Chapter 81: Veteran

Chapter 81: Chapter 81: Veteran

Xiang Yi wanted to reach out and steady Master Chang as the man bowed in apology, but both his hands were still locked in bone-setting devices — he couldn’t do a thing.

"So you think a jailbreaker who got a few hundred inmates killed counts as a good person?"

"Why ’too’?"

"..."

"Look, I’m pretty confident you’re not some irredeemable monster. I genuinely want to make it up to you — no strings attached. I can show you my veteran’s discharge certificate if you want."

"A soldier, huh..."

Xiang Yi hesitated, if he was being honest with himself.

He did have a natural soft spot for military people, even after what had happened earlier in the day — but that had been militia, which was a different thing entirely.

Master Chang appeared to be a legitimate veteran. The only real question now was whether the military in this world operated the same way as the one he knew.

"I’m less interested in your discharge certificate. I’d rather take a look at the military’s code of conduct."

"What do you need that for?"

Master Chang didn’t follow the logic, but he headed to the study anyway and came back with a thick booklet.

Human Federation Military Internal Affairs Regulations.

Xiang Yi flipped to the relevant section and read through it carefully.

He had to admit — the Human Federation’s military bore a striking resemblance to what he knew. The differences were there, but they were minor, nothing fundamental.

Part of that probably came down to the Human Federation’s form of government, given that it was a military junta.

But regardless of which side you were on, the military’s stated obligations toward civilians were essentially the same.

In that case... a man who was willing to step up, own his mistake, and offer compensation unprompted was probably someone worth trusting.

Master Chang had even taken the opportunity, while Xiang Yi was reading, to pull out both his discharge papers and his disabled veteran’s rating certificate.

All of it was verifiable through the Human Federation’s official website.

At that point, Xiang Yi finally let his guard down — at least partially.

Master Chang might be the only genuinely decent person he’d come across since landing on this planet. A bit hot-tempered, sure, but decent.

Maybe it was worth extending some trust his way.

He was a wanted fugitive on the run. He couldn’t afford to let any opportunity slip through his fingers.

A junkyard owner with a military background — and not just any junkyard, but one operating in a Star System whose entire economy revolved around salvage and recycling — a man like that might have connections that could actually be useful.

Xiang Yi looked at Master Chang and asked, "Do you have anything around here like a Laser Gun?"

"I’ve got one, but it’s not a gun."

Master Chang led Xiang Yi to the garage attached to his living quarters as he spoke.

He rummaged through one of the shelves and produced a handheld Laser Cutter, which he held out to Xiang Yi.

Xiang Yi’s hands could just barely move without pain by now. He reached out stiffly and gave the device a brief touch.

A moment of contact was all he needed before he pulled his hand back.

He didn’t use the panel. Instead, he manipulated the Laser Cutter through sheer force of will.

Guided by Xiang Yi’s Spiritual Energy, the Laser Cutter rose into the air and broke apart into several distinct components, hovering in mid-air.

He didn’t have a deep technical understanding of how the device worked, but simply disassembling it along its natural seams was no problem at all.

"I can modify any of this — within the limits of what I actually know how to do — whether that means altering the material properties or the physical structure itself."

Once the demonstration was over, Xiang Yi reassembled the components back into a complete unit, then reached up and rubbed his temple.

He’d burned through a fair amount of Spiritual Power earlier pushing his mind into overdrive to keep up with Master Chang’s attack, and the brawl with the Scavenger crew during the day hadn’t helped. Using his Spiritual Energy now felt slightly off, like a muscle that had been overworked.

Master Chang studied the Laser Cutter in Xiang Yi’s hands for a moment, then asked, "Is that all?"

"That’s just the baseline. There’s more to it than that."

Xiang Yi asked Shi Tie to retrieve a Blood Crystal from the backpack.

The moment Master Chang laid eyes on it, something clicked. He immediately thought back to what his friend had mentioned — that Xiang Yi might have been infected by an Abnormality during his time in prison.

But the reality seemed more complicated than that. If Xiang Yi had the Corpse Ghost under his control, then he almost certainly had a grip on the Black Stone too — which probably meant he could control Blood Crystals as well.

Master Chang didn’t actually know much about Black Stone.

Just that Spiritual Ability Users could control Black Stone, and through it exert some influence over certain Abnormalities.

The specifics of how that control worked, or how many Abnormalities could be controlled at once — none of that he was clear on.

He was speculating, mostly.

The Blood Crystals found on that crashed ship were probably not the result of an Abnormality on Xiang Yi’s person spreading and infecting the corpses on its own. More likely, Xiang Yi had done it deliberately.

The reason wasn’t hard to figure out — destroy all the bodies on board and cut off any trail the prison might use to track him.

Though it seemed Xiang Yi hadn’t realized at the time that the ship still had a black box.

Whatever the case, Xiang Yi was clearly no saint, and anyone who’d broken out of prison definitely wasn’t going to be.

Not that it mattered much. As long as there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the man, Master Chang had no intention of backing out of his decision to help him.

"Where’d you get this?"

"Brought it out of the prison."

That was what Xiang Yi said, though the Blood Crystal in his hand had actually been lifted off the body of one of the Scavengers outside the hospital — the one who’d tried to run and caught a sweep from his Blood Crystal Laser Rifle.

Blood Crystals produced through the Laser Rifle’s Blood Crystal mode weren’t the same as High-Quality Blood Crystals formed by Blood Crystal Worm infection and assimilation. They were ordinary Blood Crystals at best, but good enough for a demonstration sample.

Master Chang squinted at it and said, "That stuff goes for a pretty penny, doesn’t it? Tell me what it’s worth and I’ll cover it."

"We can figure that out later."

Xiang Yi opened his panel again and selected the Laser Cutter’s [Firing Module] for [Unique Modification] using the Blood Crystal as the material.

Under the combined influence of his Spiritual Power and Spiritual Fluctuation, the Blood Crystal in his hand slowly liquefied and seeped into the inner workings of the Laser Cutter.

The modification was over quickly. The cutter’s exterior looked no different than before.

Master Chang was about to ask what had just happened when Xiang Yi cut him off first. "Do you have any raw meat around? Or a rat, something like that?"

"I think so." He turned and went to the kitchen adjacent to the living room, came back with a cut of meat from the fridge, and handed it over. "Bought it this afternoon. Pork."

Xiang Yi took the pork outside, set it down in the middle of an open patch of ground, then positioned himself roughly three meters away from it.

That was the maximum effective range of the Laser Cutter.

A beam of deep crimson light swept across the meat. Almost instantly, a thick layer of murky, blood-colored crystals crusted over its surface — visibly low-grade, anyone could see that at a glance.

But Master Chang, standing right beside Xiang Yi, suddenly let out a sharp exclamation. "What the hell is that?!"

"That’s my Spiritual Energy," Xiang Yi said offhandedly. "Infusing Abnormality Material into a mechanical device to enhance it. Results are decent, I suppose."

Master Chang’s expression shifted completely — shock and disbelief written all over his face.

Then, a beat later, understanding hit him all at once. He stared at Xiang Yi with wide eyes full of stunned disbelief.

"You call that decent?! That’s a Spiritual Ability Weapon! No — that’s an Abnormality Weapon!"