Dark Ruins Dawn

Chapter 36 Reselling
The code name for the nuclear inspector is "Raven".

He came to a broken steel support beam and gently touched it with his palm.

"Susu..."

The metal, which should have been hard, crumbled like weathered sand when he touched it.

His expression was ashen.

A technician walked over quickly and handed him a data board.

"Sir, the preliminary report is out."

"explain."

"The collapse of the incinerator structure... is very strange."

The technician carefully considered his words.

“We analyzed all the key fracture points, including load-bearing columns, steel beams and concrete foundations, and their collapse was not caused by shear stress or external impact.”

Another technician added, "We also did not detect any traces of high-temperature melting at the fracture surface, ruling out the possibility of directional blasting."

"It's decaying mist."

The crow drew its conclusion directly:

"This was a premeditated and highly technical act of sabotage. Someone disabled the fog-repelling device, causing the stagnant fog to form in key locations, which led to the accident."

But he didn't know how this person had managed to do it.

The crow's gaze swept over the devastated ruins, and it continued, "Have you found the whereabouts of that departing airship?"

"Sir, we're still tracking it."

The subordinate's voice came through the communicator.

"The officer on duty at the time said they had complete access codes and mission briefings, all the paperwork was in order, and a routine check found nothing unusual, so..."

"So they let them through."

Crow shut down the communication; he had clearly outlined the entire incident:

A highly skilled enemy uses unknown means to disable the fog-dispelling device, causing a collapse, and then uses the medical pod under the guise of "repair" to escape in the chaos.

"Immediately contact nuclear headquarters to request support and track the whereabouts of that airship and medical pod."

He gave the order through the communicator.

"Authorizer, Raven."

"Yes!"

At the same time the communication was sent out, the report verifying the identity of the body also arrived simultaneously.

The missing person was named "Guangtu".

The crow's gaze fell on the unremarkable face on the holographic screen.

"I want all the video and audio materials of him from the first second he entered the criminal camp to the last time he disappeared, including his social network, account transaction records, and so on."

"In addition, all those who had close contact with him were brought in for questioning."

"Especially that one named Watson."

Afterwards, the crow carefully examined Guangtu's information, and one by one, the doubts were magnified.

The perfect timing for the redemption, the perfect time for the incinerator to collapse, the perfect time for the disappearance, and... the perfect time for the airship to leave.

This series of coincidences ultimately points to one person.

The person who approved all of this.

"Notify the border defense commander."

The raven's voice carried a barely perceptible hint of murderous intent: "His 86th Battalion Commander, Xie Ke'en, is a mole who is protecting serious criminals."

Border defense zone, commander's office.

The commander didn't roar; he simply pulled out the documents one by one and slammed them hard into Shekorn's face.

"Fake repairman contact code, no such person found!"
"An untraceable flow of funds was directly deposited into a black market account outside the city!"
"And this redemption approval document!"

The commander's fingertips slammed heavily onto the paper.

"The timing is exactly the moment before the Nuclear Corporation is about to screen Battalion 86! Shay Cohen, are you telling me this is a coincidence?"

Xie Ke'en's face turned ashen, and his forehead was covered in cold sweat.

From his initial attempts to deny it, to his shock, and now, a sense of humiliation and fear of being fooled has completely overwhelmed him.

He couldn't understand how he could be manipulated by a lowly laborer.

"This is slander, no, I might have been scammed! The repairman cheated me!"

He quickly grabbed the communicator on the table, his fingers trembling slightly, and entered a string of numbers.

The communicator connected, and on the other end was a customer service center staffed by bionic intelligence, from which came a sweet electronic voice.

"I need to check a maintenance team, their inspection number is..."

Shercohn quickly recited a string of characters.

"Sir, I'm sorry, this number cannot be found."

"Impossible! Their contact address is..."

"I'm sorry, but we cannot find this repair shop based on the address and contact number you provided."

Done
He slumped into the chair like a lump of mud, overcome with anger and coughing violently.

He lost both his money and his job.

"Take it down."

The commander's voice was full of disgust.

"He has been removed from all his posts and is subject to a full investigation."

Two guards stepped forward, lifted the distraught Shekorn up, and escorted him out of the office.

It's over, it's over.

As they passed the mutant camp, the heads of mutants executed for the riots had piled up into a small mountain.

Shekorn stiffly turned his head away.

