Chapter 34 A woman in the lower city who, theoretically, should be dead...
Chapter Thirty-Four
The hallucinogen X-201 is so potent that an ordinary person would vomit and faint after drinking three vials a day, experiencing severe side effects. Not to mention Dong Shiwu, who bought twenty-six vials with all his savings and drank them all.
Du Yu paused for a moment, looking around the cramped staff apartment. This was the coffin Dong Shiwu had chosen for himself. The watch-shaped quantum computer on his wrist vibrated.
The smartphone, a smart device that Du Yu was familiar with, was already obsolete more than two hundred years ago. It was replaced by a more comprehensive optical brain, which consists of an internal chip implanted in the brain and external devices worn on the body.
This device, which looks just like a watch, is Dong Shiwu's personal computer. It's an old model that she was issued when she joined the company more than ten years ago.
Operating the quantum computer was not difficult. With the memories of the original owner and Dong Shiwu, Du Yu quickly mastered the tricks of using the quantum computer. Pressing the metal protrusion on the left side of the quantum computer, the screen that only she could see lit up in the air, with a clear red dot on the icon representing "communication".
Someone sent a message to this account. Du Yu casually clicked on it, his gaze sharpened, then turned strange, a smile playing on his lips:
"Oh? Interesting."
——
In the City of the Sun, the city is divided into seven areas from 01 to 07 based on their distance from the core area. The urban area ends at District 06. No one knows why the mysterious city lord named the vast gray fog area outside the city and the suburbs as District 07.
The six districts, numbered 01 to 06, are not only distinguished by distance, but also by their distinct functions. The headquarters of major companies, municipal departments, core laboratories, and four universities are all located in the first two districts, which are therefore often referred to as the Upper Districts by some.
Where there is an upper level, there is also a lower level. The area of District 06, located on the edge of the city and closest to the smog, has been conventionally referred to as the Lower District.
In the eyes of ordinary people, the Lower City is synonymous with chaos and disorder, a den of iniquity, inhabited only by cultists, the Hunter Guild which calls itself the Mist Hunters but is no different from a gang, mad scientists who will do anything for their experiments, and lunatics who walk the line between law and crime and engage in gray-area activities.
In a sense, Dong Shiwu is also one of the last types of people who can open a branch in the Lower City District and engage in any legitimate industry.
However, Dong Shiwu was the type responsible for doing the rough work, and she could only vaguely sense that the higher-ups seemed to be looking for something. Given her position, it was impossible for her to know the specific strategic plans.
Therefore, thanks to such a "unique geographical advantage," while other things in the Lower Town may not be as good, bars and casinos are more developed than in the Upper Town, making them the three pillar industries of the Lower Town.
As for the other pillar industry, it relies on bars and casinos—the sale of human bodies. In the lower city, "scattered" people are worth much more than whole people.
Several drunkards stumbled open the door, only to fall to the ground after a few steps, a sight the doorman watched indifferently, as if it were commonplace. A few minutes later, a bald man emerged from a black truck across the street from the bar, a scar running from his left ear to his right, almost splitting his face in two.
The leather shoes kicked him mercilessly a few times, and the drunk man, in pain, rolled over to his right side. The scarred, bald man sized him up, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, then picked up the most muscular man among them. With only a slight twitch of his arm muscles, he grabbed the drunk man by the collar and lifted him up, heading towards the truck.
The drunkards showed no surprise or anger at their companion being taken away. One of them even gave the scarred bald man the middle finger and spat, saying, "Scarface, are you looking down on me?"
"Pooh."
The scarred bald man exhaled his cigarette, cursed a few times, and pulled out a laser gun from the bulge behind him, shooting off the drunkard's outstretched middle finger.
The drunk man who had been shot was stunned for a moment before he reacted, then bent over and covered his wound, screaming in pain.
The drunkards around him were enraged by the scarred bald man. They muttered curses and pulled out guns, some even taking out bombs from their necklaces, and rushed towards the bald, burly man.
