Jin Xueli paid taxes and laundered money

The two groups had finished shopping, but neither had left. They stood far apart on the dim Platform, talking quietly among themselves.

Even without hearing what they said, Jin Xueli could make a rough guess.

They were all family-affiliated Hunters; for their families, the product descriptions before them had completely changed the significance of the Vending Machine.

False Image Hunters risked their lives entering the Nest for, to put it bluntly, one thing: money.

The Vending Machine had been neglected before because its products were weak and heavily restricted, with little potential profit to speak of-for example, the M&M's expired twenty-four hours after leaving the Nest. Who would pay a fortune for something so close to disposable? If you could sell them at cost, that already meant you had extensive connections and no shortage of desperate suckers among your friends.

Now, the restrictions on the Vending Machine's products still existed-had even grown worse-but even Jin Xueli, who had no family affiliation, could tell at a glance that their potential returns were on an entirely different scale.

Unfortunately, that only applied to the families.

She swept her flashlight over the product descriptions twice and found a picture of a drink in a blue plastic bottle.

After reading the description earlier, the gentle-looking female Hunter had bought a bottle of water without a word, immediately shielding it as she stuffed it into her backpack. Only Jin Xueli's sharp eyes had caught a glimpse of blue, allowing her to identify the drink the woman had bought.

Gate-Raid sports drink 500 ml

Everyone knows the threshold between life and death is like a gate. On this side lies the human world/the Nest; step through, and you either go to heaven or descend into hell.

(Just kidding, how could humans possibly go to heaven hahahaha)

In life, people don't necessarily step cleanly through the gate between life and death. All sorts of accidents can leave you hovering on the brink. Say you get hit by a car, suffer a sudden cerebral infarction, get shot... In situations like these, you might discover that, hey, between life and death, there's actually a precious window for emergency treatment.

It's like having one foot inside the gate and one outside; surely you'd want the human world to hold on to you a little longer?

If that window is longer, giving doctors more time to try, you might survive; if it's too short and you miss it, you're destined to develop livor mortis.

This sports drink is especially suitable for people hovering on the brink of death, as though launching an attack on the gate between life and death! Amazing! It cannot bring back the dead, but it can give you a little more precious time for emergency treatment-as long as you can still safely swallow liquids, every 1 ml you drink adds 3 seconds.

Disclaimer: This product can extend the window for emergency treatment, but does not guarantee successful resuscitation. Please defer to the emergency physician or operating surgeon regarding the specific circumstances.

Shelf life outside the Nest: 4 hours

Price: $38,000

Flavor: blue-green livor mortis

Spending thirty-eight thousand dollars on a Phantasm with a shelf life of only four hours was practically guaranteed to lose money for a solo Hunter or a small family-without a major family's network of connections, information, personnel, and material support, just finding a client willing to trust you completely was already harder than reaching heaven. And after that came an even bigger problem.

How were you supposed to deliver it?

Say a client's life was in danger, and his representative urgently notified you that he needed this sports drink Phantasm immediately, within ten minutes.

A solo Hunter would first have to enter the Nest through a Pathway, rush to a hiding place or the Vending Machine, get the Phantasm, then open a Pathway back to Blackmoor City... By the time they returned, the client would already be buried.

But things were different for a large family.

Jin Xueli didn't know their exact procedures or methods, but she had heard a few scraps that might offer a glimpse of the whole-when major families faced a time-sensitive emergency, they dispatched helicopters.

At that thought, Jin Xueli couldn't help glancing back at the two figures still whispering with their heads lowered farther along the Platform. They had bought so decisively that the family behind them had to be fairly large, with no worries about finding buyers. Even the cards they used to shop probably belonged to their family.

Sigh, how nice. She turned back with a miserable expression.

Her credit card limit wasn't even thirty-six thousand-although Jin Xueli had earned quite a lot through the broadcasts, this subject inevitably made her envy the advantages of family affiliation again. Her earnings were all gray income, impossible to bring out into the open or count as personal assets, and did nothing for her credit score.

Family-affiliated Hunters, however, were different.

Their income came from their families, under headings such as wages and bonuses, dividends and commissions, allowances and reimbursements... Not only was it perfectly aboveboard, they could even pay a token amount of tax sufficient to keep the IRS from knocking.

And what about the families' income?

"Besides doing the accounting and finances," Amber had once told Jin Xueli quite plainly, "I'm also responsible for laundering money for the family."

Jin Xueli let out another deep sigh.

She had spotted what she wanted to buy long ago.

But besides her tendency to get distracted and let her thoughts wander, there was one crucial reason she was standing here foolishly contemplating money laundering and taxes instead of hurrying up and buying it: she didn't have enough credit left on her card.

Jin Xueli looked around, her gaze settling on the gentle-looking female Hunter. Two seconds later, it shifted back to the baseball-cap woman and her companion, who were sitting on the stairs talking.

Give it a try, she encouraged herself. Asking doesn't cost anything. What's the worst that can happen? They say no?

When she reached the foot of the stairs, the baseball-cap woman looked up.

"What is it?"

Jin Xueli kept suspecting she might be making a bit of a fool of herself. "Um... May I ask, are you family-affiliated Hunters?"

The gum-chewing girl nodded. "Yes. Why?"

