Dragon Clan: Starting with the Azure Dragon Fruit

The two exclaimed in unison, glanced at each other with disdain, and each took a half step back, their faces full of resistance.

Lin Yuanguang thought about it and realized that it was unreliable to be paired with this red-haired girl who complained that he wasn't handsome enough.

Nono glanced at the bruises on her wrist that hadn't completely faded and realized that partnering with this violent maniac was no good idea.

They both said in unison, "No."

Chu Zihang wasn't in a hurry and didn't try to persuade them further. He just stood there watching them, as if to say, "Call me when you've made your decision."

After a moment of silence, Nono couldn't hold on any longer.

She remembered the money that Chairman Zhou had promised, but since the matter hadn't been settled, she wouldn't get a single penny.

Upon further reflection, Chu Zihang's method seemed to be the optimal solution at the moment.

She grabbed a handful of hair in frustration and let out a long sigh through her nose: "Fine, fine, what can I do? I'm kind-hearted."

"I'll just have to put up with this today. You better be smart and pretend to be mute the whole time, don't give yourself away!"

Seeing that Nuonuo offered a way out, Lin Yuan didn't say anything more. In the end, all this trouble was for his Azure Dragon Fruit. A small act of impatience could ruin a great plan.

He shrugged, which was taken as tacit agreement.

Seeing that the plan was confirmed, Chu Zihang took out his wallet from his pocket and handed it to Lin Yuan.

"What?" Lin Yuan asked, puzzled, and didn't answer.

“I have a lot of cash on me; you should be able to use it to gather information,” Chu Zihang explained, his hand hovering in mid-air.

Lin Yuan was even more surprised, but still didn't reach out: "We've already gone to the black market, isn't that a no-man's-land? Do you expect us to use money?"

In his logic, a lawless place should follow the rules of survival in a lawless place. He believes that if he speaks the truth, others should listen to him. If others don't understand the truth, he will also learn some martial arts.

It's one thing to spend money to buy intelligence from Gao Yuan, but to spend money on the black market is a complete waste.

"Try not to make a big deal out of it." Chu Zihang insisted on holding up his wallet, his eyes serious.

"Our goal is to find the source. If we alert them, we'll cut off the trail. If it can be solved with money, then we'll follow the rules."

Lin Yuan stared at Chu Zihang and pursed his lips helplessly.

"Alright, alright, I'll do as Boss Chu says." He took the wallet and carefully put it into his pocket.

Half an hour later.

A taxi dropped the three of them off on the outskirts of the neighborhood Gao Yuan had mentioned. When the driver heard they were coming here, he instinctively wanted to refuse them a ride, but only agreed to take them to their destination after they paid double the fare.

Chu Zihang found a reasonably clean coffee shop on the street corner, chose a window seat with a view of the street entrance, and sat down to act as a backup.

Lin Yuan and Nuonuo followed the main road and walked deeper into the neighborhood.

As the two ventured deeper, the surrounding scenery rapidly deteriorated. The tidy streets vanished, replaced by cracked cement pavement and walls covered in gang graffiti.

The air was filled with the stench of marijuana, urine, and cheap alcohol.

The buildings on both sides gradually turned into an illegal complex of shipping containers, corrugated iron shacks, and canvas tents.

Seeing that they had already ventured deep into the neighborhood, Nono took a deep breath and suddenly turned around.

She grabbed Lin Yuan's arm and pressed half of her body against it, her eyes changing from their previous arrogance to a wary and somewhat timid look.

The sudden soft touch made Lin Yuan tense up instantly, and even his steps became somewhat uncoordinated.

"Relax." Nono leaned closer, her warm breath brushing against his ear.

“We’re a couple now. If we stay like this, people will immediately notice.”

Chapter 42 America

The two of them huddled together as they walked through the containers and canvas tents.

Lin Yuan woke up in the morning in a five-star suite that cost $800 a night. The marble floors were spotless, and the people coming and going were all elites in suits.

In the morning, Lin Yuan found himself in Chinatown, a place filled with crowded streets and back alleys that seemed quite outdated.

But only now, walking through this neighborhood, has he truly seen what the lowest rungs of this city look like.

Expensive executive suites, the old buildings stacked in Chinatown, and the dilapidated streets before us—the fall from grace here is so swift that it only takes a few blocks to descend into a social class.

It's hard to imagine that they're all in Chicago, in this country that prides itself on freedom and prosperity.

This absurd sense of displacement makes everything around seem somewhat unreal.

The narrow, dilapidated streets are lined with abandoned cars and various industrial waste.

As Lin Yuan's gaze swept over several wrecked pickup trucks, he noticed a few figures adopting an eerie, stiff posture.

