Breakfast for one starving girl, three dead scavengers, and a bill that turns Lu Jin from terminal patient into a man who has to hunt—for money.
At six in the morning, the sunlight over Sector A-11 was the color of bone ash.
Li Xing woke up hungry.
She pushed herself up from the cloud-soft mat of the camping pod, rubbing at her eyes. The warm air system hummed quietly, holding a cozy bubble of 24°C inside while the outside world sat at five below zero.
Her fingers brushed the mat beneath her.
Real.
She pressed down harder, feeling the spring of the padding, the faint give of the fabric.
Not a hallucination. Not a last-moment dream before dying.
Her stomach growled loudly in protest.
Back in the rental apartment, Lu Jin had a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, foam around his lips as he stared at his phone.
The moment Li Xing clutched her belly, cheeks flushing in embarrassment, the pressure-inducing chime rang again.
[Good morning, O Great Savior!][Alert: Your cloud-raised girl's blood sugar has dropped below warning levels!Low blood sugar can cause dizziness, weakness, and failure to run away at critical moments.]
Pink heart bubbles burst across the screen. A glossy, holo-menu unfolded.
[Premium Energy Breakfast Pack (Wasteland Limited Edition)]
Contains:– Self-Heating Braised Beef Can (extra meat) ×1– High-Purity Filtered Water (500 ml) ×1– Sterile Wet Wipes (mint scented) ×1
Original Price: ¥128.00Current Price: ¥68.00
[Newbie Achievement Reward: First breakfast for your cloud-raised ward is on us.This order will be fully covered by the system.](Note: This benefit is one-time only. Future orders of similar items will be charged normally.)
Lu Jin spat the toothpaste into the stained sink and caught his reflection in the mirror—pale skin, hollowed eyes, toothbrush hanging from his hand.
"Sixty-eight yuan for breakfast," he scoffed.
"I stand downstairs at that greasy fast-food stall, agonizing three minutes over whether I can afford to add a drumstick… and you just casually slap on a tag that's, what, two days of food money?"
His mouth was ruthless.
His finger still hit [Confirm].
[Achievement Unlocked: "A Day Where She Doesn't Go Hungry"][Breakfast Pack cost covered by system. Actual charge: ¥0.00]
"Heh."
He glanced at his balance—still stuck at ¥7,489.
"You really know when to play saint, don't you?"
In the wasteland, the air shimmered.
A heavy can and a clear bottle of water materialized in Li Xing's arms. The can's self-heating strip had already kicked in; it hissed and popped, sending up a rich, meaty smell that filled the cramped pod in seconds.
She hugged the hot metal, throat bobbing.
Carefully—so carefully—she pulled the tab open.
The scent of braised beef punched her in the face. Her eyes watered.
She didn't inhale it in one go.
First, she tore open the wet wipe packet and wiped her hands, fingers, and nails with almost obsessive thoroughness. Only after her hands were clean did she pinch up a cube of meat and place it on her tongue.
Soft. Juicy. Scalding.
The best thing she'd ever tasted.
In the real world, Lu Jin was sitting on the toilet, gnawing on a dry bread roll that cost ¥2.50, watching his ward squint with simple bliss over a can of meat.
Somehow, the bread didn't feel quite as hard going down.
The warmth lasted exactly three minutes.
Clang!
A metallic crash knifed through the quiet like a blade.
The camping pod shuddered. Li Xing nearly dumped the can all over herself. She jerked her head up.
Through the translucent walls, three ugly faces peered in, all greed and hunger.
Three scavengers, fully armed.
They wore mismatched scrap armor welded together from whatever they'd ripped off corpses, hands gripping crowbars and pipe-wrench weapons. Their eyes shone as they stared at the silver pod glowing in the ruins.
"Boss, we hit the jackpot!" the skinny one with yellow teeth yelled, slamming his crowbar against the pod's shell again. The screech of metal-on-metal set Li Xing's teeth on edge. "Look at this material! That shine! This is top-tier pre-war stuff! There's gotta be some pampered bunker brat hiding inside."
"Crack it open," the one-eyed man in front said, licking his cracked lips. Greed pooled in his lone eye.
