"Daddy, where are we going?"
Sonya clutched her father's rough, calloused hand tightly, tilting her small face up timidly.
Erwin smiled. "We're going underground, to send you to school."
Sonya looked back and saw a dozen other children being led by their parents toward them.
Their convoy had stopped on an open patch of ground amid ancient ruins. In the center stood a strange building.
Though the structure looked crude on the outside, just a simple ring of stone walls with iron doors and windows, it sat seamlessly against the ground, as if the entire earth were its foundation.
Erwin pushed open the rusted iron door, its hinges groaning dully.
Inside, a dim promethium lamp burned. A boy sat behind a stone table.
The boy stood immediately. "Uncle Erwin."
Erwin gently nudged the girl hiding behind him forward. "Durm, this is my daughter Sonya. She's still young and doesn't know much. Please take good care of her from now on."
Durm studied the young girl. She looked about seven or eight.
A worn-out gas mask hung around her neck; her clothes were covered in grime, smeared with the putrid stench of garbage dumps.
But Durm showed no disgust. Under-dwellers and outskirt folk, they were all oppressed, all just ordinary people struggling to survive.
Durm asked, "How many children?"
"Seventeen, all volunteers."
They had come willingly, but others in the town still had reservations.
This first batch of children was meant to set an example for the rest.
Durm said, "Uncle Erwin, would you like to come down and see the school?"
"Ah… wouldn't that be inconvenient?"
"Not at all. This way you can see where they'll be living, and you'll feel more at ease."
"Then I'll take you up on that."
Erwin did want to see for himself; he could not help but worry about his daughter's safety.
"Follow me, and mind your step."
Durm lifted a promethium lamp from the wall and lifted a stone slab, revealing a hidden passage below.
A brand-new stone staircase appeared, its surface smooth and unworn, no signs of long use, no dust from prolonged abandonment. Handrails had been thoughtfully installed along the sides, as if it had just been built.
The staircase spiraled downward around a massive stone pillar ten meters in diameter, descending about a hundred meters.
Every ten meters, six bridges extended outward from the staircase, each leading to a platform.
Beyond the platforms, further extensions seemed possible, though they appeared unfinished.
At the bottom of the staircase lay a grand circular hall, with six entrances radiating outward in even distribution.
Durm explained, "Entrance 1 leads to the dormitories, Entrance 2 to the classrooms, Entrance 3 to the cafeteria, and the warehouse is at Entrance 4. Entrance 5 goes deeper into dangerous areas underground, and Entrance 6 is the school library, where the Mentor also lives."
"Let's go register at the dormitory first and drop off your things. There are washing facilities there, you can clean up."
"After registration, you're free to look around the school, but Entry 5 is off-limits."
Erwin's eyes widened in shock: "You wash with water?"
Outskirt folk never had the chance to wash with water, that was far too luxurious.
At best, they rolled in the sand to scrub themselves.
Durm puffed out his chest with pride: "These are all the Mentor's doing. Every facility you see was designed by the Mentor himself. We don't lack water here!"
The tunnel networks underground were a labyrinthine maze.
Caelan had simply used his psychic power to hollow out all the surrounding soil, leaving only the central pillar and a vast open hall.
The rest was like building blocks, planning freely and turning chaos into order.
For Caelan, such transformation was effortless.
Cthonia lacked neither land nor water, what it lacked was habitable land and drinkable water.
Cthonia's blue sun had long poisoned its people. Except for the hive cities, the surface was largely uninhabitable.
The underhive received no sunlight year-round; the upper hive and spires had special filtration systems to block deadly UV radiation.
Everyone else had to live underground to escape the sun.
Even the outskirt folk lived in excavated basements during the day, emerging only at night to work.
Water was even scarcer.
The spire nobles enjoyed near-luxurious water supplies, they drank multiple-filtered pure water, bathed in clean water, and could even flush toilets with it.
