What Is the Flower Language of a Hand Grenade?
Smack!
The stone struck Carl squarely on the head, but delight suddenly appeared on his face. In his previously empty right hand was a handful of moist soil.
"Less than a second."
Carl returned the soil to the manor and made a rough estimate.
That was roughly how long it had taken from when he entered the manor to when the stone fell.
In the middle of all that, he had even had time to grab a handful of soil!
"That's enough!"
Rubbing the small bump on his head, Carl hurried to the bed and pulled out the three moldy loaves of bread and the earthenware pot from underneath.
He snatched up the ragged quilt on the bed and bundled it up. Then, with a thought, he vanished from the shack.
That was right. He had no intention of staying in the shack for two days!
As the saying went, a gentleman did not stand beneath a wall in danger of collapse!
Compared to the shack, where someone might pass by at any moment, the isolated manor was clearly safer!
"Hum..."
Space and time rippled, and when Carl opened his eyes again, three brilliant suns hung directly overhead.
Nine plots of land glowed like jade. Eight blood-red pomegranate sprouts set off the lone orange-yellow sprout, the nine of them like sparkling gems in the sunlight.
"Inhale..."
Carl took a deep breath of fresh air, put down her bundle, and walked toward the nine plots.
Last time, the flood of memories had swept him out before he had even had a chance to look around the manor.
Now that he was feeling much better, it was time to have a look at his manor.
Unlike the wide-open view outside, the space within the manor was not large. Aside from the nine cultivated plots, there was only a narrow green path just wide enough for Carl.
A brownish-yellow cottage stood quietly at the upper left corner of the fields, looking particularly inconspicuous.
Beyond that was a gray barrier, like a giant net wrapped around the entire manor.
Carl plucked a blade of grass from the ground and gently tested the gray barrier. Sure enough, just as the memories said, it could not pass through.
Open the outside interface panel.
Without hesitation, Carl softly called out in her mind, following the technique imparted by the flood of memories.
"Hum..."
A golden flash swept past, and a transparent panel appeared on her retina.
The panel showed the very shack he had been in earlier.
He rotated the panel, taking in every detail: the sheet metal and rags on the roof, and even the five wooden trays at the base of the wall.
"Now all that's left is to wait for the fruit to ripen..."
Carl waved the panel away and walked back to where she had left her bundle.
He spread out the quilt, placed the half-full earthenware pot and the bread beside a ridge between the fields, and silently lay down.
Breathing in the manor's fresh air and feeling the sun's warmth on her body, Carl gradually grew drowsy.
A profound sense of safety made his eyelids sink slowly until they closed completely.
May 11, 1984, early morning.
With a flash of white light, Carl appeared in the sheet-metal shack.
A few beams of sunlight shone in through small holes in the metal, lighting up Carl's surroundings.
Carl straightened her freshly washed, patched clothes, bent down, and quickly rolled around on the ground twice. In the manor, he had discovered by chance that the water in the watering can could be replenished endlessly.
Out of habit from his previous life, Carl had not only washed himself clean but also scrubbed his clothes...
It did not matter in the manor, but in Meteor City...
"A little more soot."
After all that, Carl had successfully restored her appearance from two days ago.
Soot smeared thickly over her face, clothes and hair covered in dust, and worn straw sandals on her feet.
A classic Meteor City outfit, ready to go.
"Time to go!"
After checking everything several times, Carl put on a crude cloak made of black cloth and opened the door with a creak of old hinges.
"Creak, creak, creak..."
As the door opened, a stench several times stronger instantly flooded into the shack. Feeling the two Bomb Pomegranates she had tucked inside her clothes beforehand, Carl steadied herself and strode out.
"Bang!"
The door closed.
What kind of place was Meteor City? Anything discarded here would be accepted. Garbage, weapons, corpses, babies... whatever this world threw away, the residents here would take it all in.
Carl traveled through the morning mist, soon leaving the shack district strewn with garbage and entering the streets under the elders' jurisdiction.
In official records, this was an uninhabited area, so even babies abandoned here did not need to have national identification numbers, physical data, or the like registered. No one knew how the residents lived or what education they received.
Carl walked swiftly along the route in her memories, her feet treading on the clean stone paving of the street.
As the saying went, cats had their paths, and rats had theirs.
For Carl, who had grown up in Meteor City, every alley and every fork in the road was familiar.
But another saying went, "Hunt geese all your life, and one day a goose will peck your eyes out!"
Sure enough, several tattooed thugs had started tailing Carl at some point.
Damn it, I never should have set out before dawn! Carl cursed inwardly.
He was not the original owner of this body, after all. Some memories that had left only a faint impression on the original owner were now completely inaccessible to him...
He knew all too well what sort of people these tattooed thugs were, unqualified to join a gang and forced to huddle at the bottom of Meteor City. They had simply spent the whole night partying and were now wandering around in the early morning.
Once the sun rose fully, the elders' guards would soon drive this dregs into the dark corners.
The problem was, Carl was neither one of the elders' guards, nor was it morning yet...
"They're getting closer."
Listening to the footsteps drawing closer behind her, Carl gritted her teeth and pulled a Bomb Pomegranate from inside her clothes.
His body was only eleven years old. He could not possibly outrun these thugs!
And what would happen if these thugs caught him...
"Stop!"
The thugs' panting and shouts kept drawing closer behind her. Carl hardened her heart, pulled the small branch-the safety pin-off the Bomb Pomegranate in her hand, and threw it down the alley behind her.
Since some people wanted to die, he would send them on their way for free!
"Ding!"
"Ding!"
Two crisp sounds rang out in midair.
Without looking back, Carl accelerated and darted into another alley.
When the Bomb Pomegranate cut through the morning mist, he could already see the fate awaiting those three thugs!
"Clang, clatter..."
The blood-red pomegranate arced through the air and finally rolled to a stop not far from the mouth of the alley.
"This brat's got some strength!"
"I just wonder if he'll be as vigorous in bed as he is now..."
The three thugs quickly approached the mouth of the alley, their leader speaking with a lecherous grin plastered across his face.
Meteor City had been under lockdown for a long time since child kidnappings had become frequent.
Now that a brat had delivered himself to his door, he would never let him go!
"Boom! Rumble..."
Before the three could react, the violent blast shattered their eardrums.
Immediately afterward, pomegranate seeds like steel pellets riddled their bodies with holes, leaving them like honeycomb briquettes.
Flying flesh and blood splashed across the alley walls in the shape of pomegranate blossoms. The emptied pomegranate shell crumbled bit by bit until it turned completely to black ash.
The enormous explosion spread out from the alley and echoed down the entire street in the blink of an eye.
Thirty minutes later, all the guards who hurried to the scene could see was a shallow crater two or three meters wide near the mouth of the alley, and a grotesque flower made of flesh, blood, and severed limbs.
"Quick, go notify the elders!!!!"
Staring at the grotesque flower of flesh and blood on the wall, the captain turned around and spoke in a trembling voice.
What a brutal atrocity was this?
Even after so many years as a guard captain in Meteor City, this was the first time he had seen something so perverse!
Beside him, the guard who received the order turned and left, not daring to hesitate for a moment...