Chapter 1734

Harley opened her eyes and found herself huddled in the corner of a dilapidated house. She tried to lift her arm and found that one arm seemed to be dislocated. She rolled up her sleeve with the other hand and saw the bruises printed on her forearm. Combined with the abrasions on her waist and the side of her leg, it seemed that someone had dragged her here by her arm.

Except for that first movement, Harley didn't move at all, still half-closing her eyes, only using the narrow field of vision under her eyelids to look at the environment in the room.

Harley is a Cat Getan local, so she looked around and knew that this was probably the dormitory of some black factory. Calling it a dormitory is actually a room partitioned from the factory building for child laborers to rest. There are about fifteen or sixteen children here who are the same age as her.

Harley spent about five seconds recalling how she came here, and then she also realized that this might be some kind of illusion, and she knew that this was an environment built by a friendly force, otherwise the location wouldn't have been chosen in Cat Getan.

After thinking clearly about these things, the first thing Harley did was close her eyes and sleep.

This body probably had never eaten a full meal, worked all day, was trembling all over from exhaustion, and perhaps because she offended the foreman, her arm was dragged and dislocated. It is very likely that she wouldn't have anything to eat all day tomorrow. If she didn't seize the time to rest now and let her body adapt to this state, she would probably faint from hypoglycemia before long.

Harley slept until the next morning.

Until the faint light came through the door crack, Harley had time to look carefully at her appearance. The little girl she possessed was about seven or eight years old, thin like an egg stuck on a chopstick.

Her arm hung weakly to one side, but her complexion was much better. After all, Harley wouldn't be afraid and worried. After having a solid sleep, at least her spirit got sufficient rest.

Recovering a little bit of physical strength, Harley first pressed her arm and pushed it up hard. After a muffled grunt, the arm was hung back.

Harley found that her guess was indeed correct. This should be habitual dislocation. After pressing the arm back, except for soreness, her actions were not affected.

After a while, a fat woman wearing an apron full of oil stains walked in. She carried some leftovers in a basin and dragged a dirty bag full of hard bread behind her.

After she threw these things into the room, the originally weak children jumped up like hungry tigers and rushed toward the food frantically—Harley was the most agile. She didn't even look at the vegetable basin with soup, hugged her arms, and grabbed at least five large pieces of hard bread.

Hugging three in front of her chest and clamping two under her arms, she arched her body flexibly, rolled on the ground, kicked away a child who was blocking the way and running slowly, and shrank into the corner she was originally waiting in.

She put all four pieces of bread into the gap between her back and the wall, then leaned her body tightly against the corner, protecting the bread airtight, and then tore the only piece of bread in her arms with her teeth like a beast.

Just kidding, she was someone who had wandered in Cat Getan, Harley thought. Her parents had only been dead for two days when her uncle took people from the gang and drove her out. The incident happened suddenly, Harley had no weapons in her hands, and to save her life, she had to leave obediently.

A middle-class little girl was suddenly displaced, had no connections in the gang, and was very beautiful. To survive, Harley did whatever it took. She hid on that street for three months. Let alone other children on the street, even stray dogs all starved to death because they couldn't grab food from her.

Harley stuffed a large piece of hard bread into her stomach in just a few dozen seconds, without even choking once, and then she pounced on the child next to her and bit his ear.

The boy next to her let out a scream. Harley wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, pushed the child away, picked up the bread he dropped because of the pain, and without caring about the sand sticking to it, stuffed it into her mouth like a starving ghost.

Several children around shrank toward their own direction because of fear. Harley's eyes fell on someone's bread every three seconds on average, and those who were stared at by her hurriedly grabbed their food and hid to the side.

The food thrown in by the black aunt looked like a lot, but there were fifteen or sixteen children here. If it were distributed equally, one could get a piece of hard bread the size of a fist, and then dip it in some vegetable soup with salt and sugar, which was basically the level of not being full but not starving to death.

But the problem is that eating here depends on grabbing. Harley grabbed five pieces of bread by herself, which meant that four children might have nothing to eat. But in fact, bread is not the focus of the scramble. The area around the vegetable soup basin brought in was the most intense area of the battle.

Although bread can fill the stomach, the vegetable soup is hot and contains butter, which has the fat that these children are most urgently lacking. It can be clearly seen that a small group is holding the soup basin, and several stronger children around are eyeing it covetously but haven't rushed over rashly. The rest of the children who are too thin and didn't grab bread can only squat on the side and stare straight at it, hoping to get some remaining soup base.

But in another corner of the room, there was a boy who looked out of place. He had very conspicuous red hair, typical white sunspots on his face, and his body looked stronger than the others, but he squatted in the corner without saying a word, not moving at all.