They stood there like pieces of dead wood, half-dead, their backs bent like shrimp, their heads drooping to their chests, their arms hanging limply, not moving for a long time, as if the pause button had been pressed.

Occasionally, someone would sway slowly for a couple of moments, then immediately freeze back to normal.

This is the "zombie-like appearance" unique to severe opioid addiction.

As if to confirm this, just a dozen meters away from them, next to a trash can, an African American homeless man suddenly seemed to have all his strength drained away and collapsed to the ground.

His body convulsed violently as if he had been electrocuted, and white foam tinged with blood kept spilling from the corner of his mouth. His chest heaving weaker and weaker until he gradually stopped moving.

However, instead of offering help, the homeless people passing by swarmed around the area like vultures that had smelled blood.

Some people skillfully ripped off the leather shoes on his feet, while others stepped on his still twitching fingers and snatched the half-smoked cigarette from his hand into their own pockets.

The entire robbery took less than half a minute, like a group of assembly line workers disassembling a pile of industrial parts.

In the world of One Piece, murder and robbery are common occurrences.

But right now, facing a living person who hadn't completely died, they just surrounded him and started dismantling him. Even Lin Yuan, who was used to seeing all sorts of things, felt that it was a bit too brutal.

The anti-drug education I received in China from a young age only told me that drugs would ruin people's lives, but never mentioned that people would degenerate into recyclable biological consumables because of drugs.

He turned his head and asked in a low voice, "They've been knocked out like this, and the local government isn't doing anything about it? And quite a few of them are white, yet the police won't even send them to a compulsory drug rehabilitation center?"

Nono took his arm and explained in a low voice as they walked.

"Drug rehabilitation centers? Those are for the middle class who can afford the exorbitant medical fees." Nono scoffed and popped a bubble.

“Here, the poor don’t even have the right to get sick or injured, let alone quit drugs. And do you think they are born addicts? More than half of these people started their addiction by taking painkillers from regular hospitals.”

She tilted her head slightly and whispered in Lin Yuan's ear, making it look to outsiders like a young couple whispering sweet nothings: "Pharmaceutical giants, for the sake of profit, bribe medical institutions to prescribe painkillers to low-income workers like candy. Once these people become addicted to drugs and their bodies develop tolerance to ordinary medications, they will try to find something even stronger. In the end, they will become slaves to drugs."

Nono's tone carried a cold indifference, as if she had never seen anything like it before: "In the eyes of capital, the poor don't deserve to be saved. Once their wallets are drained, they're just a bunch of biological consumables. They're trash that can't even contribute to the sales tax, so the Chicago Police Department can't be bothered with them."

Lin Yuan didn't reply, but simply stepped silently across a puddle of oily, dirty water.

After walking a short distance, they saw a woman squatting in a corner, almost blending into the surrounding waste.

She was dressed provocatively, her cheap sequined tank top stretched so low it barely covered anything, yet her exposed flesh lacked any seductive appeal. She was so thin she was almost unrecognizable, her ribs resembling tree branches, her cheeks sunken, making her nearly skeletal.

Beside the woman stood a tattered piece of cardboard with a string of numbers and vulgar English words scrawled on it in marker.

Lin Yuan's gaze fell on the equally shriveled child in her arms. There was no trace of a child's innocence in those eyes, only a lifeless numbness.

He silently withdrew his gaze, suppressing the gloom surging in his chest, and followed Nuonuo deeper into the area.

The road surface was now covered with sticky black water and garbage, with almost no clean place to step.

The shoes occasionally made a "crunching" sound when they stepped on the ground, which was the sound of discarded syringes being crushed.

Lin Yuan turned his head and glanced at Nuonuo, who was holding his arm.

The girl was still chewing gum, her face expressionless, as if the horrific scenes around her were just ordinary roadside scenery.

“You don’t seem surprised at all,” Lin Yuan said in a low voice, withdrawing his gaze.

"What's so surprising?" Nono asked, looking straight ahead.

"Because this is part of the 'real America.' Behind the glitz and glamour of Wall Street and Hollywood, there are these dregs of flesh and blood."

She deftly avoided a puddle of sewage and continued, "The security situation in China fills you with too many unrealistic fantasies. If an ordinary person is robbed in China, they can usually avoid trouble by handing over their wallet. But on this land..."

She gestured with her chin, indicating that Lin Yuan should look at the group of young men in hoodies in front of her: "Here, a clean jacket, nearly new sneakers, twenty dollars in your pocket, or even just a glance can completely wipe out your health bar."

No sooner had he spoken than trouble came knocking on his door.

