This time, the pile of trash in the center of the space was nearly twice as large as before.
Rather than a trash heap, it was a veritable mountain of garbage.
Chen Lin stared at the spectacular sight before him, his scalp prickling.
The invisible force had already begun working, slowly drawing out all manner of bizarre junk and sending it flying toward its designated area.
With his previous experience, Chen Lin knew exactly what he wanted. Without another word, he headed straight for the pile of broken porcelain and shattered tiles glinting in various colors.
He practically sprawled over it, his eyes shining like a miner panning for gold.
Give me a few more pieces of imperial green jade!
Or another bottle of spirit spring water would do!
Yet after more than ten minutes of turning the edges of the area upside down, he had gained nothing but a few cuts on his fingers.
It was all worthless broken pottery and rocks.
Apparently, heaven-defying luck would not smile on him every time.
Chen Lin inwardly lamented the missed opportunity, but he did not lose heart. He began a systematic search of the entire enormous transfer station.
Most of it was junk, with no discernible value.
Was everything brought in this time really just pure, unadulterated garbage?
Chen Lin sighed, ready to give up hope.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something pale jutting from a corner of the unsorted trash heap.
An arm.
"Fuck, not again!"
Chen Lin's stomach churned, but this time, he did not lose his composure as badly as before.
The fear was still there, but an emotion called greed held it firmly in check.
He forced himself to stay calm, his gaze fixed on the arm.
An antique-looking ring adorned one finger of the severed arm.
He strode over.
Up close, the details of the ring became clearer.
The next instant, a pale blue screen appeared out of thin air.
[Item information: Low-Grade Storage Ring]
Chen Lin's heart jolted. A current of wild joy shot through his entire body, sweeping away all his fear and nausea.
A storage ring!
Who'd watched Battle Through the Heavens-the one with battle aura turning into horses-and didn't know what a storage ring was?
The first thing my man "Just Got Lucky" did after killing an enemy was strip off their storage ring.
Chen Lin no longer cared how creepy the severed arm was. He lunged forward, seized the cold, stiff hand, and yanked the ring off its finger.
The ring felt cold and hard in his palm.
But how was he supposed to use this thing?
Chen Lin was stumped.
In novels, these things seemed to require spiritual power, battle aura, or some similar energy to operate.
Where was an ordinary person like him supposed to get any of that?
"Bind it with blood?"
One of the most classic tropes in fantasy novels popped into his head.
Might as well try a last-ditch remedy!
Chen Lin picked up a sharp shard of porcelain from the ground and lightly sliced his fingertip.
He squeezed out a crimson bead of blood, letting it fall squarely onto the plain, unadorned ring.
The ring trembled slightly and gave off a barely perceptible flash before growing dull again.
At that very instant, Chen Lin felt a faint mental connection form between himself and the ring.
He tried closing his eyes and sinking his consciousness into it.
Boom!
A strange space roughly the size of his bedroom appeared clearly in his "vision."
A little over thirty square meters-not large, but to him right now, it was nothing short of a miracle!
Quite a few objects floated silently inside.
Five or six porcelain bottles, several thick, antique-looking books, and a pile of dried herbs he could not identify.
Chen Lin withdrew his awareness and began experimenting with how the storage ring worked.
He looked at the porcelain shard in his hand, the one that had cut his finger, and willed it inside.
"Store!"
Whoosh!
The shard vanished from his hand.
Chen Lin sent his awareness into the ring again. Sure enough, the shard was floating quietly in one corner of the space.
"Retrieve!"
The shard appeared in his hand out of thin air.
Suppressing his wild excitement, Chen Lin turned to a rag beside his feet.
"Store!"
The rag vanished.
"Retrieve!"
The rag appeared.
Like a mortal who had just acquired divine authority, he greedily savored the wonder of conjuring things out of thin air.
This was a genuine strategic-grade treasure!
He forced himself to calm down and decided to study the ring's contents properly once he got back.
His immediate priority was to find more treasures before the sorting finished.
Now that he had a storage ring, he could stash away anything that looked valuable but that he could not identify!
Eyes wide, he searched carefully through the piles of automatically sorted trash.
Soon, an animal carcass with only half its body remaining caught his attention.
[Item information: Incomplete Crimson Moon Fox carcass]
"Store it!"
With a thought from Chen Lin, the fox carcass vanished instantly.
He then approached the metal pile made up of countless damaged weapons, hoping to find an intact weapon for self-defense.
