A Small Matter

  "There's a ke... Cough, cough! What's this smell? It's so pu..." Qiu Ran was choked by the smell and couldn't help but ask.

  "Idiot, in this freezing cold outer world, a ke emitting a faint glow, could it be a normal ke?" Nuo Mi crouched down, toug the snow on the ground.

  "Tire tracks."

  Li Aozzi noticed:

  "The traces are fresh, a voy passed through not long ago—it looks like one vehicle separated from the group."

  "Is it the White Fang gang?"

  "Not sure. It could also be other wanderers."

  Li Aozzi shook his head. Such things were hard to determine. He took out a short knife and bde from his backpack, attag them to his waist.

  "We 't drive over!" Nuo Mi said: "There's a ndslide here, we 't drive further, let's get closer on foot."

  "You stay here and watch the car. We'll go."

  Li Aozzi gave instrus, then camoufged the vehicle a off towards the ke with Nuo Mi on foot.

  The outer world storms were to, and the soil was unstable. Even with a map, it was useless. Wind could move mountains into valleys ht.

  Judging by the tire tracks, there weren't many people, possibly wanderers looking for warm areas to escape the cold.

  After a few hueps, they saw the truth of the glowing ke: from the distant hills, ten pipes the size of trucks extended from the mountain mouth, tinuously discharging dirty, hot wastewater. The water poured down from dozens of meters high, various garbage, waste, sludge, and body remnants naturally washed up and piled along the shore, f a dike.

  "Damn it... Frost scum!"

  Nuo Mi cursed:

  "Look over there—what is that?!"

  Li Aozzi followed her pointed finger: near a rock, several discarded tainers were piled up, clearly marked with a spicuous yellow-bck radiation symbol.

  "Radioactive waste."

  Li Aozzi said:

  "So, it's a Frost waste discharge pipe, no surprise. There was a once prosperous try that dumped nuclear waste into the sea."

  "Those bastards, scum, worse than pigs and dogs, heartless and despicable! It's because of things like this from the Four Nations that the blue purned out this way!"

  Nuo Mi gripped her wrench, seething with anger:

  "I spit on their so-called human rights and industrial development, necessary sacrifices—people of the Four Nations prospered by sug the blood of all the blue p's people... and they call us Rose Army terrorists, 'Purify Society' Frost, Tianhuan, Red Arrow, ead every one of them, the biggest terrorists are the Four Nations!"

  Li Aozzi didn't deny it. Nuo Mi's words were harsh but n.

  He checked the surroundings. Someone had been here, rested briefly for warmth, and the.

  "Someone was here, sitting on that scrapped TV set. They must have just goo the wastewater, leaving a puddle of vomit with blood clots... probably went into the wastewater looking for food."

  Following the footprints on the ground, Li Aozzi soon found a corpse, o a self-assembled car.

  It was just a wanderer. He vomited everywhere and, in agony, shot himself in the head.

  Li Aozzi stabbed the corpse's eye socket to firm the kill, then searched the body. The gear was in terrible dition, worse than his own.

  Nuo Mi stood behind him, cautiously surveying the surroundings.

  Fortunately, he had no panions. Nuo Mi climbed into the assembled car and rummaged through it, finding only a tattered "Children's Stories" book and a short paintbrush.

  After flipping through it, Nuo Mi threw the book out. One page, depig a gentle female illustration, was covered in various disgusting marks and yellow-white stains... Nuo Mi didn't o guess what the book's owner did with it.

  Hearing Li Aozzi analyze the cause of the man's death, Nuo Mi muttered:

  "What could he find to eat there... Stupid fool."

  "Dead is dead, don't be so harsh—this car still has 42 liters of fuel, go get the barrels and siphon the fuel."

  "Got it." Nuo Mi rubbed her hands, ran back to the car, grabbed the siphon and barrels, and collected the remaining fuel from the vehicle.

  "So, did you find anything on the body?"

  "I found a letter. His name robably Benny? Dixon. He heard from a friend that his mother was killed by bandits, so he wao join the Rose Army for revehere was als made from a pull tab, a keepsake from his mother."

  Si didn't trigger a quest, Li Aozzi crumpled the letter and threw it away. The pull tab ring was meaningless junk, so he tossed it into the wastewater ke.

  [Your as have reduuo Mi's affe for you by 3]

  "Hmm?"

  Li Aozzi g Nuo Mi. She looked expressionless, yet seemed to care about such things.

  Though the affe was reduced, Li Aozzi didn't mind.

  After all, Nuo Mi was just a temporary teammate he tricked into joining, ready to be discarded when no longer useful.

  "Benny... what a pitiful guy. But the Rose Army doesn't have time to deal with outer world bandits."

  Nuo Mi shook her head:

  "Once we defeat the Four Nations, everything will be better."

  "Every nation's rise es with the blood and tears of others. From aimes to now, empires have never been sacred." Li Aozzi shrugged.

  "The's smash all these empires to pieces, tear them apart, trample them underfoot." Nuo Mi said.

  "And then?"

  Li Aozzi casually said:

  "Then you'll find that to mahe power to overthrow empires, you must create aronger, more stable imperial regime. Repeating the cycle—history proves that humans are humans, they never surpass history."

  "I 't think that far."

  Nuo Mi shook her head:

  "I'm just a stupid fool. The instructor always said I'm often mediocre, just a little wildcat who knows how to fight."

  "But even a wildcat like me 't tolerate the world being like this."

  "I don't know if others will make better choices, maybe there will be tyrants, new officials, and the world will be worse—but I'd rather make mistakes hundreds of times than maintaiatus quo."

  She gazed ahead, her single eye filled with determination:

  "Uhis red-bck sky lies a world buried in white snow and yellow sand, a world full of despair."

  She turo Li Aozzi:

  "Don't think of all this as irrelevant. This is our world. Whether it's me or you, aren't we part of this world?"

  "This isn't some reckless game. For us outer world people, the Rose Army, no, all who resist the Four Nations, are our faith."

  "In fact, ah eyes knows fighting the Four Nations is impossible—but we do it anyway. Even if only usih and nails to cause them pain, this struggle proves ohing:"

  "We, the creeping survivors of the outer world, are just as human, just as alive as those in the Four Nations who sit in warm rooms, eating bread, watg TV, and reading books."