This landfill was enormous, Jiang Yue had been walking all day and still hadn’t found her way out.
The sun had set. Jiang Yue squatted beside a pile of garbage, feeling troubled. She was exhausted, sleepy, and hungry, and still had to endure the stench that filled the air.
The shoes on her feet had been worn through during the climb, and her prison uniform hung off her in tatters. As the temperature began to drop after sunset, Jiang Yue rubbed her chilled arms and started stomping her feet on the ground to keep warm.
She recalled a line from a Spring Festival Gala skit; why do the Irish dance tap so well? Because they’re freezing!
She needed to get out of here as soon as possible and figure out a way to earn some money for a proper meal. It had been a long time since she’d tasted anything flavorful; she wondered what kind of local snacks this “garbage planet” might have.
Hugging her arms, Jiang Yue shuffled forward, stomping her feet as she walked. She tried to distract herself by thinking about the delicious food she used to eat at the military academy; barbecue, hot pot, steak, ice cream, and even that whole box of premium snacks hidden under Xi Boyu’s desk.
Her mouth filled with saliva.
But it was completely useless, thinking about all the delicious food she’d eaten in the past didn’t ease her hunger at all; if anything, it made her even hungrier.
Jiang Yue felt miserable, lowering her head to look at the endless piles of garbage bags beneath her feet.
She couldn’t possibly dig through trash to find something to eat… that would be far too damaging to her self-respect.
But she’d already fallen to this state, there was no need to cling to the airs of a pampered girl from her past.
Jiang Yue hunched her shoulders in distress. After a fierce internal struggle, she twitched her nose and began trying to pick out the scent of food amid the overwhelming stench.
The sky grew darker and darker. The hill-like mounds of garbage were swallowed by the night, looking at a glance like a range of rolling mountains.
Just how big was this landfill, anyway?
Jiang Yue twitched her ears and suddenly heard a series of footsteps. Her eyes lit up for a moment, but she quickly calmed down again, her expression settling as she continued walking forward.
After climbing over a garbage heap more than ten meters high, the glow of a bonfire came into view.
Five gaunt, sallow-faced betas were sitting around the fire for warmth. Their clothes were tattered, and each of them wore a black, raincoat-like cloak. A strong, choking smell of chemicals clung to their bodies.
When they saw Jiang Yue coming down from the heap of trash, their gazes immediately turned wary.
This landfill was filthy and chaotic, countless scavengers had killed each other here over a single bite of food or a piece of trash that could be sold for a bit of money.
The sudden appearance of a bald Alpha nearly 1.9 meters tall made everyone uneasy. The betas sitting around the bonfire quietly gripped the daggers at their waists.
Jiang Yue stopped in front of them. After straightening the hem of her clothes, she politely asked, “Excuse me, how long does it take to get out of this landfill? Is there a road that leads to a town?”
They looked Jiang Yue up and down. One of the betas, a man in his forties, glanced at her and said, “This is a garbage dump; if you move fast, it’ll still take about a week to get out. If you want to reach a town, head south.”
“Thank you. I’ll be on my way then.”
Jiang Yue turned and walked south. The night grew darker and the temperature kept dropping; her tattered clothes couldn’t stop the heat from leaving her body. The rustling of insects, snakes, and rats moving through the garbage filled the air. She licked her lips, wondering whether she should catch a few rats to stave off her hunger.
At this point, she had no room to be picky. After paying such a heavy price, survival was what mattered most. In times of famine, people had gnawed on tree bark, there were even stories of people resorting to exchanging children to eat. Compared to that, her situation wasn’t the worst; it could be worse, at least.
Jiang Yue closed her eyes and began pinpointing the source of the sounds. The noises made by rats were easy enough to distinguish, she had dealt with plenty of large rats in the small woods at the military academy and was very familiar with them, with ample experience catching them.
Without a gravity ring to use as a throwing weapon, the thin filament that could shoot out from her eyeball became her best weapon.
After draining ten rats, the gnawing hunger finally eased a little. A faint hint of color returned to Jiang Yue’s paper-pale face.
“Good thing my eyeball can absorb energy, otherwise I’d have to eat dead rats,” she muttered, burying the shriveled carcasses deep in the trash. If she’d had a lighter on her, she would have burned them to ashes long ago to destroy any trace.
