103: Chapter 103 Requires an Underground Pass?

"Slow down," Chen Chen said, tapping the back of Jiang Yanxue's seat.

Jiang Yanxue reduced the speed to forty yards as the Ghost Fortress slowly approached the East Gate.

The hum of the chassis's electric arcs sounded exceptionally piercing in the silence of the Rusted Waste City's outskirts.

The two guards at the gate nearly dropped their rifles when they saw this steel behemoth hovering in mid-air.

One of them, an older man in his forties with a face full of scars, had a rusted metal nameplate hanging around his neck engraved with "East Gate Duty - Squad 7."

He raised a tattered red flag, signaling for them to stop.

Chen Chen rolled down the window.

"Outsiders?" The scarred guard's voice was tight, his eyes constantly darting toward the Ghost Fortress's armor.

"Register. Name, number of people, vehicle type, and purpose of entry."

"Six people. One vehicle." Chen Chen rested his arm on the window frame.

"Coming in to buy some things."

"Six..."

The scarred guard poked his head in to glance into the cabin.

Then, his expression underwent a very interesting transformation.

First, he saw Shen Wanbing in the passenger seat, wearing a turtleneck and black stockings, and he froze for a moment.

Looking further back, he saw Shen Wanxing, Jiang Yanxue, and Blood Rose—his Adam's apple bobbed twice.

Finally, his gaze landed on Su Xiaoqi, who was gnawing on meat, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

"You... brought five women by yourself?"

"Six," Chen Chen corrected. "There's one more upstairs."

The scarred guard fell silent for three seconds.

The younger guard next to him leaned in and lowered his voice:

"Old Zhou, this vehicle isn't right... it's hovering, no wheels. I've seen similar tech in other camps; that's at least an A-grade power system."

The greasy smile on the scarred guard named Old Zhou vanished completely.

He took a step back, his attitude changing.

"Sir, there are a few rules in the city. First, no attacking registered residents in the Trade Zone. Second, the underground area is a restricted zone; outsiders without a passage permit from the Council are not allowed to enter. Third—"

He pointed to several machine guns on the city wall.

"—the city defense system is auto-locking. It won't fire on those registered as 'friendly.' But if you're marked as 'hostile'..."

He didn't finish, but the meaning was clear.

Chen Chen glanced at the machine guns on the wall.

Old triple-barreled rapid-fire cannons; the caliber wasn't large, and the fire density was average.

Against the Ghost Fortress's 8,500 defense points plus three layers of energy shields, it wouldn't even count as a tickle.

But there was no need to make a scene.

"Let's register then."

Old Zhou pulled an electronic nameplate and an oil-based pen from his pocket and handed them through the window.

"Fill in any name. Hang the plate on the front of the vehicle. Once inside, the Trade Zone is on the East District main street; you'll find resource trading, intelligence brokers, and mercenary hiring. The Council Building is on the north side of the Central Plaza; if you have business, find the Council."

Chen Chen took the nameplate and scribbled two words on it.

Ghost.

He hung it on the front bumper's guard.

The iron gate rose slowly amidst the roar of hydraulic jacks.

The Ghost Fortress rolled over the threshold and entered the Rusted Waste City.

The scene inside the city was much richer than outside.

Though the buildings flanking the main street were dilapidated, almost all the first floors had been converted into various functional areas.

There were simple stalls made of sheet metal displaying scavenged parts and weapon accessories; there were "taverns" with hand-written cloth signs, from which noisy voices drifted;

There was even an area enclosed by tents with two burly men carrying sledgehammers standing at the entrance; the tents had "Arena—Life-and-Death Combat · Bet to Enter" written in red paint.

People were walking on the streets.

Not many, just in small groups.

Most wore tattered protective suits or patched clothing, carried weapons, and looked alert.

As the Ghost Fortress drove past, everyone stopped in their tracks.

The visual impact of a twenty-six-and-a-half-ton hovering steel beast moving through the narrow streets of the wasteland city was immense.

The blue electric arcs of the chassis almost brushed against the gravel on the ground, and the dark gold armor plates reflected a metallic luster in the morning light.

Some people dropped what they were holding and ran.

Others stood frozen, mouths agape, forgetting to close them.

Chen Chen's attention was on scanning the stalls along the street.

"Ammo." He pointed to a stall enclosed with wire mesh ahead to the left.

A bald, burly man sat behind the stall with several crates of ammunition piled beside him.

