Rumble!
Lightning snaked across the sky, and rain poured like beads.
The longer the warm, humid air currents had been brewing, the more ferocious the torrential downpour became when it finally broke.
In the second half of the night, Cheng Ye suddenly snapped awake. Springing up like a leaping fish, he used a thought to recall the pendant that had been charging.
*Is it... a blackout?*
The Collector's sudden alarm had made Cheng Ye think for a split second that a thief had sneaked inside.
Fortunately, when he checked the interface, it was only a notification that the power input had paused.
*Click!*
He raised a hand and tugged the pull-cord of the bedside lamp. Nothing happened. It seemed all the lines were down.
Cheng Ye picked up the defense comm by his pillow and checked the time. It was four minutes to six.
Since he was already up, he decided against trying to sleep any longer. After dressing, he swung his legs out of bed.
"Holy crap, that's a massive downpour!"
Walking over to the window and peering out, Cheng Ye was instantly stunned.
The sky-obscuring curtain of rain merged into a continuous white sheet, far more staggering than any storm he had ever witnessed.
It had only been coming down for six or seven hours, yet the courtyard of the electronic factory residential compound had already accumulated calf-deep water.
In the darkness, a dozen people could be seen holding flashlights, trying to clear the courtyard drains.
Unfortunately, their efforts yielded little result, as the street outside the compound was equally flooded with a ridiculous amount of water.
*Whoosh.*
Like a runaway river surging down the street, the deluge swept up fallen leaves and debris, tossing them about haphazardly.
Scoured by the torrential rain, the painted-over peace that normally masked the Buffer Zone peeled away, exposing the worn, mottled decay beneath.
When all was said and done, this place was ultimately a ruin of civilization left behind by the old era a century ago.
Back when it was planned and built, no matter how much the architects wracked their brains, they never could have anticipated that a hundred years later, this land would be overrun by a population several times higher than originally planned.
*If I ever have the ability to build a settlement in the future, I must get the drainage right from the very start.*
Cheng Ye let his mind wander as he indulged in the daydream.
If he hadn't caught a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of transcendent power and discovered the wonders hidden beneath the wasteland's ruins, he would have gladly curled up in his inspector post for the rest of his life, keeping his iron rice bowl in Happiness City bolted shut!
Yet now that he knew, how could he be content staying trapped here?
Even if he died, he would rather die on the road pursuing transcendent power and chasing freedom.
Rubbing the edge of the pendant, Cheng Ye called up the interface. Just before the blackout, the charge in the upper-right corner had managed to break past fifty percent.
This meant that once he reached the fast checkpoint, if he spotted a target, he would have the chance to increase his strength again at any moment.
***
Seven in the morning.
The torrential rain eased slightly, but the flooding grew even worse.
Cheng Ye put on a raincoat and wrapped a strip of duct tape around the rims of his high-top rain boots to keep the rising water from spilling in.
Yet no one could have anticipated that his very first step downstairs would land him straight into a knee-deep pool of water.
"Fuck!"
Influenced by older architectural styles, these older tenement buildings had notoriously high thresholds at their entrances.
As a result, water poured in and couldn't flow back out. It just kept piling up, until the steps of the ground floor were completely submerged like a fish pond.
"Haha, buddy, I was just about to warn you!"
A man rushed out through a security door beside the stairs, carrying a blue plastic bucket.
Cheng Ye poked his head over to look. Good grief, the man's home had practically turned into a fish hatchery, yet he could still laugh about it.
"We're flooded, so we don't have to work today, but we still get paid!"
Sensing Cheng Ye's confusion, the man immediately offered an explanation. "Besides, I heard the Inner City engineering team is discussing plans to renovate tenements like ours once this storm clears up."
"Renovate?"
Short of knocking it down and rebuilding, Cheng Ye didn't see how renovating the tenement would make it much better than it was now.
Still, if they could fix the sewer pipes, overhaul the power supply, and ideally upgrade every resident to five-square-millimeter wiring, that would be fantastic!
"You're heading to work, right? Come on, I'll carry you across on my back!"
Seeing Cheng Ye stuck in a dilemma at the base of the stairs, the man set down his bucket and walked over.
"Don't stand on ceremony with Old Sun! We live in the same building. Besides, going to work means you're contributing to our Buffer Zone, which is way better than someone like me who just draws pay without working."
Speaking of collecting a free paycheck, Cheng Ye couldn't help but feel that Old Sun sounded genuinely proud of it.
"Well... thanks!"
"What're you being so bashful for? Hop on."
Carrying Cheng Ye on his back, the man sloshed his way out of the compound, his footing wavering through the deep water.
By the time he carried him to the entrance, the deepest pool reached past his thighs, and everything below his knees was coated in yellow mud.
"I'm heading back. If you're coming home tonight, I'll carry you across again."
Leaving behind that single promise, Old Sun waded back the way he had come.
Watching the man's brisk, bustling figure, Cheng Ye suddenly felt that the hearts of people in this wasteland weren't quite as rotten as he had imagined.
The bad might be worse, but the good hadn't vanished completely.
***
Elsewhere.
"Aiya, good heavens! Be gentle, don't knock my shelves to pieces!"
Uncle Dong's flustered shouts cut through the sheet of rain.
Cheng Ye stood on his tiptoes to take a look. The water inside the convenience store had also crept up to mid-calf, and four or five workers were hunched over, scooping it out with washbasins.
