35mm rounds, with a long barrel and an especially large drum magazine underneath that held thirty shells.

Li Qinwu whistled. A bulldozer! This gun would be incredibly useful in cramped places like the Lower Hive!

He saw that the Fertilizer Gang core member also had a full drum magazine on him and reached for it.

The core member spat out blood. "I think I'm dying."

As Li Qinwu removed the drum magazine from him, he said, "Your intestines have been torn out. Bitten by a Chemical Pig, right? You're done for. Come on, lift your butt."

The guy had a strange drum-magazine harness that let him hang two large drums from either side of his waist. Li Qinwu wanted that too.

The core member was in so much pain from being manhandled that he wanted to die. He shouted, "Stop messing with me first! It hurts too much! Give me a quick death."

Li Qinwu nodded and drew his dagger, but the core member hurriedly stopped him.

"Don't! Don't use a knife. I saw you picking up Poison Needles on the battlefield just now. Give me three shots."

Li Qinwu thought about it, put down the dagger, took three Poison Needles from his bag, and jabbed them directly into the core member's neck.

The excessive chemicals instantly severed his brain's perception of his body. He stopped groaning in pain, and his eyes slowly lost focus.

Watching Li Qinwu remove the harness from his body, he murmured, "In my next life, I don't want to be human anymore..."

As soon as he finished speaking, his head tilted to the side, and he died.

Li Qinwu stuffed the harness into his backpack, stood up, and left.

"You still want a next life? Go report to Chaos!"

In Warhammer 40,000, there was a place called the Warp. It could be simply understood as hell, and Daemons lived within it.

Daemons belonged to different factions and had different temperaments, but they could collectively be called Chaos.

After people died, if their souls were not taken away by the God-Emperor, the ruler of humanity, there was a high chance they would fall into the Warp and become playthings of the Daemon Chaos Gods.

So that guy still wanted a next life? Was he making a wish or something? Go become a Daemon's meat puppet!

Several more hours passed, but the gang bosses on both sides still lacked the courage to go all in.

The gunmen were the gangs' elites. Everyone else could die; their ranks could be replenished within a few months. But the gunmen could not.

The bosses had nurtured these men with genuine care. Every one who died was one fewer, while each additional gunman let a boss control at least another hundred cannon fodder.

But if all the gunmen died, even if no other gang attacked, the bosses would no longer be able to control their own gang territory. Someone would kill them and rebel!

Therefore, both bosses chose to slowly withdraw from the battlefield, temporarily giving up the fight for the Reactor. They would gather another wave of cannon fodder in a few months and fight again.

Li Qinwu found two more homemade Autoguns in good condition with rifled barrels on the battlefield. His bag was also packed full of Poison Needles, triggering yellow encumbrance.

With a full haul, he decided to leave.

He first returned to where Little Knife was crouching and resting. "Let's go. The battle's over. Your boss has withdrawn."

Little Knife was startled. He had been somewhat injured from running earlier, though mostly he had been frightened. After Li Qinwu killed three Chemical Pigs, he had been told to rest.

Only upon hearing this did he realize that the gunfire and battle cries had stopped long ago.

Little Knife got to his feet and wanted to chase after the Fertilizer Gang's main force, but Li Qinwu grabbed him and asked:

"How many did I kill? Do you remember?"

Little Knife thought for a moment. "Sixty-three Poison Insects Chemical Dogs and four Chemical Pigs."

Li Qinwu nodded. "Go tell your boss to prepare the money. I'll collect it in a few days."

Then he counted out three hundred dollars, stuffed it into Little Knife's pocket, waved his hand, and vanished into the darkness.

Little Knife held the three hundred dollars, somewhat dazed.

"Huh? I got a hundred just for making one trip?"