Yero City

"Name!"

"Lu Zhan!"

"Age!"

"Eighteen!"

"Occupation..."

In a luxury ward at the Ninth Medical Care Center in Yero City's outer city.

A woman in a black Inspection Office uniform was questioning a young man whose head was bandaged into something resembling a sesame ball.

In another corner of the room, two "temporary workers" from the Public Security Office were "brimming with energy" as they took notes.

"Occupation? Uh..."

"I recently became an Alchemy apprentice. I'm responsible for fitting wheels onto steam locomotives."

Perhaps out of nervousness, or perhaps a young man's shyness, Lu Zhan's expression visibly changed when she asked about his occupation.

"Lu Zhan, don't hide anything. Cooperate and tell us the truth!"

"We know perfectly well that you're a member of the Wutu Gang."

"Commissioner Xin isn't like us. She's from the Inspection Office."

"You're lucky Commissioner Xin is kindhearted. If you ask me, drifters like you should be thrown straight into the Inspection Office's jail."

Hearing Lu Zhan "gloss over the important details" instead of coming clean about his background, Wesker stopped writing.

They were present at the interrogation precisely because they "knew the situation."

The Wutu Gang that Lu Zhan came from, for instance, was based in their Ninth Public Security Office's jurisdiction.

"Lu Zhan, don't be nervous, and don't feel you need to hold anything back."

"The Inspection Office treats everyone equally. As long as you haven't done anything to harm Yero City, we won't discriminate against you because of your background."

Seeing that the reprimand had made Lu Zhan even more "nervous," Xin Ya, who was leading the interrogation, played the good cop.

Xin Ya had already been through similar situations more than a dozen times over the past few days.

As a result, despite being a newcomer to the Inspection Office, she handled the interrogation with practiced ease.

"I'm not nervous, and I'm not deliberately hiding anything."

"It's just that, under the Wutu Gang's rules, since I didn't become an enforcer after reaching adulthood, I have no right to call myself a member."

Ultimately, he was still "too young," and Lu Zhan couldn't help defending himself.

The Wutu Gang had indeed raised him, but the moment he was reduced to an Alchemy apprentice, his ties to them had been "severed for good."

"Commissioner Xin, the Wutu Gang does have that rule."

"They fled here twenty years ago and managed to establish themselves in the outer city."

"The Wutu Gang paid a considerable price to enter Yero City. Lu Zhan and several hundred other orphans were part of that price."

"Although the Wutu Gang took responsibility for raising Lu Zhan and the others, they generally sold them straight to Alchemy factories once they reached adulthood."

"These Alchemy apprentices really have become estranged from the gangs they grew up in."

Wang Yang, the other Public Security Office member, explained the Wutu Gang's situation to Xin Ya, giving her a detailed account of Lu Zhan's background as well.

He had so much information that even Lu Zhan himself hadn't known some of the details.

"They came to Yero City twenty years ago?"

"So they suffered too."

The moment Wang Yang mentioned twenty years ago, Xin Ya understood.

Twenty years ago, the monsters in the wilderness had suddenly gone berserk, wiping out a swath of small cities around Yero City.

The so-called Wutu Gang was an organization formed by survivors of Wutu City who had banded together.

During that period, far too many outsiders had poured into Yero City.

Even though Yero City turned no one away, its limited size meant it couldn't accommodate every refugee.

There were only so many places available in the outer city, and the various survivor organizations fought both openly and covertly over them.

Lu Zhan's parents had died in the chaos back then.

"Lu Zhan, I'm sure you know why we've come to see you."

"This is the Ninth Medical Care Center. Ordinarily, it isn't open to regular citizens."

"We spent considerable resources keeping you alive."

"If you cooperate honestly, we'll reduce your medical fees. Otherwise, you'll have to work for the rest of your life to pay off the debt."

Perhaps Lu Zhan's background had stirred certain memories, for Xin Ya's voice had lost some of its chill.

But when Lu Zhan heard about the medical fees, he went completely numb.

Even in his previous life, those things—medical bills—were mountains heavy enough to break a person's back!

Damn it, who said you could eat and drink like a king after transmigrating, laze around, and enjoy life?

Had any of them actually transmigrated?

I really did transmigrate, but isn't this start a little too miserable?

On the hospital bed, Lu Zhan felt his head, bandaged into a ball, then glanced at the dozens of "high-tech" devices connected to his body. He wanted to cry, but had no tears.

He didn't doubt Xin Ya's claim that it would take him a lifetime to pay off his medical bills.

According to the memories he had absorbed from this body's previous owner, his brains had been beaten out at the time.

And it wasn't just his head. His chest had been torn wide open too.

Yet now, apart from a slight grogginess in his head, all his other wounds had actually healed.

This definitely couldn't be credited to his transmigration, or Xin Ya and the others wouldn't have been so unfazed.

Even a bone or tendon injury took a hundred days to heal in my old world, but here, a chest torn open healed in just three days.

This world's technology definitely isn't as simple as I thought.

No wonder even a job tightening screws comes with the title of Alchemy apprentice.

Lu Zhan studied the dozens of machines with a solemn gaze. They were completely different from the medical equipment of his previous life.

Naturally, the constantly shifting lines on their screens left him even more bewildered.

All he could blame was the previous owner's "humble background."

Although his occupation was Alchemy apprentice, he was nothing like the haughty alchemists in the novels Lu Zhan had read in his previous life.

In this world, humanity had likewise

developed an industrial civilization, but called it the power of Alchemy.

For instance, the steam locomotive factory where Lu Zhan worked clearly used the steam engine technology of his previous world, yet insisted on proclaiming it the power of Alchemy.

Otherwise, how would the previous owner, a laborer who fitted wheels, have dared call himself an Alchemy apprentice?

"Commissioner Xin, I'll cooperate fully with your investigation."

"You want to know about what happened on the night of the twenty-third, right?"

"A Mutant Beast. We encountered one of the legendary Mutant Beasts that night!"

No matter how he considered it, Lu Zhan found that he seemed to have only one way to survive: "confess and receive leniency."

And that wasn't merely because he was powerless to resist the law enforcement agency Xin Ya represented.

It was even more because he, the victim, still hadn't escaped the shadow of the killer.

Lu Zhan was absolutely certain that the Mutant Beast responsible for that night's bloodbath was still at large.

Otherwise, in this world where human lives were worth less than weeds, an ant like him would never have deserved a place in such a high-end hospital. He would simply have been dumped in a stinking ditch.