Waking up from the soft bedding, Guo Fanxiang couldn’t help but linger over the sweet dream he’d had the night before.
He’d been up among the clouds, surrounded on all sides by food so delicious it brought him to tears — dishes floating around him endlessly, and he’d taken a bite here, a bite there, feeling so blissfully happy he nearly fainted.
That night had been the soundest sleep he’d had in his entire thirty-some years of life.
He woke up refreshed and clear-headed, and even the dark circles that so rarely left his eyes were nowhere to be seen.
After getting up, he took his time washing up, then rode down that contraption they called an elevator to the first floor, heading toward the restaurant.
At this hour, the restaurant was serving breakfast — all sorts of steamed buns, along with tofu pudding and fried dough sticks.
Prices ranged from 5 to 10 points, a price range that back at the base, no one would even dare dream of.
Guo Fanxiang grabbed two meat buns and ate while listening to the ability users around him chatting.
The inn had changed again?
This time, a parking lot had been added outside?
Underground, too?
God, what kind of person was this innkeeper, that he’d dare build facilities underground?
After all, out in the wasteland, aside from mutants that lurked everywhere, there were plenty of other special monstrous creatures too.
Among them was something called an armored earthworm, which lived underground.
These creatures could grow to over ten meters in length, their entire bodies encased in a hard shell, making them extremely difficult to kill. Worse still, if provoked, they’d spew acid capable of stripping a human down to bare bones in an instant.
Fortunately, though, these creatures didn’t feed on humans — they ate dirt, or other monstrous insects.
As long as no one disturbed their habitat, these creatures could coexist peacefully with humans.
But the moment humans tried to develop underground space — well, just wait and see, these creatures would show you exactly what a truly terrifying fortress wall looked like.
So, after finishing breakfast and stepping out of the inn, seeing that a passage leading underground had genuinely appeared off to the side —
even Guo Fanxiang, a man who’d been through countless battles, couldn’t help his eyes going wide.
“This…”
Opening up an underground space — that was basically suicidal!
He walked over to the entrance of the passage and peered inside.
A notice board up ahead caught his attention.
“You can even refuel here?!”
Ever since the great catastrophe over a hundred years ago, productivity levels across the entire world had regressed drastically.
Fueling stations had become vanishingly rare, and the handful that remained were all tightly controlled by the major bases.
Of course, there’s always a way around any problem.
Aside from converting most gas-powered vehicles into electric ones, people had found another solution.
That was to squeeze every last drop of value out of mutants — rendering their bodies down, extracting corpse-oil, and using it as fuel for vehicles.
No one really understood the underlying principle, but mutant corpse-oil genuinely shared a great deal in common with gasoline, making it a more-than-suitable power source.
Though the conversion efficiency was fairly low, meaning driving burned through it awfully fast.
Guo Fanxiang examined the pricing on the sign.
The price was roughly comparable to the “monster oil” back at the base, which ran over twenty points per liter there.
But…
His gaze landed on the yearly membership option.
Signing up for a yearly pass got you 12% off.
That alone would save a considerable amount! And since it could be linked to ten vehicles, couldn’t he refuel for other people too? Charge a small service fee…
It really would be an ongoing business.
Out in the wasteland, anyone heading out to hunt needed some form of transportation.
After all, there were dedicated patrol squads clearing out mutants near the base, so there wasn’t much left to hunt for crystal cores close by.
And the more dangerous beasts tended to avoid the base entirely, staying well clear.
Thinking this over, he glanced back at the inn’s building.
This place really was extraordinary.
After a moment’s thought, Guo Fanxiang decided to be the first to test the waters.
He’d witnessed the innkeeper’s uncanny power with his own eyes yesterday, in the restaurant.
That kind of ability — capable of killing a person without so much as blinking — was the inn’s best possible guarantee of safety!
So he registered his license plate and drove down into the underground garage.
The moment he entered, the sheer scale of the place left him stunned.
Lights lined the ceiling, stretching all the way from the entrance into the distance — just how much power generation would it take to keep a space this vast lit up like this?!
Even First Base, hundreds of kilometers away from Panlong Base, wouldn’t dare waste this much power just to light up such a non-essential underground space!
Electricity was an incredibly precious resource out in the wasteland — the civilians living in the outer districts, for instance, didn’t even have access to it at all; they still relied on candles.
Driving slowly through the underground parking lot, Guo Fanxiang followed the signs and found the fueling station.
Once he opened the gas cap, the pump filled the tank automatically.
He swiped his card right away and filled the tank all the way up.
His vehicle’s tank had been modified to hold 100 liters, and Guo Fanxiang estimated it was about half-empty, so he’d need roughly 50 liters.
Sure enough, that matched exactly.
It cost him 500 points.
But—
Partway through fueling, he noticed something was off.
This fuel’s smell… it didn’t smell like mutant corpse-oil at all.
Corpse-oil rendered from mutants had an awful stench — like a corpse that had been rotting for over ten days.
But this smell… how to put it? It was actually quite similar to the smell of gasoline he’d once encountered back at First Base.
He found it hard to believe, and sniffed at it with his nose scrunched up for a good while.
Eventually, he arrived at a conclusion he could barely accept.
The inn… was really using actual gasoline?!
He felt a pang of regret — if he’d known, he should have dumped out all the corpse-oil first before refueling.
Now the two types of oil were mixed together, making it hard to even verify properly.
