Chapter 2: Escaping the Trash Bin
But just at that moment, a line of text suddenly popped up in Li Jie Xuan's mind:
Beginner Mission (Stage Mission): Escape the trash bin.
Mission content: Because the black-hearted shop owner Hetian threw your young self into a trash bin. The nights here are extremely cold. If you don't want to freeze to death, you'd better escape the trash bin within three hours!
Mission reward: Kunai Throwing (Beginner).
Time limit: Three hours.
Escape the trash bin within three hours!
It sounded simple enough, but after carefully observing the situation, Li Jie Xuan realized the problem. The trash bin was a massive thing—two meters long and one meter high. Its walls were smooth, with no footholds whatsoever. With his height of less than half a meter, it was practically a prison.
"Hetian, huh?"
Li Jie Xuan crouched down and tried to search the trash bin for anything useful.
"You really gave me a tough problem this time!" After rummaging around for quite a while, Li Jie Xuan found only a huge fish bone inside the bin.
There was no need to even try…
That fish bone plus his own height still didn't add up to even one meter.
"It looks like I can't escape relying on my own strength."
That was also the reason Hetian had felt at ease leaving him here.
Li Jie Xuan casually tossed aside the fish bone, thought for a moment, and sat down. Conserving some strength would allow him to last a bit longer.
"In that case…"
Li Jie Xuan reached out and opened the wooden treasure chest in the system.
He could only hope to get an item that would allow him to escape from here. Unfortunately, things rarely went as one wished…
The wooden treasure chest slowly opened, and a faint glow flashed.
Lowest-tier treasure: (Auto-Recovering Space-Time Kunai)
Character: Li Jie Xuan.
Items: Auto-Recovering Space-Time Kunai (sharper than an ordinary kunai, possessing the wondrous ability of automatic recovery).
Chakra: None.
Ninjutsu: None.
Holding the kunai in his hand, its surface gleaming with a dark sheen, Li Jie Xuan sighed helplessly. "It's a decent item, but it doesn't really help the current situation…"
Although the kunai was sharp, Li Jie Xuan's strength was far too weak right now. Trying to cut through this thick iron plate with it was simply unrealistic.
More importantly, as time passed, Li Jie Xuan's limbs had already grown so cold that he could barely muster any strength at all. Without realizing it, two hours had already gone by…
"That means, in the remaining one hour, if I don't manage to escape, I'll freeze to death!?"
At this point, Li Jie Xuan no longer cared whether he would attract Hetian's attention or not. He clenched his fists and slammed them hard against the iron plate.
"Help! Help!"
Under these circumstances, he could only hope that someone might hear him and come to rescue him.
"Bang, bang, bang…!"
In the silent alley, the sounds of impact coming from inside the trash bin were dull and heavy. Li Jie Xuan craned his head back, raised his arms, and smashed them against the hard iron plate again and again. More than half of the final hour had already passed, yet Li Jie Xuan felt that he might not even last the full three hours.
Even though he had tried his best to conserve his strength, calling for help consumed far too much energy.
"Someone… please come…"
Li Jie Xuan felt the warmth in his chest slowly slipping away. The life of a one-year-old infant was just that fragile, like a pitiful stray kitten. Before long, he would be frozen into an ice-cold lump, then hauled away by garbage collectors and thrown into roaring flames.
"Someone… save me…"
Li Jie Xuan desperately lifted his head, gathered the very last bit of strength in his body, and hurled himself violently against the iron plate…
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