"I’ll go help mom." Ryan said then walked back toward the kitchen.
Sarah his mother was standing there quietly. She had heard everything. She quickly turned her face away and pretended to concentrate on the stove. Ryan saw her trembling shoulders.
"Mom."
"I’m fine." Sarah wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "There’s just smoke."
Ryan looked at the tiny stove. There was barely enough smoke to make anyone’s eyes water. He didn’t expose her. Instead, he walked over and picked up the old wooden bucket.
"I’ll get some water."
"Ryan, eat something first."
"I’m not hungry."
"You didn’t eat much yesterday either."
Ryan paused. Then he smiled. "I’ll eat when I come back."
Sarah looked at her eldest son. She knew he was lying. But she also knew there was nothing she could say. The family’s rice jar was almost empty. There was only enough rice left for perhaps two more meals. The small sack of flour had already reached its bottom. The herbal medicine Ethan needed was running low. The roof needed repairing before the next heavy rain. And the rent was due soon.
Their family had no savings. No valuable possessions. No powerful relatives. No Bloodline Fighters willing to support them. Everything they owned could probably be carried away in a few sacks.
Ryan looked around the small shack. The cracked wooden table. The patched walls. The old stove. The chipped bowls. The repaired wheelchair. His brothers’ oversized clothes hanging from a thin rope. His parents’ worn work shoes beside the door.
This was their entire world. And somehow, it was still home.
Ryan tightened his grip on the wooden bucket. He couldn’t promise that he would obtain the Limb Restoration Pill. He couldn’t even promise that he would earn enough money to buy better medicine for Ethan. But he could do something. Even if he found only a few copper coins today. Even if he discovered nothing valuable. Even if all he could bring home was enough money to buy a little meat for Toby. It was still better than doing nothing.
Ryan turned toward the door. "Mom, I’ll be back before dinner."
Sarah nodded. "Be careful."
"I will."
Ryan opened the door. Warm morning sunlight spilled into the dim shack. He stepped outside. Behind him, Toby was still sleeping. Ethan sat quietly in his wheelchair. Sarah stood beside the stove. Ryan glanced back at them one final time, and his eyes gradually became firm.
’I’ll find something. Anything is fine. Even if it’s not worth much, it’s still better than nothing.’
Then Ryan closed the door and walked toward the garbage disposal site.
He didn’t know that before the day was over, his fate would completely change.
...
Ashfall City, inside a super-large garbage disposal site.
The place spanned several dozen hectares, with garbage and debris piled together like a vast ocean, multiple meters deep.
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh..."
At this moment, a pale, thin young man frowned as he endured the terrible stench assaulting his nose.
Like a large marmot, he skillfully dug through the garbage pile before him, his movements practiced from years of experience.
The thin young man was Ryan, having been scavenging for a while, even with his years of experience, his luck today seemed particularly bad.
He had been digging through the garbage for nearly an hour. Apart from a few thin, rusty pieces of iron worth barely a single copper coin, he had found nothing else of value.
With a physique far weaker than that of an ordinary person, he was already exhausted. His hands and feet frequently went weak, while sweat poured down his pale face and soaked his tattered clothes.
Yet Ryan dared not rest for long. He wanted to help his parents shoulder as much of the family’s burden as he could. Since he had made so little progress today, he had no choice but to persevere, no matter how tired he was.
"Ryan, you can do this. Just hold on a little longer..."
He gritted his teeth and silently encouraged himself, deciding to search a few more spots before sitting down for a proper rest.
However, in the next moment, his hand suddenly brushed against something beneath the garbage.
"Hm?"
Ryan’s expression changed slightly.
After digging away the surrounding debris, he unexpectedly pulled out something black, round, and lumpy.
"This is..."
The object looked strangely familiar.
Ryan’s eyes immediately lit up, and the fatigue weighing down his body seemed to vanish in an instant.
After carefully placing the object aside, his digging speed not only failed to slow down but increased dramatically.
