"I was thinking of buying some to try out. Since you guys already know about them, do me a favor and bring me a batch," the burly car merchant said, clearly tempted.
"A large batch probably isn't possible," one of the adventurers replied. "Those bullets are strictly rationed. It doesn't matter how high you bid—their production capacity is probably just too limited."
"Heh. If that weren't the case, I reckon the Ash Alliance would've counterattacked Trash City by now."
"Shh!" The merchant hastily shushed them both. "There aren't any surveillance lines back here, but they've added a lot of drone patrols lately. We still need to be careful."
Startled, the two adventurers immediately snapped their mouths shut.
Ultimately, the merchant was the one who killed the topic.
"Sigh. No matter how strong the weapons are, it's useless. The Main Brain always rolls out targeted upgrades in no time. How could our human brains ever compare?"
At those words, the two previously excited adventurers fell into a sullen silence.
Although they lived in Trash City, the fact that they hadn't accepted implanted chips proved that, deep down, they couldn't truly submit to the rule of a mechanical intelligence.
At worst, they would just wait for Trash City to achieve absolute victory before implanting the chips.
The two parties quickly concluded their transaction, and the adventurers departed.
Du An, wearing goggles and a windproof mask, walked up to the merchant. "Do you have any vehicles with good off-road capabilities?"
"Of course. I've got them ranging from 10 points all the way to 100. What's your budget?"
"Around 50 points. It just needs to seat two people," Du An said calmly.
The burly man pulled out a digital tablet. "Let's look at the display models first. Once something catches your eye, I'll take you to see the real thing."
Du An wasn't picky. He quickly selected a four-wheeled armored off-road vehicle priced at 48 points.
However, he paused right before transferring the points. "Did you guys mention something about Trojan Bullets just now?"
The merchant's gaze instantly turned sharp.
When he was talking to his previous customers, this man had clearly been across the street. They had spoken so quietly—how could he possibly have heard them?
The merchant didn't consider the possibility of superhuman hearing. "Were you eavesdropping on us with a listening device?"
"No," Du An replied, paying no mind to the merchant's sudden hostility. He maintained his placid tone. "You were just a little excited earlier, which allowed me to overhear a few interesting words."
After speaking, Du An deliberately flashed the balance on his Smartwatch to the merchant.
Over seventy points.
The man's eyes immediately softened. "Yeah. A new type of bullet popped up in the West District. They're sold very secretively and the price is high, but the power is solid, so quite a few people want to try them out."
"Can you describe their power?" Du An asked.
"Well, I've only heard rumors." The merchant shared the information he knew with Du An.
It was all semi-public information. He didn't tell Du An about things like purchasing channels.
That wasn't free information.
Although the man didn't explicitly say anything, Du An understood what he meant.
"Including the car, I'll give you fifty points. Where can I buy them?"
Pleased that Du An knew how things worked, the man hurriedly told him the information worth two points.
Upon hearing this, Du An paid the points without hesitation and went with the man to pick up the vehicle.
Once he drove the armored vehicle he had just learned to operate out of Trash City, Du An tossed the Smartwatch out the window.
Easy come, easy go; it didn't hurt to spend free points.
It was just that payments in Trash City were all made in virtual currency. If someone detected an anomaly in the account and tracked him down, it would be somewhat troublesome.
The Shattered Realm wasn't a place one could just visit on a whim. Du An had no intention of wasting his accumulated merits on dealing with minor annoyances.
As for the possibility of tracking devices on the vehicle?
First, the merchant's vehicles were of dubious origin; they wouldn't have any official tracking chips.
Second, Du An was, after all, a former General of the highly advanced Ring World. Taking control of mid-to-low-end technological products like this was a breeze for him.
While Du An was driving toward the West District of the Trash Realm, Li Ban's group finally crossed into Yanzhou.
Yanzhou was vast and sparsely populated, its area roughly equal to the combined size of Weizhou and Yuezhou.
Furthermore, Yanzhou suffered from sweltering summers and freezing winters. Resources were relatively scarce, making life quite harsh for the ordinary people living there.
Yanzhou's terrain was also relatively elevated.
Li Ban felt that their carriage had been going constantly uphill during the latter half of the journey, leaving their two fine steeds utterly exhausted.
Not long after entering Yanzhou, they heard the roaring sound of rushing water, letting them know they were about to see the River of Helplessness.
However, when he actually saw the River of Helplessness, Li Ban was rather surprised.
The River of Helplessness was completely walled off by an impossibly tall dam that stretched beyond the horizon.
He could only hear its roar; he could not see its form.
"They really walled it off tight!" Li Ban said, standing outside the carriage and staring at the towering wall along the bank. "If I didn't know better, I'd think they were trying to prevent a foreign invasion."
