Cheng Ye was well aware of his own needlework skills.
Years ago, before Pinduoduo made bargain shopping so easy, he used to stitch up ripped jeans. Later on, when a pair of jeans cost only twenty yuan, who bothered mending them anymore? When they wore out, tossing them into a Cainiao Post recycling bin fetched four yuan, and after camping for coupons, a brand-new pair could be had for ten yuan at most. As time passed, the craft had mostly slipped from his memory, leaving him with only a rudimentary, bare-bones grasp.
*Looking at it this way, the action points must scan for my peak capability.*
Cheng Ye pondered this for a moment, then chided himself for worrying about it in the first place.
There was really no need to obsess over how the Action scan set its standards. In the future, complex actions would inevitably require matching skills to execute, while simple tasks wouldn't set the bar very high. Even if he couldn't perform something right now, picking it up on the fly wouldn't take much time.
After all, the wasteland wasn't a world of total ruin, and Happiness City was hardly a zombie-infested city in decay. Human civilization was still carried forward here. Given his status as an inspector, acquiring classified high-tech data might be tough, but getting his hands on widespread common knowledge was easy enough.
Besides...
Cheng Ye pulled open the desk drawer and tucked the backpack inside.
Although the Collector masked biological perception while performing an action, the finished product couldn't remain hidden. He had to keep that in mind going forward: use the Action function only when no one was around.
...
Stuck in the quarantine zone with nowhere to go, more than four hours of the morning slipped by in a flash.
As the old saying went, a violent storm never lasted, but a drizzle lingered on. The downpour from the previous night had broken too violently; by morning it had dwindled to light rain, and by now the skies had cleared completely.
The temperature shot upward, and the blazing sun made one's head swim.
At first, Cheng Ye had worried that infected entities might appear and prove difficult to handle. He had spent the whole time studying the approach beyond the checkpoint with rapt attention, occasionally getting up to stretch and keep warm. Yet through the entire morning, neighboring Quarantine Zone B had waved through at least a hundred people, while his Zone A hadn't seen so much as a shadow.
*Did last night's torrential rain really collapse the roadway out there?*
*That shouldn't be the case. Anyone driving outside would've anticipated the weather, wouldn't they?*
Cheng Ye was genuinely surprised. If he could skate through his first day so quietly, it would be a blessing for him.
Yet Murphy's Law worked in miraculous ways.
As fate would have it, the very moment that thought crossed his mind, the distant outline of an approaching vehicle finally appeared.
Here it comes!
Cheng Ye perked up and instinctively pulled up the Collector interface to glance at the upper right corner.
After nearly five hours, the charge had recovered from 0% to 18%—a gratifying rate of efficiency. At this pace, it would finish charging by the end of his shift, giving him enough energy for another search before tomorrow's work. What was more, he had previously worried about search failures, but now a failure yielded action points. Either way, he came out ahead.
The vehicle drew closer. As expected, it was the most common sight in the Buffer Zone: a Jinbei van.
Cheng Ye noted that as the van climbed onto the paved roadway and passed through Channel One, its two front tires were compressed noticeably flat. Clearly, it was carrying a heavy load of cargo.
"Halt! Await instructions!"
Cheng Ye pushed back his chair, grabbed a megaphone from beneath the desk, and called out to the approaching van.
Although this was his first time on duty at a fast checkpoint, he had observed the process in neighboring Zone B all morning and had picked up the basic routine. It was straightforward enough: divert first, then inspect, probe with questions, and verify the results.
The Westerner inspector in Zone B seemed especially averse to using instruments. Whenever a scavenger failed to give an answer that satisfied him, he slapped them with the label of "infected entity" and shoved them into an isolation pod—for seven days minimum. Setting aside whether that approach was right or wrong, its efficiency was undeniably abysmal.
As a proper product of the academy, Cheng Ye had spent the past two months honing his own methodology. Bolstered by the pointers Luo Xiaoxue had shared, he was confident he wouldn't perform worse than the stubborn oaf next door.
The Jinbei van rolled through the channel and came to a steady halt before the iron quarantine gate.
Realizing an Easterner inspector was seated inside, the Westerner driver blinked in surprise.
"Step out of the vehicle and state your vitals! Don't you know the drill?"
Cheng Ye's shout jarred them back to their senses. The occupants hurriedly opened their doors and clambered out.
There were four of them in total: two in the front and two in the cargo area, all Westerners.
"Do you have your departure permits? Pass them through the window so I can see."
"Yes, yes!"
The Westerner driver nodded repeatedly, turned back to retrieve an envelope from the compartment beside his seat, and handed it over. "Please take a look, sir."
A palm-sized slot was cut into the outer iron quarantine gate, designed specifically for travelers to pass documents through. Cheng Ye took the envelope, returned to the alloy desk, and tore it open.
To his surprise, six coins spilled out onto the surface. Their front faces were stamped with the Great Wall of Happiness City, while the reverse was embossed with the number '100.'
Six hundred?
