Chapter 1 — I Built an Empire in the Wasteland

The sky above Tàn Đô is never blue. Seven years since the end of the Great War, the only thing left above people's heads is still an opaque gray curtain mixed with radioactive dust, the light passing through is weak as if the sun was also ashamed of what happened below. Tô Bạt Phong squatted on a cracked piece of concrete, holding an iron rod in his hand to pick at layers of rubble, his eyes glued to the dark gap between two wall panels that leaned against each other, creating a dead corner that no one noticed.

He was twenty-four years old, but his hands were calloused like those of a middle-aged man who had worked hard all his life. Seven years of scavenging among the ruins of a city that once had a name, now only known by the common name given to it by all the survivors: Tàn Đô, the desolate heart of the entire Phế Thổ region. Before the war, the place where he was sitting was one of the busiest school districts in the city, there was a high school where he had attended, was at the top of his class, and had his name called out by the teachers in front of the whole school every exam. Now it's just an unnamed pile of rubble, no one remembered what it used to be.

The iron rod touched something hard and there was a faint metallic sound. Bạt Phong stopped and leaned closer into the dark crack. An old transformer shell, perhaps some copper components inside can still be used. He breathed a rare sigh of relief during the day, and began to carefully pry each piece of surrounding brick to pull it out without collapsing more of the wall above.

Scrap picking in Phế Thổ is not as simple as people think. The good metal left over from seven years of digging by tens of thousands of people has almost been exhausted in easily accessible areas. To find anything valuable, people must risk their lives to get into areas that are still dangerous - walls can collapse at any time, the ground can sink into flooded basements, and worst of all, pockets of radioactive gas are still left in some deep holes, something that not everyone has a detector to detect in time. Bạt Phong has an old radiation meter, the outer shell is cracked, the indicator needle sometimes works, but it's still better than nothing. He always wore it on his hip, the only life-saving habit he learned in seven years.

He pulled out the transformer shell and put it in a sack that had bulged quite a bit after half a day of work. Inside were a few pieces of copper wire, a solar panel with one corner broken but still usable, and two cans of pre-war canned food luckily found in a corner of the basement - the most valuable thing of the day, enough to exchange for clean water for a whole week in the Black Market.

The afternoon sun—if that pale light could be called sunshine—had begun to dip over the horizon when Bạt Phong stood up, hoisted a sack over his shoulder, and walked out of the ruined area toward the Black Market. He had gone less than five hundred meters when he heard a familiar high-pitched whistle coming from behind a pile of rusted cars.

Three silhouettes stepped out to block the way. In the lead was a tall man, wearing leather armor gleaned from several layers of old coats patched together, his hair cut short, and on his cheek there was a long scar from the corner of his eye to his chin - a trace of a fight some year, no one could remember the exact cause. Lôi Quang Việt. Before the war, he was ranked second in Bạt Phong's class, behind only one person: Bạt Phong himself. Seven years later, his academic rank no longer means anything, but it seemed that the old resentment was still in his heart, only the form of expression had changed.

"It's you again." Lôi Quang Việt smiled faintly, lightly kicking the tip of his shoe against the pile of bricks under his feet. "I heard that this area has a very good scrap mine. The best student in the school really has good eyes."

Standing behind him was Hạ Tử Kỳ, thinner but with eyes more dangerous than Lôi Quang Việt, holding a sharpened iron bar at one end in his hand. The third person was a big guy, Bạt Phong, who couldn't remember his name. He only knew that he had been in the same grade but in a different class.

"I don't have anything worth blocking your path for." Bạt Phong kept his voice calm, even though he already knew the outcome in his heart. This is not the first time.

"Nothing?" Hạ Tử Kỳ stepped forward and used the tip of the iron bar to open the mouth of the sack on Bạt Phong's shoulder. "This bag is so heavy, it's probably full of rocks and dirt."

Without waiting for Bac Phong to answer, the big man rushed forward and snatched the sack off his shoulder. Bạt Phong instinctively held the strap of the condom, was pulled staggered forward, and immediately a punch hit him square in the stomach, causing him to bend over, his breath catching in his chest.

"The best student in the school in the past now only knows how to dig through trash." Lôi Quang Việt picked up the sack from his accomplice's hand, rummaged inside, his eyes lit up when he saw two cans of canned food. "Let me keep this for you. Consider your tuition fees owed to me from high school."

Bạt Phong knelt on one knee on the gravelly ground, one hand holding his stomach, his eyes still not taking his eyes off the sack being carried away. He knew that resisting now would only make the beating worse. The three of them had weapons and were in large numbers, while he only had two empty hands and a body exhausted after half a day of digging.

"Next time, remember to find a little more." Hạ Tử Kỳ smirked, used the toe of his shoe to gently push Bạt Phong's shoulder, causing him to fall to the ground. "If not, we'll have to find you ourselves."

Three figures disappeared behind the pile of rusted cars, carrying with them all the results of a day's work of Bạt Phong. He lay still for a moment on the cold ground, looking up at the gray sky above, a familiar feeling of helplessness rising in his chest—a feeling he had learned to endure over the past seven years, but had never really gotten used to.

He remembered his parents, who died in the first bombardment when the Great War broke out, when he was just seventeen years old. He remembered the small house in the school district, the textbooks he once cherished, and his dream of entering a prestigious technical university that probably no longer existed. All of that was buried along with the city, leaving only a scrap collector kneeling in the middle of a pile of rubble, letting his former classmates trample on him.

But Bac Phong did not cry. He stopped crying a long time ago. He just slowly got up, brushed the dust off his clothes, and continued toward the Black Market with empty hands. Along the way, he passed by an area fenced with rusty barbed wire, with a radioactive warning sign with most of the words faded, only the familiar skull was still vaguely recognizable. This area was located deep inside a collapsed high-rise building complex. Everyone was rumored to have pockets of high-concentration radioactive gas left underneath. No one dares to go in there to look for scrap even though they were sure there were many valuable things inside.

Bạt Phong stopped walking and looked at that fenced area for a long time. The radiation meter on his waist didn't sound an alarm, perhaps because he was still standing on the outer edge. A reckless thought suddenly appeared in his mind: if everyone else was afraid of this area, then perhaps this was the only place where something remained untouched.

He has nothing to lose. The scrap sack had been robbed, two precious cans of canned food were also lost, and tomorrow he still had to find something to exchange for clean water, if he didn't want to die of thirst in this dead land. If Lôi Quang Việt's Gray Wolves continued to block his path to plunder in easily accessible areas, then perhaps it was time for him to venture into places where even they dared not go.

He looked at the blurred warning sign again, then turned and continued walking towards the Black Market, silently planning for tomorrow. The afternoon wind blew through the ruins, carrying fine dust to the ground, as if the whole of Tàn Đô was sighing with him.

That night, in a makeshift tent built of old corrugated iron sheets on the edge of the Black Market, Bạt Phong lay looking up at the hole-filled roof, hearing the wind whistling through the gap. His stomach was hungry because there was nothing left to eat, but his mind was unusually alert, thinking about that barrier area, about what might be waiting underneath that layer of rubble.

He didn't know that tomorrow's reckless decision would change his entire life, would pull him out of his position as a bullied scrap collector, into a story much bigger than what he could imagine right now — a story about a girl kept in the dark, about a secret buried along with the old civilization, and about a desolate land waiting for someone brave enough to start rebuilding from scratch.

Outside, the sky in Pha Tho was still as gray as every night, not a single star could penetrate the thick layer of radioactive dust. But somewhere deep underground, another light is waiting to be awakened.