Chapter 1565 - 87: Blood Tax Officers

Among the collapsed ruins stood fragmented low walls, resembling vast stretches of gray and white reefs, expansively extending into the gray mist.

A crude little hut stood alone among the reefs, built with some simple wooden planks and tattered cloth, appearing extremely fragile and shaky.

In a corner of the ground, there was an open crack that extended into the darkness below, connecting to this vast ruin. After a slight tremor, Melissa moved her body and crawled out from the narrow crevice.

The little hut was Melissa’s home, but it was too rudimentary to bring any sense of security. For this reason, she usually slept in this crack. Although it was too narrow to turn over, lacked ventilation, and bugs occasionally crawled over her body, in the Old City, such a sleeping environment was already quite decent.

She wouldn’t be robbed by other blood folk at night, nor discovered by lurking beasts, and certainly wouldn’t face the brutal arrest by those blood tax officers... Melissa understood this all too well.

Relying on her petite frame, she often crawled back and forth through the crevices among the ruins. On several late nights, she witnessed blood tax officers violently flatten those simple houses, dragging out the blood folk hidden inside and throwing them into cages.

Melissa guessed that they were attacked by the blood tax officers for failing to pay taxes on time, or perhaps for some other mistakes. All she knew was that those blood folk never appeared again after that.

"There are many blessings in the world, some from the Celestial God, some from the Devil, but only blood comes from ourselves."

This was a phrase commonly spoken by the believers on the west side of the Old City. Melissa didn’t really understand what it meant, but after frequent interactions with them, over time, she memorized a few sentences and habitually recited them.

After ensuring safety around her, Melissa extracted her whole body from the crevice. She lay on the ground gasping and utterly exhausted.

Shaking off the dust from her body, Melissa’s skin had a sickly pallor, with bluish veins faintly visible. Her body was extremely frail, perpetually malnourished, but she did not feel panic about it; instead, she felt grateful for her thinness.

As long as she remained this frail, Melissa could continue hiding in the ruins’ crevices. If she grew too large to fit, her life in the Old City would certainly become much more dangerous.

After resting for a moment, Melissa took a long cloth from the corner and wrapped it tightly around her body, concealing her appearance. Like a nimble stray cat, she squeezed out of her little hut.

Overhead were gloomy gray clouds; before her stood the ruins, a haze of gray mist covering them, allowing Melissa to see only indistinct silhouettes.

Taking a deep breath, the damp and cold air filled her lungs. The drizzling rain patted her body, and Melissa shivered, quickly traversing through the ruins.

In the distance, a gigantic silhouette loomed vaguely, as if a colossal figure stood behind the fog, emitting a terrifying aura.

That was the Blood Tax Station, one of the rare intact buildings in the Old City, and Melissa’s first destination today.

Melissa couldn’t help but feel tense. In the past, she wouldn’t have had the courage to approach the blood tax officers, but thinking of her newly made friend, out of trust for him, Melissa decided to take a risky try.

She cautiously traversed through the mist, faint screams and sounds of a violent struggle echoed from the side, prompting Melissa to quickly hide in a crevice, just as two figures emerged from the fog, locked in combat.

"Damn it! Stay still!"

In this gray world, the blood tax officer in vivid crimson attire was so conspicuous that Melissa spotted him almost immediately.

He cursed as he pinned a blood folk beneath him, raising a short stick to repeatedly beat the man’s emaciated body.

The blood tax officer’s strikes were skilled, neither too light nor too heavy, leaving bruises on the man’s body without breaking his flesh and spilling blood.

Every blood tax officer underwent strict training before taking office, adept at beating blood folk into submission without causing them to bleed, for every drop of blood is exceedingly precious.

Soon, the man was beaten into a state of near collapse, paralyzed on the ground, devoid of any strength to resist.

Two other blood tax officers emerged from the mist. One held a short stick, watching the surroundings vigilantly, while another skillfully opened a medical kit, picking up a needle and a tube, connecting them. He palpated the man’s arm to find a vein.

The last blood tax officer inspected the man’s appearance, the serial number on his identification tag, and flipped through a ledger to compare.

Melissa observed covertly; blood tax officers usually operated in groups of three, each bearing different duties. In the Old City, people referred to the one with the short stick as the Debt Collector, the one with the medical kit as the Blood Thief, and the one with the ledger as the Auditor.

The Auditor’s voice was cold, like a machine, "Mr. Brie, you owe three periods of Blood Tax."

"Just a few more days! I’ll make it up!"

Brie wailed, pleading for the blood tax officers’ mercy.