She seemed very fond of the baseball-cap woman. With her left arm back to normal, the two now sat shoulder to shoulder, looking much closer than the other pair.

"I work alone. I don't belong to a family." Jin Xueli cleared her throat. "Um... I haven't bought anything from the Vending Machine yet. There's something I want that would be very useful to me, and I can't put it off any longer. Ideally, I need to get it right away."

The two watched her, waiting for her to continue.

Unable to back out now, she forced herself to say, "But I don't have enough credit left on my card... Would you be willing to let me use yours? I have money in my savings account, but that card doesn't have a contactless chip, so the Vending Machine can't read it..."

Standing in a place as unreal as the Nest while discussing such a mundane, trivial problem, Jin Xueli kept feeling that something was off.

Afraid they would misunderstand, she hurriedly added, "I have cash! It's not that I don't have money!"

On the half of the face visible beneath the baseball cap's shadow, a long, narrow dimple suddenly appeared again. "Do you have the cash on you?"

Jin Xueli felt utterly hopeless. "No, the cash is in Blackmoor City..."

"So you're asking to borrow money?" The baseball-cap woman's smile widened, her white teeth gleaming in the dimness.

"Now that you mention it, I-I suppose I am..."

The girl had even stopped chewing her gum and stared at her with her mouth half-open. Perhaps she had never been asked for a loan by a stranger in the Nest before.

Jin Xueli also felt the situation was getting rather outrageous. She stammered, "Um, of course, it's not like I can't come back in, but my Pathway-ah, I can't really talk about that..."

The baseball-cap woman suddenly burst out laughing.

Once her laughter subsided, she took off her cap, reached up to ruffle her short, wavy hair, and lifted her face into the dim lights of the Platform.

It was the first time Jin Xueli had seen her clearly, and she was briefly dazed.

Although she was probably also in her twenties, she looked like an androgynous youth. Behind her tousled, wavy hair were long, deep-set blue eyes, like the pristine sky reflected between Arctic icebergs.

The gum-chewing girl looked at Jin Xueli, shrugged, and muttered the expression on her face aloud. "I knew it."

"What?" Jin Xueli came to her senses, and her embarrassment returned twofold. "Um, forget it. It's fine. I'll just come back in... After all, I wouldn't casually lend money to a stranger either..."

But the baseball-cap woman-though she had taken off her cap, Jin Xueli still didn't know her name-stood up and pulled a wallet from her back pocket.

"My driver's license and card." Holding up two cards, she told Jin Xueli, "Give me your driver's license, credit card, and phone."

"Huh? My phone too?"

"Of course. How do I know you're carrying genuine ID?"

The gum-chewing girl thoroughly agreed. "These days, besides your own children, the only thing you absolutely have to redeem is your phone."

The baseball-cap woman's demands were reasonable. The driver's license went without saying; of course she needed to know who was borrowing her money. The credit card served as extra collateral in case Jin Xueli didn't repay her or died in the Nest. Besides, she was asking for the phone, not its passcode.

Yet Jin Xueli hesitated for a long time before finally handing over her phone as well.

The baseball-cap woman lowered her head to look at the phone screen, which had lit up at her touch. In its glow, her clean-cut face went still for a moment. She looked at the hundred-plus filthy messages still frozen on the screen, said nothing, and slipped the phone into her trouser pocket without expression.

For some reason, though, Jin Xueli felt a sense of shame, as if she had been stripped naked.

"Here's my address and phone number." Seeming to have already forgotten the messages, she wrote Jin Xueli a note and asked, "Is there any information on your phone you need to write down? Phone numbers, for example?"

Anthony's number was already etched into her mind; Jin Xueli shook her head.

"Jin Xueli, right?" The baseball-cap woman looked from the driver's license to her and smiled. "It's rare to see an ID photo as good-looking as the person."

Jin Xueli thanked them both repeatedly, then exchanged some necessary information. Throughout the process, she felt as though she were walking dazedly through clouds, unable to believe she had actually borrowed a card from a stranger-a stranger! And this was the Nest!

For some reason, she had been too embarrassed to look at the baseball-cap woman's driver's license. Only when she returned to the Vending Machine did she quietly lower her head and glance at it.

Moran Dao. Even her name was gender-neutral.

Jin Xueli took a deep breath, brought her attention back to the Vending Machine, pressed a few numbers, then held the credit card against it.

A notification confirming the successful payment of $12,000 popped up on the screen. With a thunk, a can of soda fell into the compartment below.

Jin Xueli reached in, picked it up, and put it in her backpack.

She straightened, turned her head, and met Moran Dao's gaze.

She hadn't concealed the soda can, and it was the only purple product, its purple vivid and clear beneath the Vending Machine's light. Anyone who had read the product descriptions should know that the purple soda had only one function.

Killing people.

How did I discover the Puppet Master Chips? A colleague in Shenzhen told me that Oley supermarket had some imported chips that were the best she'd ever eaten in her life. Of course I was curious, so she gave me two bags.

They really were delicious. Whether they're the best is still up for debate, but one of the flavors! In your mouth! Actually feels like popping candy!

I took a look: bubbly serrano chilli flavor. Translated, wouldn't that be bouncy little chili peppers?!

The photos are still on my phone. I'm wondering whether I should post them in the comments section for Apocalypse...

(End of chapter)