Free Web Novel3:00 PM.
Just as 【Pelican Lady】's private time was interrupted by the vibration from the bao sang cang xiao badge, Vivian Schiaparelli finally finished her work for the day after being busy for most of it.
About two kilometers from the mouth of the Free City canal, there sat a warehouse with a peculiar design; the square main body of the building was topped with a very standard circular roof.
On the building's exterior walls were colorful paintings that looked like they came straight out of a children's cartoon: balloons, flowers, various small animals, and a rhinoceros that took up more than half the surface area, appearing naive and cute.
Looking at the building's exterior alone, one might even think it was some kind of indoor children's playground. In fact, it was indeed a kind of "playground," but it was not open to children.
This was the warehouse and logistics center for "Gray Rhino Meat Industry," which controlled over seventy percent of the various meat supplies in the Free City.
At the same time, this was also a good choice for part-time work for drifters without steady jobs like Vivian. Those unfortunate souls fished out of the canal, if they lacked the value to be sent to that underground clinic on South Avenue, could also be brought here for sale.
Six dollars a pound on average, slightly higher than the price of regular beef.
As for what Gray Rhino Meat Industry did with what they bought, no one knew for sure. It was said that it was used for supplies at certain special restaurants, but there was no evidence to confirm this.
"Only fifty dollars, sons of bitches!" Vivian complained to the strange cat on her shoulder while waving the money in her hand. "Horace, tell me, do they think I'm easy to bully?" freewebnσvel.cѳm
"Alright, alright!" The strange cat raised a paw and patted Vivian's shoulder. "I think this price is quite reasonable. Don't you think about what kind of goods you fished up today?"
The corpse Vivian fished up today seemed to be the product of a gang fight; there were hardly any intact parts on the whole body, and who knew how many bullet heads were inside. When she fished it up, the flesh around the wounds had already soaked until it was white and swollen. Being able to sell it for fifty dollars was already pretty good.
"I'm just pissed off!" Vivian rolled her eyes. "Worked myself to death moving it for most of the day, and I still had to avoid the police's sight, and yet they only gave me this much."
"Who can you blame for that?" the strange cat said. "Isn't it all because of that man you picked up yesterday? If he hadn't delayed our start time, we wouldn't have been left with only some low-grade goods when we got there..."
"Shut up, Horace!" Vivian shot a sideways glance at the strange cat. "Don't use your demonic sowing-discord tactics in this kind of place."
"Uh, sorry, force of habit." The strange cat dodged Vivian's gaze, looked around, and quickly changed the subject. "Where are we going now? Going home?"
"Why go home? Of course, we're going to Garden Street!" Vivian curled her lip. "Collect the pay and go to Garden Street, isn't that our usual routine?"
Garden Street and South Avenue could be called the "Crouching Dragon and Fledgling Phoenix" of the Free City. North of Garden Street and south of South Avenue were both the areas with the worst public security in the Free City, and the level of chaos was on par.
But the difference between the two was that South Avenue gathered mostly emerging forces similar to 【Scarlet Pelican】 and "Gray Rhino Meat Industry," while Garden Street, due to its geographical location near the northwestern manor district, had long been controlled by gangs that had set foot on this land two or three hundred years ago.
Fortunately, the Free City had a vast area, and the huge city acted as a barrier, preventing the two groups, who looked at each other with disgust, from causing too much chaos. Otherwise... it would truly fulfill that joke: gunfights every day.
"Aren't you afraid that kid at home will wake up and run away?" the strange cat asked.
"Why be afraid?" Vivian shrugged. "I just didn't find what I wanted on him, but the aura of my power on him hasn't dissipated. As long as I want to, I can confirm his location at any time. If he runs, I'll just catch him again, won't I?"
If he really ran, maybe I could follow him and find the thing that stores my power... Vivian added in her heart.
She always felt that the guy at home must have touched her things; otherwise, it was impossible for such a strong aura to remain on him. Since she couldn't find it on him, it was very likely that he had hidden it.
In fact, she didn't care where the thing storing her power was kept; she was just worried about it leaking.
She felt that she was saving the guy at home.
"Alright, since you say so..." the strange cat said. "Then let's go to Garden Street!"
----
Free City, Garden Street.
Unlike the prosperity of the city center and the southeast, and distinct from the wealth of the manor district, after the brief prosperity brought by the wave of immigration between 1820 and 1920, this place gradually declined, eventually leaving only a mess after a carnival.
To this day, the only thing Garden Street can still show off is probably one of the Free City's landmark buildings—the Sanctuary Grand Theater.
And Vivian's destination was near the Sanctuary Grand Theater.
After getting off the bus, she looked around, then put her hands in her pockets and walked straight toward the gorgeous grand theater that stood out like a crane in a flock of chickens among the old buildings.
However, she did not enter the theater. When she reached the theater's front gate, she changed direction, circled into the narrow alley next to it, passed through the alley, and stepped onto a dirty but exceptionally lively street.
