Zaunite Community

Li Wei lived in the Zaunite Community right beside the Piltover Factory District, some distance from Piltover University in the Rich District.

As the name suggested, the Zaunite Community was naturally a neighborhood where Zaunites gathered. Most of those living here were Zaunite Apprentices who were not even Piltover citizens, along with a small number of Zaunite immigrants who had lost everything to obtain Piltover status and had no money to move elsewhere—or rather, new Piltover residents, as they preferred to call themselves.

In short, everyone here was poor trash from Zaun.

Piltover valued community self-governance. When an entire neighborhood was inhabited by poor trash, it naturally became a "ghost town."

It could not even provide the most basic public services. No one cleaned the streets or maintained the roads. There were no hospitals, schools, or public transportation, and even the Enforcers rarely wanted to come here.

The walls along the streets were covered in Zaun-style graffiti, while the road surface was riddled with unrepaired cracks like spiderwebs.

The storefront windows were all boarded up with heavy planks. Shopkeepers openly sat at their doors with shotguns, warmly greeting familiar customers while warily watching every stranger who passed by.

Every trash bin by the roadside was overflowing, with all kinds of garbage spilling out like mudslides.

The heavy, wet, bulky stuff clumped onto the ground like stubborn stains.

The light, dry, small bits drifted about the streets in clusters like tumbleweeds.

Any Piltover resident who came here would wrinkle their nose in disgust.

That naturally included Seraphine.

Earlier, she had been wholly focused on finding Li Wei as quickly as possible, sprinting all the way without having time to feel disgusted.

Now that Li Wei was beside her and she was once again walking through the streets of the Zaunite Community, she could not help noticing the appalling sanitation conditions.

"Eww..." Seraphine tiptoed along in tiny steps, desperately trying to avoid the various bits of trash dancing through the street in the wind.

Yet even so, bags, scraps of cloth, and the like would occasionally be blown past her, brushing against her spotless white stockings, gold-embroidered dress, delicate skin, and even her beloved pink hair.

It disgusted her so much that goosebumps rose all over her skin.

So Seraphine walked even more carefully, and even more slowly.

"Could you walk a little faster, Miss Seraphine?" Li Wei could not help urging her on.

His teammate moved so slowly that he was almost tempted to buy her a wheelchair.

"N-no, sorry. There's just too much garbage here, and..." Inside her expensive yet uncomfortable heeled boots, Seraphine tried to flex her sore, sweaty toes. "I really can't walk anymore, Mr. Li Wei."

"How about..." As she spoke, she suddenly perked up. "Mr. Li Wei, why don't you carry me for a while? Then we can move faster, and you can 'sing' to me too!"

"No!" This girl was always thinking about the songs in his head.

But Li Wei had no desire to become Seraphine's automatic wheelchair and portable music player.

What if, while he was making physical contact with her, he thought about things other than singing? How could he ever face anyone again or lecture them about lofty principles?

"Walk faster. Once we leave the Zaunite Community, the environment will be much better. There's a tram station over there too. Once we get there, we can catch a ride and rest."

"We can talk about music after we get there."

"Okay." Seraphine was a little disappointed. Still, after being promised that she could hear music once they arrived, she tried to pick up her pace and silently followed behind Li Wei.

However, after only a few steps, she suddenly widened her innocent blue eyes as though she had discovered a whole new world, then tugged on Li Wei's sleeve from behind.

"Mr. Li Wei, look—"

"Why is someone sleeping in that pile of garbage?"

"Huh?" Li Wei became a little curious too.

He followed Seraphine's gaze and looked toward the "pile of garbage" beside the road.

"That isn't a pile of garbage." Li Wei's mouth twitched. "That's his 'house.'"

"A house?" Seraphine cried out in surprise. "Isn't that just a pile of cardboard? Cardboard can be a house? Wouldn't it be cold living in there?"

"Why does he live there?"

Li Wei did not even know how to explain it.

Why? Because he was poor, obviously!

If he were not poor, who the hell would live in a Hooverville?