People in the landfill probably wouldn’t care about a few dried-up rats, but being cautious and careful never hurt anyone.
Jiang Yue licked her lips and touched her deflated hump. If it were still intact, she would only need two days to run out of this landfill. Now that her stamina was severely depleted, it would take much longer.
After moving forward for a while, she finally found a few pieces of wood. Delighted, she picked them up and began searching for relatively dry trash.
After gathering a pile of garbage, she resorted to the most primitive method, drilling wood to make fire. After a great deal of effort, she finally managed to produce a small ember and, with some difficulty, lit a pile of trash on fire.
The bright firelight attracted a swarm of insects. The landfill truly had an absurd number of them, abundant garbage had fed them until they were fat and oversized. One mosquito alone was as big as half a fist, with a bright red head. Jiang Yue seriously doubted whether a human could survive being bitten by something like that.
No wonder the five people she had met earlier smelled so strong, that must have been some kind of repellent against insect bites.
Jiang Yue huddled by the fire for warmth, curling into herself. A red-headed mosquito the size of half a fist lunged at her aggressively. She grabbed a piece of discarded plastic board and swung it back and forth, slapping rapidly as she tried to kill the mosquitoes.
The mosquitoes came in endless waves, and she couldn’t possibly put out the fire. In irritation, she removed both eyeballs from her wrists and had them catch the mosquitoes.
The eyeballs seemed very happy. They bounced along, one on each side, onto Jiang Yue’s shoulders, and extended thin red filaments toward the mosquitoes, like flawless hidden weapons from a martial arts novel, hitting their targets with perfect accuracy every time.
Jiang Yue gathered a few relatively clean foam boards and arranged them into a ring around the fire as a buffer zone. After that, she lay down on the foam, propped up her long legs, and stared at the dull, ash-colored night sky above the landfill.
The moon of Garbage Star was slightly larger than that of Beta Star. By all logic, its light should have been bright and clear, but the ever-present gray leaden clouds blocked most of it. As a result, the moonlight here was dim and hazy, as if smeared across the sky.
She had escaped from the prison on Garbage Star, but what was she supposed to do now?
Where could she go, all alone like this?
What would she do in the future? How was she going to fill her stomach and survive on her own?
Jiang Yue felt deeply lost and uncertain.
When she had still been a pampered, extravagant rich girl, she had never seriously thought about life.
Later, when she followed Song Yang to Liyue by accident and enrolled in the Federal Military Academy, she still hadn’t given much careful thought to her future.
In her original plan, she would simply spend four uneventful years at the academy, graduate smoothly with a diploma, and then find some easy, low-pressure job that could support her basic needs.
Even if the income was low, it didn’t matter. She would choose the least stressful lifestyle; no marriage, no Omega bearing her children. Living alone and growing old in solitude would have been fine too.
But ever since she transmigrated, her life had gradually drifted away from the carefully planned script she once set for herself, like a wild horse that had broken loose and was now running out of control.
“How did I even end up like this? This is way too exciting!”
“University—I didn’t finish it. Prison—I didn’t finish that either. I can’t eat properly, I can’t sleep well, I’ve even lost my hair, and Zhang San’s promised ten million is gone too. He even sweet-talked me into teaming up with him to traffic drugs. I should’ve snapped his neck back then and done society a favor. I was way too soft-hearted. And now look at me, I’m sleeping on a pile of trash. Even these few pieces of foam board were scavenged after digging through garbage for ages.”
“Life really is full of ups and downs… downs… downs… downs…”
“Even if I got kidnapped by the Zerg right now, I probably wouldn’t even be surprised.”
“My life can’t possibly get any more dramatic than this!”
Jiang Yue lay on the foam boards, talking to herself. She let out a long, weary sigh and felt deeply wronged by the way things had turned out.
“Ugh, this is miserable.”
“Ugh, really miserable.”
“Ugh, this is damn next-level, spiraling-to-the-heavens kind of miserable.”
She kept grumbling under her breath, then, halfway through her rant, she tilted her head and fell asleep right there on the foam boards.
The next morning, the deafening roar of a flying vehicle woke her up.
