281: Heart Pump Trading

Chapter 281: Heart Pump Transaction "Damn it... which mental hospital did this lunatic escape from?"

The tattooed man wiped cold sweat from his face and spat fiercely. "Hurry and notify the boss, someone's here to crash the place!"

He just reached for the communicator in his pocket.

Suddenly, he felt a chill in his chest.

He looked down.

A Butterfly Knife, which had been plunged into his chest at some unknown moment, was trembling slightly with his breathing.

"Wh... when..."

His companion nearby pointed at him in horror. Just as he was about to scream, a line of blood sprayed from his own neck.

Chen Mo sat in the cab of the pickup truck.

He glanced at the rearview mirror.

Those two figures had collapsed.

"You left the Butterfly Knife there," Ruan Qiushui said. "That was your most handy weapon."

"It's a locator."

Chen Mo turned the steering wheel, and the pickup veered into a dark alleyway. "That old fox Qin Wen definitely left backdoors in all the metal objects on my person."

"Then why didn't you chop off the mechanical arm too?"

"If I chopped it off, who would drive?"

Chen Mo coughed twice, his saliva tinged with blood. "Besides, this hand is still useful."

The pickup threaded through the intricate alleyways.

The buildings here were like tumors, growing rampantly and layered upon each other.

Neon signs were hung everywhere: "Massage," "Loans," "Organ Recovery," "Prosthetic Maintenance"... The air was thick with the sour smell of fried noodles and machine oil.

Ten minutes later.

The pickup stopped in front of a giant tenement building that resembled a honeycomb.

This was the Walled City.

There were no elevators, only countless stairs and corridors coiling like intestines.

Chen Mo parked the car in the shadows.

He slung the backpack full of money and weapons across his body and wrapped his frame tightly in a raincoat, concealing the obvious mechanical arm.

"Heart rate 140."

Ruan Qiushui warned, "The drug's effects are starting to wear off. Your body temperature is dropping rapidly."

Chen Mo felt it.

The original feverish sense of power was receding like a tide, replaced by a bone-chilling cold and exhaustion.

It was the backlash after overdrawing his body's resources.

He had to find the 'Butcher' immediately.

"Basement level three."

Chen Mo pushed open the car door and walked into the dark, damp stairwell.

The stairwell was crowded with addicts and vagrants.

Most of them had mutilated bodies or were fitted with cheap second-hand prosthetics, staring at every passerby with greedy, numb eyes.

Chen Mo looked straight ahead.

The scent of blood radiating from him was too heavy, so heavy that these hyenas instinctively felt fear.

Basement level three was even worse than above.

The floor was covered in sewage, and the lightbulbs overhead flickered intermittently.

At the end of the corridor hung a light box painted with a red cross, splattered with a few drops of dried blood.

The door was ajar.

From inside came the harsh sound of an electric saw cutting through bone, along with screams like a pig being slaughtered.

Chen Mo pushed the door and entered.

The clinic wasn't large, filled everywhere with various models of prosthetics and organ preservation jars.

In the middle of the room was an oil-stained operating table.

A bald man wearing a rubber apron and a gas mask was performing surgery on a gang member with a broken leg.

There was no anesthesia.

The bald man hummed an out-of-tune tune while sawing the leg.

"Queue up."

The bald man didn't even look back. "Registration fee is five hundred, amputation is two thousand, replacement parts are extra. No credit, no Federation coins, only gold or hard currency."

Chen Mo walked to the operating table.

He pulled a stack of dripping old bills from his bag; his previous stock of non-sequential cash was more useful here than Federation electronic credits.

Slap.

Twenty thousand was slapped onto the blood-stained tray.

"I want to change a pump."

Chen Mo pulled open his raincoat, revealing the mechanical heart interface on his chest that was frantically flashing a red light. "Nuclear-powered."

The sound of the electric saw stopped.

The bald man slowly turned around.

The eyes hidden behind the gas mask lenses stared intently at the device on Chen Mo's chest.

"The Special Investigation Bureau's latest 'Tyrant' series?"

The bald man's voice was somewhat surprised. "Only the highest-level Executioners among those mad dogs are qualified to be fitted with this thing. Which captain did you kill to strip this off?"

"This wasn't stripped off."

Chen Mo pointed to his heart. "It grew inside."

The bald man fell silent for two seconds.

Suddenly, he raised the electric saw in his hand and swung it violently toward Chen Mo!

Zzzzt—!

The high-speed rotating teeth headed straight for Chen Mo's neck.

Chen Mo didn't dodge.

He didn't have the strength to dodge anymore.

But he had bet correctly.

The electric saw stopped just one centimeter from his neck.

The fierce wind made his skin sting.

"Got guts."

The bald man turned off the saw and tossed it aside. "I like lunatics who aren't afraid of death."

He took off the gas mask, revealing an ugly face covered in scars, and grinned at Chen Mo, showing a mouthful of black and yellow teeth.

"I have nuclear pumps. Stripped them from a crashed military transport plane before. They're second-hand, but they've got kick."

The bald man pointed to the safe in the corner. "Five hundred thousand."

"I don't have that much money," Chen Mo said.

"Then use something as collateral."

The bald man's gaze fell on Chen Mo's left arm. "This mechanical arm is decent. Li Chunfeng's craftsmanship, right? Modifications from an old monster like that are out of print on the market now. Take it off for me, and I'll install the heart for free."

"I can't give you this hand."

Chen Mo shook his head. "But I have better news that's worth the price."

"Oh?" The bald man raised an eyebrow. "What news is more valuable than Li Chunfeng's craftsmanship?"

Chen Mo leaned in closer.

His vision began to blur, and his body swayed precariously.

"Wang Daoming is dead."

Chen Mo spoke softly, "I killed him."

The bald man's pupils instantly contracted to the size of needlepoints.

The entire clinic fell into a deathly silence.

Even the wounded man screaming on the operating table seemed frozen by this chill, his mouth open but unable to make a sound.

A few seconds later.

The bald man suddenly erupted into a fit of wild laughter.

"Hahahaha! Good! Good! Good!"

He laughed until tears came out, truly excited, carrying a sense of pleasure from a long-awaited revenge. "That old bastard is finally dead! I've waited ten years for this day!"

He grabbed the collapsing Chen Mo and dragged him like a dead dog to another empty operating table.

"I'm taking this job! For free!"

The bald man roared, pulling a giant syringe from a cabinet. "Endure it. I don't use anesthesia. This heart has a strong rejection reaction; if the pain doesn't kill you, consider yourself lucky!"

"Wait..."

Chen Mo grabbed the bald man's wrist and said with his last bit of strength, "Outside... someone is looking for me..."

"Don't worry."

The bald man patted Chen Mo's face and aimed the thick needle at his chest. "Once you enter my Walled City, even if the king yama comes, he has to register first."

Puchi.

The needle pierced in.

Darkness instantly swallowed Chen Mo's consciousness.

But in the second before he lost awareness, he seemed to hear Ruan Qiushui's voice.

"Chen Mo, the crystal chip... that crystal chip is getting hot..."

"It seems to be... resonating with something here."

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