Chapter 22
Chapter 22: Entering Sand City
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
“Take off my trousers? Here?” Forbes looked stupefied and rather caught off-guard.
S(???”a…
/(//•/?/•//)/…
His horrified expression gradually warped into one of shyness. As expected, Boss has decided to make a move on a fresh, delicate flower like me in the end…
Forbes bashfully reached under his flax clothing and slowly removed his trousers.
Lin Ke also reached under his clothes and began taking off his trousers quickly. In fact, his movements were so impatient that he wanted to rip the trousers off directly.
Forbes’s trousers slid past his knees. Then, he bent over and stuck his buttocks up in the air toward Lin Ke. He stood with his legs apart, and his big, fat, and round head appeared between his legs. From an upside-down view, he saw that his Boss had also taken off his own trousers.
The two boys’ eyes suddenly met. Lin Ke balled up the trousers he was holding and hurled it at Forbes’s buttocks. He even used quite a bit of strength this time.
Forbes, upon being hit, instantly lost his balance, and his whole body fell forward.
“Just what do you have inside your mind the whole day? What I meant was, take off the Wastelands Gang trousers! Otherwise, the two of us will be taken as Wastelands Gang spies the moment we enter the city and end up being raked to death by their gunfire!”
Lin Ke was rather exasperated. Why is this damn fatty’s mind always so full of dirty thoughts?
Forbes pathetically fell on the ground. When he heard Lin Ke’s words, he laughed in embarrassment and replied, “Ahaha? So that’s what you meant…”
After Forbes took off his trousers, he hurriedly got up from the ground and went closer to Lin Ke.
“Little Treasure, listen and check if anyone’s outside.”
The currents at the area where the groundwater branched out were very fierce. Just from the sounds of water splashing downward, one could tell that they were not at a low altitude.
It wasn’t safe to send anyone to scout in a situation like this, no matter who.
Treasure Hunter Rat jumped down from Lin Ke’s shoulder and went up to the rusty metal door.
It didn’t lean against it directly. Instead, Treasure Hunter Rat stretched out its little paws and tore off the mottled rust on the metal door right in front of it. Only then did it press its ear against the door and listen.
Haha, this little guy is pretty particular about hygiene.
Treasure Hunter Rat listened for a while. Then, it turned around and squeaked excitedly to convey that there wasn’t any sign of human activity outside. However, it did vaguely hear its own kind, though.
Lin Ke’s eyes brightened. There aren’t any humans outside, but there are rats around. Additionally, there is also a river channel at the side… In that case, the outside should either be the bottom of a bridge or a sewer.
Sand Condor sprawled out on its back, laying at the side to air-dry its wings. Treasure Hunter Rat also stayed far away from the metal door.
Lin Ke put on gloves and forcefully twisted the round wheel with both hands. He did everything he could, but the round wheel didn’t even budge.
Lin Ke’s Power was only 3 points at the moment, so his strength wasn’t even up to an ordinary human’s standard.
“Forbes, come here and give it a go.”
Lin Ke didn’t find this shameful, though. What was he to do when he had inherited a body like this the moment he transmigrated here? (shrugs)
Forbes spat on his palms a couple of times, rubbed them together, and then forcefully turned the wheel with both hands.
The rust patches on the round spinning wheel started to break and flip outward, and they clattered as they landed on the ground. At the same time, an ear-piercing screech caused by friction also rang out.
The wheel had actually turned.
The speed at which Forbes turned the wheel became faster and faster. Soon, the thick and heavy metal door emitted a deafening ‘gong,’ and the spinning wheel became tightly stuck.
“Stand back, Forbes. I’ll open the door.” Although Treasure Hunter Rat hadn’t heard anyone outside, Lin Ke held the Glock 17 pistol in his hand nevertheless, just in case.
With the pistol held up with one hand, Lin Ke pushed open the metal door with his other hand.
The metal door-which had been abandoned for dozens of years-was incredibly heavy, and it even emitted an ear-piercing screech when it was being pushed open.
After he pushed the door open, Lin Ke immediately saw a wide, fast-flowing river of black water, as well as a semi-circle-shaped, domed roof above him.
