Buying or selling a house took too long and would leave a transaction record, making it a poor option for Qin Siyang.
So what Qian Wendao had offered him was really a question with only one answer.
Qin Siyang returned home, wrapped up the hundreds of copper coins he couldn't let anyone see, and put them in a cloth bag. Then he grabbed a lunch box and his Resident ID.
Then he burned the house down.
Qin Siyang lived at the very edge of the Safe Zone. Few people lived there, and no developer would come to this remote place to undertake a major construction project after the apocalypse.
As a result, the houses here were all small, single-story buildings, with some distance between them.
The burning of Qin Siyang's house hadn't endangered anyone else. It hadn't even woken his soundly sleeping neighbors.
"That should do it."
Qin Siyang's house had burned down in an "accident," making him a homeless boy in every sense of the word.
But even if he was homeless, he still needed somewhere to sleep.
He wandered for a long time, but with nowhere else to go, he ended up back at Wang Defa's Internet Cafe.
When Wang Defa saw Qin Siyang again, neither his initial fear nor his later delight remained. All he had now was a helpless expression and a bellyful of complaints.
He muttered, "What kind of boss is this? He's a damn harbinger of death! Ugh, why did I ever bother talking to him?"
Despite his resentment, when he came out of the Internet Cafe to speak to Qin Siyang, he put his smile back on and became perfectly polite.
"Boss, what is it this time?"
"Oh, I need to stay in your Internet Cafe's storeroom for a while. Probably just a few days. Once I get my Sequence registration sorted out, finding a house shouldn't be hard."
"Huh? What?" Wang Defa shuddered from head to toe and stared at him with wide eyes.
"I said, I need to stay here for a while."
"But... boss, if you do that and the Police Bureau comes for another surprise inspection, what am I supposed to tell them?"
"Whatever you told them last time."
Wang Defa waved his hands frantically. "No! Boss, you really can't do this! Last time was an emergency. There was a reason for it, and I understood. But you can't... you can't keep doing this! I have a wife and kids. If they find out about us, how am I supposed to be a husband and a father?"
Qin Siyang glanced at him. "You think I want this? Don't tell me you think rumors about that kind of relationship between us somehow benefit me at your expense."
Wang Defa's face twisted like a rag that had scrubbed floors for ten years. "I... I'm not saying you benefit... You lose out, and so do I, right? This is a lose-lose situation!"
"Enough nonsense. If you won't let me sleep here, I'll sleep at your house."
"Huh? You're... you're being unreasonable..."
"Spare me the lectures."
Qin Siyang couldn't be bothered to argue with Wang Defa any longer. He opened the storeroom door, shook the dust out of the rug, and lay down on it to rest.
Unable to voice his misery, Wang Defa could only sigh quietly and close the door for Qin Siyang.
"What the hell did I do to deserve this?"
Wang Defa left, cursing under his breath.
Lying on the storeroom floor, Qin Siyang felt rather helpless too. Right now, he missed his bed terribly.
"Hopefully Qian Wendao gets things sorted out soon. Even one day in this damn place is miserable."
After making do for the night, Qin Siyang woke a little after six the next morning, the cold, hard floor digging painfully into his back.
Though he had a powerful physique, he still wasn't used to sleeping on the floor.
"Seriously... even killing people wasn't this miserable."
Grumpy from waking up, Qin Siyang rubbed his face and opened his phone, only to find an unread message.
"All set. Sunday, eight a.m. Bring your Resident ID. Meet at Sequence Ability Management Bureau No. 14121."
He checked the sender: Uncle!
"You're amazing, Section Chief Qian!"
Qin Siyang nearly jumped for joy.
Qian Wendao really was reliable. He had sorted everything out that very day!
Unable to wait, he immediately turned on the nearby computer used to check the surveillance feeds and searched for a route to the Sequence Ability Management Bureau.
"Looks like it's about six bus stops away. I'd better leave now."
Qin Siyang memorized the route and cleared the browser history, then placed his bundle in the drawer beside the computer desk. Taking only his Resident ID, he left the storeroom.
He walked four bus stops along the main road, turned onto a side street, and followed it for ten minutes. Then he turned onto another main road and walked for another half hour.
"Sequence Ability Management Bureau No. 14121. This should be it."
The Administration Bureau was a square, three-story building with gray-painted exterior walls. Streetlights shone over the building, faintly scattering a dim glow that was almost black.
Qin Siyang didn't know how such a dark color could give off light, but it certainly added an intimidating air to the already austere building.
Qin Siyang merely found it interesting.
"I never thought my first visit to a place I used to be too afraid even to look at would involve pulling a fast one."
As he gazed at the empty street and the square Administration Bureau building with its gray exterior walls, he was filled with emotion.
There were no guards at the entrance to the Sequence Ability Management Bureau.
Every member of its staff had awakened a Sequence Ability, so thieves and criminals wouldn't come looking for trouble without a reason.
For ordinary people, even approaching the Administration Bureau took tremendous courage, let alone entering it.
After all, if a Sequence Ability User killed you by mistake, there would be nowhere to seek justice.
Under United Government law, if a Sequence Ability User killed an ordinary person, the regular Police Bureau, Procuratorate, and Court had no authority to hear the case.
The case had to be transferred to the Sequence Ability Management Bureau for judgment. The verdict usually increased the number of gods that the Sequence Ability User was required to hunt, under the lofty pretext of "continuing to contribute to the Safe Zone and making amends through meritorious service."
But in reality, everyone knew that even without punishment, Sequence Ability Users still had to hunt gods outside the Safe Zone. This was simply a disguised way of protecting them.
Yet despite the privileges enjoyed by Sequence Ability Users, no one dared complain.
First, awakening a Sequence Ability was random. No one was born a Sequence Ability User, so the path into this privileged class could be said to be entirely transparent.
Second, Sequence Ability Users could kill gods and represented humanity's hope. If you dared lead an effort to strip them of their privileges, you were depriving humanity of its chance to leave the Safe Zone. No one could withstand having that accusation pinned on them.
Thus, in places like the edge of the Safe Zone, Sequence Ability Users were like deities, regarded with reverence and kept at a distance.
Of course, the United Government didn't grant Sequence Ability Users unlimited preferential treatment.
Killing an ordinary person would be treated as a grave matter at first, then let off lightly. But Sequence Ability Users were not allowed to kill students or public employees.
Students were the future the United Government was nurturing, while public employees were the foundation of its rule. Anyone who killed people from either group would face the full force of the law, even if they were a Sequence Ability User.
With these restrictions in place, people felt even less hostility toward the privileges of Sequence Ability Users.
And so, amid this apocalypse, a relatively stable yet warped social structure had formed.
Qin Siyang climbed the steps and pushed open the Administration Bureau's black wooden door.
Before you continue