The two children, ard with simple tools, ventured down a narrow path, twisting and turning until they ca across a hidden "cave" concealed amidst heaps of garbage.
The cave was not too narrow, even sowhat spacious. This wasn’t by design; in fact, a few years ago, this used to be the site of a village. After a sinkhole incident, the original village got buried under, and the two garbage mountains above it collapsed. Supported by so large piece of waste, it ford a huge hollow space.
Although it seed safe to look at, the village elders believed the unstable structure could collapse at any ti, so they decisively abandoned the original location and built a new village not too far away. This cave was then carefully concealed to serve as an ergency shelter in tis of crisis.
The two youngsters hadn’t walked far when they spotted the "landmark," a massive tal monster with a fierce posture, at least twenty ters tall. Its body, teeming with sharp spikes, was partially buried with nurous cracks all over, one arm and one leg completely missing. At the broken ends, one could see twisted fibrous structures and nurous cables, along with so parts that looked more like muscles.
At that mont, the tal giant lay prone on the ground, its head bearing a diamond-shaped wound; anyone would think it was utterly dead.
But even lying down, its enormous size still exuded an overwhelming sense of oppression.
However, the two youngsters didn’t show much interest in this giant—
After it had fallen from above before, they had already tried but found out that even a scrap of tal could not be detached from its cracked body with the tools at their disposal. They then shifted their focus to the garbage that had buried a third of its body along with it.
Good things usually don’t appear alone; that’s common knowledge among the scavengers living on the garbage mountain.
When you find an unusual item, the things around it are likely to co from the sa world.
With such a gigantic tal giant originating from a world of advanced technology, it was possible they might find a few usable devices to take back to the village, and how much "Identity" it would cost... that was a problem for later, after confirming its functions.
By then, the garbage mountain that had covered half of the giant’s body was already significantly dug open. As children raised on the garbage mountain, they had mastered how to get the most information with minimal digging. As the mound was close to being fully excavated, the girl’s eyes almost glead with anticipation!
"What could it be? A super-powered drive device? An integrated industrial module? A 3D printer?"
Vera muttered as she tossed useless waste to the side and threw more intact items into the basket she had brought. The twin brother digging alongside her grimaced and whispered:
"I just want a hand-powered generator. I found a True Object TV earlier but couldn’t use it. It would be a waste just to throw it away."
"Idiot Vero! Even if you find it, the TV won’t show anything without a signal," Vera rolled her eyes, but Vero didn’t seem to care and replied:
"No signal ans we can watch DVDs; there’s a whole mountain of discs to the east, just need the generator..."
"Then you’ll also have to find a DVD player," Vera ruthlessly crushed her brother’s hopes, her fingers pausing for a mont with a touch of surprise:
"Eh, why is there so much cotton here? Stupid Vero, hurry up and help gather it, we might even have enough for a quilt!"
"Got it, got it... this clearly won’t be enough though!" Vero pouted, glanced at the cotton in the garbage, shook his head, and began to help gather it up.
Although it might not be enough this ti, they could start saving it up; maybe one day it would be enough.
Their originally rough movents beca careful, picking out the cotton entangled in the trash bit by bit. As they continued digging, Vera finally figured it out, her expression joyous:
"If I’m not mistaken, this must be from a quilt or a sofa that fell out, otherwise it wouldn’t be packed in the garbage like this!"
"Shall we speed up our actions? Forget about these scattered items?" Vero asked tentatively, only to receive a thump on the head from his sister—
"Did you forget what the teacher taught you? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, who knows if there’s actually more cotton beneath!"
"Why are you talking so much then?" Vero rolled his eyes at his sister and lowered his head to start picking up cotton again, and Vera didn’t just let her brother do all the work—her young but scarred hands were quickly rummaging through the garbage as well.
The two busied themselves for two hours, filling half a basket with cotton, when a very beautiful piece of fabric caught Vera’s eye.
It was a piece of black satin-like material, delicate and soft in appearance, Vera knew without even touching it that this was certainly no cheap item.
She imdiately called out to her brother:
"There’s good stuff over here, hurry up! Don’t dig the middle, start from the edge!"
"I know, I know, it’s not my first day scavenging!" Vero replied impatiently, but upon seeing that the fabric clearly differed in style from the surrounding garbage, his spirits imdiately lifted.
Generally speaking, no matter how expensive or high-end a fabric is, if it’s placed in a pile of garbage, it’s inevitably going to get dirty, but this fabric seed as though it had just co out of a store.
Faced with this situation, the only thing the two siblings could think of was the item they had once learned about in their general knowledge classes—
A True Object!
However, they quickly fell silent.
The True Object was indeed a True Object, but it was worn on a person who didn’t seem to be entirely dead.
"We’re dood!" Vero stepped back abruptly, and unintentionally fell to the ground. In the education of their village, all outsiders were considered very dangerous, especially those with True Objects.
But Vera was a bit more composed. She looked at the man still half-buried in garbage, seemingly only capable of moving his eyes, and spoke to her embarrassingly naive brother:
"Calm down, he seems to be seriously injured and poses no imdiate threat."
As she spoke, the girl picked up a tal part from the garbage, about twenty centiters long with a relatively sharp broken end, and pointed it at Feng Xue’s neck:
"Who are you? Where are you from? Do you have any other accomplices?"
"..."
Feeling the chill at his neck, Feng Xue took a deep breath, the first in a long while, and sighed:
"My na is Feng Xue, I am..."
Before he could finish, Feng Xue suddenly felt the "Identity" within him start to spin rapidly, but...
"Why now?!"
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