"If it's a guy, we gut him. If it's a girl, we keep her. And this shell? Drag it back and we can trade for half a ton of water."
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The crowbars rained down on the pod. Dents bloomed across the once-smooth alloy like bruises on skin.
Li Xing didn't scream.
She clutched the half-finished can tighter against her chest instead. The softness in her glassy eyes blinked out.
What surfaced in its place was something feral.
The pod was her home.
Her sanctuary.
The only shelter her god had given her.
They were dirtying it.
They were staining the only gift she'd ever received.
In the rental apartment, Lu Jin's gaze went cold when he saw the gouges on the pod.
It wasn't just cosmetic damage.
That was him, burning money. Even if the newbie pod itself hadn't cost him yet, the system had made it very clear who'd be paying for repairs later.
[Asset Damage Alert!][Camping Pod Durability: 82%… 75%…][Warning: If the hull is breached, external radiation will penetrate directly!]
"System," Lu Jin said, voice flat. "Give me weapons."
"I want those three dead."
The app reacted instantly, as if it had been waiting with popcorn in hand.
[Hostile units detected! Defense Store unlocked.]
Option cards slid across the screen.
Recommended Option A: Auto Sentry Gun Turret (includes 500 rounds) – ¥4,500.00(Full auto-targeting. Efficient and stylish. Unfortunately, your current balance looks… awkward.)
Lu Jin's eyelid twitched.
¥4,500 would all but wipe him out.
Another panel popped up.
Recommended Option B: Slum Warlord Package
Includes:– Adrenaline Shot – Berserker Type (Military Grade III) ×1• Instant boost to reflexes and strength. 100% pain suppression.– High-Poly Monomolecular Combat Knife (Short Blade) ×1• Cuts through steel. Perfect for close-quarters work.
Original Price: ¥3,500.00Special "Fight-Or-Die" Price: ¥3,200.00
(Can't afford a turret? Let her become the turret. For just ¥3,200, you're not buying safety—you're buying a blood-soaked path.)
"Three thousand two…"
His heart clenched hard.
That was half a year's worth of his bare-minimum meds.
On-screen, the scavengers had already pried a gap in the pod's door. A filthy hand shoved through the opening, reaching for Li Xing's ankle.
"Buy it."
The words rasped out between his teeth.
His finger slammed down on the screen like he wanted to punch a hole through the app itself.
[Payment Successful! Remaining Balance: ¥4,289.00][Items deployed. Happy hunting.]
The moment the one-eyed boss wrenched the hatch open and leaned in, ready to drag his "prize" out—
He didn't see fear.
He saw a pair of eyes as flat and unreadable as glass.
And a red injector already buried in the vein of her neck.
Hiss—
The plunger bottomed out.
Li Xing's pupils shrank to pinpoints. Her thin frame shuddered as a chorus of pops echoed from her bones. The world slowed.
She saw everything—the arc of dust motes in the air, the precise tremor in the man's outstretched fingers, each pore on his grimy hand.
A short knife of matte black metal dropped into her palm, swallowing the light around it.
"Get. Out."
Her lips barely parted, voice low and gravelly.
She didn't retreat.
Instead, she used her small size as a weapon. The instant the one-eyed man's arm was fully inside, she slammed her hand down on the emergency lock.
Clack!
The alloy jaws of the hatch snapped shut like a crocodile's mouth, crunching down on his wrist.
"AAAHHH!"
His scream ripped across the ruins.
Before he could yank back, Li Xing's knife darted out from behind the door like a striking snake, driving into the meat of his trapped forearm.
Blood sprayed. He howled.
She didn't just move fast. She understood exactly where to cut to make it count.
Panic crashed through the other two scavengers.
"She's a freak! An esper!" one shrieked. "Shoot her! Now!"
Both of them raised their crude shotguns and fired.
Pellets hammered into the pod's shell, sparking and stuttering off the reinforced surface.
But Li Xing was no longer inside.
She'd slipped under their line of fire, body pressed so close to the ground she was almost sliding, then snapped upright right in front of the yellow-toothed scavenger.
At this range, his long gun was an unwieldy stick.
Her short blade was death.
The knife punched up under his jaw and out the back of his skull in one smooth motion.
His finger jerked. The shot went wild.
