284: How much is your brain worth?

Chapter 284: How Much is Your Brain Worth? "We're here."

Chen Mo pushed the door open and entered.

The shop was deep, resembling an air-raid shelter.

Shelves on both sides were cluttered with various items: chipped katanas, still-beating bionic hearts, unknown blue potions, and even a few torn-off face skins.

There was no one behind the counter.

Only a black cat with a mechanical prosthetic eye crouched on the cash register, staring coldly at Chen Mo.

"What do you want?"

The voice came from above Chen Mo's head.

Chen Mo looked up.

An old man in a Mao suit was hanging upside down from the ceiling like a spider, using four long mechanical legs on his back.

He was repairing a broken chandelier, the welding torch in his hand spitting blue flames.

"I'm looking for something," Chen Mo said.

"Everyone who enters this door is looking for something."

The old man didn't look at him, continuing to weld the circuit. "Turn left to buy, turn right to pawn. If you don't want to die, take your hand off the hilt of your knife."

Chen Mo released his hand from the Butterfly Knife at his waist.

But it was just a feint.

His left mechanical arm was constantly charging; if the old man made any suspicious move, he could smash that counter within 0.5 seconds.

"I want to redeem something."

Chen Mo stared at the old man. "A piece of data."

"Data?"

The old man stopped his work, his mechanical legs retracted, and he floated lightly back down behind the counter.

He wore thick-bottomed glasses; one eye behind the lenses was a grayish-white vitreous body, and the other was a precision infrared lens.

"In this day and age, data is cheaper than life."

The old man picked up a rag and wiped his hands. "Every day, dozens of people pawn their memory chips just for a couple of stimulants. Which segment are you looking for? Do you have the pawn ticket?"

"I don't have a pawn ticket."

Chen Mo pointed at his temple. "But I can sense it's here."

"Sense it?"

The old man laughed, the wrinkles on his face bunching together like a piece of dried orange peel.

"Young man, that's your prosthetic hallucination. Did you just get a heart transplant? Rejection can make your mind fuzzy. Turn left outside, there's a place selling hallucinogens. Go take a few puffs and you'll be fine."

"It's right there."

Chen Mo raised his hand and pointed at a safe behind the old man. "Ruan Qiushui."

Hearing those three words, the old man's hand-wiping motion paused.

In that instant, Chen Mo heard an extremely faint sound of a servo motor turning.

That was the sound of a weapon warming up.

There was a turret hidden under the old man's counter.

"Do you know what you're saying?"

The old man's voice turned cold, and that infrared prosthetic eye began to zoom rapidly. "In this Ghost Market, some names are not to be mentioned."

"She is calling me."

Chen Mo took a step forward, the hydraulic rod in his left arm emitting a low hum. "Name your price."

The old man stared at Chen Mo for a full ten seconds.

Suddenly, he slammed the rag onto the table.

"Not for sale."

The old man turned around, his back to Chen Mo. "That thing is a hot potato. Someone stored it here ten years ago as a permanent pawn. That person said unless he came to get it himself, anyone who touched it would die."

"Who was that person?"

"Dead."

The old man's tone was indifferent. "Dead for a long time. So this thing belongs to me now. I don't want to sell it, and you can't afford it."

"What if I insist?"

Chen Mo's hand rested on the knife hilt again.

The atmosphere froze instantly.

The black cat arched its back and let out a sharp hiss.

Just then, the shop door was pushed open.

"Boss! Has the goods arrived?"

An arrogant voice broke the stalemate.

Entering was a mercenary wearing exoskeleton armor, holding a rotary machine gun that was still smoking.

Behind him followed two porters carrying crates.

This person didn't look at Chen Mo at all, pushing straight to the counter and slamming the machine gun onto the surface, startling the black cat into jumping onto a shelf.

"That batch of armor-piercing rounds I ordered last time, get them out! I'm in a hurry to kill someone!"

The mercenary shouted loudly, spit flying everywhere.

The old man frowned and ignored him, still staring at Chen Mo.

"Hey! You old fossil! I'm talking to you!"

The mercenary grew impatient and turned to glare at Chen Mo. "What are you looking at? Haven't you seen which path I walk? Get lost!"

Saying that, he reached out with his large, armor-covered hand, intending to push Chen Mo away.

Chen Mo did not move.

But the Nuclear Heart in his chest suddenly gave a heavy thud.

Thump!

The overloaded energy pushed his neural reaction speed to the limit in that instant.

A millisecond before the mercenary's hand touched his shoulder, Chen Mo acted.

It was a grab that could not even be captured by the naked eye.

Crack.