Unfortunately, even after searching for quite some time, he could not find a single whole one.
Just as he was about to leave, he spotted more than a dozen small, round, golden pieces of metal in the distance. Drawn by the invisible force, they were slowly flying toward the metal pile.
Gold coins?
Chen Lin's eyes lit up. He immediately rushed over and intercepted them in midair.
More than a dozen golden coins the size of gambling chips landed in his hand, startlingly heavy.
Gold!
Together, they had to weigh at least half a kilo to a kilo!
Chen Lin picked up a coin and examined it carefully. It was golden all over, engraved with a design resembling a wolf's head, but its lettering was a tadpole-like script he did not recognize at all.
Who cared! As long as it was gold!
Chen Lin happily put all the gold coins into his storage ring.
At the current price of gold, that was another several hundred thousand yuan in the bag!
Sweet!
By the time all the trash had been sorted and another pitch-black fissure opened in the nearby void, Chen Lin had not spotted anything else of value.
After a familiar distortion of space, Chen Lin found himself back on the hard plank bed.
He eagerly jumped off the bed, went to the center of the living room, and willed the ring to act.
"Take everything out!"
With a clatter, the contents spilled out.
A pile of miscellaneous objects appeared on the floor out of thin air.
Five or six books, more than a dozen porcelain bottles, a pile of unidentified medicinal herbs, the half-carcass of the Crimson Moon Fox, and the pile of gold coins.
The smell of blood reached him. Chen Lin frowned and immediately put the fox carcass back into the storage ring.
He picked up a gold coin, intending to examine it more closely.
Yet one glance was enough to leave him stunned.
The tadpole-like script on the coin was gone.
In its place were several square Chinese characters he knew exceedingly well.
[Minting Bureau of the Great Qian Empire] [Minted in Shangping Year Seven]
What was going on?
Chen Lin's thoughts churned. He clearly remembered that back in the garbage transfer station, the lettering had definitely not looked like this!
He picked up several of the books.
Their covers, too, bore Chinese characters in bold, flowing calligraphy.
"Is this a rule of the Myriad Worlds Garbage Transfer Station? Or a rule of this world itself?"
"Does anything from another world have its information translated and 'localized' once it gets here?"
Chen Lin could not figure it out, but he soon put the question out of his mind.
Being able to read it was a tremendous stroke of luck, whatever the reason!
His gaze settled on the thickest of the books.
Five large characters stood boldly on its cover.
"Taiyin Breathing Technique."
Chen Lin's right hand, which held the book, began trembling uncontrollably.
A breathing technique!
Anyone who'd read the Red-Haired Monster's trilogy knew this was the foundation of cultivation on the pollen path!
Taiyang, Taiyin... those names alone told you they were anything but ordinary!
This was absolutely a fucking top-tier breathing technique!
Was he going to become an immortal?
With trembling hands and the reverence of a pilgrim, Chen Lin opened the book to its first page.
It read:
"I am known as Moonwatcher. Frail since childhood and unable to enter the path of immortality, I spent ten years seeking guidance from masters and recluses across the land, creating this breathing technique. This method does not seek eternal life; it tempers only the flesh. At full mastery, one's blood and vital energy shall flow like mercury, one's sinews and bones shall be like iron, and one shall be able to fight tigers and kill bears bare-handed!"
"This method must be practiced beneath the moon, drawing in the power of yin to temper the body. Hence its name: Taiyin Breathing Technique..."
The wild joy on Chen Lin's face slowly froze.
After all that, it wasn't for immortal cultivation?
It was just a body-hardening martial art?
A crushing sense of disappointment welled up inside him.
Fuck! You were just a martial arts manual, so why give yourself such an ethereal name? Whose reputation were you trying to cash in on?
Disappointed, he was about to toss the book aside.
But the words "fight tigers and kill bears bare-handed" remained nailed firmly into his mind.
Wait...
Chen Lin suddenly caught on.
He had gotten carried away.
Immortal cultivation? Becoming an immortal patriarch? Those were all distant, nebulous things.
But "fight tigers and kill bears bare-handed" was real, tangible strength!
What would it mean for a modern person to possess that kind of power?
It meant he would become superhuman!
How was this some lousy martial arts manual?
It was clearly a treasure!
Once he realized this, the disappointment in Chen Lin's eyes was instantly replaced by an even fiercer flame.
Before you continue