Chapter 311: The Classic "Pick Up Trash to Change Your Fate"

As the tram raced westward, the surrounding scenery deteriorated at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The tall buildings gradually disappeared, replaced by dilapidated slums and endless factories belching exhaust fumes.

The light grew dimmer and dimmer. The bright sunshine had completely vanished, and the sky turned gloomy and dark, as if acid rain could fall at any moment.

The tram stopped at the terminal station on the city outskirts.

Vivi got off and, with practiced ease, transferred to a rust-covered black market cargo pickup that reeked of pungent diesel. After nearly half an hour of bumping along, she finally arrived at a landfill nearly outside the city.

This place was already very close to the area beyond the city, where Abyss demon beasts and madmen roamed, and even the air carried a faint taint of bad magic power.

The moment she stepped off the pickup, a metallic, bloody wind mixed with metal dust and all sorts of nauseating smells hit her in the face.

Looking out into the distance, the end of her line of sight was filled entirely with towering, unbroken mountains of garbage that stretched all the way to the clouds.

By the time Vivi reached the outer entrance of the landfill, several hundred people had already gathered densely there, most of them female scavengers dressed in rags with greed gleaming in their eyes.

,This was normal, after all. Neon City's male-to-female ratio was a staggering two to eight.

And everyone had naturally gotten the news that Herth was dumping garbage, so they couldn't resist coming to grab a share of the spoils.

Amid heavy, dull metallic footsteps, the crowd automatically parted to form a path.

An extremely burly cat-eared woman walked over, flanked by several lackeys.

This woman's attire was wildly aggressive. On her upper body she wore a leather jacket covered in rivets, but below she wore only half a pair of metal shorts.

She deliberately exposed her entire right thigh to the air, and that was a mechanical leg forged entirely from matte metal.

Every time she stepped on the ground, the blue light emanating from the magic transmission patterns on its surface flickered faintly, carrying an aura that seized the heart and soul.

Just the cold oppression radiating from that leg was enough to intimidate every scavenger present.

But at that moment, as Vivi stared at that metallic leg gleaming with luster, her breathing unconsciously grew heavier, a flash of envy passing through her eyes, and she felt all the magic power in her body boiling.

A 50-Series Green Ankle, Aier Tech's classic model from twenty years ago, an E+ rank magic-conduction implant, already discontinued. Even a second-hand one scavenged from the black market would cost at least six or seven thousand credit points.

So much money... so much money! How is this bastard so rich?!

Damn it, you beast from the Cat Claw Gang, even a low-level boss can afford this kind of magic-conduction implant? Is guarding a garbage dump and collecting entrance fees really this profitable?

If I hadn't taken out a loan for school, I should be able to afford something like this by now...

The woman with the code name "Leopard Cat" had a cigar clamped in her mouth and swept her fierce slit pupils across the entire crowd.

Her cold gaze and the aura brought by E+ rank magic power scraped across everyone's faces like blades.

After seemingly confirming there were no troublemakers, she sneered and turned to walk toward the Cat Claw Gang's rest base not far away, handing over the on-site hosting duties to a few small-time gang girls under her command.

A female thug with a head full of dreadlocks and a metal ring on her lip stepped onto an abandoned iron barrel, a worn submachine gun in her hand, and bellowed loudly: "Today's the day Herth dumps its trash! Anyone who wants to go in and get rich has to pay the entrance fee first!"

"This landfill, our gang has already divided into fifty zones! Whichever zone's ticket you buy, you can only scavenge in that zone!"

She yanked the bolt with a clatter, her face full of ferocity:

"Fair warning, we've got people patrolling inside. If any of you bitches dares to cross the line into another zone to skim profit, or breaks the rules and steals someone else's loot in there, as long as you're caught, the Cat Claw Gang guarantees you won't see tomorrow's sun! Understood?!"

As she spoke, a payment code projection emitting a faint glow shot out from her right eye, hovering in midair.

The moment the words left her mouth, the crowd immediately exploded with tension, thick with the smell of gunpowder.

"Zone sixteen is mine! That's my lucky number!" a cat-eared female scavenger shouted in a rough voice.

"Bullshit! Who the hell do you think you are?!"

Beside her, a scavenger with half her face covered in magic-conduction mechanical prosthetics fired back without restraint.

Neither was willing to yield, and they even started brawling on the spot, fists wrapped in faint magic power light slamming hard into each other's faces, blood and spittle flying in all directions.

The people around were long accustomed to such scenes and no one stepped in to break it up. Instead, they pushed forward even more urgently.

Each zone had a limited number of people, not to mention that getting in early meant seizing the initiative.

More crucially, everyone knew that this time there might be waste shipped over from Herth.

Although the truly valuable things had certainly already been recovered, even just scraps slipping through Herth's fingers would be enough to fill their bellies!

In the next moment, Vivi squeezed forward with a blank expression, raised her hand and tapped twice on the frame of her glasses, completing the transfer crisply and efficiently.

"I'm buying zone forty-four."

She spoke up loudly.

The instant those words came out, several scavengers who had been arguing red-faced stopped in their tracks and glanced at her in surprise, then let out a chorus of undisguised snickers.

"Zone forty-four? Has this broke-ass girl lost her mind?"

Someone gloated with mockery.

"That corner is way too remote. No company has dumped trash there for six months straight. Buying it is just paying to eat dust."

Facing the jeers and ridicule around her, Vivi remained unmoved, as if she had something calculated in her heart.

The cat-eared gang girl received the transfer notification and looked down at Vivi. Her gaze swept up and down the girl's thin frame, and a faint, hidden golden light suddenly flashed through her slit pupils.

"I was wondering who it was. It's you again."

A teasing smile appeared on the other's face: "I searched you up on [Black Loan Check]. Your payment to the Black Snake Gang is already two days overdue. If I hand you over to the Black Snake Gang, we can get a ten percent cut."

Vivi let out a cold snort, her orange-yellow eyes meeting the other's gaze without the slightest retreat: "In your dreams. The final deadline is tomorrow. Catching me now and taking me over would be breaking the rules."

"And everything on my body that can be stripped off has already been mortgaged to the Company. When the time comes, even if they strip it off, they'd still have to wait for the Company's dogs to take it first. Even eating shit wouldn't be your turn."

A gang member with a head full of dreadlocks standing nearby glanced at her with disdain, as if certain of her fate: "The Black Snake Gang's auditors must be out of their minds, actually lending money to a dead-end loser like this."

,Normally speaking, scavengers with the guts to come to the landfill to strike gold had a baseline of being superhumans with magic power at least at E- rank. Very few ordinary people dared to come.