The roar of the tracked vehicle echoed across the wasteland.
Ahead, a pitch-black Steel Fortress rose from the ground.
This was the company's recycling station.
Three ten-meter-high electrified alloy defense lines flickered with deadly blue-purple arcs.
Eight fully automatic heavy machine gun towers slowly rotated their cold barrels, locking onto any living thing that approached.
"Stop!"
A piercing electronic warning blared from the loudspeaker.
"Routine scan! Shut off your engine!"
Scar shuddered, slamming on the brakes.
He gripped the steering wheel tightly with his remaining hand, his palm slick with cold sweat.
Overhead, a crimson laser fan enveloped the entire transport vehicle.
Deep within the pile of scrap metal in the cargo bed.
Qin Yu lay flat with his eyes closed, buried in the pungent metallic waste.
[Alert: High-frequency thermal imaging scan detected.]
[Nano-Mechanical Swarm activated!]
[Constructing physical isolation layer… Host's vital signs have been completely masked.]
An extremely fine layer of black metallic fluid instantly covered Qin Yu's entire body.
On the scanner's screen, the cargo bed contained nothing but scrap metal—not even a rat.
"Clear!"
The alloy gate emitted a heavy grinding of gears as it slowly slid open on both sides.
Scar swallowed hard, restarted the engine, and drove inside.
Passing through a long corridor, the view suddenly opened up.
On the vast landing pad, fifty five-meter-tall Scavenger-class combat Mecha stood neatly arranged.
Hundreds of armed guards clad in sophisticated Exoskeleton Armor patrolled back and forth.
"Boss…" Scar lowered his voice, his lips trembling.
"We're next to the Mecha hangar now."
"Well done."
From within the scrap pile, Qin Yu's bone-chilling voice emerged.
"You can get the hell out of the vehicle now."
Scar felt as if granted a pardon. He kicked open the door, tumbling and scrambling onto the ground, then desperately crawled toward a nearby barrier, covering his head.
The surrounding guards froze.
"Hey! Scar! What the hell are you doing?"
A guard captain, rifle in hand, walked over with a frown.
Before his words faded—
"BOOM—!!"
The transport vehicle's cargo bed exploded violently!
Scrap metal flew in all directions like a torrential downpour!
A tall, straight figure shot into the sky, stepping on the raining debris!
Mid-air, Qin Yu already had the menacing [Netherworld: Death's Kiss] firmly braced against his shoulder.
The crimson Nano-Reactor erupted with a blinding, terrifying red light!
"Company, huh?"
Qin Yu grinned, revealing his stark white teeth.
"Time to take out the trash!"
"BANG—!!"
The first shot!
The deafening sonic boom instantly shattered the eardrums of several nearby guards!
A bullet wrapped in a black Nano-storm pierced through the central control tower a kilometer away in an instant!
No explosion.
Only an eerie, rustling sound!
The entire control tower, along with the underground power lines connecting the eight heavy machine gun towers,
was devoured by the nano-swarm into drifting black dust within a single second!
"Zzzzt—"
The electrified alloy gates on the perimeter instantly lost power.
The eight heavy machine gun towers simultaneously drooped their barrels, falling completely silent!
"Enemy attack!!"
The guard captain screamed in terror.
"Activate the Mecha! Activate the Mecha now!"
"Activate your mother!"
Qin Yu, mid-air, violently pulled the bolt.
"Click!"
Eject, chamber.
His movements were so fast they left afterimages!
The muzzle swung sharply, directly aiming at the fifty combat Mecha on the landing pad whose Engine lights had just lit up.
"Boom—!!"
The second shot!
For this shot, Qin Yu poured half of his Spiritual Energy into the gun!
A crimson beam swept out!
The bullet exploded amidst the Mecha group.
Transforming into a black nano Metal Storm, instantly engulfing all fifty Mecha!
"Alert! Armor solubility at 100%!"
"Alert! Reactor leak…"
The pilots inside the Mecha didn't even have a chance to escape.
The supposedly indestructible alloy armor was weaker than paper against the nanites!
The black storm swept past.
Fifty expensive Mecha turned into a pile of black iron slag!
