Wasteland Border Inspector

Chapter 36: Money to Buy Your Life, Lithium Deposits!
Cheng Ye was well aware of his own needlework skills.

Back when there were no cheap items available on Pinduoduo, he used to mend ripped jeans. But now that jeans cost 20 yuan a pair, why bother mending them anymore?

If you wear out your clothes, you can get 4 yuan by recycling them at Cainiao Station. After that, you can wait for a coupon to buy a new pair. It only costs a maximum of 10 yuan to get rid of them.

Over time, I've almost forgotten the skill; I'm basically just at the level of being able to use it.

"From this perspective, my action point retrieval level should be at its highest level."

Cheng Ye pondered for a while, then sighed inwardly at himself for worrying about this.

There's really no need to get hung up on the exact standards for action retrieval. Complex actions in the future will inevitably require supporting skills to execute, while the requirements for simple tasks certainly won't be too high.

Even if it's really impossible to implement, learning on the spot won't take too much time.

Wasteland is not the apocalypse, and Happy City is not a city ruin overrun by zombies.

Human civilization still exists here. As an inspector, it might be difficult for him to obtain high-tech information, but obtaining widely circulated common sense information would be relatively easy.

Also.

Cheng Ye reached into the table drawer and stuffed his backpack inside.

Although the collector can mask biological perception during operation, the finished product cannot continue to be masked.

I need to be mindful of this in the future and try to use my actions when no one is around.

I was stuck in the quarantine area and couldn't go anywhere. The four hours in the morning flew by.

As the saying goes, a sudden downpour doesn't last long, but a light drizzle can last a long time.

The torrential rain came too suddenly last night, and by this morning it had turned into a light drizzle, and now it's all cleared up.

The temperature is soaring, and the sun is so strong that people are dizzy and lightheaded.

At first, Cheng Ye was a little worried that the infected would come and be difficult to deal with. He focused intently on looking outside the passage and occasionally got up to move his body and keep warm.

Throughout the entire morning, at least a hundred people were let through to quarantine zone B next door, but there wasn't a single person in his zone A.

"Could it really be that the torrential rain last night caused the driveway outside to collapse?"

"It can't be that bad. Would someone who drives out not expect it to rain?"

Cheng Ye was quite surprised.

If he can get through the first day smoothly, it will be a good thing for him.

But that's just how amazing Murphy's Law is.

As luck would have it, just as this thought popped into my head, the silhouette of a vehicle finally appeared in the distance.

coming!

Cheng Ye's spirits lifted, and he subconsciously opened the collector panel and glanced at the upper right corner.

In nearly five hours, the charge level has recovered from 0% to 18%, which is quite impressive.

At this rate, I can charge until I leave work, and then I'll have enough for another search tomorrow.

Moreover, he was worried that the search would fail, but now it's fine. Even if it fails, he can still get action points, so he won't lose out either way.

As the vehicle gradually approached, it was, unsurprisingly, the most common type of van in the buffer zone.

Cheng Ye noticed that when the vehicle drove onto the hard road and passed through Channel One, the two front tires were abnormally flattened, indicating that the vehicle was carrying a lot of goods.

"Halt! Await instructions!"

Cheng Ye jumped up, pulled a megaphone from the table frame, and shouted at the approaching Jinbei van.

Although this was his first time on duty at a fast checkpoint, he spent the entire morning observing the procedures in the adjacent B area and managed to get a fairly good grasp of the ins and outs.

It's basically the same routine:
First, sort the data, then check it, exchange information with each other, and verify the results.

The Western inspector in Zone B seemed particularly resistant to using instruments. Often, scavengers who couldn't give him satisfactory answers would be labeled as "infected" and stuffed into isolation wards, with a minimum stay of seven days.

Regardless of whether this approach is right or wrong, it is certainly very inefficient.

As a typical academic, Cheng Ye had figured out his own methodology over the past two months. With the tips taught by Luo Xiaoxue, he was confident that he was no worse than the simpleton next door.

The large Jinbei van drove through the passage and slowly came to a stop in front of the isolation iron gate.

The Western driver was taken aback when he noticed that an Eastern prosecutor was sitting inside.

"Get off the bus, count off, don't you understand?"

Cheng Ye called out, and the people in the car snapped out of their daze and quickly opened the door and got out.

Four people in total.

There were two people sitting in the front row and two in the back, all of them Westerners.

"Do you have the paperwork for leaving the city? Pass it to me through the window so I can take a look."

"There are some!"

The Western driver nodded quickly and turned around to take an envelope from the storage compartment next to his seat.

"Please check, sir."

There is a small window, about the size of a palm, on the outer iron gate, which is used by the person being inspected to pass documents.

Cheng Ye took it and went back to the alloy table to disassemble and examine it.

Unexpectedly, when it was opened, six coins fell out first, with the image of the giant wall of Happiness City engraved on the front and the number '100' engraved on the back.

600?

