Chapter 42 The Secret of the Black Core

In an inconspicuous corner on the edge of the black market, a makeshift stall was set up, leaning against a dirt slope at the back.

Zhang Hao and two dark-skinned brothers sat right by the dirt slope.

Zhang Hao looked to be in his forties, and the two dark-skinned brothers also appeared quite aged in the face. Sitting together in a circle, the three of them looked just like farmers scratching a living from the earth in a previous era.

Their demeanor was rustic and simple, their faces weathered with age, and the sunken wrinkles between their brows carried a lingering air of sorrow.

Nowadays, anyone who had a patch of land to grow vegetables was a person of high status, engaging in a form of high-end entertainment that involved returning to nature.

People at the bottom of the ladder subsisted entirely on factory-machined synthetic meat and synthetic vegetables, 3D-printed according to programmed instructions.

The texture of every piece of meat and vegetable came from the same mold. Buying groceries saved the trouble of picking and choosing, the vacuum-sealed packages had absurdly long shelf lives, and each was labeled as free of any additives or side effects, completely safe for consumption.

Zhang Hao held a cigarette butt between his index finger and thumb, took a deep drag, and asked, "That kid from the incinerator hasn't been around for a while, has he?"

Dark-Face Number 1: "Yeah, hasn't been here."

Zhang Hao frowned: "The incinerator hasn't taken in any doomed corpses lately?"

Dark-Face Number 1: "They have. He staked out the entrance of the incinerator the other day and counted. There were trucks transporting doomed corpses going in every single day on average."

Dark-Face Number 1 pointed a finger at Dark-Face Number 2, who silently gave a nod.

Zhang Hao took another drag of his cigarette: "Bad luck? Didn't burn out any black cores?"

Dark-Face Number 1 shook his head again: "He followed that kid for a stretch along the road and tested him with a detector. It showed residual readings."

Dark-Face Number 2 continued to nod.

Zhang Hao's brow furrowed into a knot, and he said in a deep voice, "Residual readings mean black cores were produced, but they aren't on him. That kid passed them to someone else. Are there other people in District Nine collecting black cores?"

Dark-Face Number 1 opened his mouth to speak again, but Zhang Hao grew irritated, widened his eyes, and lowered his voice in a roar: "Stop always answering for him. Doesn't he have a mouth of his own? Let him speak for himself."

Dark-Face Number 1 let out an "oh."

Dark-Face Number 2 had been keeping his head down, poking at ants with a stick. Forced to speak now, he seemed to find thinking a bit taxing, so he distressfully tossed the stick aside. A whole patch of ants already covered the ground by his feet.

"A new kid came to the incinerator. The detected readings... very high," Dark-Face Number 2 raised his head and replied with a slight stutter.

Zhang Hao understood. While feeling a slight relief in his heart, he was also puzzled: "Since no one else is collecting black cores, why would the new kid at the incinerator keep the black cores himself instead of coming here to sell them for money?"

Dark-Face Number 1's brain power wasn't quite up to par, and he hadn't thought that deeply into it. Hearing this, he froze and asked uncertainly, "Did that kid discover the secret of the black cores?"

Dark-Face Number 2's expressionless face remained blank. He picked up the stick and used his fingers to pick off a dead ant stuck to it.

He licked his finger and flatly spat out four words: "Kill him. I'll go."

Zhang Hao was considering the matter, but before he could figure it out, he saw the stall spread out on the ground being soiled by several muddy boot soles.

"I've asked around. Your place is the only one in the black market that buys black cores, right?"

Qian Hao stepped right onto the stall, looked down at the three of them, and asked without any courtesy.

The lackeys following behind him all had short blades or iron rods tucked into their waists. Their postures were casual, and their expressions uniformly exuded the fierce, numbers-in-force arrogance unique to gang thugs.

Zhang Hao stood up and walked over, his wrinkles bunching up like a chrysanthemum as he smiled: "That's us. Are you here to sell black cores?"

Dark-Face Number 1 sensed that the atmosphere was wrong and followed closely behind. Dark-Face Number 2 kept his head down with an expressionless face, fiddling with a wooden stick and poking ants one by one.

Qian Hao sneered: "Sell? No, no, no, you've got it wrong. We're here to *buy* black cores. How many black cores do you have on hand? We want all of them."

Several nearby onlookers cast curious and astonished glances over.

Zhang Hao's heart sank, and he tentatively asked, "What do you want with the black cores?"

Before Qian Hao could speak, an impatient lackey behind him rebuked angrily, "Our boss wants what he wants, why are you asking so many damn questions? Hurry up and bring out everything you've got."

After the lackey finished cursing, Qian Hao looked at the silent middle-aged man in front of him, frowned slightly, reached one hand toward his waist to touch a short dagger, and gently patted the latter's shoulder with the other.

