Talent?
Sitting on the bus ride home, Cheng Ye massaged his aching ribs, his abdomen, his arms, his thighs...
All right, there truly wasn't a single spot that didn't hurt.
*How is this talent? This is entirely my own sweat and hard work!*
A faint smile pulled at the corner of Cheng Ye's mouth.
It was agonizing, but he was relishing every bit of it.
Compared to stagnating day after day, if enduring a little pain could yield such rapid growth in strength, what did more pain matter?
Still, he secretly resolved that he needed to find a skill for rapid bodily recovery as soon as possible.
Otherwise, even if his combat capability soared, he would merely be a five-second powerhouse, forced to rest for half a day to recover after a single fight.
*Besides... getting dragged into the direct confrontation between the East and West Factions so early works heavily against me.*
At the thought, Cheng Ye's teeth ground with vexation.
Garcia was an utter idiot. Lacking brains of his own, he let himself be used as someone else's cat's-paw, and insisted on dragging Cheng Ye into the spotlight with him.
Now look at him: Liu Bi had beaten him into emergency care. Who in the entire checkpoint would stick their neck out for him? Who would dare?
Standing behind Liu Bi was the entire East Faction—Station Master Ding Yishan himself!
Deputy Station Master Harlin? Would he dare send someone to beat Liu Bi into the clinic as well?
Or send men to beat Cheng Ye into the same state as Garcia?
Impossible. Doing so would only hand Ding Yishan more leverage to launch a counteroffensive and seize the initiative.
After all, while the West Faction held significant sway these days, they were not powerful enough to ride roughshod over the East Faction.
As long as Ding Yishan remained station master, all the West Faction could do was slowly nibble away at his influence and build momentum for Harlin; they would never bring the conflict into the open.
Only on the day their positions reversed—with Harlin becoming station master and Ding Yishan demoted to deputy—would the balance shift decisively.
*Forget it. Why bother dwelling on this?*
*Brother B is right. No conspiracy or scheme matters more than raw strength. If I had the power to string Garcia up and thrash him, none of today's trouble would have happened in the first place.*
For him, the half-month deadline for his field mission mattered far more. As long as he survived that, he would have plenty of time to figure out how to break the deadlock and profit from the factional strife.
Cheng Ye took two deep breaths, putting the petty factional politics out of his mind, and looked out the window.
The rain had indeed intensified into the night, and visible puddles were already pooling along the roads.
Though Happiness City's Buffer Zone was large compared to other shelter cities, the sheer volume of survivors pouring in recently had pushed it well past its maximum carrying capacity.
Looking beneath the eaves of roadside buildings that offered shelter from the wind and rain, canvas tents were pitched everywhere. Inside, heads were crammed together in dense clusters, their faces numb and their eyes dull. Not a shred of anticipation for the future could be seen, let alone any trace of so-called "happiness."
*"Happiness... it's a lie..."*
Cheng Ye suddenly remembered the endless mutters spilling from Edmond's lips as he collapsed yesterday.
Perhaps happiness existed in this shelter city, but it certainly did not belong to the people at the bottom.
Only by fighting tooth and nail to squeeze inside the high walls into the Inner City could one experience even a sliver of peace in this troubled world.
*Hum.*
Before long, the bus began to decelerate, grinding to a halt five stops short of the Electronic Plant Staff Compound.
The middle-aged driver turned around and shouted to the passengers:
"Sorry, everyone! Flood-control works in the Main Urban District have blocked the bus route. You'll have to get off here and walk the rest of the way."
The doors opened, and Cheng Ye stepped off with the others.
Less than a hundred meters ahead of the bus stop, sandbags barricaded the road, leaving only a single narrow opening for entry and exit.
Four armed guards stood on either side of the gap, accompanied by two Buffer Zone workers.
"Sir, due to the flood blockade, foot traffic must be strictly regulated. To enter the Main Urban District after eight o'clock in the evening, you must present proof of residency."
*This strict?*
Cheng Ye was briefly surprised, but quickly understood the logic.
The Main Urban District had been formed by the intersection of three central pedestrian streets from the old era. Residential buildings, housing complexes, shopping malls, and storefronts were all packed tightly together, and the drainage system was decrepit to begin with. If refugees were allowed to swarm in without restraint, any serious flooding would make it impossible to clear the water.
Controlling the influx in advance ensured that even if the area flooded, order could be restored quickly.
When it was Cheng Ye's turn, he did not pull out a room key to await verification. Instead, he reached directly into his pocket and drew out his checkpoint credential.
It was a circular medallion stamped with Happiness City's towering wall on the front and the bold character for "Inspection" on the reverse, embedded with a sensor chip to prove its authenticity.