[Ding! Enemy Mecha group destroyed!]
[Congratulations, host, for obtaining: 8000 Starburst Points!]
Two kilometers away.
In the shadow of a derelict warship wreck.
Old K stared intently in the direction of the recycling station.
Suddenly.
Two earth-shattering explosions tore through the toxic fog of dawn!
Immediately after, the towering central control tower turned into a cloud of black ash!
The electric arcs on the powered gate completely died out!
Old K's eyes instantly turned red.
Not just him—Monkey, Big Bear, and the three hundred scavengers behind him.
Their eyes all bloodshot!
"The machine gun turrets are silent! The gate's power is cut!"
Old K abruptly stood up, raising the rusty automatic rifle in his hand.
The veins on his forehead bulged, his voice hoarse and distorted.
"The boss didn't lie to us! He took out all the firepower alone!"
"Brothers!"
Old K turned back, looking at the faces that had been hungry for half a lifetime, oppressed for half a lifetime.
"Think about last night's meat!"
"Think about our parents who were beaten or starved to death by the company!"
Old K violently pulled the trigger, firing a shot into the sky.
"Follow the new boss! Charge in!"
"Grab the food! Seize the ships! Kill all these bastards!"
"Kill—!!"
The three hundred ragged scavengers went completely mad.
They were like a pack of starving mad dogs locked in a cage for ten years, finally unleashed!
No one was afraid.
No one retreated.
They trudged through the mud, holding broken guns and iron rods, like a black mudslide, frantically charging toward the recycling station's gate!
Inside the recycling station, chaos had erupted.
Two shots.
Just two shots!
Their proud defense System and Mecha squadron were completely gone!
"Open fire! Shoot the man with the Sniper Cannon!"
Hundreds of company guards finally reacted, raising their Gauss Rifles and aiming at Qin Yu, who had just landed.
"Rat-tat-tat-tat—"
A dense barrage of blue energy bullets poured down like a storm.
Qin Yu sneered.
He didn't even dodge.
His right arm blazed with an azure-blue light!
The energy of the [World Heart] instantly constructed an invisible barrier of rules around his body.
The energy bullets from the Gauss Rifles struck the barrier, not even causing a ripple before dissipating!
"Is that all?"
Qin Yu held the [Kiss of Death] with one hand, walking forward as if strolling through a garden.
Each time he pulled the trigger.
"Boom!"
A firing position, along with its cover and personnel, was inevitably blasted into black dust!
He was an emotionless harvester!
Just then.
Boom!
The heavy alloy door was violently shoved open by an external force.
Old K led three hundred scavengers with bloodshot eyes, flooding in like a tide!
"Kill!"
A corporate guard had just turned around, not even having time to raise his gun.
Monkey pounced on him like a wildcat.
The rusted scrap metal in his hand plunged straight into the gap in the guard's neck armor!
Squelch!
Blood sprayed wildly!
"Get off!" another guard roared, smashing the butt of his rifle into Monkey's shoulder.
But Monkey didn't retreat at all. He opened his mouth full of yellowed teeth and clamped down hard on the guard's ear!
Tearing off a large chunk of flesh!
Big Bear swung a solid iron rod slick with machine oil.
Like a raging beast, he brought the rod down on a guard's head.
The helmet crumpled, brains splattered.
One for one.
Even three for one.
These scavengers simply didn't care about their lives!
When their guns ran out of ammo, they used the butts to smash.
When the butts shattered, they used rocks to bludgeon, teeth to bite, nails to claw!
This was the fury of the bottom!
This was the desperate counterattack of generations of pent-up despair!
"Why! Why do you get to eat synth-meat every day, while we only get moldy trash!"
A gaunt, skeletal scavenger, shot three times.
Still clung desperately to a guard's leg and pulled the pin on an old-fashioned grenade at his waist.
Boom!
Both perished together.
Qin Yu stood in place, watching this scene of utter carnage.
He did not stop it.
He understood this godforsaken apocalypse all too well.
To stand up and be a man, you had to wash away the servility in your bones with the enemy's blood.
"Die, you maggots!"
An armed armored vehicle charged out from behind the fortress.
