Huang'e City was the main city on Huang'e, and the only one. That dead volcano whose peak vanished into the sky was the city's foundation, and the hundred-odd square kilometers of land spreading out from its slopes were the main rainbow crystal mining zone.
Who knows what joke the Creator was playing: on all of Huang'e, only the land around this dead volcano produces rainbow crystal, that precious ore. The rest of that vast continent offers nothing but desolation.
A city twisted by such lopsided growth can never lack the commonest thing of all — a slum. And the northwest corner of Huang'e City, close by the lava falls, is exactly the slum everyone knows.
Not every miner on Huang'e was a criminal or a smuggler. About a tenth of them were honest folk with legal status, and many of those had come with families in tow — some fleeing poverty, some hiding from enemies. Whatever the reason, none of them would let wives and children live in a mining district with no law at all. They settled their families in the relative safety of Huang'e City.
Over the years, those poor mining families, plus a scattering of service workers, made up the largest slum in Huang'e City.
The most dangerous place is the safest. Seven and his crew could think until their skulls split and never guess that Wuchang would dare hide in Huang'e City, right under their noses. Even now Seven and Roda still believed Wuchang was holed up somewhere in the Pillar Forest.
"Damn, that's steep. Five gold coins a day for a broken-down house like this? That's plain robbery!" Pike's grumbling came from inside the room.
"Save the bellyaching. You think that five gold coins is rent? I'll tell you something — the real owner of this house is a smuggling ring out of Huang'e City, and part of that money is protection money," Boss Pan said sourly.
Lane spoke up then too. "Without Boss Pan's face, you think Mad Dog and his lot would rent us a house? At a price this low? Think about it — while we live here, Mad Dog and his people are obliged to keep us safe. Anyone else renting a place like this pays at least eight gold coins a day..."
Wuchang rapped on the table. "How did we get off topic again? Every time we sit down to talk something through, the thread derails. Pike especially — always interrupting."
"Ye Tian and his men have gone blood-drunk in the mining district, and Huang'e City has started a citywide search. This one street has been swept twice in a single morning. If Mad Dog and his people weren't covering for us, we'd have been exposed long ago."
"Whether Ye Tian's operation is aimed at us or not, we're in serious danger now. On what we do next, I need to hear everyone's opinion."
There were only four people in the room now — Wuchang, Pike, Lane, and Smith Pan. Wild Bull and Eileen had gone to the black market under Mad Dog's protection to buy supplies.
Two were missing, but every brain on the team was present; whatever Wuchang, Lane, and Boss Pan decided together, the others were unlikely to oppose.
"Two problems in front of us. One, staying alive. The other, revenge. Wuchang cleaned out Seven's vault last night and came away with a hundred liquid-mithril coins, more than anyone expected, but that only makes up for what we lost in property. What about all those miners who died for nothing? Who's going to avenge them?" Lane said it quietly, then drained a full cup of wine.
"We'd better be cautious about revenge." Boss Pan was far calmer than Lane. "A lot of those miners followed me for years. It'd be a lie to say I have no feelings about it. But we have to face reality — the man behind Seven is Roda, one of the three big bosses, the Mine Supervisor, and Ye Tian and his lot have ties to Seven that nobody can untangle..."
"You're saying all those brothers died for nothing?" Lane shot back before he could finish.
"What else can we do? Isn't a miner's fate to die violently?" Pike spoke up then, suddenly bleak. "Listen to that gunfire down south, popping like beans in a pan. How many die today? A thousand? Two thousand? Ten thousand? And who's going to avenge any of them?"
"Besides, ninety-nine percent of the miners on Huang'e have records, and most of them have blood on their hands. Everyone's numb to the idea of dying. Where under heaven is there a place without a few unjust dead?"
Pike's defeatism made Lane furious, but every word of it was plain fact, impossible to argue with. Seeing the old man's face gone red with anger, Wuchang quickly changed the subject.