Someone's elbow bumped into a shelf against the wall, sending plastic bottles and canned goods clattering to the floor. The sight made Uncle Dong slap his thighs and stomp in agony, looking ready to dive straight in to salvage them.
"Uncle Dong, with those old bones of yours, don't go throwing yourself into the mess," Cheng Ye called out as he walked over, catching hold of the old man.
"If you take a fall or scrape yourself up, the clinic will cost you more than everything in this shop combined."
"Young Cheng..."
Uncle Dong turned around. His greying hair was plastered to his forehead, making him look just like a drowned hen.
"If I hadn't stayed sharp during that freak storm last night, I probably would've drowned right here in the shop."
"That bad?"
"You bet it was! I was down in the basement sorting goods, felt exhausted, and shut my eyes for a quick second. Next thing I knew, water was roaring in! In less than half a minute, it was nearly up to my neck!"
The row of shops at the entrance of the staff compound also followed the old design, each with a basement for storage.
Cheng Ye's eyelids twitched, and he said in alarm, "You shouldn't use the basement anymore. By the way, if you don't have anywhere to stay today, why not come up to my place?"
"How could I? If I don't keep watch over this shop, how could I ever sleep?"
Uncle Dong shook his head and pulled out half a box of nutrient paste from the salvaged goods nearby.
"Thirty packs. Fresh stock that arrived just yesterday. I kept them for you. If this freak rain keeps up, people are going to fight like crazy for these things."
"Thanks."
Unpacking the carton, Cheng Ye stuffed the nutrient paste into his backpack and handed over a fistful of ten-denomination coins.
A single pack of nutrient paste was currently priced at two Happiness Coins, and the handful of coins he offered contained at least twelve or thirteen of them.
Uncle Dong didn't bother with polite refusals, which was rare for him.
In a storm disaster like this, the price of nutrient paste was bound to skyrocket. Stockpiling a batch and reselling it at five coins a pack wouldn't be difficult at all.
More importantly, even if one had the money, there was no guarantee of buying any once panic-buying set in!
And reality proved just that. On his walk toward the North Station checkpoint, long lines had formed in front of virtually every shop selling nutrient paste.
Unfortunately, he didn't see Chu Yunfeng's family. He had no idea whether they had found a place to stay or stocked up on paste in advance.
*Damn, why did I think of Chu Yunfeng the second I saved up enough for a search?*
Cheng Ye felt a surge of temptation.
Compared to pulling a blind box at the checkpoint, shearing wool off a "golden legendary" like Chu Yunfeng was obviously far more appealing!
Thirteen level-one skills. Setting aside the non-combat ones he couldn't use yet, skills like Basic Perception and Quick Draw sounded immensely practical just from their names alone.
However, he knew full well that given how wary that family was, showing up without a valid reason meant he might not even reach the fifty-percent cooperation rate.
The best approach was still to wait until they crossed paths again at the checkpoint.
Cheng Ye had a faint hunch that someone of Chu Yunfeng's ability would never be content doing menial hard labor in the Buffer Zone forever. Setting aside whether he could feed his family, if the current situation continued to unfold like this...
"Price hike! Price hike! Nutrient paste, five coins a pack!"
Shouts echoed from the roadside. Scalpers who had sniffed out the business opportunity brought by the storm were squatting on street corners, already hawking nutrient paste at inflated prices.
People cursed as they squeezed out of the lines, ultimately gritting their teeth to hand over double the price for a crumpled pouch from a scalper's hands.
There was no helping it. Demand for nutrient paste was massive, the unit price was low, and it was hard to stretch with shady chemical additives.
Once the weather turned warm, the shelf life was five days at most, and getting it from the factory into the hands of distributors across the Buffer Zone ate up a full day.
Add to that the fact that most people, exhausted after a long day of manual labor, had neither the energy nor the savings to stockpile in advance.
Because of this, whenever any natural disaster struck the Buffer Zone, local prices fluctuated almost instantly.
"Aren't the Happiness City authorities going to step in and regulate this? Round up all these damn scalpers and execute them!"
"Right! Heartless bastards exploiting a disaster to make a quick buck—they better pray I never run into them out in the ruins!"
"Stop being so naive! Where do you think these scalpers get their goods?"
"Where else could they get them? Don't tell me the big shots at the Supplies Bureau handed the goods to them personally!"
"One word from you and anyone can tell you're new here. Listen closely: in the Buffer Zone, you can eat whatever you want, but you can't say whatever you want! If an on-duty guard overheard what you just said, you'd be dragged to the Security Office and beaten within an inch of your life!"
"..."
Cheng Ye strode quickly through the crowd, surrounded by a swelling chorus of curses and arguments.
For some reason, while the thought of heading to the fast checkpoint had left him filled with trepidation the night before, right now he felt a surge of excitement he could barely suppress.
Especially after hearing and seeing the refugees—their distress, despondency, curses, and despair!
He felt more and more of the civilized world's passive complacency—that instinct to avoid conflict and accept whatever came—draining rapidly from his genetic core with every step he took toward the North Checkpoint.
Taking its place was the savage ruthlessness and vicious drive of the wasteland, gradually awakening within his blood.
This was truly not a new era where everyone held hope and civilization marched toward revival.
It was a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog transcendent wasteland, where the strong sought to rule over everything!
*The Collector left by Brother Long opened an upward path for me, giving me the chance to keep growing stronger.*
*Brother B shielded me at my most vulnerable, giving me the foundation to stand on my own two feet.*
*And now!*
*It's finally this world's turn to welcome my arrival!*
Chapter 22