After use in the noble districts, the water was recycled and given basic treatment before being piped to the upper hive.
While the upper hive's water standards could not match the nobles', residents at least got relatively safe drinking water.
By the time the water reached the underhive, the administrators sometimes could not even be bothered to filter it, supplying it directly to the commoners. Occasionally, the water they drank was yellowish-brown, safe and hygienic, they said.
But even so, compared to the underworld, it was still a luxury.
Over ten thousand years of industrial pollution had left Cthonia terminally ill.
Almost all surface water was irradiated, and groundwater was no safer.
The radioactive industrial waste dumped by the hive cities continued to poison Cthonia, seeping through rock strata and contaminating the groundwater the underworld relied on.
The hives even dumped untreated waste directly into underground rivers. These subterranean rivers, floating with industrial residue, were also one of the underworld's food sources.
Thus, the under-dwellers had a much broader definition of "clean." No matter how dirty the water, as long as it was not irradiated, it was drinkable.
But the under-dwellers had no radiation-detection tools. Their method of testing was simple:
Have someone drink it.
If they did not die, it was safe.
With Golden Age technology, such radioactive contamination was not unmanageable.
But the nobles would not even pay fair wages, let alone spend money on water purification.
As long as the nobles could maintain their extravagant lifestyle, no matter how badly the commoners fared, it was none of their concern.
And the nobles never left the spire district. Even the upper-hive middle class were "poor" in their eyes, and could anyone be poorer than the upper hive?
Many nobles genuinely could not understand why the underhive rabble complained about not getting enough corpse-starch.
Why did they not just eat cake?
Surely, in a person's entire life, they could at least have some cake, right?
The staggering wealth disparity within the hive made the spires and the underhive, separated by only a dozen kilometers, into two completely different worlds.
One was heaven; the other, hell.
But in the underworld, in the school Caelan had established, he treated all students equally.
All students could eat corpse-starch bars and drink clean, purified water filtered by psychic power.
"Even the nobles don't live much better than this, do they?"
Erwin could not help but feel envious. If he were twenty years younger, he would want to study here too!
Though Caelan felt the school's conditions were still too harsh, it was unavoidable at this stage.
But in the eyes of the lower classes, being able to eat corpse-starch every day and drink non-irradiated water was already noble-tier living!
In their brief lives, they had known only garbage and corpse-starch bars, the greatest delicacies they could imagine.
Humans cannot conceive of what lies beyond their understanding. They knew nothing of the spire nobles' extravagance; their imagination could only stretch to the Emperor using a golden hoe.
Even when faced with the most depraved, evil ruling classes, the simple commoners could only imagine golden hoes as the height of luxury.
"Daddy."
After bathing, Sonya's cheeks were rosy, droplets of water still clinging to her hair, a faint, pleasant fragrance emanating from her.
Erwin instinctively stepped back half a step, afraid his own stench might rub off on her.
He wiped his grime-covered clothes with his palm, only to find that his clothes seemed dirtier than his hands.
But Sonya stepped forward and gently took her father's hand.
She looked up. "Let's go, Daddy. I want to see what the classroom looks like."
"Alright." Erwin gently held his daughter's hand, leading her back to the main hall and toward Entrance 2.
The school's tunnels were not cramped at all, they were spacious, about five meters in both diameter and height.
Walking through them, Erwin was reminded of the ruins he had explored while scavenging, one that had once been a noble's estate.
Though long dilapidated, from the broken walls one could still glimpse its former splendor.
And even that estate's corridors were probably only this wide, right?
So wasn't this place as luxurious as a noble's manor?
As they walked through the corridor, he saw rows of classrooms neatly arranged on both sides.
Characters were carved above the door frames, characters that looked like celestial script to Erwin's eyes.
Inside, rows of stone tables and chairs merged seamlessly with the floor, their corners thoughtfully rounded.
"I'm hungry, Daddy." Sonya blushed slightly.