Were they throwing away their savings?
*Is this guy trying to single-handedly wreck Happiness City's economy?*
Cheng Ye was momentarily stunned. While inspectors had plenty of avenues to pocket extra cash and earning around a thousand Happiness Coins a month wasn't difficult, their official base salaries were modest. As a trainee inspector, he made 500 coins; even a senior fourth-phase inspector like Liu Bi took home only 950. For an ordinary driver to hand over a 600-coin bribe just like that was absurd.
Sweeping the coins aside, Cheng Ye lifted his chin and studied the four men standing beyond the quarantine gate.
A single glance revealed the underlying story.
The driver and passenger looked fine, but both men who had climbed out of the van's rear were injured. The man on the left favored his arm, holding it slightly bent in an unnatural posture, while the man on the right had a leg injury and had to lean against the tailgate just to stay upright.
*No wonder they offered such an extravagant gift.*
*If they showed up in Zone B with injuries like those, the inspector wouldn't even ask questions—he'd throw them straight into isolation pods for ten days to a half-month. By the time the quarantine period ended, the one with the arm injury might pull through, but the guy with the leg would never survive it.*
Understanding dawned on Cheng Ye.
According to what Raven had mentioned earlier, four-seat Jinbei vans rarely offered large bribes. They usually handed over local specialties from neighboring settlements or shelter cities—novel items worth around fifty Happiness Coins at best. After all, travelers already paid a portion of the "passage fee" at the checkpoint before leaving the city. Only large transport convoys slipped an inspector one or two hundred coins upon entry to ensure a smooth passage.
*Six hundred coins to buy a life. That's a hefty price...*
Cheng Ye unfolded the departure permit and skimmed it. Nothing unusual stood out: it was an ordinary trade clearance listing basic tools like wrenches, screwdrivers, and hammers, along with small industrial goods like radios, tape, and wiring—all well within the permitted exports of Happiness City.
*Wait... their van came back packed to the brim.*
Remembering how squashed the Jinbei van's tires had looked as it rolled into the station, Cheng Ye realized the problem lay in the cargo.
"Who's in charge?"
"I am, sir!" The driver raised his hand.
"Name?"
"Cole Waters."
"I'm opening the quarantine gate. Drive the vehicle inside alone—I'm inspecting the cargo. The rest stay outside and wait. Understood?"
Cheng Ye's tone was crisp.
Cole's heart skipped a beat. He hadn't expected the Easterner inspector to pinpoint the issue with the cargo without asking a single question. At the same time, he realized Cheng Ye hadn't flatly refused the entry, which meant there was still room to negotiate.
The quarantine gate rolled upward with a low hum.
The gate of Quarantine Zone A was considerably wider than Zone B's, easily accommodating the Jinbei van. With the tailgate no longer offering support, the injured man on the right stumbled awkwardly; before his companion could catch him, he collapsed onto the ground.
Catching sight of the scene in his rearview mirror, Cole's expression tightened, but he had no choice except to ease the vehicle into the inspection bay, cut the engine, and step out.
Right in front of Cheng Ye, he stripped off his shirt and pants without a word, stepping into the marked inspection square clad only in his underwear. This was standard procedure at the fast checkpoint, intended to prove that a traveler bore no obvious signs of infection and concealed no weapons.
"State your vitals first."
Cheng Ye ran his gaze over him. Although Cole had several scabbed scrapes across his body and visible swelling on his calf, none of them were infection wounds. Only lacerations, bites, or puncture wounds exceeding ten by ten centimeters fit the profile of an attack by an infected entity.
"37.1 degrees, heart rate 66, breathing rate 18."
"You look awfully relaxed."
Cheng Ye flashed a faint smile. The sight sent a shiver through Cole, who answered in a hurry: "Sir, I've had steady nerves since I was a boy. Even when fighting infected entities, my pulse has never passed 130."
"Do you think that's what I'm talking about?"
Cheng Ye tapped a knuckle against the desk, making the five coins on the alloy tabletop rattle slightly. "I'll give you three sentences. Tell me what I want to hear."
"Yes... yes, sir!"
Cole's Adam's apple bobbed. Though he was facing a young man a dozen years his junior, the pressure weighed down on him like a mountain—not merely from the authority the inspector wielded, but from the unmistakable confidence and domineering resolve in his eyes.
"After delivering our cargo to Bluestone Settlement, we crossed paths with a wandering scavenger who wanted to trade information for two weeks' worth of food, and I agreed."
"The information was the location of an untapped mineral deposit."
"We found the deposit, but we didn't expect the scavenger to set an ambush; luckily, we won the fight and dug up a load of samples to bring back."
Cole spoke with blistering speed, terrified that Cheng Ye would cut him off if his words weren't concise enough.
"A mineral deposit?" Cheng Ye raised an eyebrow. "Extraordinary minerals?"
"You flatter us, sir. How could we possibly dig up something that rare? It's a small pegmatite lithium deposit."
"What? Lithium?!"
...
Chapter 36