The Cross Sword Union wasn't much different from the gang of managers in the former unit. After the dark clouds in the sky had dispersed, the routine filtering began. Feng Xue took this opportunity to sidle up to a newly found Newbie Guide and whispered,
"Bro, you seem to know quite a bit of news?"
"Sure thing!" The somewhat elderly man responded to Feng Xue with a kind smile. However, upon seeing Feng Xue's Scavenging Set, he frowned slightly and said,
"You don't look like a newbie either, what do you want to know?"
"No, no, no, I've been here for less than a month! It's just that I learned my lesson from being tricked last time." Feng Xue waved his hands and tried to use his innocent eyes to show that he was indeed a newbie.
Although the Newbie Guide felt that Feng Xue might be concealing something, he did not mind, as most Newbie Guides also worked as Intelligence Merchants. After a brief moment of thought, he asked,
"What information would you like?"
"What things are valuable?" Feng Xue asked straightforwardly while expressing his frustration,
"The things I picked up last time were all rare goods, but the old man at the door insisted they were worthless. It's been tough, I've only survived up until today by collecting corpses twice..."
Seeing Feng Xue's distressed expression, the Newbie Guide let down his guard and laughed,
"Sigh, you should know that in Infinite City, it all depends on 'Identity'. Those Tool Cards might be powerful in the original world, but here they're no different from waste paper. Bringing a few scrap motorcycles over to sell as scrap metal would be better than those things!"
"Tool Cards?" Feng Xue was intrigued, but he just echoed in agreement,
"I know, right! Sigh~"
Watching Feng Xue's convincing act of Selling Pity, the Newbie Guide got the hint and laughed, saying, "Forget it, you probably can't afford it if I ask for too much. I'll draw up a loan contract for you, 1200 towers, pay me back after you get out. How about that? If you want to buy the info outright, it's 1000 towers. But then I'd have to take the risk of you not making it out. What do you think?"
"Alright, but how do I sign the contract?" Feng Xue still maintained his newbie demeanor, while the Newbie Guide readily pulled out his work badge and rapidly entered a sequence of commands. Soon enough, a loan contract certified by Infinite City appeared.
It's worth noting that this contract wasn't composed of text, but rather it was like the 'Knowledge' inside tags, directly appearing in Feng Xue's mind. It eliminated all ambiguities and even had an evaluation function. As long as the contract was signed, this Newbie Guide would have to offer information worth over 1000 towers about scavenging. And if Feng Xue walked out of the waste dump alive, Infinite City would directly deduct 1200 towers from him to pay the Newbie Guide.
"How come my work badge doesn't have this feature? Could it be the other party has some 'Debt' or 'Loan' tag or element?"
Feng Xue was curious but still signed the contract first. As soon as the agreement was reached, the Newbie Guide immediately said,
"The biggest output in our waste dump are various vehicles. Don't bother picking up motorcycles unless they are in exceptionally good condition; they're not worth the trouble. If the car is intact, it might fetch some money, but not much either. Unless it's a particularly valuable luxury car, a car is only worth around 5000 towers—that's an appraisal, you'd get about 500 towers for one. But if you're just looking to stay alive, two cars would be enough."
He paused slightly here, but the contract clearly hadn't been fulfilled, so he had to continue,
"If you want to make money, pay attention to robots. Our landfill often has various engineering machines; if they're relatively intact, or just missing an arm or leg, they can still be quite valuable. Besides that, keep an eye out for gemstones. The Union is always overbidding for them, they want all kinds of gemstones, though nobody knows what they're used for. But one thing is for sure, three months ago someone found a pink diamond about the size of a fist and exchanged it direct for two hundred thousand towers!"
"So that's an appraisal of two million? Are you sure it wasn't a 'Phantom'? " Feng Xue asked incredulously. That was two million towers—enough for a person to live in Infinite City for fifty-four years without doing anything!
Feng Xue knew that the one who got this huge sum might not live to see the next day, but the appraisal was absolutely accurate! After all, the Appraisers of the waste dump were also subject to the rules of Infinite City. Making frivolous quotes could result in being stripped of their tags, which would be the least of their worries.
Hearing Feng Xue's question, the Newbie Guide shook his head with a look of incomprehension,
"Didn't I say they were overbidding? The Cross Sword Union's price for gemstones starts at twenty percent of the appraisal value. But even with that, that gemstone would still be worth a million! Of course, it's not a 'True Object'. Otherwise, it would have been swallowed up immediately. It's probably not a 'Phantom' either; such a big gemstone would have been discovered if it was a phantom."
"That makes sense..." Feng Xue tucked away the information about the gemstone but realized the Newbie Guide had stopped speaking, and the contract in his mind indicated completion.
Without a doubt, the prior information about the gemstones had already met the 1000 tower standard.
Realizing that by asking about "Phantoms," he might have revealed some of his hand, Feng Xue didn't say anything more to the Newbie Guide and simply activated 'Breath Concealment' right in front of him.
Although he wasn't wearing an Assassin's suit, he quickly blended into the dense crowd, and among the many dressed in Scavenging Sets, the Newbie Guide soon lost track of Feng Xue.
As for him, he felt a twinge of regret but did not delve into it. He casually scanned the crowd and had already found his next target.
Feng Xue, who had melted into the crowd with concealed breath, had no intention of looking back, but began to ponder what kind of world would have such an abundance of motorcycles. However, he soon realized a puzzling question—
Logically speaking, the landfill should be linked to more than one world; otherwise, the previous landfill wouldn't have had weapons from the Cold Weapon Era, the modern era, and the High-tech Era all at once.
Yet the garbage from this landfill seemed to be highly homogenous. Was there some sort of special pattern here?
"Cards, gemstones, vehicles..." No matter how much Feng Xue thought about it, he couldn't fit these items into a single worldview. In the end, he could only reluctantly suppress these thoughts for the time being and begin to contemplate what kind of gemstone could be worth a million towers.
"Is it possible that the President of the Cross Sword Union has been raising a Gemstone Dragon?"