"Ah, an officer from the checkpoint!"
The worker took it, tapped it against the defense comm's scanner, and immediately adopted an attitude of utmost deference upon seeing the prompt.
"The rain may grow heavier over the coming days. If you need anything at all, you may use your defense comm to contact the Works Bureau at any time. We provide twenty-four-hour emergency service."
"Thank you. Keep up the hard work."
Cheng Ye gave a slight nod, retrieved his medallion, and stepped forward.
The black raincoat concealed most of his face, yet the fair, unblemished skin exposed at his forehead still drew envious glances from the refugees crammed inside the roadside tents.
Just as hierarchies existed inside the high walls of the Inner City, so too did they exist in the Buffer Zone.
Though it spanned only a dozen kilometers or so, it was divided into the outer suburbs, inner suburbs, urban district, and Main Urban District.
Living in the Main Urban District at such a young age placed Cheng Ye squarely among life's winners.
Passing through the gap, he continued onward.
The buildings in the Main Urban District were dilapidated and the piping aged, yet little standing water accumulated along the streets.
Sandbags were piled before the shopfronts lining the road, the highest reaching nearly to a person's waist, with shredded vines stuffed into the gaps to plug the seams.
Every four or five hundred meters, a Works Bureau foreman stood with a few temporary laborers crouching beside drainage ditches, either gouging out clotted silt with shovels stroke by stroke or reaching bare-handed into the drains to pull out trapped debris.
A tin loudspeaker hung from the foreman's neck, raspily repeating announcements about clearing the pipe network, overcoming hardship together, and welcoming a happy, beautiful life.
Such jarring contradictions gave Cheng Ye the distinct feeling that this world had gone mad.
If even the tiniest fraction of the Inner City technology preserved in his predecessor's memories trickled out, it would bring transformative change to the Buffer Zone.
Yet the upper echelons chose to hoard technological access, leaving the Buffer Zone to languish in decay and keeping the ordinary residents here hovering perpetually on the razor's edge between starvation and survival, freezing and shelter.
*Without a naked contrast, no one would harbor the desperate desire to break their heads trying to get into the Inner City.*
Cheng Ye saw the same numbness reflected in the foreman's eyes.
Clearly, for those just muddling through each day, the more they understood the reality, the more hopeless and lost they felt about the future.
He strode briskly through several outer streets. Toward the center of the Main Urban District, foremen and work crews grew more numerous.
Suddenly, Cheng Ye stopped in his tracks.
Beneath a building at the end of the street corner bearing the sign for Tianyuan Mall, he spotted a vaguely familiar figure mixed in among the temporary laborers. The man was working tirelessly, hauling sandbags to seal off every point where water might seep into the mall.
A short distance away, a woman shielded a child, huddled beneath a makeshift tent to escape the rain.
*He really is a tough man...*
The large flood-control sandbags weighed at least seventy kilograms.
The ordinary laborers were frail and emaciated, requiring two people working together just to heave a single bag.
Yet Chu Yunfeng bore one across each shoulder, his expression calm and seemingly carrying strength to spare.
*Unfortunately, in the Buffer Zone, trying to support an entire family on your own takes far more than just hard labor.*
Standing in the shadows of the street corner, Cheng Ye watched the work crew for over ten minutes.
He waited until Chu Yunfeng headed to the staging area behind the mall to fetch fresh sandbags before stepping up to the foreman.
"That big fellow, the strong one—what's his story?"
Addressed out of nowhere, the middle-aged foreman turned around. Seeing a young lad, his brows furrowed, ready to snap.
Yet in the next second, his face changed drastically when he saw a medallion spinning lightly between Cheng Ye's fingers.
"Reporting, sir! That man is a vagrant who only entered the city this afternoon. I saw he had a good build and was asking everyone where he could earn a bite to eat, so I brought him along to work."
"He does the work of four men alone. How many shares of wages does he get?"
"Uh..." The foreman hesitated, quietly weighing the relationship between Chu Yunfeng and Cheng Ye.
One was a refugee who had just arrived in the city, while the other was an officer from the checkpoint...
If there were any real connection between them, Chu Yunfeng wouldn't have been reduced to doing coolie labor here.
Having sorted that out, the foreman answered honestly, "Reporting, sir, you know the rules for manual labor in the city. No matter how much work you do, pay is strictly by the head."
"He has great strength, so his chances of being picked for a job are higher than others. That's only fair."
"Give him four shares."
Cheng Ye waved a hand, adopting a tone that brooked no argument. "If there are any problems, have the people from the Works Bureau take it up with me."
"U-Understood."
