Black Market Shopping, Preparing to Build a Bus

Early the next morning.

For once, Su Bai got up much earlier than usual.

Instead of going to school, he texted his homeroom teacher, Qin Wan, to request time off, explaining that he had been "frightened by an assassination attempt and needed bed rest at home to recover from the psychological trauma."

Seeing the string of ellipses Qin Wan sent back, Su Bai smiled unconcernedly.

He slung his faded backpack over his shoulders, put on a baseball cap and a mask, and headed straight for Linhai City's largest underground black market—the Night Owl Market.

With over two million in cash to back him up, Su Bai swaggered through the black market's dark, damp alleys as though he no longer recognized his own kin.

He passed by the outer stalls selling low-grade herbs and trinkets, making his way with practiced ease to the deepest part of the market.

A shady shop called Machinery and Flesh.

The shop was the Night Owl Market's largest center for trading contraband. As long as you could afford it, they could get you even heavy psionic armor retired by the military.

He pushed open the heavy lead door, and the pungent smell of machine oil mixed with formalin hit him in the face.

The shop was dimly lit and piled high with all manner of oddly shaped mechanical parts, exotic beast bones, and strange organs floating in preservative.

A burly bald man with a mechanical prosthetic eye sat behind the counter, wiping down a heavy psionic shotgun with an oily rag.

When Su Bai entered, the burly bald man didn't even look up.

"Kid, we don't sell toys here. If you want spiritual energy powder, go to the stalls outside."

Su Bai didn't waste words either. He walked up to the counter and slapped down the "second-tier miniature spirit vein core" he had seized from Venomous Bee's ring.

Smack!

The milky-white stone radiated dense fluctuations of spiritual energy, instantly lighting up the dim counter.

The burly man's hand froze on the gun, and his mechanical eye immediately flashed with a red scanning light.

"A top-grade second-tier spirit vein core? Over ninety percent pure?"

The man jerked his head up, shock and scrutiny in his eyes as he stared fixedly at the boy in a school uniform before him.

"Little brother, this stuff is a controlled resource. You hardly ever see it on the market. Where did you get it?"

"Do you run background checks in this shop too?" Su Bai sneered. "If you don't dare take it, I'll go to the shop across the way."

With that, Su Bai reached out to take the spirit vein core back.

"Wait, wait, wait! I was just joking!"

The man slapped a hand over the spirit vein core, a slick smile immediately spreading across his face. "Everyone who walks through my door is a customer. As long as it's genuine, I, Iron Hand, will take it all! I'll give you 1.2 million for this core!"

"One and a half million. Not a cent less." Su Bai countered without hesitation. He had checked black market prices long ago; a top-grade core like this was priceless and impossible to find on the market.

Iron Hand gritted his teeth at the painful price, but the spirit vein core was too tempting. In the end, he nodded.

"All right! One and a half million, deal! Cash or transfer?"

"I don't want money." Su Bai shook his head.

"No money?" Iron Hand was dumbfounded. "Then what do you want?"

"I want to buy something." Su Bai pulled a list he had prepared long ago from his pocket and handed it over.

Iron Hand took the list, and after a single glance, his mechanical eye nearly short-circuited and blew up.

[List of items]:

1. One scrapped passenger bus involved in an accident that killed at least ten people (a school bus is best; the original bloodstains and collision damage must be preserved).

2. Ten barrels of low-grade black oil refined from a high-concentration contamination zone (the more heavily contaminated, the better; preferably corrosive enough to eat through ordinary steel).

3. One old steering wheel stained with a driver's blood steeped in resentment.

4. Fifteen recently dead second-tier mutated beast carcasses (intact bodies required; the fiercer, the better).

When Iron Hand finished reading, he sucked in a breath and looked at Su Bai as though he were a deranged serial killer.

"Little brother... what kind of hellish stuff are you buying?"

"A scrapped bus from a fatal accident? Heavily contaminated black oil? Are you planning a terrorist attack, or trying to turn yourself into an Anomaly?!"

In this world, normal deities bought spiritual objects, holy water, and high-grade ores.

Everything on Su Bai's list was either garbage contaminated by dark matter or an ominous object steeped in ill fortune!

"Never mind that. Just tell me whether you can get them." Su Bai tapped the counter.

"I can get them..." Iron Hand wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. "A few years ago, there was a major crash in the eastern suburbs. A fully loaded unlicensed bus fell into a polluted river, and more than ten people died. The wreck's been sitting unwanted in a scrapyard ever since, and the bloodstained steering wheel is still on it."

"As for contaminated black oil and mutated beast carcasses, there are plenty over at the black market slaughterhouse. It's just... all this stuff together is worth 300,000 at most. Are you sure you want to trade a 1.5-million spirit vein core for this junk?"

Iron Hand figured the kid had definitely suffered some kind of shock and gone mad.

"Get everything ready and deliver it to the abandoned steelworks in the western suburbs. Exchange the rest of the money for the highest-purity unattributed resentment crystals."

Su Bai didn't care what Iron Hand thought.

In his eyes, that 1.5-million spirit vein core was a useless rock in his divine kingdom, while this 300,000 worth of "junk" was the key material for creating the [Midnight School Bus]!

