The value of any mineral deposit depended on whether it served the logic of survival.
As society degraded into a raw contest for survival, lithium's strategic importance in Happiness City had long surpassed a whole host of traditional precious metals.
Gold, for instance!
For the settlements, small tribes, and roving factions scattered around the shelter cities, a gold bar scavenged from the urban ruins did nothing to alleviate their daily struggle for survival.
Yet a single 10 kWh battery produced by Happiness City could pull a settlement of a hundred people out of darkness for an entire month.
And lithium happened to be a core raw material for manufacturing high-performance batteries.
"How many were on the other side? How did you win the fight?"
Cheng Ye didn't dwell on the authenticity or value of the deposit, nor did he entertain any thought of monopolizing the intelligence for himself.
Back when the checkpoints were first established, the upper echelons of Happiness City had already taken that into account.
If inspectors could simply swallow up a scavenger's discovery and claim it as their own, no one would ever dare venture outside the city to take risks again.
Upon submitting a mineral deposit's location, the Inner City had a comprehensive protocol of debriefing interviews and on-site field surveys.
Passing through that screening was virtually impossible for anyone other than the actual discoverer.
And if someone was found guilty of claiming credit under false pretenses, there was only one outcome:
Execution on the public scaffold!
"Twenty-seven scavengers in total. They belonged to Big-Head Ghost from the ruins' Hundred Ghosts Gang."
Cole grinned wide enough to bare his molars. "Those bastards took us for two-legged sheep, looking to squeeze some grease out of us. Too bad the four of us grew up scrapping in the ruins. We've seen this kind of play a thousand times. We weren't scared, and we came prepared."
He spoke breezily, but every syllable bristled with murderous intent.
Cheng Ye had never heard of the Hundred Ghosts Gang, nor did he know who Big-Head Ghost was, but breaking out head-on from a twenty-seven-man trap, triumphing over them, digging up samples, and rushing back—
Assuming he wasn't lying—
That combat capability was far superior to a half-baked inspector like him with only two months of training under his belt.
"Mm. So... their wounds are gunshot wounds?"
"Uh..."
The grin on Cole's face instantly froze, and he shook his head in a hurry. "N-no, sir... They're claw marks."
"Claw marks?"
"Mutant beasts did it!"
"While we were fighting the Hundred Ghosts Gang, mutant beasts suddenly jumped in. That was how we managed to get away in one piece."
If they were gunshot wounds, backed by the promise of a lithium deposit, they wouldn't have to worry about Cheng Ye detaining them.
Claw marks, however, were an entirely different matter. If Cheng Ye insisted there was a risk of infection and locked them in quarantine pods, not even Happiness City's leadership could fault him.
This was an ironclad rule of the checkpoint, an unshakeable principle.
"Sir, on top of the six hundred coins, we're willing to offer something we picked up at Bluestone Settlement, a piece of meteo—"
"Shut up!"
Cheng Ye barked, cutting Cole off before the bribe could even leave his mouth.
No matter how good something was, you had to be alive to enjoy it.
Though the West Faction members at the checkpoint all seemed greedy enough to wave anyone through for cash, not a single one dared cut corners when it came to screening for infected entities.
Even the blockheads next door in Zone B would rather kill mistakenly than let an infected slip by.
It was precisely why the inspectors' reputation throughout the Buffer Zone remained steadfast, never collapsing.
Anyone who dared break this rule was an enemy of every inspector and a public menace to every resident in the Buffer Zone!
"Get out, and send the one with the arm injury in."
"Yes, sir!"
Cole gritted his teeth. At this point, he could only place his hopes on this Easterner inspector's keen eye.
Before long, they traded places.
The newcomer Westerner peeled off his clothes, revealing a shocking claw wound.
From his shoulder down to his forearm, the claw tear was at least thirty centimeters long, the flesh torn open and bone visible beneath!
"Name?"
"Ram Waters."
"Are you brothers?"
"Yes, sir. The four of us are blood brothers."
"Explain how you got injured. Be specific. Don't tell me bedtime stories fit for toddlers; my patience only lasts once."
"U-Understood."
Ram's gaze hardened as he realized his life was resting entirely in his own hands right now.
"It was ant-wolves. More than forty of them, all full-grown."
The ant-wolf was one of the most common mutant beasts in the urban ruins, notorious for its reproductive capacity.
A flood of information instantly flashed through Cheng Ye's mind, drawn both from standard descriptions in the inspector's manual and scattered records from books in the Survival Library.
Its form resembled that of a gray wolf, with an adult standing roughly 1.2 meters at the shoulder, sporting razor-sharp fangs, and capable of extreme sprint speeds. A pelt covered in carbonized keratin provided effective protection against physical trauma.
The prefix "ant" was appended to "wolf" because of its mutated reproductive system.
Female ant-wolves went into heat every six months, their abdomens evolving a massive brood pouch akin to a queen ant's, capable of laying fifteen to twenty eggs in a single clutch.
The oviparous wolf pups took only three months to reach the juvenile growth phase and fully matured in a single year.
Given sufficient food and an absence of natural predators, a handful of ant-wolves could swell into an immense pack within four to five years.
However, though ant-wolf meat tasted atrocious, it was non-toxic and edible. This trait doomed them never to proliferate unchecked in the wasteland, particularly within the borders of Eastern Great Country.
