Cheng Shi walked fast. Before long, the two had skirted past a sprawling shanty area—buildings of wildly varying heights, won standing outside every doorway—and arrived near an enormous, crude mud-brick structure. His eyelid twitched as he took in this so-called prison: doors hanging open, roof collapsed in places, one wall half-caved in. He was covered in black lines.
'If this counts as a jail, then the inmates' quality must be outstanding—otherwise, why wouldn't they just run?'
The Blind One smiled:
"Falling Gate is a tangle of competing factions, most fighting over resources flowing between the surface and the Underground. So unless absolutely necessary, they don't waste resources housing 'freeloaders.'
Most prisoners here get sent to the mines for hard labor. Only those too disruptive to work efficiently but still useful get temporarily held in places like this.
And the inmates stay voluntarily—because they need to make a living sowhere. Serve the sentence, and they can go back to doing what they were doing.
So today we're lucky. This... prison clearly holds a few fortunate souls."
Cheng Shi already knew people were inside, but her tone made his expression go strange.
'She's definitely mocking . Her words are technically correct, but the inflection is all wrong.' He stopped short of entering and turned to face the Blind One:
"You know an awful lot about this place. Did the History School person tell you everything?"
The Blind One paused, then nodded with a smile: "Yes. Xin Xin runs the History School quite well."
"..."
'Listen to that. A Deceit follower running an organization dedicated to excavating the Land of Hope's mories.'
'So I'm not the only blaspher in this ga after all!'
No guards stood outside the mud-walled prison, but several "inmates" were indeed held within. When Cheng Shi cautiously pushed open the door and stepped inside, the first thing he saw was seven or eight burly n sprawled on the ground, dead drunk.
The floor was a disaster—overturned barrels and food scraps everywhere. The stench of alcohol and bodily odor hit him like a wall, making him physically recoil.
'Bro—this house doesn't even have a ceiling and it still reeks this bad? Were you drinking booze or piss?'
He clamped a hand over his nose and scanned the room twice. Apart from these unconscious drunks, the place was empty.
The Blind One followed him in. Seeing the ss, she frowned, sidled up to Cheng Shi, and said nasally through her own covered nose:
"This is where a Fate Weaver shines. Bless them with a sobering charm, Cheng Shi."
'?'
Cheng Shi's lip twitched. 'What does a Fate Weaver's business have to do with Today's Hero?'
'I walked in wearing a warrior disguise. I don't have priest skills right now.'
But for simple sobering purposes, magic wasn't strictly necessary. Physical thods worked just fine.
So Cheng Shi smiled, flicked a scalpel from his sleeve, and—thwip—buried it in the nearest drunk's thigh.
The man shrieked awake, clutching his leg, and began howling before he'd even sat up. He rolled around like a steamroller, flattening the garbage beneath him, and before long, an even more potent aroma erupted.
Cheng Shi's face shifted colors. He imdiately retreated a step. The Blind One stared at his handiwork, slack-jawed, unable to recover for quite so ti.
"You—"
"Huh? Strange—you can't see, but can't you sll either? This isn't bothering you?"
"..."
For a split second, the Blind One felt disoriented. If her "vision" weren't fundantally different from normal sight—letting her clearly identify the person before her as Cheng Shi—she'd have sworn this teammate was a certain Chosen surnad Chen's long-lost brother.
"Doing this only lowers our information-gathering efficiency, Cheng Shi."
Sighing with resignation, she retrieved a small vial from her inventory and tossed it onto the thrashing man. The potion burst on contact, instantly healing his wound and sobering him up.
He stopped howling. His bewildered eyes blinked between the blindfolded woman before him and the smirking man in the distance.
"Who... are you?"
"Just passersby. Saw you'd been stabbed. Ca in to save your life." Cheng Shi replied with shaless fluency. "No need to thank us—it's what any torch passer would do."
"?" The mory-addled man grew more confused. 'What the hell is a torch passer?'
He scratched his head, frowning: "What are you doing here?"
The Blind One looked sowhat resigned. She was about to ask sothing properly, but Cheng Shi beat her to it:
"We're freelance journalists. Here looking for story material. Anything strange happen in town lately?"
The big man blanked for several seconds—seeming to rember who he was and what had just happened. His face darkened. He sat up sharply, eyeing Cheng Shi and the Blind One with hostility:
"The hell? You here to laugh at us?
Being stuck in here is humiliating enough. I don't have ti to—"
Before he could finish, a gleaming scalpel whooshed past his inner thigh and embedded itself in the ground between his legs with a tallic clink.
The man shuddered violently. His tone shifted on a di: "Ti is the one thing I've got plenty of. What would you like to know?"
Both Cheng Shi and the Blind One were amused by the man's instant about-face. Cheng Shi snorted, stepped forward again, and twirled a scalpel between his fingers:
"Like I said—what's been interesting around town. Talk well and you'll be fine. Talk poorly... and my throwing aim isn't always this accurate."
The man's face blanched. He imdiately spilled like a burst dam—household gossip, mine politics, factional feuds, newcor drama—pouring out everything he could think of. By the ti he finished, he was drenched in so much cold sweat it looked like he'd been fished out of a river, nearly collapsing from exhaustion.
Cheng Shi and the Blind One listened intently, their frowns deepening as the monologue dragged on. He'd said a lot, but nothing of substance—just petty affairs. Not even interesting, let alone useful.
Cheng Shi finally clicked his tongue in irritation and used the scalpel to cut the man off:
"How'd you end up in here? What cri?"
The man's voice hitched. He answered sheepishly: "Slept with a shanty woman. Couldn't pay. A Rad locked
up."
"?"
Cheng Shi frowned. The man's euphemism told him exactly what the shanty district was—and he imdiately recalled the area they'd skirted earlier. So that's what kind of place it was.
The Blind One frowned too: "Who's A Rad?"
"Mining team captain. A Proxy Hand top brass here at Falling Gate," the man stamred.
Cheng Shi was still puzzling over what the Proxy Hand was when the Blind One started explaining:
"An organization that extracts Underground resources for surface powers. They cooperate extensively with the Tower of Logic and monopolized certain rare underground resources for a long period.
So this trial takes place in the mid-Civilization Era—the Proxy Hand's active period."
Cheng Shi nodded in sudden understanding. He turned back to the man, curious: "Your discipline isn't bad. Is the shanty district also a Proxy Hand operation?"
"No..."
"?" Cheng Shi blinked. "No? You stiffed soone else's business and your own people locked you up? The Proxy Hand is that law-abiding?"
The man shrank, embarrassed:
"That's not it either... The shanty place belongs to soone else, but the woman I was with is A Rad's sister. I couldn't pay her, she ca to the mine to raise hell, and A Rad threw
in here."
"???"
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