Chen Chen's gaze swept over—there were standard caliber rifle rounds, shotgun shells, and several ammo belts wrapped in oil paper.

"Stop for a moment."

Jiang Yanxue parked the vehicle next to the stall.

Chen Chen pushed open the armored door and stepped out.

His combat boots crunched on the gravel ground, and the Rift-Sky Gravity Ship-Slayer Blade at his waist swayed slightly with his steps, its purple patterns exceptionally prominent in the dim light.

The bald man was sharpening a hunting knife and looked up when he heard the movement.

The moment he saw Chen Chen, his hand stopped.

"Do you have 30mm armor-piercing rounds?"

"I do... how many rounds?"

"How many do you have?"

"Two thousand rounds. It's old stock."

"I'll take them all. What's the price?"

The bald man quoted a price.

Eight intermediate vehicle cores, or equivalent resources.

Chen Chen fished a fist-sized high-level Aberrant essence core from his storage ring and set it on the wire mesh counter.

The bald man's pupils dilated sharply.

He had been in the business long enough to recognize the grade at a glance—it was a core from at least a peak Aberrant-level, with energy purity so high it glowed.

"Is this enough?"

"Enough, more than enough!" The bald man scrambled to tuck the core into his shirt, then bent down to pull out ten crates of armor-piercing ammo belts from a metal box behind him, stacking them on the counter.

"Please, count them!"

Chen Chen gave them a quick look.

The belts were intact, the packaging unopened, and the primers weren't rusted.

"Load them onto the vehicle."

The bald man glanced at the Ghost Fortress's heavy armored door and hesitated for half a second.

Jiang Yanxue leaned halfway out of the cabin, her dark red pupils sweeping over him.

Without a word, the bald man hoisted the ammo and began delivering it to the vehicle.

With the two thousand armor-piercing rounds loaded, plus the remaining twelve hundred, they had a total of three thousand two hundred rounds.

It wasn't exactly abundant, but it was enough to last through the battles beneath the Rusted Waste City.

Just as Chen Chen was about to get back in, Shen Wanbing's voice came through the comms.

"Wait. To your right, at three o'clock, that stall with the blue cloth strips."

Chen Chen turned his head.

A small figure wrapped in a heavy cloak was squatting behind a low stone table.

On the stone table lay several irregularly shaped metal ingots; they were dark in color, with faint energy patterns flowing across their surfaces.

"The energy signatures of those metal pieces—"

Shen Wanbing's speech quickened slightly, "—highly match the casing material of an A-grade high-energy nuclear reactor."

Chen Chen changed direction.

He walked to the blue-strip stall and looked down at the metal ingots on the stone table.

The figure under the cloak looked up.

It was a grayish-white face covered in fine scales.

A bony ridge protruded from the bridge of its nose, and it had two vertical-slit eyes on either side with dark green irises.

Its lips were very thin, stretching back toward its jawline.

A non-human.

"Buy?"

It spoke in a stiff human tongue, accompanied by a hissing sibilance.

Chen Chen crouched down to meet its gaze.

"Where did this come from?"

The non-human merchant patted the largest metal ingot on the stone table with a three-fingered hand.

"Underground factory. Very deep. Many bugs."

It tilted its head, a flash of shrewdness in its vertical pupils.

"You go underground?"

Chen Chen didn't respond.

The non-human merchant hissed out a laugh and pulled a palm-sized, scratched metal plate from beneath its cloak.

"Council's Underground Passage Permit. Without this—"

It made a throat-slitting motion with its three fingers.

"City defense system kills you."

In the comms, Shen Wanbing's voice rang out coldly:

"It's not lying. I scanned three sets of high-energy defense arrays near the underground entrance. Their specs are two tiers higher than those junk machine guns on the wall. Without a permit, you'll be focused down if you try to force your way in."

Chen Chen stared at the passage permit in the merchant's hand.

"Where did you get this?"

"Hehe." The merchant lifted the permit to its nose and sniffed it.

"Missions. Council missions. Bring things up from underground for them, they give tokens."

"What kind of missions?"

The merchant waved three fingers in the air.

"Ask at the Council. I'm just a small merchant selling things."

It patted the metal ingot on the stone table.

"Buy or not? If not, don't block my business."

Chen Chen stood up and turned back toward the Ghost Fortress.

The moment the armored door closed, Shen Wanbing's holographic projection had already switched to a map of the Central Plaza.