The Kahel District was the sole slum of the Capital Planet.
Looking down at the entire Capital Planet through the Star-Eye, one could spot a palm-sized area in a corner that was a lifeless, dull yellow-gray. It stood in stark, jarring contrast to the rest of the prosperous planet, which gleamed with a futuristic silver-blue glow.
It proved that no matter the era, uneven development was an eternal reality.
Lin Fu followed the route map found on his optical computer and boarded the rail-transit.
Upon arriving at the edge of the Kahel District, Lin Fu got off; the remaining distance had to be covered on foot.
It was night, and as the city lights came on, the divide between the two districts became increasingly distinct.
He casually put on a hat he had bought and walked carefully along the shaded edges.
The reason the Kahel District could exist on the Capital Planet was that its residents refused to relocate. Even though their capital was sufficient to allow them a comfortable life on a second-tier planet, and the Empire did not mind giving them a reasonable compensation payout, they refused to leave they would rather die on the Capital Planet.
Forcibly dispersing citizens was illegal, and neither Parliament nor the Royal Family wanted to take the blame, so they simply stopped interfering.
Moreover, the residents here were extremely xenophobic and prone to violence at the slightest disagreement. Ordinary citizens living on the outskirts were also reluctant to interact with them.
If they discovered an outsider like Lin Fu, he would likely be unable to avoid a beating.
As for fighting back.
Lin Fu took one look at his current arms and legs and decisively abandoned that idea.
He came here to save lives.
Compared to waiting around in a peaceful area for someone to faint, coming here was far simpler. He might easily pick up someone gravely injured in a fight in some dark corner, bring them back to apply medicine, or at worst call a hover-car to send them to the hospital, and his first task would be complete.
In the dim environment, due to the lack of energy-crystal supplies, households with lights were rare. Only a few scattered old streetlights remained, powered uniformly by the Energy Bureau.
A variety of noises echoed one after another, which ironically provided ideal cover for Lin Fu’s movement.
He entered an underground passage behind a derelict building and emerged from the other end, heading continuously toward the central area.
After walking about a few kilometers, this body reached its limit. From the soles of his feet to his waist and hips, every part was crying out in sore agony.
He had no choice but to find a concealed spot and crouch down to rest for a moment.
The System suddenly alerted him: [Host, there is a person lying in the ruins to your right rear. A weak vital sign is still detected. If you save them, the converted energy should be very high.]
Lin Fu raised an eyebrow. “You can scan the environment?”
System: [Within a five-meter radius centered on the host.]
Lin Fu: “Oh.” He calculated in his mind that this function was quite useful and could be exploited heavily in the future.
Following the System’s direction, he indeed found someone beneath the rubble. The person was lying face down with a massive steel plate crushing their back; Lin Fu could barely see the top of their head by poking his view through a gap.
Compared to how to keep this person alive, figuring out how to pull them out was the greater challenge for the current Lin Fu.
He walked around in a small arc and spent half an hour finding a handy tool. After finding a solid leverage point, he pried with all his might, using every ounce of his strength, yet the steel plate did not even tremble.
After a moment’s thought, he gripped the tool and crawled under the steel plate.
It was extremely dark inside. He pulled up his optical computer, using the faint light from the screen for illumination to inspect the trapped person’s situation.
It was a man with long, unkempt hair matted into a filthy clump of dust and grime.
Underneath the steel plate were crushed boulders. A slab of stone the length of a person was pressing down on half of his body, with the steel plate resting on top. The combined weight of the two layers of debris likely reached tons. It was hard to imagine how a human could endure under such crushing pressure for so long and still maintain weak vital signs.
He moved a few small rocks and stacked them beneath the raised end of the stone slab. Once they reached a certain height and stabilized, he reached in to feel around the area where the man was pinned. He managed to leave a tiny gap separating the arm and body.
He let out a sigh of relief, it was still within an operable range.
As he pondered what materials he could acquire at this stage, his neck hair suddenly stood on end. A terrifying sensation washed over him, as if he were a prey being targeted by a wild beast.
He turned his head abruptly and met a pair of light brown eyes. In the dim light of the optical computer screen, they shone with an amber luster, evoking the animalistic eyes of a predator filled with explosive wildness and lethal intent.
The two were extremely close. Lin Fu’s head was near the man’s shoulders and back, while half of the man’s body remained intact and uninjured. The man needed only to lift a hand to snap Lin Fu’s neck.
Lin Fu did not doubt for a second that he possessed the ability to do so.
He slowed his breathing, doing his best to project harmlessness. “I’m here to save you. You’re pinned under a steel plate.”
The man stared at him silently, his pupils unmoving as he assessed the credibility of the words.
This standoff lasted only a brief moment, not even a minute, yet Lin Fu felt as though an eternity had passed, leaving his limbs rigid.
