Li Qingyu stood in line for half an hour. His legs began to tremble from fatigue when he finally reached the goal.
A grim-faced employee of the Water Purification Guild silently held out his hand, showing no desire to talk.
If Li Qingyu didn't pay within three seconds, the guard with an electro-baton would remind him.
Without delaying for even a moment, he took out a fertilizer token worth 1 jiao and passed it through the window.
Fertilizer tokens served as this planet's special currency. The Imperium spanned millions of worlds, and a single unified currency simply didn't exist.
Interplanetary trade ran on barter, but for internal circulation each planet introduced its own money.
Somewhere it was coins; somewhere paper notes; sometimes even labor chits.
World 496b was an agri-world, and fertilizer played a key role in production. So tokens exchangeable for fertilizer naturally became the world's money.
The employee took the payment and pointed to a low-grade ceramsteel black canister set aside to the side, three liters in volume.
Li Qingyu grabbed the water and headed off, thinking about how to build his own water purifier. If his supplies ran out, he'd have to stand in queues again—and that was unbearably slow.
Then he went to the food distribution point. Another queue awaited him—several hundred people—and irritation seeped back into his blood.
From a distance he could see the issue point: grey, cheap ceramsteel barrels filled with viscous food mass.
It was a thick slurry of potatoes, grains, vegetables, salt, and chemically produced protein. Pay 1 jiao and you got a portion that could feed an adult for three days.
Li Qingyu had eaten it many times. In a word—disgusting. Cheap feed dumped into the Underhive by the upper levels to stave off hunger among the locals and prevent rebellion.
If not for fear that the trash would squander resources without restraint, they'd probably waive even that 1 jiao.
As vile as the sludge was, Li Qingyu understood: in Warhammer 40,000, where monsters and daemons ruled everywhere, those who still ate plant-based food were extraordinarily lucky—their lot was better than ninety-nine percent of the Imperium.
Most people survived on corpse-starch—and that was far worse.
Twenty minutes later, only thirty people remained ahead of Li Qingyu. The queue was shrinking slowly but steadily.
And, as if on purpose, at that moment some shameless bastard shoved right in front of him. A real line-jumper.
Li Qingyu froze, then felt a flare of rage. He tapped the man on the shoulder, about to say something, but the man whirled and pressed a dagger to his throat.
"You little bastard—if you don't want to die, shut up, or I'll cut your dick off and shove it in your mouth!"
The people around them instantly stepped back, but nobody left the line. The distribution workers only cast indifferent glances and stayed silent. They were used to bloody scenes.
As long as the fight didn't involve them, these thousands could butcher each other and nobody would blink. To them, it was just Underhive trash.
Li Qingyu felt the cold edge on his skin and blinked.
The attacker took it for fear, grinned, and pulled the knife away.
But the moment the blade moved off, Li Qingyu snapped forward, his fist slamming into the man's stomach.
Strength 12—two points above average. The blow was crushing: the line-jumper groaned, fell out of the line, and dropped to his knees.
He hadn't expected resistance, and when he came to, he flew into a rage. Snatching his dagger again, he lunged—then froze in the same instant: a barrel was pressed to his forehead.
A rebel-made pistol, 15 mm caliber, with a forward magazine holding five rounds.
Crude, heavy, inaccurate—but monstrously powerful. At close range, a shot could drop a bear. It was a trophy Li Qingyu had once found on the surface.
Without a word, Li Qingyu pulled the trigger. A thunderous crack. The attacker didn't even squeak—his head burst into a cloud of blood, his body convulsed and went limp.
The people around them froze for only a second, then everything returned to its usual rhythm. The line didn't even twitch; only now and then someone glanced at the corpse.
Holstering the weapon, Li Qingyu searched the body. He took a crude dagger, a little over two fertilizer tokens, and three water purification tablets.
Pocketing the loot, he calmly returned to the queue.
After a while, a few Underhive dwellers stripped the dead man's clothes. Later, the shoes and underwear vanished too.
When Li Qingyu got his food and walked away, nothing remained of the body. Most likely it had been turned into kebab. Only a few wretches remained, licking blood for salt and trace nutrients.
That was the ecology of the bottom of a Warhammer 40,000 world.
After that, Li Qingyu headed to a shop. Here, unlike the distribution points, it was empty.
A boutique selling expensive goods—basement rats didn't come here. The prices bit.
Li Qingyu addressed the lazy clerk:
"A pack of scented candles, three cans of cooking oil, and a bottle of chili."
The clerk looked him over for a long moment and grunted:
"Fifty-five tokens."
Li Qingyu laid out sixty. Only then did the clerk laugh, neatly gathered the goods, packed them into a fiber bag, and handed them over.
With the purchases in hand, Li Qingyu headed home. From dark corners, jealous eyes watched him.
On World 496b, a farmer earned about 150–200 tokens, while an Underhive resident made no more than twenty.
The boutique existed for gang bosses. For an ordinary beggar, even looking its way was considered a sin.
And now—a lone man walked out of the shop with his arms full of purchases?
A few people tailed him, like wolves stalking prey.
Li Qingyu turned out of the crowded zone into a dark tunnel. He took out a lighter, lit a cigarette, and, exhaling smoke, went deeper inside.
The pursuers could see only the cigarette's glow—flaring, then fading. Trading looks, they grabbed pipes and stones and rushed the light.
Footsteps thundered in echo. Every gaze was locked on the smoldering ember.
They closed fast, swung—and struck!
Clang-slam!
In the darkness, metal rang on metal. Several attackers howled in pain; the recoil nearly broke their hands.
One of them, grimacing, threw his pipe aside and felt ahead. His fingers met a cold metal wall.
He reached for the cigarette and realized it was simply wedged into a crack in the wall.
Understanding hit him; his face twisted. At that same moment, a sharp beam of light flashed from the side—blinding them all.
Li Qingyu held a torch in his left hand and a pistol in his right. The muzzle was aimed straight at them.
Bang-bang-bang!!