At the very top of the hill, there was a shark's head with cloudy eyes, facing him directly.

It was his former lackey, Nissen.

That gaping mouth, with its sharp shark teeth, seemed to still hold a faint hint of mockery.

In the interrogation room.

The old foreman's memories were projected onto the screen, flashing back to his several encounters with Zhuang Fan.

"He's good at finding things and also good at bargaining."

The old foreman's voice was hoarse: "I don't know if Nissen's death has anything to do with him, but I do know that Nissen was always causing him trouble. As for the rest... I don't know."

The memory screening was completed, and no abnormalities were found.

When it was Watson's turn, he displayed the emotions expected of someone who had been betrayed.

"Brother Guangtu... no, that liar!"

His voice was filled with pain.

"He said we were brothers, and that he could find a way to get out together, but what happened? He swindled all my money and then ran away after buying his own freedom!"

The interrogating officer looked at the emotional curve on the brainwave monitor and nodded.

"Does he have any special habits?"

"Have!"

Watson, as if grasping at a straw, hurriedly confessed:

"He likes to hide some valuable small parts in a secret compartment under the conveyor belt!"

"Also, he was always very mysterious, wouldn't let me touch his things, and later he stopped giving me any money."

The crow watched all of this silently.

Watson's emotional reactions and memory fragments were highly consistent, and coupled with the "fact" that he owed high-interest loans, he seemed like a complete and utterly pathetic wretch.

Although there are still doubts, Watson has been cleared of suspicion for the time being. What awaits him next is an endless hell of debt repayment.

The towering garbage mountains almost blotted out the sky, and a thick, eerie fog permeated the area. Scavengers, carrying fog-repelling lamps, searched through the landfill, hoping to find items untouched by the decaying fog.

For Zhuang Fan, this was an excellent hiding place.

He frantically absorbed the surrounding eerie mist, and in just two days, he recovered seventy to eighty percent of the eerie mist that had been consumed in his body.

But he also knew that he was not safe, and that the Nuclear Corporation's search network would eventually track him down here.

Based on the old man's memories and his observations that day, it was learned that migrants living in the city did not need to wear collars, but were forced to wear "tracking bracelets".

There are many robotic dogs patrolling the streets, and if they catch unregistered people who are not wearing bracelets, they will be thrown into the criminal camp.

Therefore, in order to leave the landfill and blend into the homeless area, one must have a new legal identity.

During the day, he traversed the garbage heaps, precisely identifying those high-value parts that had been eroded by the decaying fog but whose cores remained intact, restoring them to their original value.

Next, he went to the nearby underground black market and found a merchant called "Electronic Mouse".

The businessman was thin and wore three layers of goggles on his face. His ten fingers had been replaced with metal prosthetics.

"Good stuff."

The electronic mouse picked up a memory chip with its mechanical fingers and waved it in front of its eyes. "Good quality, 600 gold coins."

Zhuang Fan did not bargain.

What he needs is a stable and secure shipping channel; a lower price is acceptable.

Sodium solid-state battery, 600 gold coins
Powered exoskeleton, 800 gold coins
Electromagnetic protective clothing, 800 gold coins
In just two days, he easily earned five grams of gold, or five thousand gold coins, by collecting garbage.

The money came too quickly, and he came to a deep understanding of how corrupt the incinerator had been.

“I need a legal identity,” Zhuang Fan said.

"Refugee status, plus a tracking bracelet and 5,000 credits."

The electronic mouse's voice had a metallic quality, "But I have to warn you, the data in the bracelet is static and doesn't match your biometrics. It'll be exposed as soon as you check."

Zhuang Fan shook his head.

He's trying to leave the city; if he gets detained at security, what kind of legal status does he have?
The electronic mouse glanced at Zhuang Fan. This mysterious customer was completely covered up, making it impossible to tell his appearance. He was most likely a wanted criminal.

"Then this is the only one left."

He took a sealed bag from a greasy metal box.

Inside the bag was a human skin mask as thin as a cicada's wing, an exquisite smart ring, and two iris stickers.

"Third-class citizen status. The mask is made of memory fiber. When applied to the face, it can perfectly simulate the target's facial muscle micro-expressions. As long as you don't provoke the security systems of those big companies, you can freely enter and leave Linhai City without anyone checking you."

By reading Xu Renyi's memories, Zhuang Fan has learned about the strict hierarchical system of this world.

