Meteor Fall Master in the 'Starry Abyss'
Chapter 45 - 035. A Small Matter

Chapter 45: 035. A Small Matter

"There’s a lake... *cough cough*! What’s that smell? So pungent..." Qiu Ran coughed and couldn’t help but ask.

"Dummy, in this frigid barren land of the Outer World, when you come across a lake that emits a faint glow, could it possibly be a normal lake?" Nomi bent down, touching the snow-covered ground.

"Car tracks."

Li Aozi noticed:

"The tracks are fresh, a convoy passed by not long ago—looks like one vehicle split from the team."

"Was it the White Fang Guild?"

"Not sure. Could also be other wanderers."

Li Aozi shook his head. It was hard to say, and he took a short knife and blade from his backpack, inserting them at his waist.

"We can’t drive over!" Nomi said: "There’s a landslide here, can’t drive that way, let’s get closer and take a look."

"You watch the car here. We’ll go over."

After instructing her, Li Aozi concealed their vehicle with camouflage, and he and Nomi walked towards the lakeside on foot.

The storms in the Outer World were too harsh, and the soil unstable; even with a map, it was of no use. The winds blew and people scampered, and overnight a hillside could turn into a hollow—it happened all the time.

From the look of the tire marks, there shouldn’t be many people. It can’t be ruled out that it was wanderers from the Outer World looking for a warm area to escape the cold.

After a few hundred steps, they saw the true face of Glitter Lake: from the far hills, ten pipeline as big as trucks stuck out from the mountain pass, continuously discharging dirty, scalding wastewater. The debris cascaded down from a height of several meters, all sorts of trash, waste, filth, and remnants of bodies were naturally washed up and piled at the shore, creating a dam.

"Damn it... Frost Plated bastards!"

Nomi cursed:

"Look! Over there—what is that?!"

Li Aozi followed the direction of her pointing finger and saw several discarded canisters next to a rock, with a striking yellow and black radiation symbol clearly marked on them.

"Radiation waste."

Li Aozi said:

"So it’s Frost Plated’s sewage pipes, no wonder. There used to be a nation that lived pretty well, which dumped nuclear wastewater into the sea."

"These motherfuckers, animals worse than pigs and dogs, heartless scum! It’s precisely because the Four Nations keep doing this to the Outer World that Azure Star has turned into such a mess!"

Nomi was holding a wrench, filled with righteous indignation:

"Pfft! So much for human rights and morals, industrial development, necessary sacrifices—the people of the Four Nations are thriving on the blood of all the Azure Star People...and to think they call us, the Rose Army, terrorists. Frost Plated, Sky Ring, Zhengxu, Red Arrow! Count them, the Four Nations are the biggest terrorists!"

Li Aozi didn’t deny it; although Nomi put it crudely, she wasn’t wrong.

He checked the nearby environment; indeed, someone had been here, taking a brief rest to warm up before leaving.

"Someone was here, sitting on this wrecked TV; they must have just been in the wastewater. They left a puddle of vomit here, with blood clots in it... Probably rummaging for food in the wastewater."

Li Aozi followed the footprints left behind and soon discovered a corpse, next to it, a makeshift vehicle.

Just a wanderer, his vomit was everywhere. In his agony, he’d blown his brains out with a gun.

Li Aozi thrust his knife into the corpse’s eye socket to confirm the kill, then searched the body. The dead man’s gear was very poor, even worse than his own.

Nomi stood behind him, cautiously checking the surroundings.

Luckily, he had no companions. Nomi climbed onto the cobbled-together vehicle, rummaging back and forth for a while, and found only a thoroughly worn "Children’s Storybook" and a paintbrush about the length of a pinky finger.

After flipping through the book for a bit, Nomi threw it aside. On one page featuring a gentle illustration of a woman, someone had scribbled all over the distasteful parts with various disgusting substances, and there were also some yellowish-white filthy stains... Nomi didn’t need to guess what the owner had done with it.

When Li Aozi figured out the cause of death, Nomi muttered:

"What could he have hoped to find to eat there... such an idiot, a damn fool."

"He’s already dead, no need for so much malice—this car still has 42 liters of gas left, hurry up and get the gas can from the car, and drain all the fuel too."

"Got it." Nomi, rubbing her hands vigorously, ran back to the car, fetched the siphon and gas can, and collected the remaining fuel from the vehicle.

"By the way, did you find anything on the body?"

"I found a letter. He must have been Benny Dixon. He heard from a friend that his mother was killed by bandits, so he was going to join the Rose Army for revenge. There’s also a keepsake his mother gave him: a ring made from a pull-tab."

Since it didn’t trigger a task, Li Aozi crumpled up the letter and tossed it away carelessly, and even the keepsake ring made from a pull-tab was meaningless trash to him; he threw it straight into the waste lake.

[Your actions have decreased Nomi’s favorability towards you by -3]

"Huh?"

Li Aozi glanced at Nomi; she seemed expressionless, yet she cared about such things.

Although he had lost some favorability points, Li Aozi didn’t really care.

After all, Nomi was just a temporary teammate he had fooled into joining him, someone he could kick away once she was no longer useful.

"Benny, eh... well, he truly is a pitiable guy, but the Rose Army doesn’t have the time to deal with bandits from the Outer World."

Nomi shook her head:

"As long as we defeat the Four Nations, everything will get better."

"Behind the rise of every nation is a story of another group’s tears and blood. Since ancient times, Empires have never been sacred," Li Aozi shrugged.

"Then let’s smash this bunch of Empires to pieces, tear them up, and step on them," Nomi said.

"And then what?"

Li Aozi said casually:

"Then you’ll find out that to manage the power capable of overthrowing an Empire, you’ll have to create another stronger, more stable Imperial regime. The cycle continues—the history has proved, humans are just humans, they never surpass history."

"I can’t think that far."

Nomi shook her head:

"I’m just a fool, a dumbo. My instructor always said I’m mostly ineffectual, just a small wildcat that knows how to fight and kill."

"But even I, this kind of wildcat, can’t tolerate the world becoming like this."

"I don’t know if others will have better options, and there might be tyrants and new officials in the future, and the world might get worse—but I’d rather make hundreds of mistakes than maintain the status quo."

She gazed ahead, determination filling her one good eye:

"Beneath this red and black sky lies a world buried under snow and yellow sand, a world brimming with despair."

She turned her head, looking at Li Aozi:

"Don’t be so detached about all this. It’s our world. Whether it’s me or you, aren’t we both a part of this world too?"

"This isn’t some trivial game. For us people from the Outer World, the Rose Army, no, all those who resist the Four Nations, are our faith."

"In fact, anyone with clear sight knows that opposing the Four Nations is impossible—but we still do it. Even if it’s just with our teeth and nails, if we can inflict a bit of pain on the Four Nations, the process of this struggle itself is sufficient to prove to them:"

"We, us reptiles scraping by in the Outer World, are humans just like those within the Four Nations who bask in heating, eat steamed buns, watch TV, and read books. We too are Life."