Myriad Worlds Garbage Transfer Station

The mechanical voice in his mind vanished completely.

The room was deathly silent.

Only the occasional car horn outside the window proved that the world was real.

Chen Lin sat on his bed, cold sweat soaking his back.

Hallucinations.

It had to be hallucinations brought on by too much stress.

He had been fired, dumped, and saddled with the blame for thirty million. Anyone would have been driven mad.

He tugged at the corners of his mouth in a self-mocking smile and prepared to lie down.

But the next second, the scene before his eyes suddenly warped!

The mottled ceiling spun and stretched wildly, like thick ink dropped into clear water, before turning into pure darkness that swallowed everything.

An overwhelming sense of weightlessness struck!

Before Chen Lin could even cry out, his feet landed on solid ground.

His eyes flew open.

This was not his old bedroom, filled with the scent of soap pods.

It was a strange space of roughly a hundred square meters.

Gray nothingness surrounded him, without walls or a ceiling, stretching endlessly.

At the very center of the space stood a small mountain of miscellaneous junk. All sorts of things were mixed together, glowing faintly as an invisible force seemed to sort them slowly.

[Welcome to the Myriad Worlds Garbage Transfer Station, Station Master.]

The emotionless mechanical voice sounded again.

[This station serves as a temporary transfer and sorting facility for garbage from the myriad worlds.]

[Garbage from the myriad worlds will arrive here for transfer and sorting every week.]

[Once sorting is complete, the garbage will automatically be transported to the planes best suited to processing it.]

Chen Lin's mind went blank.

He rubbed his eyes hard, then viciously pinched his thigh.

"Hiss!"

A sharp pain shot through him.

This wasn't a dream!

He took a deep breath, forced himself to calm down, and turned his gaze toward the mountain of garbage.

There were tattered scraps of fabric, their original colors impossible to make out.

There were broken weapons-sabers, spears, swords, halberds-not one intact.

There were also countless porcelain shards, gleaming with different lusters.

As though something were drawing him in, he inexplicably walked forward and picked up a bronze sword from the outer edge, only half its blade remaining.

The blade was covered in rust, yet its broken edge was smooth as a mirror.

The instant he picked up the broken sword, a pale blue screen appeared out of thin air before him.

[Item: Broken bronze sword]

Chen Lin clicked his tongue in wonder and casually tossed the sword aside.

The broken sword traced an arc through the air. The instant it touched the ground, it flew straight toward a nearby metal pile that was already taking shape, as though drawn by a magnet.

He looked toward the small mountain of metal.

It was packed with damaged weapons, their blades rolled and spearheads snapped.

Many still bore dark red bloodstains, long since dried and blackened.

A pungent stench of blood mixed with rust assaulted his nose. Chen Lin went white, his stomach churning.

How many fucking people had died?

Chen Lin quickly tore his gaze away from that pile of "murder weapons."

But the sight farther away made his pupils abruptly constrict.

There, amid a pile of unsorted garbage, lay a pale human arm!

Its five fingers were curled, and the severed end was a mangled mess of flesh and blood.

"Urgh..."

Stomach acid surged into his throat. Unable to hold out any longer, he braced his hands on his knees and dry-heaved.

As a law-abiding young man from the modern world, he had never seen anything like this.

"Fuck! What godforsaken world did this fucking garbage come from?"

It took a full half hour before Chen Lin barely managed to recover.

He wiped the saliva from the corner of his mouth. His face was still pale, but his survival instinct and curiosity about the unknown firmly suppressed his physical revulsion.

Fortune favored the bold.

This godforsaken place might be terrifying, but it could also be his only chance to turn things around!

Fighting back his nausea, he began exploring the transfer station.

He deliberately avoided the severed arm and approached a pile of broken porcelain and tiles.

Among the fragments, a relatively intact jade bottle stood out.

The bottle was milky white all over and about the size of his palm, with a distinct crack at its mouth.

Chen Lin picked it up.

It felt smooth and pleasantly warm in his hand.

The screen appeared again.

[Item: Damaged spirit jade bottle]

[Contents: Half a bottle of spirit spring water]

Spirit spring water?

Chen Lin's heart gave a violent jolt.

Was this spirit spring water from a cultivation world?

The screen gave no response.

He clutched the jade bottle as though holding a peerless treasure.

Turning his gaze back to the pile of fragments, he began searching carefully.

Suddenly, a vivid green fragment caught his eye.

Its refreshing green color stood out starkly among the dull gray tiles.

A beer bottle shard?

That was the first thought that crossed his mind.

He reached out and picked up the fragment.

It was cool to the touch, its fine texture far beyond anything glass could offer.

The screen popped up.

[Item: Broken jade plaque]

Jade?

Chen Lin raised the fragment toward the light shining from some unknown source in the void.

The fragment was translucent throughout, and the green within seemed alive, flowing slowly through it.

Chen Lin's breath caught.

Was this... imperial green?

Boom!

A blaze of feverish excitement erupted from the depths of his heart and shot straight to the crown of his head!

Last year in Magic City, he had accompanied Li Wei to a jewelry exhibition.

At the very center of the exhibition hall, an imperial green Maitreya Buddha carving only the size of a thumb had carried a price tag of three and a half million!

And the fragment before him was twice the size of that Maitreya Buddha!

This piece alone had to be worth over a million!

Chen Lin viciously pinched himself again.

Fuck, that really fucking hurt!

This really wasn't a dream!

He fought to suppress the wild joy about to burst from his chest, his breathing growing frantic.

His eyes went wide as he rummaged furiously through the pile of fragments.

This was money!

This was the means to escape his predicament and grind Wang Lei's pig face beneath his foot!

After searching for over ten minutes and cutting his fingers several times on the sharp fragments, he finally found another piece!

Placed side by side, the two fragments had exactly the same luster, texture, and color!

They definitely came from the same jade plaque!

He was rich!

This time, he was really rich!

Trembling all over with excitement, Chen Lin tucked the two priceless jade fragments into his pocket.

He grabbed a broken sword from the nearby metal pile, ready to turn the entire mountain of fragments upside down.

Maybe he could piece together a complete jade plaque!

But then something suddenly changed.

Without warning, a pitch-black fissure opened in the void nearby.

An immense suction roared from the fissure, like collapsing mountains and raging seas.

As though pushed by giant invisible hands, the sorted piles of garbage began pouring into the spatial fissure one after another.

The metal pile, the fabric pile, the porcelain pile...

Chen Lin stared, dumbstruck.

"No!"

He watched helplessly as the small mountain of countless weapons was swallowed up, his heart aching so badly he could barely breathe.

"Fuck, it feels like I just lost hundreds of millions!"

As the last pile of garbage poured inside, the spatial fissure slowly closed and disappeared.

The entire space returned to its original emptiness.

The next second, everything spun.

Chen Lin found himself back on his familiar hard plank bed.

He jerked his head down.

The jade bottle containing the spirit spring water was still in his hand.

His trembling hand reached into his pocket. The two cool, hard fragments of imperial green rested quietly inside.

It was all real.

Chen Lin stared at what he had brought back, stunned for a long while.

Then the corners of his mouth spread into an ever-widening grin.

"Heh..."

"Heh heh..."

His stifled, crazed laughter sounded unbearably harsh in the silent night.