Cold sweat broke out on the back of the foreman's neck, and he nodded repeatedly in agreement.
Yet even as he watched Cheng Ye walk away, he didn't dare ask to verify the medallion or record the officer's identity details.
How could he dare?
As the agency sitting atop the pyramid of power in the Buffer Zone, the checkpoint held a stranglehold over vital lifelines including personnel movement, supplies rationing, labor scheduling, and field expeditions. Forget a low-level foreman like him—even high officials from the Works Bureau had to bow their heads before an inspector. Trying to verify his identity would be courting death.
As for how to account for three extra shares of pay, that was simple enough: he would just report it up the chain.
After all, in the Buffer Zone, lying or embezzling wouldn't necessarily get you killed, but taking the fall for an inspector would trigger an exhaustive investigation that wouldn't stop until heads rolled.
***
"Qinghui, son, you must be starving, right?"
Chu Yunfeng opened his coat, revealing five pouches of nutrient paste and two slabs of candy wrapped inside. The stern expression he had worn ever since entering the city finally relaxed into a faint smile.
"That itinerant merchant we met before wasn't lying after all. As long as you're willing to work in Happiness City, you really can earn a bite to eat."
"Daddy, wasn't it only two pouches? How... how did the boss give you so much?"
While adults could endure, the child was already seeing stars from hunger. Bursting with delight, he picked up a slab of candy and crunched into it with relish, chewing greedily.
Beneath the tent, the families of the other laborers couldn't help licking their dry, chapped lips at the sight.
"I'm not sure either. When the boss took me on, he said pay was strictly by the head, but just now he settled with me for four full shares based on the work I actually did. Said... your dad has real strength and didn't slack off, which gave him good face... and that he was very pleased?"
Chu Yunfeng was somewhat perplexed.
Under normal circumstances, he would have grown suspicious, wondering what scheme lay behind it.
Yet everything that had happened today had left his mind in utter disarray.
In this Happiness City, famous across the wasteland, the people behaved with staggering contradictions. One inspector had been hell-bent on extorting an entry fee, pushing him to the brink of a violent rampage, while another had acted like an old-world philanthropist come to life, treating them with immense kindness to the point that Chu Yunfeng still found it hard to believe.
Furthermore, that second inspector had spent the entire time holding back laughter, which only deepened Chu Yunfeng's confusion over what on earth had transpired.
Finding work after entering the city had been no different.
Some foremen had looked upon him with sheer disdain, preferring to employ a pack of scrawny refugees to drag their feet and kill time.
Others, like the boss just now, had treated him exceedingly well, putting him to work after barely a word and paying him four shares of wages in the end.
Such stark contrasts made it difficult for the vigilance he had honed across years of wandering the wasteland to find purchase.
"Yunfeng..."
Yu Qinghui gestured for him to lean in, whispering, "Just now, I saw a young man standing beside the boss. The boss seemed to treat him with tremendous respect... I wonder if it had something to do with *him*?"
She placed deliberate emphasis on the word *him*.
Sharing years of tacit understanding, Chu Yunfeng instantly knew which "him" she meant.
"Are you sure? He was wearing a mask this afternoon..."
"I'm eight or nine parts certain. His face was hidden, but his build, habits, and posture were distinct. No one else could match so many personal traits. The only thing is, it felt a little strange..."
"Strange how?" Chu Yunfeng pressed.
"I... I felt that the way he walked looked very much like you. That kinetic drive... I hadn't noticed him at first, but it was just so remarkably similar that..."
As Yu Qinghui spoke, she even began to stammer. She couldn't very well say that she felt as though she had seen a younger, leaner version of Chu Yunfeng from over a decade ago when they first met; that would sound absurd.
"He... looks like me?"
Chu Yunfeng was stunned. "He was sitting down this afternoon, so I didn't pay attention. He helped me out of nowhere—could there really be some connection between us?"
"I don't know if my eyes were playing tricks on me. It's night, and it's raining..."
Yu Qinghui's explanation sounded more like a cover-up.
The two of them had roamed the wasteland for years and never ceased their training. As martial practitioners with keen eyes and sharp ears, how could her vision deceive her?
Chu Yunfeng fell silent for a while, shaking his head one moment and nodding the next. Finally, he picked up a pouch of still-warm nutrient paste and pressed it into Yu Qinghui's hands.
"Drink it. Regardless of what happened or what motive he had, he's helped us twice now. We owe him this debt of gratitude."
"In the future, I'll find opportunities to repay him tenfold."
He paused briefly before adding, "For now, our most urgent task is to find shelter before the downpour hits and secure steady work so we can eat. Don't overthink the rest."
Chapter 8