Deng Jun had previously operated mostly within Yu Province, Langzhou, and Tu Province, so he had seen the River of Helplessness a few times.
Hearing that it was Li Ban's first time seeing the River of Helplessness, he eagerly offered, "Lord Li, we're running low on water in the carriage. Let's go over there and fetch some."
Li Ban wanted to get a closer look anyway, so he nodded. "Alright."
The carriage changed direction, heading toward the majestic long wall that looked like the boundary of the heavens.
There was a water collection point every few thousand meters along the wall. Though they were called collection points, they were actually just wells with filtration nets added at the bottom.
A wooden bucket hung beside the well.
Perhaps because there were no households nearby, this collection point hadn't been used much, and a layer of dust had settled on the wooden bucket.
Considering himself a humble lackey, Deng Jun had taken it upon himself to handle all these chores.
He stepped forward, shook the dust off the bucket, and tossed it into the well.
Once it was in, he swayed the rope in his hands back and forth, allowing the bucket to take on water and sink naturally.
After the rim of the bucket sank below the water's surface, he gave it another shake and began pulling it up to avoid scooping up the mud and sand at the bottom.
However, when he shook the bucket just now, it seemed to bump into something.
Although the wooden bucket was successfully hauled up, it also snagged the object it had bumped into.
A shattered, white skeleton floated up from the bottom of the well.
"Uh, how about we go to the next collection point? It's only a few li away anyway."
While finding a corpse in a wilderness well wasn't exactly strange, seeing one while drawing water was still quite unnerving.
"It's fine. The bones are already white. Who knows how many years it's been down there. Besides, it's not stagnant water," Li Ban said, unfazed.
Having spent three years in the Death Prison, he no longer had any taboos about the dead.
Deng Jun naturally didn't care either. He was just about to ask Shi Ming for his thoughts when he realized the young man was gone.
Looking left and right, he was stunned to discover that Shi Ming had, at some unknown point, climbed up the dam.
His hands struggled to grip the upper edge of the dam, and his feet planted on the uneven stones as he fought to push himself upward.
Li Ban simply flashed over and grabbed Shi Ming by the collar. In the next moment, they appeared together at the top of the dam.
There was also a half-zhang wide walkway atop the dam.
Standing on the walkway, they could see the waters of the River of Helplessness surging violently toward the Unreturning Place further north.
Yet, the terrain of the Unreturning Place was clearly higher in elevation.
For a river to flow upward from a lower point defied natural law. It could only be attributed to the power of a Great Wizard.
The river crashed against the dam. Occasionally, corpses would be churned to the surface before swiftly sinking back down.
Unlike the River of Forgetfulness, the River of Helplessness wasn't as wide, nor was it blanketed in vision-obscuring fog.
However, the water was extremely murky. Grays, yellows, and reds churned back and forth within it, filling anyone who looked at it with a profound sense of unease.
Perhaps it was the raw souls beneath its surface growing restless.
Across the River of Helplessness was the Mist Zone. The mist in the Mist Zone was a dreary gray. It looked thin, but it actually possessed incredibly strong isolating properties.
Even using his right eye, Li Ban couldn't see what lay behind the fog.
It was a forbidden land in the Nine Provinces, yet it might be even vaster than the Nine Provinces themselves.
Li Ban withdrew his gaze and noticed that Shi Ming had been staring blankly for quite some time.
"What are you looking at?" Li Ban asked.
Since being brought onto the dam, Shi Ming had kept his head bowed, staring into the waters of the River of Helplessness.
"I heard the River of Helplessness is also called Severed Ties. If an ordinary person falls into the river, they'll forget everything from their past life and become a new person, as pure as a newborn infant."
"That's probably just them getting their bodies snatched by the raw souls inside the River of Helplessness," Li Ban replied.
Shi Ming had been feeling sentimental, wondering if his lack of past memories had something to do with the River of Helplessness, and if his previous abandonment in Yu Province was because someone didn't want him coming into contact with the river.
But a single deduction from Li Ban instantly wiped away all his sentimentality, leaving him feeling somewhat terrified.
"Ah? Body snatched?"
Li Ban thought to himself, 'Downloading from the Laboratory is also a form of body snatching. Only, the body being snatched is a soulless corpse.'
He looked at the dumbstruck Shi Ming, wondering if this person had also snatched the original Shi Ming's body. If so, Shi Ming's family wouldn't like him, yet wouldn't be able to bear harming the physical body, resulting in them leaving him to fend for himself.
However, that kind of storyline leaned more toward ordinary families.
Even the Priest knew Shi Ming, so his identity shouldn't be ordinary.
Having seen the River of Helplessness with his own eyes, Li Ban prepared to head back down, but as he turned, he noticed Shi Ming still hesitating.