The Plasma Autocannon on its roof spun wildly, preparing to strafe the scavengers.
"Did I say you could move?"
Qin Yu's eyes turned sharp.
His gun muzzle instantly locked on.
Bang!
The armored vehicle disintegrated mid-charge, exploding into a cloud of black ash!
With Qin Yu's terrifying heavy artillery providing suppressing fire, any heavy weapon that dared show itself wouldn't last three seconds!
[Ding! Eliminated corporate armed personnel. Gained Starburst Points +50]
[Eliminated armored vehicle driver. Gained Starburst Points +200]
The System's prompts scrolled frantically in Qin Yu's mind.
In less than ten minutes.
The entire scrapyard square was dyed red with blood.
Half of the three hundred scavengers were dead.
But the remaining several hundred corporate guards were completely annihilated!
One well-equipped corpse after another lay in pools of blood, their armor and weapons being frantically stripped by the scavengers.
Old K, covered in blood, walked up to Qin Yu holding the head of a guard captain.
He dropped to his knees with a thud.
"Boss!"
Old K wailed.
"We killed them all! We killed every last one of those beasts!"
The scavengers behind him knelt one after another, shouting Qin Yu's name with frenzied madness.
Qin Yu stepped over the corpses littering the ground, his gaze turning towards the depths of the scrapyard.
There stood the only core fortress that hadn't been destroyed.
"We're not done yet."
Qin Yu strode forward.
Raised his leg.
And delivered a mighty kick!
Crash!
The half-meter-thick Explosion-Resistant Door of the fortress was kicked inward by Qin Yu, flying back and slamming heavily into the wall.
Inside the fortress hall.
A fat man wearing a high-end suit, with a beer belly, was trembling as he operated an escape pod.
He was the sole official corporate overseer on this trash planet.
Hearing the tremendous crash.
The fat overseer was so frightened he collapsed onto the floor.
Watching Qin Yu stride in like a god of death, the overseer's trousers instantly soaked through.
"D-don't kill me!"
The fat overseer stumbled backward, his flabby flesh trembling uncontrollably.
"I'm directly assigned by the company headquarters! If you kill me, the company will send a starfleet to flatten this place!"
"I have a lot of money! And nutrient paste production lines! I'll give you everything!"
Qin Yu walked up to the fat man.
Expressionlessly, he raised the [Kiss of Death] and slammed the rifle butt hard into the overseer's right knee.
Crack!
"Aaaah—!!!" The fat man let out a scream like a slaughtered pig.
"Starfleet?"
Qin Yu crouched down, grabbed the fat man's hair, and forced him to look up.
The killing intent in those eyes made the overseer feel like he wasn't facing a human at all.
"Go back and tell your executives."
Qin Yu's voice seemed to come from the deepest depths of hell.
"Wash their necks and wait."
"I'm coming to wipe out your headquarters right now."
Qin Yu extended a bloodstained hand.
"Now, hand over the orbital defense tower access key."
The fat man was in so much pain his eyes rolled back, trembling as he pulled out a golden-glowing identity card from his chest.
Qin Yu snatched the card away.
Then, he brought the rifle butt crashing down again.
Thud!
The fat man's head slammed heavily against the metal floor, knocking him out cold.
[Ding! Core item detected: Orbital Access Key.]
[Settling battle rewards…]
[Congratulations, Host! Total obtained: 55,000 Starburst Points!]
[Current Starburst Points balance: 63,000/100,000]
Listening to the prompt in his mind, Qin Yu stood up.
He strode out of the fortress.
Outside, Old K and the others had already changed into the company guards' high-quality armor, holding brand-new Gauss Rifles.
Though each of them bore injuries, their spirit had completely transformed.
They were no longer worms from the garbage heap.
They were a pack of wolves who had truly tasted blood.
"Boss!"
Old K straightened his back and shouted.
Qin Yu tossed the access key to Old K.
"Go open the gate."
Qin Yu raised his head, looking toward the massive black interstellar transport ship behind the landing pad.
His gaze pierced through the dark red sky.
"Yao Xue, Ruo Bing, Xiaoqian."
Qin Yu clenched the rifle tightly.
"I'm coming for you."