Erwin held Sonia's hand, "Then let's go to the cafeteria."
His daughter was now a student here, surely a meal would not be too much to ask?
They returned to the main hall and entered through Entrance 3 to the cafeteria.
Rows of tables and chairs filled the room, and a line of young boys and girls had already formed in front of the serving window.
Behind the counter was a girl, barely over ten, not much older than his daughter.
Seeing everyone in line, Erwin also queued up with his daughter.
When their turn came, the girl behind the counter handed him two corpse-starch bars and two bowls of lightly salted water.
Erwin was taken aback. "I get to eat too?"
The girl kindly explained: "You're a parent of a student. During visiting hours, you're entitled to a free meal."
"Do you eat this every day?"
"Right now we only have corpse-starch, but the Mentor says better things will come. Bread will come, milk will come, everything will come."
The girl's ears turned slightly pink, her voice soft: "Though I think corpse-starch is already quite tasty, at least better than anything I ever found in the garbage."
Erwin fell silent. Corpse-starch could indeed be used to make bread, but there were no facilities here, and no one knew how to bake.
Apart from being bland, corpse-starch had almost no flaws, it provided more nutrition per unit weight than conventional staple foods.
Outside the hive, corpse-starch was a precious resource.
Though Erwin had received a whole truckload from Caelan, they dared not eat it every day!
If they ate it daily, what would happen to the garbage they'd gathered? It would spoil!
And what if they got used to it and could no longer stomach garbage?
Eating it daily was far too extravagant. Junkers dared not eat so well, they weren't nobles.
Only by mixing it with garbage could they remember they were outskirt folk.
Besides, corpse-starch bars could be stored long-term and used in emergencies to save lives.
After all, scavenging income was unpredictable, they could not always find edible leftovers.
Erwin asked, "Have you ever eaten bread and milk?"
The girl shook her head. "No, but the Mentor said they exist, and I believe the Mentor."
Erwin asked no more, many others were still waiting in line.
He took Sonya to an empty table and sat down. The corpse-starch bars were bland, but that was also an advantage, at least they were not bitter, nor did they smell foul.
Some garbage was so hard to swallow that Erwin often gagged while eating.
Beyond the corpse-starch bars, there was an unexpected bonus, a tiny piece of meat, the size of a fingernail, floating in the bowl of salted water!
Erwin's eyes lit up. He tipped the meat into his daughter's bowl and urged in a low voice: "Eat up."
Sonya looked up hesitantly: "Daddy, what kind of meat is this?"
Erwin sighed inwardly. Whatever meat it was, having meat was already a blessing.
A boy at the neighboring table overheard them and kindly explained: "Don't worry, it's rat meat. The Mentor strictly forbids us from eating people, and no one here breaks that rule."
"Oh, it's rat." Sonya sighed in relief, a smile finally spreading across her face.
She carefully scooped up the meat, took a sip of the salty broth, and savored it as if it were a rare delicacy.
Erwin bit into his corpse-starch bar, deeply envious of these children.
They did nothing, no risk of radiation poisoning, no scrabbling through garbage heaps, yet they could enjoy corpse-starch bars every day.
And what was more, they could learn.
Whatever the subject, learning itself was a precious opportunity.
If no one taught the outskirt children how to distinguish high-radiation trash heaps from low-risk ones, they would be dead within three days, rotting in the garbage.
If no one taught the under-dweller children how to fight, they would become stepping stones for other gangs' children to earn their killing names in gang conflicts.
Even in the hive, without parents teaching underhive children how to operate machinery, they would never work in the factories when they grew up, relegated to scavenging or driven to the dangerous bottom hives.
Erwin was grateful he had made the most correct decision of his life: sending his daughter to this school.
As long as Caelan lived, his daughter could live like a noble.
He was already a junker, he could not let his daughter spend her life in the garbage as well!
If there was any chance to change her fate, no matter the cost, he would fight for it!