So Li Wei could not help asking, "Seraphine, have you seriously never come to the Zaunite Community in your life?"

"Mm... My father never let me come here. He said only bad people lived here, and that it would be dangerous if I came..."

Li Wei: "..."

He instinctively wanted to make a sarcastic remark, but looking at the surroundings, Mr. Ervin was not actually wrong.

If he had a daughter, he definitely would not want her anywhere near this place either.

"Come on, Seraphine. Why that man lives in a cardboard box... if you spend more time out in the world, you'll naturally understand."

"Mm." Seraphine nodded blankly.

Yet not long afterward, she curiously spotted something else.

"Mr. Li Wei, is that one a 'house' too?"

"No." Li Wei glanced at it. "That's just a pile of garbage."

"Then why are people sleeping in it? There are several of them, all lying together."

Seraphine instinctively wanted to go over for a closer look.

"Stop!" Li Wei called out to her with a dark expression.

No wonder Mr. Ervin would not let her come here. With this young lady's innocence, if she wandered around the Zaunite Community alone, she would probably have gotten herself into trouble long ago.

"Don't go near them!"

"Why? They're sleeping in a pile of garbage. They look so... pitiful."

"Pitiful, my ass!" Li Wei cursed in disgust. "See those needles and empty bottles? They're a bunch of lunatics high on Shimmer! You'd better stay far away from them!"

"Shimmer?" Seraphine looked surprised. "The kind of banned drug? My father said it was very expensive..."

"So what if it is? Just to escape reality for a little while with that stuff, these people are willing to sell their wives, their children, even their own lives."

"But what good does that do? Once the drug wears off, all that remains is an even more miserable reality."

"A person can be poor. But they can't live in such a twisted state."

Li Wei had not the slightest sympathy for those addicts. He merely urged Seraphine to keep moving with him.

Yet Seraphine still looked troubled.

As she walked, she realized that there were many, many more Shimmer addicts like those from before by the roadside.

Some were unconscious, some stood there blankly, and some even convulsed and crawled across the ground like a group of infected zombies. Yet they were clearly still alive, which was what made it truly frightening.

"M-Mr. Li Wei." Before long, Seraphine lightly tugged on his sleeve again.

"What is it?" This time, Li Wei could not even be bothered to turn his head. "Don't tell me you found another 'pile of garbage.'"

"Mm..." It actually was one. "Mr. Li Wei, look at that. Is it a pile of garbage or a house?"

"...That's a pile of garbage!"

"But there's someone sleeping inside it."

"Is there?"

"Yes. A foot is sticking out."

Li Wei: "..."

He took a careful look, then helplessly pressed a hand to his forehead.

"He isn't sleeping in there..."

"He died in there."

"Huh?" Seraphine's face went pale. "A-a corpse?"

"What's so surprising?" Li Wei sighed. "People here are always dying because they can't afford treatment, being worked to death, or getting beaten to death by gangs. Once they die, their bodies get tossed into the garbage and periodically burned along with it."

"How could that be..."

"Wouldn't his family... b-bury him in a cemetery?"

"Who told you he even has family?" Li Wei sighed helplessly. "Family is a luxury in Zaun, understand?"

"And even if they do have family, when someone in the family dies, we still dispose of the body like this. At most, they might put in the effort to carry it to the harbor and throw it into the sea, calling it a 'sea burial.'"

"Otherwise, cemeteries, coffins, funerals, memorial visits—all of that costs money. Zaunites can't afford that kind of money for appearances."

"Then... is it like that in Zaun too?"

"No. In Zaun, no one just throws corpses around."

"Only Zaunites in Piltover do this."

"That's good..." Seraphine released her lip, which she had bitten pale, though it was unclear who she was relieved for.

"Good, my ass!" Li Wei grumbled. "Zaun has dedicated Alchemy Shops that collect corpses and use them as experimental materials for those mad scientists."

"A perfectly good corpse would go to waste if you threw it away, wouldn't it?"

Seraphine: "..."