Chapter 56: The Door to the New World Was Opened

Lights out, and the night deepened.

The straight black pillars merged with the night sky, losing all prominence.

Most shops along the street were closed, and vehicles and pedestrians on the road grew sparse.

Many worried people outside the Snack Street could no longer hold out to go home and wait for news; only a few individual figures remained, stubbornly keeping watch, but they could barely stand, so they found a place with a stone block a bit farther away to sit and wait.

Wang Xiuli sat on a stone block by the roadside, her eyelids drooping with drowsiness.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of many vehicles approaching, and a foul stench spread through the air.

She rubbed her eyes and looked toward the street: one sanitation garbage truck after another, and vehicles covered with black tarps, formed a long line, driving out of the night.

Like a bloated, stench-ridden arthropod insect, they slowly drove into the Snack Street.

Martial law soldiers moved aside the roadblocks, escorting the vehicles in, but sternly stopped several people who stepped forward to inquire.

The sound of guns being loaded was terrifyingly frightening, scaring off every thought of questioning.

Feng Mu hid farther away, in a darker and quieter diagonal alley, watching the long line of garbage trucks with equal suspicion, his heart full of bewilderment.

Until he saw those few vehicles covered with black tarps, slightly clumsy, and he suddenly understood everything.

Those were corpse carts from the Incineration Plant; they had all driven over.

Then, because Iron Bones no longer feared the cold, he suddenly shivered on the spot, feeling a chill run down his spine, every pore on his body emitting coolness.

He wondered suspiciously: "How many people had to die for even the corpse carts to be insufficient, requiring garbage trucks to transport them?"

One corpse cart could hold six bodies without problem, while one garbage truck could hold... dozens?

Feng Mu felt a chill in his heart; he even overlooked whether using garbage trucks to carry bodies was respectful, because compared to the possible number of dead, this seemed insignificant.

So many vehicles could fit all the people in the entire residential compound... right~

"Wait, surely not all of them died, so a whole residential compound is full of 【Destiny】's Extremist Members, all delivery couriers who got lost bringing me packages?"

Feng Mu could only use this roast to suppress the emotions surging in his heart—fear, or perhaps anger, he himself couldn't say.

He just looked up at the black pillar merged with the night sky, and in a daze felt that not only that black pillar, but the entire night sky had turned into a bloody dining table.

And that huge shadow above was sitting at the table, picking meat scraps and blood threads from between its teeth, an unprecedentedly terrifying monster.

The black pillar dissipated silently.

The barrier isolating the air disappeared, and a nauseating bloody smell surged toward the street like a wave—a stench that the fermented old filth of over a dozen garbage trucks could not cover.

Wang Xiuli and those people seemed to have their breath strangled by a hand, their faces turning deathly pale.

Through the night and distance, they couldn't see clearly, but vaguely saw those soldiers seemingly carrying heavy objects in pairs and throwing them onto the garbage trucks.

Some sanitation workers got off with large brooms and shovels; in a short while, they heard "shua shua shua" scraping sounds from the residential compound ground, and "hua hua hua" flowing water sounds.

The cleaning sounds were quite ordinary; when Wang Xiuli cleaned at home, she would make such sounds too.

But this time, her mind involuntarily conjured up nauseating images; her stomach, having eaten nothing all night, churned, and her throat surged as if she would vomit.

Those waiting like her seemed to tacitly associate the same images, one by one leaving in panic—who would dare wait here anymore?

Wang Xiuli was very timid; she hesitated for a while, then hid farther away.

Inside the residential compound, severed limbs and broken arms were everywhere, mixed together, indistinguishable.

Soldiers of the Investigation Corps, constable heads of the Patrol Bureau, Extremist Members of 【Destiny】, rootless Blank Citizens—at the moment of becoming minced flesh, they finally had no hostility, no class, blending into one puddle after another of rotten flesh, merrily swept and shoveled into the garbage trucks by brooms.

Old, shabby low-rise buildings seemed, overnight, to have been freely painted and beautified, all brushed into the same red.

"People, that's just the problem: no matter what skin they wear while alive, the blood that flows after death is the same color." The Special Commissioner stood before the doorway, inexplicably sighing with emotion.

He looked at the corpses piled on the ground; the top one was a scarred woman who, even in death, clutched a sword hilt, a pair of fierce eyes glaring upward.

"These people, to their deaths, wanted to climb up to the sky; clearly they were ants crawling on the ground, why insist on growing wings?" The Special Commissioner stroked the badge on his chest, his tone contemptuous.

Wang Yilin stood aside, keeping his mouth shut and not joining the conversation; he too was an ant climbing from the Lower City, but he had never fantasized about the sky—wasn't the Upper City's backside just as colorful as the sky?

Seeing no one respond, the Special Commissioner was not angry; he smiled and said: "Gather and piece together the corpses of the Extremist Members, fix them up for photos, so I can report merits for you all."

Wang Yilin understood this sentence and hurriedly agreed.

He gestured to Feng Ju and ordered: "Piece together those seven Extremist Member corpses."

Feng Ju stood in place, not moving at first, but discreetly glanced at the Special Commissioner's frowning expression, then plucked up courage to ask: "Bureau Chief Wang, there are more than seven here, right?"

Wang Yilin was stunned, and before he could speak, heard the Special Commissioner ask with a half-smile: "Then by your count, how many should there be?"

Feng Ju knew he had bet correctly; he saluted and loudly replied: "Reporting to the Special Commissioner, there are a total of 14 Extremist Member corpses here."

The Special Commissioner pursed his lips: "Say it."

Feng Ju: "Seven closely monitored Open Lines, and seven Deep Cover Lines hiding in the residential compound; ultimately, all were searched out, and after our Patrol Bureau and Investigation Corps joint operation fought bloody battles, all were executed on the spot."

Investigation Corps Battalion Commander Zhou Jian glanced sideways at Feng Ju, a three-part smile appearing on his face, thinking: "A smart person, more sensible than that stupid Bureau Chief Wang Yilin."

The Special Commissioner looked deeply at Feng Ju: "What is your name?"

Feng Ju stood at attention: "Reporting to the Special Commissioner, my name is Feng Ju."

The Special Commissioner looked deeply at Feng Ju again, then said lightly: "Go do your work."

Feng Ju's breathing grew heavier; he turned and called several constable heads to piece together the corpses.

Only then did the Special Commissioner whisper in Wang Yilin's ear: "Bureau Chief Wang has capable constable heads under him; I think this Feng Ju is not bad, Bureau Chief Wang can rely on him more in the future."

Wang Yilin nodded deeply in agreement.

At this moment, he belatedly understood everything: the reason they had to circle the residential compound red and slaughter it clean was not only the "kill all" policy, but also to piece together seven more corpses.

The entire residential compound was dead; the 【Destiny】 Deep Cover Lines hiding within were naturally slaughtered too.

Who would say they weren't even here—was it you, me, or the corpses on the ground?

Hehe—

So, only killing over a thousand breath-wasting Blank Citizens could piece together seven Extremist corpses; where else in the world could one find a deal more cost-effective than this?

Truly a Special Commissioner from the Upper City; the method of gaining merits is truly... admirable to us Lower City people.

Wang Yilin felt his thoughts had reached an unprecedented sublimation; his vision and pattern of viewing the world were different; a brand-new door had been pushed open by him...

End of Chapter