Chapter 3: Recruiting a Gang
Moments later, Ning Lu found an abandoned sewage pipe in the garbage mountains on the outskirts of Tetzvok.
Hive cities developed from the bottom up. When humanity first set foot on a planet to develop, they initially established settlements on the surface, and then expanded upwards over long periods of time.
Due to population migration and other reasons, most of the facilities in the underhive were abandoned.
He entered the pipe, walking through the sludge formed by industrial wastewater.
Ning Lu moved through the five-person-wide sewage pipe. After walking a kilometer, his ears twitched, and the captured sound waves sketched a scene of hundreds of people fighting in his mind.
He continued for several hundred meters, his hearing painting a picture of a chase, one person pursuing another.
A scream suddenly rang out. The person fleeing in front fell to the ground, followed by another scream, and the pursuer also collapsed.
Ning Lu listened intently. Apart from the two, he heard no other living sounds. How could both of them have fallen?
Moments later, he arrived at the scene. Both were dead in the sewage.
Even in the dim environment, he could clearly see the strange state of the two. Their shoes were tattered, and the soles of their feet were a bloody mess of hundreds upon hundreds of intersecting wounds.
Ning Lu scanned his surroundings, keenly spotting crystal clusters in the murky sewage in a corner.
[Not a living thing, it's spire crystal.]
Ning Lu knew that spire crystal appeared in the sewage pools, drainage pipes, and other places where pollutants accumulated for generations in the hive cities. It was less of a plant and more of a mineral stalk, similar to coral, composed of fragile and sharp dense crystal clusters.
Fools who fell into spire crystal quickly discovered its terror. Its sharp crystals would inflict thousands of tiny but extremely painful wounds.
The greatest danger came from the toxins and chemical corrosives on the crystals. Once they entered the wounds, even the smallest scratches would turn into severe suppuration and festering, leading to death if left untreated.
Tragically, most people in the lower and underhives had no medical supplies, so stepping on it meant a swift end to their miserable lives.
[So quickly I've encountered one of the auxiliary ingredients.]
Ning Lu bent down and searched in the sewage. Soon, he found two complete crystal clusters.
He took out the spare clothes from his backpack and used the shirt and pants to wrap each spire crystal separately before putting them in the backpack.
Ning Lu's mood improved greatly, and he continued forward. Several passages converged, and he saw a platform.
On the platform, two gangs were launching attacks around a forge, firing at each other with makeshift lasguns.
On the left side of the platform, the leader of a group with red cloth strips wrapped around their heads took down an enemy with a makeshift laspistol, then rolled to avoid an attack. Suddenly, his eyes lit up.
He saw a boy who didn't belong to the underhive. His tattered clothes couldn't hide his handsome face, and he was worth more than the forge itself.
He immediately rushed towards Ning Lu, reaching out to grab him.
"Kid, get over here."
Ning Lu sidestepped, and the gang leader's hand missed. The moment the other lost his balance, the boy grabbed his wrist, pulled him forward, and then thrust the silver-gray shrapnel into his abdomen.
He found five power packs on the corpse and stuffed them into his clothes pockets.
The mutant had a dozen pockets sewn onto his clothes with scraps of different colored cloth to hold the "treasures" he found.
The gene-sire then picked up the laspistol pieced together from different parts. As soon as he held the gun, he expertly checked the power pack.
[The gangs in Voss-Toria have better craftsmanship than those on other planets. The makeshift laspistol is above average. It can fire a total of 23 shots, and it still has 17 left.]
Ning Lu shouted loudly, "Stop!"
Although still a boy, his voice had no childishness to it.
The two warring gangs only heard a reprimand, like the cold scolding of an Arbites who occasionally came to the underhive. Their bodies trembled, and they all turned their heads to look.
When they saw Ning Lu, their eyes all lit up.
On the right side of the platform, the gang leader who had poked his head out spat.
"When did it become your turn, you little brat..."
Before he could finish his sentence, a bright beam shot through the vital point between his eyes, and his corpse fell to the ground.
The two gangs were shocked. The distance between the boy and the leader was more than thirty meters, far exceeding the maximum range of a makeshift laspistol. He had actually killed the leader with such precision—it was unbelievable.
On the left side of the platform, several sharp-eyed individuals noticed that the gun the boy was using was their boss's, and their boss's corpse was lying at the entrance of the passage.
"The boss is dead!"
The shout woke up the members of both gangs. Immediately, several people's eyes gleamed. They were all gang leaders, and now that the boss was dead, their chance to rise had come.
They immediately turned their guns and attacked their competitors.
As for the boy, no matter how powerful he was, he was just a child. Once they became the boss, they could always capture him with a siege.
Ning Lu had already prepared to roll and dodge, but he was surprised to find that they were even more foolish than he had imagined.
He immediately moved. Since these people had encountered him, they would be the foundation for his conquest of Voss-Toria. Now was the time to establish his authority.
"I said... stop..."
As Ning Lu spoke, he raised his hand and fired three consecutive shots, killing three people in the gang on the left side of the platform. Two others were killed by their competitors in a sneak attack.
He then dealt with the victor from the other gang and looked at the crowd.
"From now on, I am your boss. Anyone who doesn't listen will end up like them."
The gang members were all dumbfounded. They didn't dare to move. They had never seen such accurate marksmanship—continuous shots, one kill per shot. They had never even heard of it.
Thus, on his first day in Voss-Toria, Ning Lu formed his own gang, with three hundred and ten members.
When Ning Lu poured all the fungi from his backpack into a large vat, all the gang members' eyes glowed green. If they hadn't been wary of his incredible marksmanship, they would have pounced like hungry wolves.
Ning Lu stood on the platform, looking down at the crowd below. Knowing that the underhive people had little culture, he spoke in the simplest and most straightforward language.
"I won't mistreat those who follow me, but I also don't support useless people."
"How much you get depends on your ability."
"Whether you drink soup or eat scraps depends on yourselves."
He scanned the crowd, seeing most of them craning their necks and staring wide-eyed at his feet. Only a few were still scratching their heads.
"Now I have a question to ask. Whoever can answer it will get soup."
"First question: where nearby can I find giant rats, over a meter long?"
The better the quality of the potion ingredients, the better the effect after consumption.
Ning Lu wasn't afraid of them knowing the potion formula. He only needed to ask about two ingredients.
"Me," a skinny bald man reacted the fastest. "Boss, giant rats are everywhere nearby. There are many over a meter long. I can't give you an exact number, but there are many in every tunnel and pipe."
Ning Lu looked down at the crowd. No one refuted him. They all showed expressions of regret and anger.
"Very good. You can come up and take a spoonful first."
The bald man immediately sprinted forward, stumbling slightly and almost falling as he climbed onto the platform.
He supported himself with his left hand and immediately stood up, as if afraid the boss would go back on his word, scooping up a full spoonful.
Smelling the aroma, he couldn't wait to squat down beside the vat and lick the soup.
The others all looked enviously at the quick-reacting bald man, straining their ears, waiting for the boss to ask the next question.
"Second question: who knows where to find wiregrass?"
(End of this chapter)