At the very bottom are criminals and mutants, and he has already fully experienced the suffering of this class.

From top to bottom are the vagrant class, third-class citizens, second-class citizens, first-class citizens, and honorary citizens.

The homeless population must wear tracking bracelets, while ordinary citizens only need to wear smart rings or register in a brain-controlled chip.

The certification process for becoming a third-class citizen is simple: pay 3000 credits each month, and if you are late, you will automatically be demoted to a vagrant. If you are late again, you will be relegated to the class of criminals.

Zhuang Fan was a little puzzled: "Won't the original owner discover this human skin mask?"

The electronic mouse smiled and said, "The original owner will keep this a secret forever, don't worry."

Zhuang Fan instantly understood: he had been assassinated.

The electronic mouse extended two mechanical fingers: "This set costs 20,000 gold coins. In addition, you have to come here every month and spend 2,000 to repair the memory fibers, otherwise they will become ineffective."

Zhuang Fan didn't speak. By sensing the nature of the eerie mist, he determined that the electronic mouse wasn't lying.

"Leave it to me first, the money will arrive soon."

Twenty thousand gold coins was a huge sum for him, but he was confident he could earn it back quickly.

He turned and walked into the sea of ​​garbage, starting to race against time.

Zhuang Fan focused on the most valuable items: military-grade prosthetic bodies, high-capacity solid-state batteries, and some loose chips.

If you're lucky, you can find one in two hours.

To protect himself, he repaired an automatic pistol and assembled a simple silencer for it.

In just one day, he had collected six thousand gold coins.

During this time, he also found a working communication terminal and successfully connected to the public network of Linhai City.

Zhuang Fan searched for the name "Tiros" but found no results.

There was no information about the demon envoy on the internet; it was as if it had been deliberately erased, completely gone.

He subconsciously felt something was wrong, but he could only investigate further later.

After clearing all access traces, he put the communication terminal into his backpack and continued his search.

His efficiency quickly attracted the attention of another group of garbage collectors.

They were a group of local thugs who had been entrenched in the area. There were seven of them in total, and the leader was a burly man with a scar on his face.

They pretended to get close to Zhuang Fan, trying to recruit him, but he completely ignored them.

That night, they decided to close the net.

Seven figures silently surrounded Zhuang Fan's abandoned carriage from different directions.

"Kid, hand over all the goods you found today, and we might let you die a quick death."

Scarface's voice carried a mocking tone, like a cat playing with a mouse.

There was no response from inside the carriage.

Zhuang Fan had already been lying in wait in the distance, holding the pistol fitted with a silencer in his hand.

"What about people?"

A garbage collector peeked in and saw that the carriage was completely empty.

"puff."

With an extremely faint sound, the bullet pierced precisely between his eyebrows.

"Third brother!" Scarface exclaimed in surprise.

He heard gunshots, but couldn't determine the direction at all; the eerie fog was interfering with the sound's propagation path.

He's on the right!

"No! It's on the left!"

Amid the chaos, two more soft sounds rang out.

When the group found Zhuang Fan's true hiding place and prepared to launch a counterattack, they suddenly froze in place, momentarily stunned.

Several more gunshots rang out, and bodies fell to the ground.

In the end, only Scarface was left.

He clutched his severed arm, staring in horror at the figure emerging from the shadows.

There was not a trace of pity in the other person's eyes.

"Who sent you? Some nouveau riche boss?"

Scarface shook his head instinctively: "No, it's me."

"you are lying."

Zhuang Fan got the answer he wanted and pulled the trigger.

"puff."

This battle allowed Zhuang Fan to firmly establish himself in the junkyard and also deterred all the eyes that were secretly watching.

The next day, a one-armed man found Zhuang Fan and directly conveyed the boss's message:
"The boss appreciates capable people. The good stuff you have can be sent to the largest tracked vehicle in Warehouse No. 3, where the price is 20% higher than that of the electronic mouse."

Zhuang Fan didn't even look up, only replying, "I know."

After the man left, he erased the incident from his mind.

He doesn't have much time and won't waste his energy in such shallow waters.

For him, local tycoons like the boorish bosses were the most conspicuous targets in the entire landfill.

Once the nuclear group's search network extends here, the local tycoon will inevitably be the first target to be purged.

That medical pod was a real hot potato.

(End of this chapter)