Harley naturally noticed the boy's abnormality. She looked at the boy from head to toe and determined that he should be Little Bruce.

There is nothing particularly difficult to judge. Little Bruce is not the Batman of the future after all. Some of his habitual small movements were not deliberately concealed. Harley had long discovered that when Little Bruce was thinking, his right index finger would habitually tap on his arm.

Harley laughed in her heart. She didn't even need to think to know that Little Bruce must be thinking. The content of his thinking must be who brought him here, what conspiracy the other party has, where this place is, how to break this trap, and so on.

Harley took another vicious bite of bread and curled her lips. She remembered the few days when she was just driven out of the room by her uncle. She also sat on the embankment of the Cat Getan River thinking all day, and the final result was that if it weren't for the fact that she happened to find an inconspicuous trash can on the street corner that no one turned over, she would have really starved to death.

Harley finished the small piece of bread she grabbed, took another piece of bread from behind, and continued to gnaw on it wolfishly. After looking at Little Bruce, she thought that this pampered young master must not know that this might be their only decent meal in two days.

Because she had really eaten it, she knew that although the bread stuffed into her mouth was hard and difficult to eat, it was full of quality, and this kind of black factory raising child laborers could never provide such food every meal.

Sure enough, Harley's guess was completely correct. Except for this meal in the morning, there was only cold water for lunch and dinner.

This is a food seasoning processing factory. The work the children do is to add raw materials into the pot bag by bag and then stir. Don't ask why there is no assembly line. Electricity is much more valuable than hard bread and swill soup.

For adults, a bag of raw materials weighing more than ten pounds is not heavy. Even if carrying back and forth and stirring is more tiring, it is not heavy physical labor. But the people working here are all children aged seven or eight, at most ten years old. The raw material bags are all carried, and each person stirs a large pot. They cannot rest at all in the middle. From six in the morning to twelve noon, even Harley's willpower made her dizzy from exhaustion.

There is a half-hour break at noon, but it's not really letting them rest. It's mainly to let them go to the water room to wash their faces and hands clean, otherwise too much sweat will drip into the pot.

In the water room, Harley saw Little Bruce with a livid face. His whole arm was shaking violently when he was washing his hands. If there were no accidents, his arm wouldn't be able to be lifted in a few hours.

The force application method is completely wrong, Harley shook her head and thought. Not tightening the core, waist, back, and shoulders exerting force at the same time, only using the strength of the arm to stir, he couldn't even persist until the next day.

Obviously, Bruce Wei En at this age had never done any heavy work at all. When his parents were still alive, the heaviest work he did was moving the children's bicycle down the three steps of the manor garden, and he had to have Alfred supporting him.

He didn't eat anything in the morning, and this body had likely not eaten anything for two days. In the afternoon, he was taught a lesson by hypoglycemia.

Little Bruce almost fell into the soup pot headfirst. It was the adult in charge next to him who pulled him out quickly, but his arm that touched the heating part below was scalded with a patch of blisters.

After the person in charge pulled him out, he dragged him out directly, and Little Bruce was beaten up, because if he really fell into the soup pot headfirst, this pot of soup would be unusable, which was much more valuable than him.

When Harley finished a day's work and returned to the dormitory, she saw Little Bruce curled up in the corner, with large bruises on one side of his cheek, neck, and arm, and his ankle was completely swollen, looking like he couldn't walk.

Harley didn't go to the water room to wash her face and hair, so she came back earlier than everyone else. She walked to Little Bruce's side, squatted down, and smiled at him. Little Bruce immediately recognized Harley. That crazy smile was too recognizable.

"We have to find a way... find a way to escape..."

"Escape to where?"

Little Bruce opened his mouth and just wanted to speak, Harley made a "tsk" sound with her tongue and said: "You wouldn't think there's any place better than here outside, would you? Wake up, young master! You are not Bruce Wei En anymore!"

Little Bruce clenched his fists, obviously feeling angry at Harley's words. He didn't understand how Harley could so easily accept the fate of being abused. Not only did she not think about resisting, but she really started working here.

"I belong here, Bruce." Harley's tone became rare and gentle. She said: "Cat Getan's children all belong here. This is not our suffering, this is our life."

Little Bruce curled up on the ground in silence, not saying a word, but his eyes showed that he didn't want to accept this fate. Harley shook her head and walked to the other side of the corner to sit down.

After a while, she said: "If you can't survive in the current environment, how can you jump out? If you can't live well and strong here, you will understand that the place you think is the bottom of the valley has a deeper abyss below."