6: Chapter 6 Handing it over to the state

He tightly clasped the gold nugget against his chest, clamped the shovel under his armpit, and looked as disheveled as if he had been dug out of a garbage dump.

At this point, the countdown for the portal had less than ten seconds remaining.

[ 00:00:10 ]

Blue patterns spread from the soles of his feet, and the familiar circular pattern lit up once again.

[ 00:00:03 ]

[ 00:00:02 ]

[ 00:00:01 ]

The blue light surged violently, and the world spun.

This time he had experience; he gritted his teeth, locked his grip on the gold nugget, and clamped the shovel handle under his armpit, locking it with his elbow.

His body was pulled, squeezed, and reconstructed—

Boom.

His feet landed on the ground.

The familiar smell of mold and instant noodles hit him in the face.

The rented apartment.

The curtains were still drawn, the power rationing had not passed yet, and the room was pitch black.

Su Mingyuan looked down—the gold nugget was still in his arms, weighing thirty to forty catties, heavy and aching his ribs.

The shovel leaned against his legs, its head still stained with the black crude oil of the Otherworld.

He brought it back.

He brought everything back.

He slowly squatted down, placed the gold nugget on the floor, leaned the shovel against the wall, and then collapsed onto the floor, panting heavily.

His heart pounded wildly for a full two minutes before slowly calming down.

Right at this moment, a new piece of text emerged in his vision, longer than any previous time, unfolding line by line and glowing with a faint blue light:

[ Detected that the host has completed the first cross-border round-trip Transmigration. ]

[ System binding program initiated... ]

[ Binding complete. Host: Su Mingyuan. Status: Permanent binding. ]

[ Temporary portal Formation has been upgraded—portal (temporary type). ]

[ portal characteristics: Side effects (dizziness, vomiting) significantly reduced. ]

[ Carrying non-living matter during Transmigration: No upper limit. ]

[ Countdown to the next portal opening: 72:00:00 ]

Su Mingyuan stared at the last line.

Seventy-two hours.

In other words, three days later, he could enter that Otherworld full of oil and gold once again.

Furthermore—there was no upper limit to carrying non-living matter across during Transmigration.

What did this mean?

It meant he could bring barrels over to load oil, sacks over to load gold sand, and pushcarts over to transport Ore.

As long as he wanted, he could move a batch of resources back from that world every three days.

The corners of Su Mingyuan's mouth curled upward involuntarily.

He looked down at the gold nugget on the ground, then at the "72:00:00" countdown in his vision, and an unprecedented sense of security rose from the soles of his feet, like soaking in a hot spring in a snowy world.

Thirty-two hundred thousand online loans? Paid off.

Rent? Paid.

Zhou Kaiwen? Whatever.

Jiang Wanting? None of my damn business.

From today on, he, Su Mingyuan, would no longer have to live a life counting every five yuan and thirty-four cents.

As he was thinking this, a harsh honking suddenly came from outside the window.

"Woo—wah—woo—wah—"

An ambulance.

Su Mingyuan was stunned for a moment, got up, walked to the window, and looked down through the gap in the curtains.

A white ambulance was parked by the roadside downstairs, its rooftop warning lights flashing on and off, the red and blue light appearing exceptionally glaring in the gray smog.

Several emergency personnel in white coats were busy squatting on the ground, and a circle of people had already gathered around.

Some covered their mouths, some were making phone calls, and some stood there watching motionlessly.

A white cloth was spread on the ground.

A human-shaped outline bulged beneath the white cloth, and a pool of dark red liquid seeped from the edge, slowly spreading across the cement ground.

Su Mingyuan's pupils contracted sharply.

Someone jumped from a building again.

He instinctively looked up—on the rooftop of the residential building opposite, two people in uniforms were pulling up warning tape, the yellow tape snapping in the wind.

The murmurs of the onlookers were carried up by the wind, intermittently drilling into his ears.

"...Old Zhang on the third floor... from the chemical plant... laid off last month..."

"...I heard he owed over one hundred thousand, his wife took the kids back to her maiden home, and debt collectors blocked his door every day..."

"...Sigh, these days, living is harder than dying..."

Old Zhang, he knew him.