The man spoke in a low, raspy voice that sounded like it was coated in grit: “…A Guide?”
Lin Fu: “Yes.”
Having exhausted his remaining strength, the instant he received this answer, the man closed his eyes again, and the crushing pressure surrounding Lin Fu vanished instantly.
Lin Fu gasped for air. He had not expected that saving a person would involve a close encounter like this.
Lying in place, he waited for a while to confirm that the man was truly unconscious and would not wake up again. While feeling relieved, he also felt a subtle, lingering annoyance at being looked down upon.
Cursing inwardly, he could not stop his hands.
He continued stuffing rocks into the gap, carefully observing the space beneath the stone slab. Once confirmed, he began dragging the man outward.
Lin Fu was not gentle in the slightest. If he had felt any lingering reservations earlier, the man’s brief awakening had dispelled them all.
Since he still had the energy to wake up, it meant his condition was not critical.
He pulled and dragged ruthlessly, hauling out the pinned half of the man’s body. A metallic scent of blood gradually filled the air. Deprived of support, the steel plate overhead began to sway and emit raspy groans, scattering dust downward.
Lin Fu’s movements grew faster. Enduring intense discomfort and body aches, he gritted his teeth and pulled the man free from the rubble. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glint of brightness it seemed to be the reflection of metal.
Just as he intended to take a closer look, the System urged frantically: [Host, hurry! The support point you built can only hold for five more seconds!]
Lin Fu quickly dragged the man out, pulling him along as they rolled away. At the same time, the steel plate lost its balance point with a loud roar, tilting heavily onto the ground as its opposite corner tilted high into the air.
Lin Fu’s breathing was heavy. The smell of blood in the air instantly became several times more potent than before. Turning his head, he saw that a large chunk of flesh on the man’s upper right arm had been sheared off by the falling steel plate, blood streaming down his elbow like a rivulet.
He gritted his teeth, tore off a piece of tattered cloth, and bound the arm tightly to stem the bleeding, then hoisted the man up to leave quickly.
Before long, people alerted by the loud noise gathered near the steel plate. Shining lights on the large pool of dried blood on the ground, they discussed noisily: “Who was fighting here?”
“Could someone from the outer district have come in?”
“Hmph, those cowardly rats wouldn’t dare.”
Getting no answers, the crowd searched the surroundings, found no traces of outsiders, and dispersed.
While Lin Fu was torn between the choices of “sending him to the hospital” or “taking him back to the rental apartment,” the System informed him that what he had failed to pick up earlier was a military meritorious medal.
Lin Fu was startled. After considering it for a moment, he booked a hover-car on the StarNet with his rental apartment as the destination.
After hauling the man back to the apartment, Lin Fu went to the hospital himself first.
He had sustained injuries all over while saving someone, his shoulder was dislocated, and he had lost a significant amount of blood. The treating doctor looked at him in utter disbelief, repeatedly asking if he had been abused by a Sentinel at home.
Only after Lin Fu repeatedly assured him otherwise did the doctor reluctantly let him leave.
Refusing the medical restoration pod on the grounds of lack of funds, he held his bandaged arm, fetched his medicine from the dispensary, and returned home. Upon arrival, he found that the small apartment looked as though a burglar had broken in lights in all rooms were on, belongings were scattered everywhere, and the door to the storage pod was half open.
Frowning, he was about to grab a stool to enter the storage room when the System whispered: [Host, there are no outsiders. It’s the man you saved today.]
Lin Fu: “…”
He opened the door and saw the man leaning against the wall with his eyes tightly closed, his left hand still clutching an empty nutrient solution tube.
The man was covered in dirt and grime. His right arm and right leg were twisted at bizarre angles, and the tattered fabric covering his limbs exposed raw, scraped flesh oozing droplets of blood beneath.
Setting the medicine down, Lin Fu accepted his fate and dragged the man to the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, threw him into the bathtub to wash him clean, and then hauled him back to the bed to set his bones, apply medicine, and wrap his bandages.
The exertion left him drenched in sweat, as if he had just been pulled out of the water. Lying on the edge of the bed, the wound on his own right arm ruptured again, soaking his bandage in blood.
Unwrapping the gauze, he reapplied the medicine. The medicinal efficacy in the interstellar era was exceptionally potent; the moment it was sprayed on, the bleeding stopped, and the edges already showed signs of healing. With proper application, it would likely heal within a few days without leaving a single scar.
While wrapping the gauze, he examined the man on the bed.
Once cleaned up, he was remarkably handsome, with sharp, striking facial features, broad shoulders, long legs, and an exceptional build.
Lin Fu looked enviously at the firm, powerful muscles lining his abdomen and could not help but poke the System: “When can the optimization you mentioned be redeemed?”
System: [His vital signs are not stable yet, and he could die at any moment. We need to wait one night for him to stabilize, and then it will work! Please rest assured, Host he is so severely injured that the converted energy will definitely be enough to purge the mental toxin, and there might even be a surplus to start restoring your mental strength.]
