Back in the Hideout, Li Qingyu immediately collapsed into sleep. When he woke, he grimaced at the heavy stench of gunpowder and blood soaked into him from head to toe.
"Damn! It pisses me off that I can't wash properly. I'm going to rot soon!"
He hurried through hygiene, wiping himself down with a damp towel. Washing himself wasn't hard—half a liter of water at most. But his clothes were a disaster: proper laundry was nearly impossible, and he couldn't stand the ingrained stink anymore.
Glancing at the three water filters he'd just acquired, he muttered:
"My patience is over. I want unlimited water. Period."
Just in case, he grabbed his pistol and his sketches of the tattoos, left the Hideout, and headed for the trader Nepal.
Reaching Fertilizer gang territory, he noticed there were far more armed men now—nearly a thousand! They were making primitive armor from steel sheets and sharpening broken metal into machetes and axes. A war of the poor against the Chem gang seemed to be looming.
Li Qingyu reached the trader's shop right as Nepal's lackey was rolling out two carts piled with machetes.
"Oh, my good friend! Come here quickly—you always bring me good news!"
Seeing Li Qingyu scanning the entrance cautiously, Nepal hurriedly pulled him inside. Li Qingyu laid eleven pieces of skin bearing periodic-table tattoos on the table. The trader whistled.
"Wow, my good friend, you took down eleven chemical dogs all by yourself? Impressive! Here—just as agreed: three hundred tokens for each, total three thousand three hundred fertilizer tokens."
Li Qingyu took the money and shoved it into his pocket without counting. Then he jerked his chin toward the Fertilizer gang camp, where activity was boiling.
"Getting ready for war?"
Nepal nodded.
"My boss and 'Mommy' from the Chem gang are sitting in the Department of Justice in the Mid-Hive right now, supposedly negotiating. If they reach an agreement—there'll be no blood. If not—there'll be a meat grinder, and the reactor goes to the victor. But from experience, I'll say this: it's unlikely they'll agree. It's not negotiations—just a probe to feel out the enforcers' stance: how much slaughter they'll allow us to stage."
Li Qingyu took out cigarettes and offered the trader one. Nepal flicked his lighter, and soon both were smoking.
"You think you can take the Chem gang?" Li Qingyu asked.
Nepal's face grew serious.
"Hard to say. Those bastards have more people than us. And their dogs don't feel pain under drugs, plus they've got chempigs—true monsters. You haven't seen a chempig, have you? I'll tell you, it's—"
Li Qingyu pulled the Anchor of Wrath from his rucksack and slapped it onto the table.
"Seen one. And I already killed one."
Nepal went stiff, staring at the spine on the table. He was genuinely shaken.
"Almighty Emperor! My good friend killed a chempig!"
Li Qingyu waved a hand lazily.
"Happens. Better tell me—how much will you pay for killing a thing like that?"
The trader hesitated, then answered:
"Three thousand. I'll pay you three thousand for its head!"
Li Qingyu was satisfied. Risking his life for one such bulk wasn't that profitable compared to the price of an automatic rifle, but doing it along the way made sense. He'd need Rage Serum to craft medicae supplies later anyway, and it could only be obtained from chempigs. Making money off it in the process was just right.
Nepal thought some more and offered:
"My good friend, if you want easy money, how about taking part in the brawl when we clash with the Chem gang?"
"How much?" Li Qingyu asked.
"Five thousand for participation. Just for coming out with us."
Li Qingyu thought for a second.
"Deal. But I don't take orders—and all loot from those I personally drop is mine."
Nepal nodded.
"Of course. Once the fight starts, choose your own position. Whoever you kill—you have first-loot rights as well."
With that, he handed Li Qingyu a black armband marked with a red sack of fertilizer.
"This is an identification band. Put it on, and Fertilizer gang boys will cover you if anything happens."
Li Qingyu took the armband, and his gaze caught on a refrigerator standing in the back of the shop.
"Hey! Is that a refrigerator?"
Nepal turned and nodded.
"Yeah. Rats pulled this junk out of the Great Lift drain. But it works. Looks like the Upper Hive lords bought a better model and scrapped this one."
Li Qingyu's breath caught. This was one of the three key components for assembling a medical station! He needed chemical purification equipment, a thermoregulator, and a mixer-precipitator. The thermoregulator could be pulled from a refrigerator. If he got it, he'd already have two out of three parts.
"Sell it to me. How much?"
Nepal thought.
"Hm. For my friend—if you really need this… Let's do it like this: bring me Anchors of Wrath from three chempigs you kill, and I'll give you the refrigerator for free. Deal?"
Li Qingyu nodded without hesitation. He currently had a little over forty thousand tokens. By Underhive standards he was already rich, but with his appetite that money would melt away in an instant. Besides, he still had no idea where to get the third component for the medical station, so he had time for quests.
"Deal. Three chempigs. I'll find a way to kill them."
So Li Qingyu took on two jobs at once: one—trade equipment for killing monsters; the other—work as a hired gun in the coming gang war. After getting the quests, he bought upgrade materials from Nepal. He took so much that he even had to buy a cart to haul it all.
Back home, he started breaking down the purchases. First came the large plastic drums and ceramite pipes. Using tools, Li Qingyu drilled holes, joined the containers with pipes, and assembled a water purification system.
The purifier had two parts. The first drum served as a settling tank: pour in 100 liters of dirty water, drop in one reagent tablet, wait a day—and you get 99 liters of clean water. The tablet made large particles settle to the bottom. Then an electronic timer triggered, and the water flowed through pipes into the second container.
Along the way, biofilters inside the pipes removed leftover chemicals, bringing the water to a safe drinking state. One filter's service life was about one thousand liters. In total: one tablet, 10% filter durability, 100 liters of dirty water, and 24 hours of waiting produced 99 liters of potable water. Old Li was getting very close to water independence.
With a bucket in hand, Li Qingyu went into the corridor outside the Hideout, found a leaking pipe, and filled the bucket to pour into the purifier. The wastewater in the pipe looked clear, but it was absolutely not safe to drink—chemical levels were off the charts. These were industrial effluents from some hive plant—possibly machine coolant; sometimes boiling water even blasted out.
After making several trips, he filled the purifier to the brim, dropped in a tablet, and left the system running until tomorrow.