"You aren't thinking of jumping in, are you?"
Shi Ming bared his teeth. "Not anymore."
No matter who he really was or why he had lost his memories, Shi Ming quite liked his current body. He had no desire to surrender it so easily to some raw soul in the river.
When Li Ban flashed back into the carriage with Shi Ming, Deng Jun had already returned with the drawn water.
As for the skeleton, he had tossed it right back down the well.
By the time Du An arrived at the West District of the Trash Realm, the battle here had already come to a close.
Trash City's mecha warriors were beginning to withdraw, and the already fractured Ash Alliance scattered back into smaller squads.
The West District had originally been a massive city as well, but through multiple wars, it had been reduced to ruins.
The members of the Ash Alliance relied on the sprawling underground subway system to fight a guerrilla war against Trash City, and they usually lived and rested down there as well.
Du An ditched his vehicle outside the West District and followed a squad of people inside.
After passing through the West District's gates, the people ahead looked at Du An warily, clearly on guard against him.
Du An's expression didn't change. He simply turned his head and walked down another street.
Only then did the squad ahead feel relieved enough to continue moving forward.
None of them noticed, however, that an invisible shadow was currently clinging to the back of the last person in their group, moving forward right alongside them.
Du An waited a moment before emerging from a different path, trailing far behind the group.
On his way here, he had seen these people using Trojan Bullets. Figuring that they had come to the West District to restock, he had deliberately followed them.
The people ahead had long since disappeared from sight, but Du An wasn't in a rush. He simply walked while observing the layout of the West District.
Before long, the people Du An was tracking easily navigated their way to the person selling the Trojan Bullets.
The seller was a mechanic.
He was armed with a gun, and spare magazines were strapped around his waist. Only one of them was a genuine spare; the rest were his merchandise.
When Du An arrived, the people he was following were currently haggling with the merchant.
Their main goal was to buy a larger batch.
Meanwhile, the dark shadow clinging to the back of their squad member had already transferred onto the merchant's back.
Seeing this, Du An turned a corner and slipped into the next street.
He waited until the next morning. The Trojan Bullet merchant seemed to have finished his duties, as he sneaked underground to rendezvous with someone, giving the other party seventy percent of his earnings.
Little did they know, during the handoff of the money, the dark shadow on the merchant's back transferred once again to the other person's back.
After securing the money, the contact immediately left the West District, speeding away on a motorcycle.
Du An followed him out of the West District. "To think the person supplying the bullets to the West District actually came from somewhere else—I ditched my car too early."
He looked around and spotted two sneaky-looking individuals. "I suppose I'll just buy another one."
The dark shadow couldn't move too far away from Du An. Even though he bought a motorcycle as quickly as he could, he still ended up losing his target halfway there.
However, having chased the trail this far, he wasn't about to give up.
He was already a long way from the West District, and with no one else around, the target shouldn't be taking any more detours.
Du An drove straight along the road, traveling almost continuously from morning until night. Along the way, he passed by numerous abandoned architectural complexes, but he didn't catch sight of his target.
Just as Du An was beginning to wonder if he had driven too far, a figure suddenly appeared in front of him.
More accurately, a squad of people.
A burly man standing over two meters tall and several warriors were dragging two beasts and a pile of parts packed in metal netting as they trekked north.
Du An recognized those people.
The first time he came to the Trash Realm, he had seen several dozen people near the location where Chen Dong's divine soul fluctuations were detected.
To prevent the possibility that Chen Dong was hiding among them, Du An had carefully sensed each of their divine souls, but none of them was the soul he was looking for.
Therefore, after inspecting them, Du An had left the area. He had assumed he arrived a step too late, allowing Chen Dong's divine soul to escape.
Yet, as he traced the origins of the Trojan Bullets, he unexpectedly ran into these exact people once again.
The first encounter could be written off as a coincidence, but what about the second?
After hearing the others describe the Trojan Bullets, Du An realized that the ability attached to them was extremely similar to the Virus element he had introduced into the Ring World.
Du An suspected that Chen Dong wasn't the only one who had fallen into the Trash Realm.
The Leader might have landed here as well.
After all, the Virus Element from back then had entered the Leader's cranial domain.
Then what about Chen Dong?
Could he be by the Leader's side?
Chen Dong was a fiercely loyal General, after all.
Du An changed direction, trailing Luca's group from a great distance.
He made sure not to follow too closely. Naturally, he wasn't afraid of being discovered by Luca and his men, but he was worried about beating the grass to startle the snake, causing the Leader and Chen Dong to go into hiding once again.
Because of this, after following for a while, he lost track of Luca's group once more.
However, Du An wasn't anxious. He knew for a fact there had to be a hidden base right here; his targets were hiding somewhere nearby.