Li Xing twisted her wrist, yanked the blade free, and let his body fall. Blood splashed across her face. She didn't blink.
A roll took her out of the line of the last man's frantic swing. His pipe wrench slammed into stone where her head had been a heartbeat earlier.
This was muscle memory—carved into her nerves by a thousand "survival tests" in some lab's underground cages.
The weapon they'd designed finally woke up.
The last scavenger broke.
He dropped his tool and ran.
Li Xing was faster.
She launched herself, legs coiled like springs, and clamped onto his back. Her arm hooked around his neck, the blade sliding across his throat in a black arc.
There was a wet rip.
He stumbled, clutched at the wound, and crumpled.
Thirty seconds.
Three bodies on the ground.
Li Xing stood in the middle of it all, chest heaving. As the drug's surge ebbed, pain rolled back in—every joint aflame, every muscle screaming.
She staggered.
Almost fell.
Caught herself with the point of the knife.
She didn't look at the corpses.
She turned.
Dragging her bleeding leg, she limped back toward the camping pod. She reached out with a blood-smeared hand and began to wipe at the dents on the door.
Scrub, scrub, scrub.
The metal stayed marred.
This was her god's gift.
And it was damaged.
Her vision blurred. The girl who hadn't flinched while killing three grown men now found her eyes filling, tears dropping silently onto the scarred alloy.
She turned toward the unseen camera, sank to her knees, and bowed.
Her tear-and-blood-streaked face pressed up against where she imagined the lens to be, like a puppy that'd broken something precious.
"Sorry…"
Her voice broke, barely a whisper.
"I… I messed up our home…"
In the rental flat, Lu Jin stared at that zoomed-in face—blood, tears, dirt, all mixed together—and heard his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Not from fear.
From something sharp and unfamiliar wedging itself under his ribs.
System prompts exploded.
["Fight to the Death" resolve detected.]["Guilt + Attachment" mixed emotions detected.][Holy Resonance Energy surge! Conversion rate: 800%.][Holy Resonance Energy gained: 15 points.]
A golden torrent blasted out of his phone, swallowing him whole.
This wasn't the gentle warmth from before.
This was a forced rewrite.
"—kh!"
Lu Jin doubled over, hacking. A clot of thick, dark blood splattered onto the floor.
His lungs felt like someone was carving them clean with knives. Every breath was a knife-edge; every heartbeat, a hammer to his ribs.
Then—
The pain broke.
What rushed in to fill the space was clean and sharp.
He inhaled.
Air flooded his lungs without the usual friction, no more wheezing bellows, no more dragging ache. His chest expanded fully for the first time in years.
He straightened slowly. Threw a light punch.
Wind hissed off his knuckles.
He was still thin, still gaunt, but the brittle, about-to-fall-apart feeling had eased. There was… fuel in the engine again.
Panels snapped up in his vision.
[Body Function Repair: 15%][Pulmonary Fibrosis Reversal: Mild][Current Status: D-rank (Capable of normal activity)]
Lu Jin wiped the remaining blood from the corner of his mouth and looked back at the screen.
Li Xing had collapsed at the pod's doorstep, unconscious from exhaustion and pain.
¥3,200.
In exchange for three dead scavengers, a chunk of his illness clawed back, and a believer who would bleed for the home he'd given her.
"Silly girl," he murmured.
His fingertip brushed the glass over her cheek, barely touching.
"This deal… is daylight robbery—in my favor."
He lifted his head and looked out the window.
The city glared back at him—towers of steel and glass, giant gene-tech billboards casting smug blue light across the streets.
[Balance: ¥4,289.00][Gene Collapse Countdown: 60 hours][S-grade Repair Serum: ¥500,000.00]
The warmth in his eyes froze over.
Four thousand yuan was nothing here. Less than pocket change to the people on those billboards.
If he wanted to save her—If he wanted to fix himself—
Scrimping and saving wasn't going to cut it.
He was going to have to hunt.
Just like Li Xing hunted scavengers in the ruins, he would hunt money in this city that ate people alive.
Lu Jin grabbed his jacket and headed for the door.
The look in his eyes, as he stepped out into the hallway, was fiercer than any wolf prowling the wasteland.