"Don't worry, we won't short you on the money. Whatever price you bought them for, we'll take them all at a twenty percent discount."

In Qian Hao's dictionary, being willing to pay eighty percent of the price was absolute mercy and a high-end offer.

Zhang Hao realized that this batch of thugs was different from those who had merely come to snoop out of curiosity; these people were genuinely here to snatch the black cores away.

In other words, these people knew the secret of the black cores, or rather, the boss behind them knew the secret of the black cores?

Seeing that Zhang Hao remained silent the whole time, Qian Hao's expression instantly darkened. He gripped the latter's shoulder slightly tighter, pinching out several bruises through the fabric of his clothes.

"You aren't going to tell me you don't plan on selling them to us, are you?" Qian Hao asked with a sinister tone.

Zhang Hao feigned pain on his face, his body instinctively hunching down, while his hand behind his back signaled Dark-Face Number 1 to hold back from stepping forward.

He lowered his head and plastered on a servile smile: "No, no, we'll sell all of them to you."

Qian Hao loosened his fingers: "Where are the goods? Bring them out."

Zhang Hao: "The goods are in the house where our brothers live. How about this? Tomorrow at this time, we'll bring all the black cores here, and you bring the money to pick them up."

Qian Hao raised an eyebrow and sneered: "You aren't tricking me so you can pack up and run, are you?"

Zhang Hao shook his head vigorously: "We're just blank citizens, we can't even get out of District Nine. Besides, it's just one night; we aren't stupid, we know we can't run away."

Qian Hao seemed to believe him and said, "Fine, just one night. We'll come to collect them tomorrow at this time."

With that, Qian Hao led his men away.

Not long after, Zhang Hao and the other two didn't even care about their stall, sneaking away from the black market.

Not far away, in a dark corner, Qian Hao kept a cold eye on the direction the three were leaving in, and led his brothers in following them silently.

What Qian Hao didn't know was that if he had a previous life, the yellow-haired and red-haired punks who had died not long ago would have told him this felt all too familiar.

Twenty minutes later.

Beneath a secluded bridge culvert near the river.

Corpses lay scattered all over the ground, every single one of their faces frozen in terror and distortion. In particular, their eye sockets had been smashed to pulp, and white brain matter oozed out in streams, staining their eye cavities an eerie, ghostly white.

Qian Hao lay on the ground, breathing his last. A tree branch was jammed deep into his right eye socket, still sticky with dead ants.

The battle had happened too fast. In barely the span of a single breath, everyone Qian Hao had brought with them was dead, leaving only him, with his eyes gouged out.

Terrifying.

This was definitely not the level of combat power a gang or black market merchant should possess.

Qian Hao couldn't even gauge the opponent's strength, because he had never before witnessed anyone kill with such ferocious yet effortless casualness.

The enforcers of the Green Wolf Gang did raise some martial artists, but most were first or second-tier martial artists, and Boss Zheng was already the strongest third-tier martial artist in the gang.

Beyond that, Qian Hao had never seen anyone higher—anyone with that kind of strength wouldn't be slumming it in a street gang.

Yet, the dark-faced man who had just used a tree branch to string eyeballs together like beads—the strength he had displayed in that split second made even Boss Zheng look inadequate by comparison.

Qian Hao couldn't figure it out. Why would someone so fiercely brutal choose to shrink back into a dead-end black market? And most crucially, why collect worthless black cores?

If you guys are going to be so low-profile, how are we supposed to charge blindly into an iron wall and get ourselves killed like this?

Zhang Hao squatted halfway in front of Qian Hao. The rustic smile of an old farmer, when reflected in Qian Hao's single remaining eye, was enough to make one's soul tremble from the core.

"I know you have a lot of questions."

"Don't ask them. Save time. You don't have much life left; you only need to answer my questions."

Qian Hao gritted his teeth hard. Terrified though he was, since he was going to die anyway, he wasn't going to utter another word.

Zhang Hao seemed to guess Qian Hao's thoughts, and his next sentence, spoken in a flat tone, made Qian Hao's hair stand on end.

He said: "If you don't speak, I'll keep you suspended on the brink of death. Rest assured, my craftsmanship is very good. I can guarantee that while ants eat away half your heart, liver, and lungs, your mind will still be clear enough to talk to me."

When his chest was sliced open by the tree branch and the first ant crawled across his heart, Qian Hao completely broke down.

"Tell me, who sent you here to collect black cores?"

"Brother Bin, it was Brother Bin who sent us."

"Why does Brother Bin want black cores?"

"I don't know! Brother Bin didn't say! I really don't know, ahhhhh! Don't let it bite me anymore, it hurts so much, ahhhhh—!"