Lin Fu lowered his eyes, wiping the blood from between his fingers: “Who said I want to optimize mental strength?”
System: […?]
“Use all the remaining energy to optimize my physical constitution. Once the mental toxin is cleared, don’t worry about mental strength anymore.”
System: [? But Host, you are a Guide. Only by optimizing your mental strength can you save more people…]
Lin Fu interrupted: “No rule says a Guide can only stay in the rear and cannot enter the battlefield.”
Once the mental toxin was removed and his physical constitution was initially optimized, he would apply for the military academy.
After handling the wounds and the messy house, Lin Fu slept on the sofa in the living room for the night.
Early the next morning, as dawn broke, the System notified him: [Vital signs confirmed stable. Rewards are being distributed…]
Just as Lin Fu was awakened by the voice, his brain felt as though a steel needle had pierced straight through from right to left. The intense pain caused him to roll off the sofa, clutching his head as cold sweat poured down like a waterfall. The agony came so abruptly that before he could adapt, the needle eagerly unfurled its dense array of steel barbs, seemingly trying to shred everything inside his skull.
Arching his spine, he curled into a tight ball, muffled groans of agony escaping his lips. The severe pain in his brain triggered muscle spasms, causing his body to tremble violently. While restraining himself from screaming out loud, he cursed in his head using every foul word he knew.
Damn it, he had not expected it to hurt this much.
Rolling uncontrollably on the floor, his dislocated arm and wound struck the corner of the table, compounding his suffering. Blood trickled from his gums from clenching his teeth too hard, flowing down the corners of his mouth and smearing across his face.
Toward the end, Lin Fu’s consciousness began to blur. When it finally ceased, he remained entirely unaware, his mind so numbed that he still felt trapped in agony, rendering him oblivious to the physical pain on his body.
When Lin Fu woke up, the sky was completely dark. Weakly crawling up from the floor, he first downed a tube of nutrient fluid. Once he regained some strength, he entered the bathroom to clean himself up.
After taking off his clothes, he was surprised to find that the palm-sized wound carved out of his right arm had actually healed, leaving only a faint pink mark indicating new skin. His dislocated wrist had completely recovered, and other minor bruises and scrapes had vanished without a trace.
Washing away the dried blood on his body, he asked the System: “Was my physical constitution optimized too? Does saving one person yield this much energy?”
System: [The mental toxin has been completely purged, and preliminary recovery has begun. All remaining energy was used to optimize your physical constitution. Upon testing, the person you saved possesses immense energy, which cannot be equated to that of an ordinary person. An ordinary person’s energy would only be enough to disperse the mental toxin, and even then, not completely.]
A touch of joy appeared on Lin Fu’s face, and as he applied medicine to the man again, the man looked increasingly pleasant to his eyes.
After changing the man’s bandages, Lin Fu placed several tubes of nutrient fluid by the bed, left a note, locked the door, and departed.
He took the rail-transit to the Kahel District once more.
This time, he did not experience the unbearable muscle soreness after walking a few kilometers.
The other end of the steel plate was tilted high; retrieving the item was much easier than saving the person had been. Moving aside the crushed rocks and following the System’s detection guidance, he quickly located the medal left behind and dug it out from a pile of stone chips.
The medal was hexagonal and made of an unknown material; even after enduring massive pressure, it did not bear a single scratch. Reflecting a faint golden light, it was engraved with the shape of the Empire’s interstellar territory map. At the very center was a small pattern resembling a family crest, which Lin Fu did not recognize.
Had he retained all the memories of this body, he might have known it, being the young master of a major family after all.
Unfortunately, he only possessed fragmented memories.
Stashing the medal away, he stuffed the moved rocks back into place, disguising the scene as if no one had ever been there. After concealing his tracks along the way, he left via his original route.
Shortly after his departure, a micro-probe landed on the steel plate to gather intelligence.
Capturing the large pool of dried blood on the ground, it descended to collect a sample before departing silently.
For the following period, Lin Fu did not venture out on any more risks. Instead, he gradually kept a low profile, leaving the apartment only when he needed to purchase equipment.
The man woke up on the third day.
Lin Fu was curled up asleep on the sofa, facing inward under a thin blanket, exposing his slender shoulders and fair, delicate neck.
The bedroom door opened. Cheng Jiu rested his hand against the doorframe, his light brown eyes fixed intently on the fair neck. A surge of lethal intent ebbed and flowed in his eyes before finally fading away.
Scanning the room, he stepped over to the sofa and bent down to inspect the appearance of this bold Guide.
Tracing from the forehead down to the bridge of the nose and to the lips, it was just as he thought the youth looked restless and unmanageable.
If he were well-behaved, what Guide would ever venture into a place like that?