Not particularly close, but they were nodding acquaintances.

On the third floor of the opposite building, in his early forties, slightly plump, with a genial smile.

Yet now he was lying beneath the white cloth.

Su Mingyuan's Adam's apple bobbed up and down, and the excitement brought by the gold nugget and the portal System just now felt as if a basin of ice water had been poured over his head.

Just as he was about to close the curtains, his peripheral vision suddenly caught a sight—

On the sixth floor of the old building diagonally opposite, a window was pushed open.

A thin figure climbed over the windowsill.

Su Mingyuan's heart almost skipped a beat.

"Don't—!"

He instinctively shouted, but his voice was blown away by the wind and couldn't reach the opposite side at all.

The man was wearing blue-gray work clothes with messy hair, standing on the outer edge of the sixth-floor windowsill, clutching the window frame with both hands and looking down.

Someone downstairs noticed, and screams and shouts erupted— "Don't jump!"

"Someone is going to jump off the building again!"

"Quickly call 110!"

The emergency personnel looked up, their facial expressions drained of color.

Su Mingyuan's hands clutched tightly onto the window frame, his nails sinking into the cement crevices, and his entire body stiffened there, forgetting even to breathe.

The man stood on the windowsill for about ten-odd seconds, his body trembling violently, and the wind blew his loose work clothes like an old flag about to be torn apart.

Just as everyone's heart leaped into their throats.

Two hands suddenly reached out from the window, grabbing his arms tightly.

It was the neighbors who had broken the door open.

The two people pulled back with all their might, and the man struggled and shouted:

"I don't want to die—but I can't go on living—!"

This cry was like a needle, piercing straight into Su Mingyuan's temples.

Su Mingyuan slowly retreated back into the room, leaned against the wall, and slowly slid down to sit on the floor.

His eyes stared at the gold nugget on the floor, its golden surface reflecting the flashing red and blue lights of the ambulance outside the window.

Forty-two million.

Enough for him to eat and drink without worry for the rest of his life.

Enough for him to pay off all his debts, buy a house and a car, and let Zhou Kaiwen and Jiang Wanting see clearly who the real joke was.

But so what?

He alone had turned his fortunes around.

Old Zhang in the opposite building still died.

The man in work clothes on the sixth floor was pulled back to safety today, but what about tomorrow? What about the day after?

Out of the twenty-four households in his building, more than half were laid-off workers.

Aunt Li next door started picking up cardboard boxes and selling scrap last month, saying it was to save tuition money for her grandson.

Across Great Xia, a wave of manufacturing layoffs swept through every industrial zone; half of the chemical plants were closed, logistics dropped by thirty percent, and even the roadside breakfast stalls decreased by half—because oil was too expensive, flour had also risen, and what they earned wasn't enough for capital.

And the root cause of all this was four words—energy blockade.

Without oil, factories couldn't run.

Without natural gas, heating couldn't be turned on.

Without energy, electricity couldn't be generated, high-speed trains couldn't run, and logistics couldn't move.

The food, clothing, housing, and transportation of 1.4 billion people were all stuck on a single pipe.

And that pipe had been cut off by someone.

Su Mingyuan closed his eyes.

A thought formed in his mind.

This portal, this passage that could lead to an Otherworld full of oil and gold—

Should not belong to him alone.

If the oil over there was truly inexhaustible, if it could really be shipped back in large quantities—

Then this wasn't just an opportunity for one person to turn things around.

This was an opportunity for all of Great Xia to turn things around.

The fate of 1.4 billion people shouldn't be held in one person's hands.

Su Mingyuan took a deep breath.

He thought of a word, a word often joked about online, made into memes, and told as jokes by young people—

Handing it over to the state.

In the past, whenever he saw this word, he would laugh along.

Thinking it was stupid.

Thinking it was fake.

Thinking that anyone who actually handed valuable things over to the state was either a Saint or out of their mind.

But at this very moment, sitting in this moldy rented apartment, listening to the fading siren of the ambulance outside the window, and looking at the wet pool of blood at the edge of the white cloth downstairs—

He couldn't laugh anymore.

Beep... beep...

"Hello, this is the 110 alarm center, badge number xxx, how may I help you?"