It was as though he had suddenly been injected with a stimulant.
In just a few breaths, he quickly dug out all the black, round objects buried in the garbage.
Ryan then reached into the hole and carefully felt around again and again, making absolutely certain that he hadn’t missed anything.
"Whew..."
Only after confirming there were no more did Ryan let out a long breath.
He brushed away the spiders and ants crawling across his hands, then stretched his sore and exhausted muscles before sitting down cross-legged.
Using the patched-up yellow cloth wrapped around his body, he carefully wiped the mud and dirt from the surface of the objects one by one.
Then, holding his breath, Ryan quickly grabbed a handful with his right hand and eagerly raised them before his eyes.
His gaze fixed intently on the objects as he began identifying them one by one.
What met his eyes were round pills.
Including those still scattered across the ground, there were more than twenty of them.
Each pill was about the size of a longan. After being wiped clean, they revealed a light-yellow, translucent surface. Under the sunlight, they glimmered faintly, looking almost like rare treasures.
A rich medicinal fragrance wafted into the air, temporarily overpowering the stench of the garbage around him. For a moment, the foul-smelling disposal site seemed almost refreshing.
Because of his naturally weak constitution and impoverished family, Ryan Cole had endured countless taunts and instances of bullying since childhood. However, those experiences had also tempered him into a sensitive and meticulous person.
Even while intoxicated by the rich medicinal fragrance, he keenly detected a faint, almost imperceptible burnt smell hidden within it.
"Waste pills!"
Ryan was not disappointed. Instead, he was overjoyed, grinning from ear to ear.
"Haha, finally, I’ve struck it rich! They’re all waste pills! If I sell them, my younger brother can finally have a proper meat meal!"
So-called waste pills were produced when Transmuter-type, fire-attribute Bloodline Fighters failed during the pill-refining process.
Speaking of which, the place known as the Crimson Expanse was an extremely martial world.
All adolescents who reached a suitable age would invariably regard becoming a Bloodline Fighter as their primary path.
Generally, if a person failed to awaken their Bloodline by the age of sixteen, the chances of awakening it later became exceedingly slim.
Ryan had been deemed an untalented commoner by the Bloodline Institute for precisely this reason.
When he received that verdict, Ryan felt as though his entire world had lost its color.
At the time, he was completely disheartened. He remained silent inside the family’s dilapidated shack in the slums for an entire month.
However, because his weak body could not handle strenuous labor, he eventually made a decision.
To reduce the burden on his family, he resolutely embarked on the path of a scavenger.
This was the first time Ryan had ever dug up so many waste pills, and he dared not think too much about what such a haul might be worth.
"Ho..."
Ryan took a deep breath, suppressing the excitement surging within him.
He quickly raised his head and vigilantly scanned his surroundings.
The garbage disposal site was enormous, and quite a few scavengers of different ages were scattered throughout it.
Incidents of people coveting another scavenger’s discoveries and forcibly snatching them were not uncommon.
Therefore, Ryan had to be extremely careful.
After confirming that none of the nearby scavengers had noticed what had happened, his expression relaxed slightly.
He then found a yellowed piece of old cloth nearby and spread it across the ground.
Ryan quickly transferred the waste pills onto the cloth, carefully wrapped them up, and tied the bundle securely.
He then tucked it against his waist, hiding it beneath his tattered clothes and keeping it close to his body.
"Ha! Today’s start is already this good. Let’s put in a little more effort and try for a second haul!"
Having unexpectedly found more than twenty waste pills, Ryan was in an exceptionally good mood. He almost felt like humming a tune.
His body, which had previously been sore and exhausted, suddenly seemed to have been injected with a strength-enhancing agent.
He was full of energy, and the fatigue that had weighed heavily upon him moments ago seemed to have been swept away.
Thus, Ryan began frantically digging around the area where he had made his previous discovery, moving like a greedy mole.