Right on the heels of it, a terrible stench assaulted their senses, choking Lin Ke and Forbes badly.
Alright, Lin Ke knew what this place was now. This was Sand City’s trunk sewer.
Lin Ke and Forbes held their hands over their noses and walked out. They closed the metal door behind them and headed in the direction against the water flow after taking a look at the water flow direction.
The wastewater was directly transported out of the city, so they would be able to enter the city if they went against the flow.
Sand Condor simply couldn’t stand the stench. It spread its wings and flew in the direction against the sewer’s water flow.
Treasure Hunter Rat continued to follow Lin Ke.
“Forbes, watch your step. If you’re careless and end up falling, the wastewater will directly wash you out of the city. Even I won’t be able to save you.”
Upon hearing his words, Forbes huddled toward the wall at once.
The paths on either side of the sewer were very narrow; they were only about one meter wide.
Before long, Treasure Hunter Rat met a few fellow rats-which were pitch-black from head to toe. Treasure Hunter Rat excitedly jumped onto the floor to greet them.
Lin Ke looked down at them. Treasure Hunter Rat was amicably chatting with its fellow rats from the city. However, one could evidently see that Treasure Hunter Rat-a rat from the countryside-was actually putting on more airs than the rats in the city sewer.
Treasure Hunter Rat stood on its hind legs with its back straight; it even stood one fist’s length away when speaking with the sewer rats, lest they dirtied its fur.
After a brief exchange, Lin Ke heard the chatter behind him becoming more and more intense.
It didn’t take long before Treasure Hunter Rat returned and jumped back onto Lin Ke. It sat on his shoulder with its paws against its hips, its cheeks all puffy as though they had been pumped with air. It started to speak unceasingly to Lin Ke about what had happened just now.
After hearing what it said, Lin Ke burst into laughter.
Simply put, those black rats only had one line to say: “Even a doghouse in Sand City’s sewers is more impressive than your 10,000-hectares luxurious mansion in the ruins of a small, third-rate city!”
Treasure Hunter Rat had refuted a lot, but the black rats only had one line to say-“I live in Sand City.”
No matter how eloquent Treasure Hunter Rat was, it simply went back to the same thing-“I live in Sand City.”
In the end, Treasure Hunter Rat was so mad that it ran back.
“Haha, what’s the point of fighting with them over this? When Howling Ancient Castle is rebuilt in the future, you’ll be a royal rat. Your status will be so much higher than those plebeians.”
Lin Ke would like to say that this team was really very difficult to lead!
He had a servant who constantly thought about taking off his trousers to do dirty deeds, a rat that required psychological counseling, and a lazy, silly performance artist.
After almost half an hour of walking, they finally saw light at the end of the sewer.
After one last bout of sprinting, dazzling white light filled Lin Ke’s and Forbes’s vision. The two of them finally exited the sewer. They went to the side to breathe in and out as much as they wanted.
The dazzling light gradually vanished, and clarity returned to Lin Ke’s eyes.
Lin Ke looked around him, and the scenery in front of him looked very familiar. The black water surging from the river channel also began to look clearer.
Lin Ke went up the stairs on the slope to an upwind area and took in the fairly fresh air there.
What entered his sight was a huge dumping ground. Several people-whose skin was as dark as Forbes’s, but were skinny, frail, and physically deformed-were there. They were going through heaps of rubbish to search for things of value and things worth recycling.
This dumping ground was located in Sand City’s slum area, which was also Sand City’s southernmost borderland.
“This dumping ground is so big…” Dumbfounded by the sight, Forbes’s mouth fell agape.
Lin Ke’s stomach was already growling softly. Since their escape from Goria Grand Canal, he hadn’t ingested anything other than water.
Although Lin Ke had already formed a complete and perfect plan, filling the stomach was clearly of higher priority than the plan.
“Forbes, we should go.” Lin Ke didn’t want to linger in the dumping ground. Firstly, Sand City was a very ‘dangerous’ place. The slum area even had the charming name of ‘Hell On Earth.’