…Never mind that now.
Gritting his teeth, Guo Fanxiang, once the tank was full, immediately drove out of the underground parking lot and headed straight for the base.
He was going to convert every last point he had at Panlong Base into crystal cores, then top up his inn points card with all of it!
The thought left him practically unable to wait — he set off back toward the base at once.
Meanwhile, Chu Yi, having just returned from the mangrove forest, of course caught sight of that impatience written all over Guo Fanxiang’s face.
Well, look at that — he’d taken the bait.
Watching the ability users trickling out of the inn one after another, some heading out to hunt in the wasteland, others returning to the base, Chu Yi felt little in the way of any particular reaction.
These people would all come back eventually.
Because out in the wasteland, there was nowhere better than his inn.
Once Chu Yi walked back into the shop, he spotted Xue Xiaobai and Zhu Bei coming down from the second floor.
The two of them went out together every day, which improved their odds of a successful hunt.
But this time, Chu Yi called out and stopped them.
“Xue… Xiaobai.” He spoke slowly, and paused slightly when saying the name, as though confirming something.
His voice wasn’t loud, but within the inn, no one ever overlooked what he said.
Xue Xiaobai stopped in his tracks immediately.
“What is it, Innkeeper? Did you need something from me?” He walked over to the front desk, uneasy.
Chu Yi studied the boy.
He did look somewhat malnourished, and wasn’t very tall either — only about 1.7 meters, with barely any meat on his bones.
That a body like this could still go out hunting every single day was frankly something of a miracle.
Pulling his gaze back, Chu Yi said flatly, “Do you want an ability?”
…An ability?
Xue Xiaobai froze.
Did he mean the kind of ability he was thinking of?
The kind of extraordinary power that could make a person strong?
“…Innkeeper? Do you mean an actual ‘ability’?” he asked again, somewhat uncertain.
“Mm. An ability,” Chu Yi said. “I offer ability rentals here. Of course, this service is still in a trial phase — since you were the first guest to check into this establishment, you’ve been granted eligibility to purchase it.”
At these words, not just Xue Xiaobai but Zhu Bei standing beside him as well, both stared with eyes wide in shock.
“You— you mean an ability?!” Zhu Bei struggled to control his voice, saying excitedly, “Is this for real? You can really rent one out?!”
He himself was currently a tier-two speed-enhancement user.
But speed enhancement was about the weakest ability there was in terms of combat power — useful at best for fleeing, but to kill stronger mutants and monsters, a far more powerful ability was needed.
But this — this was an ability! A miracle that only those chosen by heaven itself could ever awaken. Awakening even a single ability was already considered a divine blessing, let alone a second one.
If — if the innkeeper really could rent out abilities—
Then even the most basic strength enhancement alone could completely transform his situation, letting him gather far more crystal cores!
At this thought, Zhu Bei told himself to stay calm.
The innkeeper had said this was still a trial phase, and only Xiaobai had been granted eligibility.
Which meant, aside from the two of them, none of the other guests staying at the inn likely knew about this yet.
With that in mind, Zhu Bei took a deep breath, patted Xue Xiaobai on the back, and turned to Chu Yi. “Innkeeper, may I ask — what’s the price for renting an ability?”
Not bad — he’d caught on quickly.
Chu Yi’s eyes curved into a faint, pleasant smile.
He didn’t answer the question right away — instead, he opened his palm.
A small wisp of white energy hovered above it, drawing both their gazes.
“This is a tier-one dual-enhancement ability — speed combined with strength. My current asking price is 50 points per day. A rented ability can’t be leveled up, and it will drain over time just like a normal ability, recovering slowly on its own.”
Hearing this, both of them froze once more.
What had they just heard?
A dual-enhancement ability! Speed and strength combined! With an ability like that, how could killing mutants possibly be a problem?!
Xue Xiaobai’s breathing grew noticeably heavier.
“I— I want to rent it!” he blurted out, almost before he could think. “Could… could I try renting it for just one day first?”
He thought of the points left on his card — a little over a hundred now. If he didn’t gather more crystal cores today, he risked being turned out of the inn.
And thinking about all those ability users continuously flooding in — if he ever left the inn, there was no guarantee he’d ever get the chance to check back in a second time!
Today, he had to gather at least twenty tier-one crystal cores!
Watching the expression Xue Xiaobai couldn’t quite hide, Chu Yi let out a light chuckle and pulled out a contract from beneath the counter.
“Certainly. Here’s the rental agreement — take a look.”
Xue Xiaobai felt a bit flustered.
He’d never had formal schooling in reading, and some of the characters on the page were beyond him.
Fortunately, Zhu Bei noticed his discomfort and took the contract himself, reading through it carefully.
He had to admit — true to form, the innkeeper had drafted this contract flawlessly.
“No problems here. The innkeeper definitely wouldn’t try to cheat us,” Zhu Bei said, handing it back. “This is an actual ability! With this, we can go take on tier-two mutants head-on today!”
Xue Xiaobai nodded eagerly, over and over, and quickly signed his name on the contract, terrified that even a second’s delay might make the ability slip away.
Looking at his own scrawled, chicken-scratch signature next to the innkeeper’s elegant, flowing handwriting, he felt a brief pang of embarrassment.
Chu Yi seemed not to notice his self-consciousness at all. Once he’d put the contract away, he offered a perfectly professional smile.
“Now then…”
“Let me grant you your ability.”