That's it?
You want to destroy the economic system of Happiness City, don't you?
Cheng Ye was stunned for a moment. Although prosecutors had many ways to make money and earning a thousand or so happiness coins a month was not difficult, the official monthly salary was not much. He, as a trainee prosecutor, earned 500 coins, while Liu Bi, a senior fourth-term prosecutor, only earned 950.

Now anyone can just show up and offer 600 Happiness Coins as a bribe. Isn't that absurd?

Cheng Ye swept the coins aside, raised his head slightly, and looked at the four people standing outside the isolation door.

Upon closer inspection, he immediately discerned something significant.

The driver and passenger were fine, but the two people who got out of the van's trunk were likely injured.

The person on the left has an arm injury, which is slightly bent involuntarily, while the person on the right has a leg injury and needs to hold onto the tailgate to stand.

"No wonder they sent such an expensive gift."

"If this injury were in Zone B next door, they probably wouldn't even ask any questions, they'd just throw him into an isolation ward for ten days or half a month. After the isolation period, the one with the arm injury might be able to hold on, but the one with the leg injury probably won't make it through."

Cheng Ye immediately understood.

As Raven previously stated, these four-seater large golden goblets usually don't contain much in the way of bribes. They mainly consist of local specialties from surrounding settlements and sanctuaries. While they are rare, their value is generally around 50 Happiness Coins.

After all, they had already paid a portion of the "toll" at the checkpoint before leaving the city.

Only large transport convoys would slip a hundred or two coins to the city for inspections, just to ensure their safety.

"Six hundred coins to buy a life, that's quite a sum."

Cheng Ye opened the exit form and looked it over.

There was nothing special recorded on it; it was just a normal transaction approval. The goods were nothing more than tools such as wrenches, screwdrivers, and hammers, as well as small industrial products such as radios, tape, and wires, all of which were within the scope of Xingfu City's permitted exports.

No, these people came back with their trucks fully loaded.

Suddenly remembering how flat the tires were when the large Jinbei van entered the station, Cheng Ye immediately realized that the problem lay with the cargo.

"Who's the leader?"

"Sir, it's me!" the driver said, raising his hand.

"name?"

"Cole Waters".

"I'll open the isolation door. You drive in alone. I need to inspect the goods. Everyone else, wait outside, understand?"

Cheng Ye's tone was crisp.

Cole's heart skipped a beat. He hadn't expected that the Eastern inspector would guess that there was something wrong with the goods without asking any questions.

But at the same time, he realized that Cheng Ye had not directly refused, which meant that there was still room for discussion.

The isolation door slowly opened upwards.

The isolation gate in Quarantine Zone A is much wider than that in Zone B, more than enough to allow a large van to pass through.

With the support in the trunk removed, the injured man immediately staggered, revealing an unusual condition. Before his teammates could catch him, he collapsed to the ground.

Cole caught a glimpse of this scene in the rearview mirror, his expression changed slightly, but he could only slowly drive the car into the inspection area, obediently turn off the engine and get out of the car.

In front of Cheng Ye, he took off his shirt and pants without saying a word, leaving only his underwear, and stepped into the checkpoint area.

This is standard procedure at rapid checkpoints, intended to demonstrate that the person has no obvious symptoms of infection or is concealing weapons.

"Report your numbers first."

Cheng Ye glanced at him and saw that although Cole had several scabbed abrasions all over his body and his calves were swollen, none of them were infected.

Only scratches, bites, or puncture wounds larger than 10*10cm meet the characteristics of an infected person's attack.

"37.1 (body temperature) / 66 (heart rate) / 18 (respiratory rate)."

"You look very relaxed."

Cheng Ye forced a smile, which startled Ke Dun, who immediately shivered and quickly replied:

"Sir, I've always had a strong heart since I was a child. Even when fighting infected creatures, my heart rate has never exceeded 130."

"You think I meant this?"

Cheng Ye reached out and tapped the table, causing the five coins to tremble on the alloy surface.

"I'll give you three chances to say what I want to hear."

"Yes, sir!"

Cole's Adam's apple bobbed. Despite facing a young man more than ten years his junior, he felt immense pressure.

It wasn't just because of the power the other party held, but also because of the unquestionable confidence and domineering presence in their eyes.

“After we finished transporting the goods to the Qingshi gathering place, we met a homeless scavenger on our way back. He wanted to exchange a message for two weeks' worth of food, and I agreed.”

The message stated that it described an undeveloped mining location.

“We found the mine, but we didn’t expect that the scavengers had already set a trap. Luckily, we won the fight and even dug up a lot of samples.”

Cole spoke very quickly, as if afraid that his words would not be concise enough and that Cheng Ye would interrupt him.

"mineral?"

Cheng Ye raised an eyebrow slightly. "Is it a supernatural mineral?"

"Sir, you are joking. How could we possibly find such a rare commodity? It's a small lithium deposit in the form of pegmatite."

"What, lithium ore?!"

P.S.: It's a new day, don't forget to vote and read on! Your support means a lot to me. Thank you to every reader who's made it this far!
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(End of this chapter)