This was where Garden Street originally originated. Some people said that this was the real Garden Street, and those wide, clean streets outside surrounded by old buildings were just an illusory facade.
The sky was growing dark, and it started to rain again in the Free City. The rain fell on the damp, dirty ground of the street, splashing up tiny droplets, and the broken neon lights on both sides of the alley flickered with a gloomy glow.
Cakes, electronics, vintage shops...
The content on the signs near the entrance of the street was still relatively normal, at most shops selling adult products, firearms, or marijuana disguised as candy stores. But the further one went, the stranger the scenery on both sides of the street and the content on the shop signs became.
Shops for Alchemy modifications, psionic items, and prosthetic implants gradually appeared in sight. From time to time, the sound of conversations hidden beneath the noisy crowd reached her ears—there was Chinese, English with an R-country accent, and even the languages of African indigenous tribes.
There were also some people dressed like streetwalkers, mercenaries, or religious figures standing on the side of the street, looking around.
Vivian passed through the crowd and walked toward an alley. The arc lamp at the entrance of the alley seemed to be aging, flashing and emitting a dim halo, as if synchronized with the rhythm of her footsteps. In the deepest part of the alley, a cluster of simple tents covered with waterproof canvas were crowded into an open space surrounded by buildings.
Arriving in front of those tents, Vivian walked straight toward the largest dark blue tent among them, her gaze falling on the woman inside, whose appearance looked somewhat terrifying.
Like Vivian, she had a standard Celtic appearance: green eyes, a high nose bridge, and messy short red hair.
Between the gaps in her hair were some decorations that looked like wires, tangled together with her red hair. Looking at her face alone, she was indeed not terrifying, and from the side, her body curves were not inferior to the stars on TV.
But when she heard the commotion and turned around, revealing her empty body—with the entire left arm and most of the left chest shaved away, looking like a crescent moon—it was definitely enough to make most people gasp in horror.
The loss of the woman's body tissue could no longer be described as a disability. For a normal human, even if the heart was on the right side, such an injury would be fatal.
But ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) she was still alive. When Vivian arrived, she was even skillfully tinkering with the wires, pipes, and psionic circuits connected to the missing parts of her body.
"Oh, isn't this our dear Miss Vivian?" The woman put down the tools in her hand and flashed a warm smile at Vivian. "Are you here to bring us money again?"
That's right, this was the reason she showed enthusiasm toward Vivian.
"Cut the crap, this is the medicine money for this month." Vivian rolled her eyes, raised her hand, and threw a thick roll of banknotes onto the table in front of the woman. "Is everyone doing okay lately?"
The woman picked up the banknotes on the table and curled her lip. "Just like that, can't live well, but can't die either..."
Halfway through, she put down the money in her hand and looked at Vivian. "Honestly, I've never understood why you want to pay their medical expenses?"
"After all, the suffering those guys are going through now stems from the choices they made in the past. Who told them to believe in an immature technology?"
"If you didn't care about those guys, I'm afraid you would have saved enough money long ago to move to the Metropolis and live in a big mansion, right?"
The guys the woman was talking about were the others living in this cluster of tents.
No, perhaps they could no longer be called humans.
Three years ago, when a group of guys calling themselves "Messengers" appeared on Garden Street, bringing the urban legend organization's prosthetic implant modification technology and claiming they could help everyone modify at a low price, those guys flocked to accept the modification and gained unprecedented power.
But no one told them that the rejection reaction after the modification would be so severe, and no one told them that the price of the drugs to alleviate the rejection reaction would be more than ten times the cost of the modification.
After being drained of their money by the Messengers, and under the influence of the rejection reaction, they gradually became urban legend-ified, and in the end, they could only hide in dark corners like rats, waiting for death in pain, until... Vivian Schiaparelli appeared.
"There's no need to ask this kind of question every time. No matter how many times you probe, I won't tell you." Vivian glared at the woman, who was burying her head in counting money, and said fiercely. "If you hadn't stolen a bit of the Messengers' modification technology, you probably wouldn't be much better off than them right now!"
"Also, the thing I asked you to look into earlier, did you find it?"
"No." The woman shook her head.
"No? A whole day has passed!" Vivian widened her eyes. "Did you get high on drugs again during the day?"
"Of course not, I quit a long time ago!" the woman explained. "I didn't look into it, simply because there was no need to. If you don't believe me, see for yourself."
Saying this, she put down the money in her hand, picked up the remote control, turned on the old TV with an antenna stuck on the side, flipped through a few channels, and stopped on the Free City city channel.
"Yu Yinchuan, Z countryman, code name 【Jin Chan Lang】..." Such a voice came from the TV.
"The wanted notice has been looping for a whole day. Drug trafficking, murder, robbery, suspected of pedophilia... Even a criminal like me thinks he's detestable!" the woman said viciously.
Vivian: "..." What the hell did I pick up and bring home?