The degree of disorder here far exceeded that of Strong Winds Desert and the Gobi.
There was a story in Sand City’s slum area that went like this: “You could be sitting in a petty bourgeoisie café in the wealthy district drinking a cappuccino in the morning, but you might be stuffed into a burlap sack and transported to the slums in the afternoon. By the time you’re out of the burlap sack at night, you’ll find that you’ve already been transported to Machinery City and become part of the living battery ‘army’.”
Here, human trafficking, organ trafficking, contract killing, and arms trafficking happened everywhere.
Although Sand City was under the Freedom Federation’s jurisdiction and had hostile relations with the Machinery Holy Cult, the concepts of right and wrong and good and evil were already long gone in a place like the slum area. The only truth here was money.
As long as one could pay, there was nothing that couldn’t be done.
Lin Ke did have cash on him. He had found 3,400 Wastelands Coins on the Machinery Holy Cult fanatics. If they were a little more thrifty, this amount of money was more than enough to last them a month in terms of food, accommodation, and transport.
The whole way, a wide-eyed Forbes let out sigh after sigh of admiration.
The further they traveled, the more regulated the dumping ground looked. All the rubbish in the innermost area had already gone through filtering. Only children of the slums would stay here the whole day to pick up leftovers to exchange them for a few coins to help out with family expenses.
The real rubbish was in the dumping ground’s middle section. Various huge rubbish-transporting trucks and excavators were at the top of the rubbish heaps.
Rotten and putrid rubbish, combined with diesel exhaust fumes, stung one’s nostrils and made one tear up badly.
Lin Ke and Forbes were dressed like refugees. Coupled with Forbes’s dark skin, they blended into the dumping ground perfectly. Nothing about them was out of place at all as they walked out of the dumping ground.
What followed right after was an expanse of tiny, closed-off slum housing spaces. When looking out from the top, the place looked just like it had been pieced together with fabric patches of various colors.
“We’ll make do for lunch at noon, and then we’ll have a feast at night.”
Forbes naturally didn’t have any objections and nodded repeatedly. Just being here at Sand City already made him very happy. He had seen so many people; there were even so many people who looked like him here…
Forbes finally understood his father’s feelings of anticipation from back then.
There would definitely have been a market for pallbearer services if they had come to Sand City and started their business here!
Lin Ke spent five coins and bought five sandwiches at a small stall in the slums. He ate one and a half sandwiches, Forbes ate two, Treasure Hunter Rat ate half a sandwich, and he fed Sand Condor the last.
Don’t ask why Sand Condor didn’t eat it by itself.
Lazy fellow!
After wolfing them down, Lin Ke thumped his chest a few times. He had choked a little.
The Next thing they had to do was look for a place to put up at.
Lin Ke didn’t plan on staying in the slums for long. It was simply too chaotic here. Accidents could happen anytime. It would distract their attention and waste their energy too easily.
However, the slums were the only place he could stay in for these couple of days because he wanted to offload some goods…
After walking out of the slums, the two-storied and three-storied short buildings in front finally felt a little more city-like.
However, the blackish dirt roads filled with holes and dents, occasional cesspits at the roadside, and blackish, old, run-down building wall exteriors showed that this place was more like the fringe area linking the city and the countryside instead.
Lin Ke found an inn at the street corner-its signboard almost falling off-and opened the old and shabby wooden door with an ‘Open’ sign hanging on it. He passed through the dim, long, narrow, and suffocating corridor and walked over to the inn’s front desk.
A black, middle-aged woman with a distinctive head of curly hair was currently bent over and knitting a sweater.
“I’d like a standard room.”
The black, middle-aged woman didn’t even raise her head. “Fifty coins a night!”
“I’ll book it for three nights for now.” Lin Ke paid without hesitation.
The woman took out a room card and keys from a drawer and counted the money.
With a hoarse voice, she mechanically said, “There’s a pantry area at the end of the corridor on every floor. There are only burgers, sandwiches, and soda for food service. Five coins for one set. If you need to order, you can just call the front desk…”
Lin Ke brought Forbes upstairs without waiting for her to finish. They had more important things to do after a quick rest.
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