Jiang Yue opened her eyes and saw a silver spiral-shaped spacecraft hovering above the landfill, beginning to dump its cargo.
Massive piles of electronic waste rained down from the sky. Her eyes lit up, and she instantly sprang up from the foam boards, sprinting toward the falling electronics.
All those years reading novels on “Green JJ” had finally paid off! Thankfully, her friends’ relentless, storm-like recommendations had pushed her to read a few non-romance, big-female-lead stories on the platform, despite being immersed in endless domineering CEO romance novels full of wall-pinning, waist-grabbing, low-voiced hoarseness, tearful red eyes, and ruthless affection where the heroine’s fragile body could be broken with a touch.
Thank goodness!
These electronic scraps could be sold for money!
She charged toward the pile of garbage like a husky that had just been let out of its cage.
Running at 170 km/h, her mood was beyond ecstatic.
A crowd surged in from all directions. Jiang Yue, moving at top speed, was the first to plunge into the pile of electronic waste. With quick hands, she grabbed a handful of discarded circuit boards and what looked like finely made metal components.
She had read about this in books, these things were worth money!
Why couldn’t she have eight hands? Why couldn’t she be like an octopus with lots of tentacles and suction cups? Two hands were simply not enough.
These electronic scraps were all money.
And money could buy steaming buns and hot meat soup.
The more she collected, the more she earned. The more she earned, the more she could eat.
Jiang Yue closed her eyes and made a ruthless decision. She tore off her prison uniform.
Bare-chested, she revealed a lean and powerful physique; firm, well-defined back muscles, solid biceps, and a set of full, sculpted abs that glowed faintly in the morning light.
With a tragic sense of determination and an almost heroic resolve, she swept all the circuit boards and miscellaneous electronic parts into her clothes.
Only when her limited clothing could no longer contain her boundless greed did Jiang Yue reluctantly tie up both sleeves. Hugging the bulging bundle in her arms, she left the pile of electronic waste with deep regret.
Before leaving, she also picked up a one-and-a-half-meter-long metal rod. She wasn’t sure what it was used for, but it was extremely sturdy.
Electronic waste was a hot commodity, so valuable that even a lion couldn’t withstand being surrounded by packs of wolves.
Soon, several groups had set their sights on Jiang Yue.
A lone scavenger with no companions was the easiest target. So what if she had a solid, muscular build?
Two fists couldn’t beat four hands, and no matter how skilled someone was, they still feared a kitchen knife.
Very quickly, five people approached her with hostile intent, eyeing her up and down with obvious malice.
Jiang Yue picked up a torn garbage bag from the ground and tied her bundle to her body. She weighed the heavy gray metal rod in her hand, her cold, gray vertical pupils fixed on them.
A 1.9-meter-tall frame, a bare and muscular upper body, a bald head gleaming under the morning light, a sharp and almost sinister face, cold gray vertical pupils, and a one-and-a-half-meter metal staff…
All these elements combined together made the bald figure in front of them radiate an unmistakable “boss-level” aura.
The five people backed off without a fight and walked away as if nothing had happened.
Jiang Yue secretly let out a breath of relief. She wiped the cold sweat from her forehead and trudged off with the bundle on her back, feeling uneasy.
She didn’t know where the recycling stations were, so she had no choice but to ask a group of scavengers for directions.
The scavengers she approached glanced at the gray metal rod in her hand, and their expressions immediately turned tense.
“G-Go south… that’s where the waste recycling station is.”
Jiang Yue asked again, “Do you have water and food? I can trade you for what I picked up.”
She squatted down and spread out her bundle. The group of scavengers took a circuit board and, in exchange, gave her a piece of bread, a can of food, a bag of compressed biscuits, and a bottle of water.
Jiang Yue then asked, “How much can I sell all this for?”
The person who gave her the food said, “What you picked up is good stuff. Circuit boards and electronic components are valuable, you could sell it for at least over 200 credits.”
Jiang Yue thanked them and walked away, carrying her bundle.
A faint wind drifted across the landfill, brushing over her well-defined chest muscles, and sweat slowly slid down her body, bringing a strange sense of coolness.
This… was the taste of freedom.
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Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152