A crisp sound of snapping.

The mercenary's wrist snapped backward at a ninety-degree angle, and white bone shards pierced through the skin and the gaps in the exoskeleton, exposing themselves.

"Argh—!"

The scream was stifled as soon as it left his mouth.

Because Chen Mo's left hand had already seized his throat, lifting him up with one hand.

That heavy set of exoskeleton armor seemed weightless in Chen Mo's hand.

"Too noisy,"

Chen Mo said softly.

He felt a bit unable to control this power.

The blood pumped by his heart was like high explosives, burning his brain and making him dizzy, wanting only to destroy every living thing in front of him.

The mercenary struggled desperately, his other hand reaching for a grenade at his waist.

Chen Mo's eyes turned cold.

His fingers tightened.

Squish.

It was the sound of crushing a tomato.

The mercenary's neck went limp, and his head slumped powerlessly.

Chen Mo let go.

The corpse slumped onto the floor like a pile of mud.

The two porters behind were terrified; they dropped the crates and turned to run, scrambling out of the shop door.

Chen Mo shook the blood off his hand and looked back at the old man.

"Quiet now,"

He said, "Name a price."

The old man looked at the corpse on the floor; that was a famous local mercenary leader, wearing the latest military individual armor.

But in the hands of this young man, he was like a paper toy.

"Tsk."

The old man adjusted his glasses. "You've dirtied my floor; the cleaning fee won't be cheap."

Though he said that, his originally tense infrared prosthetic eye relaxed.

In the Ghost Market, strength is the pass.

"Li Chunfeng's craftsmanship."

The old man's gaze fell on Chen Mo's left arm. "And a Nuclear Heart from the Special Investigation Bureau. Are you that 'Ghost' Chen Mo, who is being wanted across the city?"

Chen Mo neither admitted nor denied it.

"Interesting."

The old man turned and quickly entered a sequence of commands on the safe's keypad. "Since you are Li Chunfeng's masterpiece, then perhaps this thing is destined to belong to you."

Click.

The safe opened.

The old man took out a lead-black metal box from inside and placed it on the counter.

"This thing has been stored for ten years. The owner was a woman."

The old man tapped the box. "She said if one day, someone who can hear a heartbeat comes looking for it, I should hand it over."

Can hear a heartbeat.

Chen Mo's heart skipped a beat.

"What kind of person was Ruan Qiushui when she was still alive?" he suddenly asked.

"A person?"

The old man gave a weird laugh. "Who told you she was a 'person'?"

Chen Mo was stunned.

Before he could ask further, the old man pushed the box in front of him.

"Take it and get out. As long as this thing is with me, I can't sleep well for a single day. Now it's your trouble."

Chen Mo reached for the box.

The moment his fingertips touched the box,

Zzzzt—!

A strong current of electricity shot straight from his fingers to his head.

"Warning! Core Code Fragment detected!"

Ruan Qiushui's voice screamed in his mind, the pain and fear exceeding anything before. "Don't open it! It's... it's a trap! It's a prison!"

Chen Mo's hand froze.

"What?" The old man looked at him with a half-smile. "Don't dare to take it?"

Chen Mo took a deep breath, forcing down the sharp pain in his head.

He grabbed the box and stuffed it into his backpack.

"How much?"

"No charge."

The old man waved his hand. "But I have one condition."

"Speak."

"The heart you're wearing right now won't last more than three days."

The old man pointed at Chen Mo's chest. "In three days, if you're still alive, take what's in this box to the top floor of the 'Ladder'. An old friend is waiting for it there."

"And if I die?"

"Then you'll be a burial object for this box."

After saying that, the old man jumped back onto the ceiling and continued welding his lamp. "Get out. Black Skin's brothers are probably already on their way. Don't die in front of my shop."

Chen Mo turned and left.

Just as he stepped over the threshold, he heard the old man say eerily behind him:

"Remember, don't believe a single word that AI tells you. Sometimes, the dead are better at lying than the living."

Chen Mo paused for a moment but didn't look back.

He charged into the curtain of rain and vanished back into the darkness.

The metal box in his backpack felt heavy, not just because of its weight, but because it was emitting a bone-chilling cold through the fabric, like a living thing.

And in his mind, Ruan Qiushui had gone completely silent.

That dead silence was more unsettling than the screaming.

Chen Mo felt as if he weren't carrying a storage device, but a still-beating brain.

"Ladder..."

He looked at the distant giant tower piercing the clouds, brilliantly lit.

That was the center of power in Sin City, and the source of all evil.

Thump.

His heart struck his chest cavity heavily again.

Three days.

The countdown had begun.

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