Those hoodie-clad youths crouching on the street corner had long been eyeing the Asian couple.

In the social hierarchy of slums, Asians are often labeled as "easy to bully" and "only good at keeping quiet when trouble arises," making them easy prey for those who appear here.

The young Black man leading the group had dreadlocks, whistled, and shouted in accented street slang, begging for "tolls."

Lin Yuan couldn't understand the string of rapidly spoken slang, but he understood what the other person meant.

He frowned, his fingers twitching at his sides. Although he didn't want to cause trouble, since trouble had come knocking, there was no reason for him to continue to tolerate it.

In just a few seconds, he could stuff the dreadlocked youth and his accomplice into the nearby trash can.

But Nono reacted faster; she slightly tightened her grip and pinched Lin Yuan.

"Don't act impulsively."

The next second, she put on a panicked expression, said something to the thugs in English, and then made a pitiful expression saying "Don't make things difficult for us."

The dreadlocked youth sneered as he looked at Nono's timid and submissive reaction.

My gaze swept over Lin Yuan's old shirt, and I felt that this Asian couple probably didn't even have twenty US dollars on them.

Moreover, Nuonuo's fluent English made him unsure. What if she was an international student who had accidentally wandered in and caused some trouble? That would be far more serious than the deaths of a few local thugs or drug addicts.

After weighing the options, he turned around and whispered a few words, and the three men grumbled and made way for him.

Looking at those figures, Lin Yuan felt slightly annoyed. He secretly made a mental note that once he finished his business, they had better pray they didn't run into him again.

Nono had no idea what Lin Yuan was thinking; she just breathed a slight sigh of relief.

She quickened her pace without making a sound, pulling Lin Yuan through the narrow alley.

Ahead are the wreckage of those two burned pickup trucks.

Chapter 43 Rock Paper Scissors

Behind the wreckage of the pickup truck was a house pieced together from several discarded shipping containers, with a black plastic curtain hanging at the door.

Lin Yuan, unusually gentlemanly, stepped forward and lifted the strange-smelling curtain, gesturing to Ms. Nuonuo to go first.

The room was dimly lit, and a pungent odor filled the air.

Several shelves were stacked against the wall, filled with various medicines and white powders, and at the very back was a wooden counter with a patina.

Behind the counter, a bald white man weighing at least 200 pounds was dozing off with his legs crossed.

His old man shirt was a bit yellowed, and his thick arms were covered with dense tattoos.

After entering the house, Nuonuo did not rush to talk. Instead, she walked to the simple shelf against the wall and, under the dim overhead light, pretended to pick out the medicine she needed. After picking through it several times, the noise of her rummaging finally annoyed the owner behind the counter.

The bald boss, his sweet dream disturbed, opened his eyes impatiently.

Seeing the Asian girl rummaging through his shop, he slammed his foot on the wooden table and yelled in a loud, gruff voice, "Just say what you want to buy, or get out!"

Nono immediately shrugged, leaned forward, pointed at Lin Yuan, and told the boss her request.

"Boss, we'd like to buy some medicine. My boyfriend injured his back while unloading cargo at the dock. We can't afford to go to a regular hospital, and the ordinary painkillers he takes don't work. Do you... have any of those 'stronger' special medicines here?"

Lin Yuan stood half a step away, very cooperatively, clutching his waist and feigning pain on his face.

The boss looked impatient. He saw more than a dozen of these poor, low-class people a day who couldn't afford medicine because of work injuries and had to come to the black market for stronger painkillers. He could hardly squeeze any money out of them.

He opened the drawer of the counter, rummaged around inside for a bit, took out two boxes of OxyContin, and threw them on the counter.

"That's eighty US dollars in total, cash only."

Nono glanced at the two boxes of medicine, shook her head, and pushed them back.

"No, that's not it. This medicine isn't working for my boyfriend anymore," Nono said cautiously, taking a half-step closer.

“I heard from a fellow villager that you have an even stronger painkiller.”

Upon hearing what Nuonuo said, the boss put his legs off the table, leaned forward, and began to scrutinize the man and woman intently with his eyes still full of grime.

The boss first glanced at Lin Yuan's pathetic state, where he was in so much pain he couldn't straighten up, and let out a cold snort. Then he turned his gaze to Nuonuo's face.

Originally, Nono deliberately messed up her hair to play the role of a lower-class woman, thus concealing her good looks.

But now that the two are a little closer, his usually sharp eyes immediately noticed something amiss. Even in the dim light, this woman was still as beautiful as a Hollywood star.

The impatience in the boss's eyes gradually melted away, turning into a nauseating stickiness and greed.