In the chaos, someone's gun went off accidentally, grazing a man's hat with a "whoosh" and bouncing against the wall in front of the bar. The man, who was walking towards the bar's entrance with several companions, was enraged upon seeing this. Without thinking twice, he cursed and joined the fray.
Whether it was bystanders, onlookers getting beaten up, or people joining in the brawl, the number of people in this nonsensical melee once increased to more than thirty. By the end, almost no one remembered the original reason for the fight.
The scarred bald man broke away from the melee halfway through the fight, but seeing the drunkard he was carrying dead, he became enraged and went back to fight. Under the bored gaze of the bar doorman, he snapped the neck of the last man before reaching out to pull the bullet stuck in the bionic heart, cursing "bad luck" before leaving.
Du Yu looked up at the bald man in the driver's seat, lit another cigarette, and drove off with a blank and bored expression, cruising over the still twitching piece of flesh at the bar entrance. He clicked his tongue in disapproval.
Neither the original owner, who grew up in the upper city, nor Dong Shiwu, who diligently saved money to pay off his debts every day, had any memories of the lower city. The chaos in the lower city opened Du Yu's eyes wide upon arrival.
"Ah Biao, come out and clean the floor!"
The doorman impatiently kicked the pieces of corpse away and called out. A pretty girl who looked no more than sixteen came out, her impatience even greater than the doorman's.
She was wearing an oversized old hoodie, her thin legs, as thin as chopsticks, dangling from the ripped holes in her jeans. Her hands were outstretched, her fingers curled into claws, and two streams of water, as thick as her wrists, appeared out of nowhere, washing over the ground and pushing aside the human remains scattered on the ground.
This bar has gone so far as to hire people with superpowers to do the cleaning!
The water jet washed away the still-fresh red, but it couldn't clean the black grime that had accumulated over the years in the cracks of the floor tiles. The girl watched as several people dressed as homeless rushed out, collecting human tissue in woven bags, and wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"I never want to drink any nutritional supplements produced in the city again in my life."
"Oh? Why?"
"Why are there so many questions?"
Without thinking, Ji Xiangbiao retorted, then noticed the woman who had spoken to him pause, a hint of surprise and disdain flashing in her eyes:
"What the hell are you dressed like?"
A loose, bright red T-shirt, striped shorts that looked like pajamas, red and green shoes, and an old slipper with stitches on the red one—even in the downtown area where dressing like a man is fashionable, this woman was dressed way too inhumanly.
"Hmm?"
Du Yu casually tossed away the half-eaten lollipop, his mouth still lingering with the cloying taste of artificial sweeteners. Hearing this, he tugged at his red T-shirt, his feet in red slippers lifting slightly in confusion.
"My outfit is also cleverly designed. Look, these two colors complement each other."
Ji Xiangbiao glanced at the woman dressed like she was going downstairs to buy groceries, not at all like someone drowning their sorrows in a bar, snorted coldly, turned and left, his shoulder shoving hard against Du Yu's upper arm, a flash of anger crossing his eyes:
"If you want to eat your own fingers, go buy some nutrient solution from the city center!"
"So young, yet so hot-tempered."
Du Yu shook his head and followed them into the bar called "Red Light".
In the dimly lit room, colorful lights on the stage flashed wildly, and the cacophony of voices was like a pot of boiling water half-filled with oil, almost drowning out the singer's hysterical screams and roars.
With his hands in his pockets and slippers on, Du Yu dodged three drunkards who bumped into him, two people who pretended to be drunk and tried to sneak up on him, and a thief who looked like he was trying to steal something but didn't know what he was looking for. Finally, he found the person he was looking for in a secluded booth near the restroom.
Just then, a beam of purple light swept across, illuminating the woman's fanatical eyes and blank facial features.
Dong Shi-gu, and her friend who came from the Unified Social Welfare Home, and her companion who made a suicide pact with her.
A woman who, theoretically, should be dead.
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Author's Note: There will be another chapter later, so don't miss it! (orz)
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