Resentment crystals were hard currency. Whether he was upgrading the Thirteen Steps or strengthening Hongdou, he needed vast amounts of resentment.

"All right! Since you insist, little brother, I'll have my people take care of it right away! I guarantee everything will be delivered intact to the steelworks in the western suburbs before dark!"

With money to be made, Iron Hand naturally wouldn't refuse. He cheerfully put away the spirit vein core and started making calls to round up his people.

Having secured the key materials, Su Bai left the black market in an excellent mood.

The hardware for the [Midnight School Bus] was all there. Now, only the final "soul" was missing.

The souls of fourteen dead people, brimming with resentment.

Those couldn't be bought on the black market. Great Xia Nation law strictly prohibited the buying and selling of human souls, and anyone caught faced the death penalty. Even a black-hearted merchant like Iron Hand wouldn't touch them.

"Looks like I'll have to go fishing again."

Su Bai rubbed his chin.

The meeting place on the Gu Family's bounty notice-warehouse three at the abandoned chemical plant in the eastern suburbs.

Since it was a meeting place, that meant the Shadow Guild definitely had a contact stationed there. Other assassins might even go there to pick up the contract on him.

"Isn't that a ready-made 'soul ATM'?"

Su Bai made up his mind to visit the abandoned chemical plant in the eastern suburbs that night.

Just as Su Bai was considering how to trick those assassins onto the bus.

His phone suddenly rang.

He glanced at the caller ID. It was Fatty Lin Que.

"Hey, Fatty, what's up?"

"Brother Bai! Where are you? Something big happened at school!" On the other end of the line, Lin Que sounded frantic, his voice almost breaking into tears.

"Don't panic. Take your time." Su Bai frowned slightly.

"It's the Gu Family! That bastard Gu Chengfeng's dad, Gu Canghai, came to the school in person!"

Lin Que lowered his voice, as though hiding from someone.

"They brought a bunch of lawyers and safety assessment experts from the municipal education bureau, and they're making a scene in the principal's office! Gu Canghai insists your divine kingdom is a 'high-risk, uncontrollable source of contamination.' He's demanding that the school expel you immediately and have the City Appearance Bureau forcibly take you away for 'divine kingdom severance surgery'!"

"Divine kingdom severance surgery?" Su Bai's eyes turned cold.

How the hell was that any different from killing him? Once a divine kingdom was severed, its owner would not only be crippled but also have an extremely high chance of suffering brain death on the spot!

Unable to beat Chen Tianxing in the open, the Gu Family had started using official rules and the pretext of safety to apply pressure.

"What did the principal say?" Su Bai asked.

"The principal and Teacher Qin are both doing everything they can to protect you, but several senior leaders from the education bureau came this time, and they're siding with the Gu Family. They said that as long as your contamination index is still at 99.5%, that fulfills the prerequisite for a public safety hazard, unless..."

"Unless what?"

"Unless you can prove in the City Appearance Bureau's 'extreme combat assessment' that you can perfectly control the contamination and keep it from leaking out."

Lin Que stamped his feet in anxiety. "Just now, Captain Zhang Lei from the City Appearance Bureau's Abnormality Division came to the school. He called you out by name for a mandatory combat assessment mission!"

Su Bai narrowed his eyes.

Zhang Lei? An official mandatory assessment mission?

It seemed that woman, Bai Lan, had grown suspicious of him after all.

"What mission did they assign me?" Su Bai asked coldly.

"It's... it's the Benevolent Heart Hospital in the western suburbs! They want you to enter the hospital's core area without outside support, retrieve the bodies of several missing streamers, and bring back at least one sample record of a second-tier Anomaly!"

Lin Que's voice was trembling.

"Brother Bai, that's Benevolent Heart Hospital! One of the three great forbidden zones in Linhai City! They say it has not only mutated doctors and nurses, but also a half-formed third-tier Anomaly with the 'Forced Diagnosis' rule!"

"Never mind you-even the teachers leading the elite class wouldn't dare venture into the core area lightly! They're obviously sending you to your death!"

On his end of the call, however, Su Bai fell silent.

The western suburbs? Benevolent Heart Hospital?

Forced Diagnosis? Mutated doctors and nurses?

Rather than feeling the slightest fear or anger, Su Bai swallowed instinctively.

He had been worrying about where to find materials for his next large-scale urban legend after building the [Midnight School Bus].

This was like being handed a pillow just as he was getting sleepy!

An entire abandoned hospital, full of resentment and contamination!

It was the perfect place to give birth to a super Domain urban legend like the [Forbidden Hospital]!

"Brother Bai? Brother Bai, are you still listening?" When Lin Que heard no response from Su Bai, he thought he had been scared witless. "Whatever you do, don't come back! Just run! I've got some money stashed away; I'll transfer it all to you..."

"Fatty, give Teacher Qin a message for me."

Su Bai cut Lin Que off, an intensely excited, fanatical smile curling across his lips.

"Tell her I'm taking this mission."

"Also, have Zhang Lei prepare stretchers and body bags. But they're not for me. They're for the hospital's 'natives.'"

"They dare question whether my divine kingdom is safe enough? Then I'll show them what the true ancestor of Anomalies looks like!"