America: Starting from collecting corpses, leveling up to godhood

With his improved driving skills, Chen Ming drove this old car with only four cylinders like a rally car, weaving left and right through the congested traffic of East Los Angeles, perfectly avoiding every braking point.

"Slow down a bit... never mind, you should just drive faster."

Sofia's face turned pale, whether from motion sickness or from the increasingly strong smell in the back seat, it was hard to tell.

After confirming that he had shaken off his pursuers, Chen Ming finally slowed down and drove into a gloomy neighborhood full of graffiti and barbed wire—the Vernon Industrial District.

This is the appendix of Los Angeles.

The air is perpetually filled with the stench of slaughterhouses, the acidic smell of chemical plants, and the exhaust fumes of heavy trucks.

For Chen Ming's line of work, it was a natural cover.

No one would care about a car that smells bad in a place like this, and no one would care if, besides pork, beef, and lamb, there were any other kinds of white meat hanging in the cold storage...

Unless, like at one of those airports in Colombia, more than 20,000 bodies were hidden there at once.

"Turn right at the third intersection, and you'll find a gray warehouse with a cold chain logistics sign."

Sofia rolled down the car window and greedily inhaled the outside air, which felt like pure oxygen from the Alps.

"Park the car at the back gate, so the security guards at the front gate don't see it."

Chen Ming did as instructed and parked the car steadily at a loading platform behind the warehouse.

Two white vans were parked there, and several workers wearing blood-stained aprons were unloading blue plastic buckets with biohazard labels.

"Alright, newbie, welcome to the meat wholesale market."

"See those? Those are usually head samples sent to dental school; one can sell for five hundred dollars."

Sofia pointed to the blue plastic buckets, as if introducing discounted items on a supermarket shelf.

"Those smaller incubators next to it probably contain knees and shoulders. Orthopedic surgeons use these to practice how to hammer titanium nails into bones. A joint with complete ligaments costs more than the latest iPhone."

"And there are those with red labels... usually cut-up spinal segments, which are valuable in neurosurgery. No doctor wants to practice on a living person's neck; if there's even a slight tremor, the patient could be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of their life."

She shrugged and flicked away the cigarette ash.

"Of course, if there's a complete, uncut torso, the price can be much higher."

Looking at the bustling scene before him, Chen Ming couldn't help but sigh inwardly.

The underground human trafficking network—a gray industry chain that is not exactly hidden even in broad daylight.

After all, not all medical schools, research institutions, or vehicle crash test centers have formal channels to obtain enough "cadavers".

When demand far exceeds supply, "middlemen" like him and Sofia emerge.

They don't care about the source, they only care about the quality of the goods.

Here, people are no longer people, but are disassembled into commodities labeled with terms such as "joints," "ligaments," "skull," and "spine."

A middle-aged, overweight white man with a receding hairline, wearing a yellow rubber vest, walked out of the warehouse, carrying a whiteboard in his hand.

"Damn it, did you guys fall into a formaldehyde pool and take a bath? I can smell this stench from two blocks away!"

"Enough with the nonsense, old Sam."

Sofia got out of the car, skillfully putting on a fake smile.

"The rare item you want is on the truck. If you don't want it, I'll call Kong next door right now. I heard they're really short on stock lately..."

"You mean albinism?"

The fat man, known as Old Sam, brightened up, and his earlier disdain vanished.

He rubbed his hands together and walked to the car.

"Take a look at it. As long as it looks good, I won't mind the suffocating smell that could kill a skunk."

Chen Ming opened the back door, picked up the heavy black bag with one hand, and threw it onto the unloading platform.

The bag made a muffled thud when it hit the ground, and several streams of yellow liquid gushed out from the zipper seam.

Old Sam's smile froze for a moment.

He looked at Chen Ming, this new face, with suspicion, and slowly unzipped his zipper while wearing gloves.

As the bag was opened, a fishy, ​​pungent odor wafted out.

The moment he saw what was inside, Old Sam's face scrunched up like a bun.

"This is what you call a rare commodity? It looks like a bag of minced meat just rescued from a meat grinder."

"Dude, are you sure this is albinism and not just a 'flattened' body?"

"It's just a minor soft tissue contusion; the bone structure should still be intact."

Without changing his expression, Chen Ming zipped the zipper up halfway again, covering up the most unsightly part.

"A little piecing it together and stitching it up won't affect its use at all. After all, your client isn't taking him to a beauty pageant, right?"

"Not necessarily, some rich people just like to do this."

Old Sam twitched his thick cheeks as if he had heard some hilarious joke.

He pulled a ballpoint pen from his breast pocket and, without any respect, poked the collapsed chest cavity of the "sample".

"Listen, kid... If this were two years ago, maybe I could sell it to the Army for vehicle blast protection testing—they didn't care if the thing was intact or not, since it would all end up in pieces anyway, but things are different now."

As he spoke, Old Sam disgustedly flicked the sticky residue off the tip of his pen.

"It looks like it's been trampled by a Thanksgiving parade. If I'm going to sell it, I'll have to get an embalmer to give it a full-body makeover—do you know how much a union-certified embalmer earns per hour these days? More than a damn divorce lawyer!"

Two thousand five hundred.

Chen Ming ignored the other party's complaints and directly gave a number.

"This is albinism, and I know the value of such rare gene samples in the Institute of Dermatology."

"Two thousand five hundred? Are you robbing me?"

"I can't go more than 1,800. I still have to take the risk; what if there's some infectious disease on it..."

"Three thousand two. And we don't provide after-sales service."

Sofia, who had been leaning against the car door smoking, came up and spoke.

"Stop pretending, Sam. I know you have a big client from Arizona who collects these weird stuff. With a little processing, you can resell this for eight thousand."

Old Sam's fat twitched when he was exposed.

He gritted his teeth and stared at the still-leaking bag for a few seconds before finally letting out a sigh.

"Fine, fine... you two vampires."

"The deal is for 3,200, but I'll deduct 200 for cleaning fees—look at all this soup on the floor. I'll have to find someone to bring a high-pressure water gun to clean it up. If those bastards at the Environmental Protection Bureau see this, the fines will cover the whole wall."

"make a deal."

Chen Ming didn't dwell on the two hundred yuan; he just wanted to get rid of it.

Old Sam muttered a few curses as he drew a few lines on the whiteboard, then pulled a roll of banknotes tied with a rubber band from his pocket.

"Next time you deliver this kind of bulk cargo, remember to at least put the bones back together first. This is a cold storage, not a Lego assembly center... This is my phone number."

"No problem." Chen Ming took the business card from Old Sam.

"By the way, is there a place that... can clean up small things without requiring any records?"