For scavengers and wanderers celebrating holidays or special occasions, ant-wolf meat was an inevitable staple main dish.
"You know the value of a lithium deposit, sir. We didn't really believe an untapped deposit could just be stumbled upon by a scavenger and conveniently shared with us. But don't scavengers risk their necks just for that one shot at striking it rich and making something of themselves? We hesitated back and forth, but finally decided to scout it out. Before heading over, though, we deliberately lured a pack of ant-wolves behind our truck, thinking that if there was an ambush, the wolves would disrupt their formation.
"And our gamble paid off!"
A glint of ferocity flashed in his eyes. "Under the open-pit stripped layer of that knoll the scavenger mentioned, the sunny slope really did have pegmatite lithium. The ambush was there as expected too... But those bastards in the Hundred Ghosts Gang never saw it coming that we'd herd a wolf pack straight to their doorstep. While they were hunkered down in the shadows, the wolves swarmed them. We flanked them from the sunny side, and without much effort, we took every last one down...
"Only..."
Ram paused, a bitter smile flitting across his face.
"We miscalculated the beasts' appetite. Twenty-seven men weren't enough to fill their bellies, and they turned right around to make prey out of us. These wounds came from our desperate struggle against the pack."
Ram's narrative was not only logically coherent but remarkably smooth, clearly rehearsed over and over during their drive back.
Cheng Ye nodded slightly, harboring none of the instinctive resistance other inspectors might feel.
Nor did he behave like someone in a movie or drama, illogically equating "smooth" with "lies."
Back before his graduate thesis defense, he had spent two days in his dorm running simulations over and over. Now, with life and death on the line, if the four brothers hadn't synchronized their story beforehand to prevent slips of the tongue, that would have seemed truly suspicious.
*Four brothers with guts, methods, and brains...*
*Only people like this deserve to stumble upon a priceless lithium deposit.*
Cheng Ye mused inwardly.
The world teemed with capable figures like carps crossing a river; walking the wasteland in the days ahead, he truly could not afford to underestimate anyone.
After all, anyone who could claw their way through urban ruins was bound to be a ruthless character who lived by the blade.
"Call out your numbers."
"37.7 / 133 / 22."
Ram answered in a low voice, though his heart sank slightly. These readings were teetering right on the edge of abnormal.
The moment his temperature broke 38 degrees Celsius, the inspector before him wouldn't need any reason at all to dump them straight into a quarantine pod.
"Bring in the one with the leg injury. Have the other two support him."
Cheng Ye spoke impassively, gesturing toward a corner of the quarantine area without any expression. "You, go stand in the corner and don't make any sudden moves."
"Yes, sir."
The isolation door slid open, and two men quickly walked in supporting the injured brother. Cole helped strip the injured man's lower garments.
Good grief.
Compared to the wound on Ram's arm, the gash on this man's right leg was truly horrifying.
From his calf all the way to the base of his thigh, massive bite tears revealed mangled flesh; even with immediate emergency medical care, saving the leg from amputation would be a tall order.
"Sir..."
"Names?"
"Her Waters. Simo Waters."
"Read the numbers."
Given no opening for further explanation, Cole gritted his teeth and assisted with taking the measurements before calling them out:
"36.9 / 10 / 18."
"38.7 / 162 / 26."
Her's readings were still within normal range, but Simo's three critical readings were so dangerously off that even a dog would shake its head in dismay.
"Sir..." Cole parted his lips, completely at a loss for where to begin.
Begging Cheng Ye for leniency right now was tantamount to asking him to violate an inspector's core principles.
Even though everyone understood that abnormal readings were very likely an immune response triggered by severe trauma.
"Lock me up, sir! My injuries are too severe; I'm already beyond saving..."
Simo gritted his teeth, bloody froth leaking from the corner of his mouth. "For the sake of that lithium deposit, for the sake of our blood spilled for Happiness City, I beg you—let the other three go!"
"What kind of bullshit are you talking!"
Cole's expression shifted drastically as he clamped a hand onto Simo's shoulder. "Didn't the four of us swear to live and die together? We finally scraped together a chance to rise up, and no one gets left behind!"
"Shut up, Simo! If anyone gets locked up, it should be me—"
*Well, then.*
*Looks like I'll have to retract my assessment that these four brothers have brains.*
Cheng Ye sighed inwardly, noting wryly how art truly imitated life. While he wasn't as foolish as the interrogators in movies, the fools being interrogated certainly existed in reality.
Whether someone was quarantined was indeed up to the inspector; even with all three of Simo's vitals flashing red, Cheng Ye had the authority not to isolate him.
However, locking up only one while letting the other three walk free would be a blatant violation of regulations.
Unless the four were Inner City property owners backed by higher-tier clearances, the moment he dared do that, he would be suspended and investigated the very next second.
*Bang.*
After a single shot fired into the air, the world finally quieted down.
The irritating melodrama cut short, the four brothers froze instantly on the spot, the ringing reverberation of gunfire the only sound left echoing in their minds.
Holstering his standard-issue inspector handgun, Cheng Ye rose and jerked his chin toward the corner.
"Leave him. The rest of you, get over to the corner and squat down."
...
Chapter 37