"We can talk revenge through later. Right now the priority is our safety. We can't hide forever, can we?"
Boss Pan had been turning this question over for a long time. He answered without hesitation. "Smuggling out. The only way now is to be smuggled out. Once we're off Huang'e, out of Roda's reach and Ye Tian's and Ye Fei's, and living on a civilized world, with the money we have now we can still live like rich men..."
Boss Pan's proposal was practical. A hundred liquid-mithril coins was a full million gold coins; even on Three Seas Star a man could live well on that.
"A million gold coins is enough for you?" Lane looked at him with contempt. "A million gold coins won't buy you a house on Three Seas Star. All that money gets us is a few thatched huts on a mortal star. Don't forget, six people are splitting it — that's a hundred and sixty thousand each. What's that supposed to buy?"
"You filthy old man, you argue for the sake of arguing. When did I say anything about the capital star ring? I mean a mortal star, just to get by for a while. A million gold coins still counts for a hell of a lot on a mortal star..."
Listening to them bicker, Wuchang finally saw where the two of them clashed. It was the same as back on Earth: a million in cash was nothing in a first-tier city, but carry it off to a third- or fourth-tier city and it buys you a very comfortable life.
Lane would not let this one go. Hugging his bottle, his voice climbing, he said, "Wuchang has to go to the capital star ring. What future is there on a mortal star? Don't forget, Wuchang is an Outlier, and his head is stuffed full of learning. Give him the best education there is, and his future is a golden road."
"Cut the crap. I believe Wuchang has real ability, but Wuchang lost his memory — he doesn't know his own past, and who knows what enemies he's made? A family that can raise an Outlier and hand down so much hidden knowledge — is that going to be an ordinary family? Then how did a member of that family end up in a dump like Huang'e, with his damn memory gone on top of it? Doesn't that make you stop and think?"
The more Boss Pan talked, the hotter he got, pounding the table as he locked horns with Lane. "There has to be a big story behind Wuchang ending up in a state like this. You'd ship him off to Three Seas Star before you've figured it out? Are you crazy, or am I..."
Both men's eyes bulged bigger than an ox's, and the quarrel grew fiercer until they were about to push up their sleeves and come to blows. And right then Eileen and Wild Bull came back and pushed the door open.
"Are you two out of your minds? Weren't you supposed to be working out our next move? Why are you fighting?" Eileen said, shoving the pair of them apart and piling the food on the table.
"How's it look out there?" Wuchang tore open a bag of jerky and asked between bites.
"Don't ask. A river of blood. Mad Dog's informants watched the whole thing from somewhere along the city wall — it was a one-sided massacre. They killed people like animals."
At the mention of the massacre in the mining district, Lane and Boss Pan forgot their quarrel and sat back down together to pick it apart.
"What game is Governor Ye Fei playing? Isn't this cutting Huang'e's roots out from under it? With nobody left to mine for him, isn't he afraid His Imperial Majesty will take his head?"
"Exactly. The war between the Horsehead Star Ring and the Orion Star Ring hasn't stopped for a day, and the military's demand for rainbow crystal has reached a fever pitch. If Huang'e's output drops sharply now, that just doesn't add up."
Wuchang, stuffing dried meat into his mouth, muttered absently, "Rainbow crystal... rainbow crystal..." A moment later he was suddenly on his feet.
"Boss Pan, get in touch with Mad Dog right now and have them put me into the mine shafts after dark. I'm going mining. And while you're at it, contact the black market traders — with this many miners dead, the price of rainbow crystal is bound to shoot up. I want to make a killing while I have the chance."
"Mining?" The whole room was dumbstruck. Wuchang isn't the money-grubbing type, is he? They all started in to talk him out of it, but Wuchang was already flat on his camp cot, snoring.
In Huang'e City, black market traders were a very particular breed. The authorities hated them, yet no Governor in living memory had managed to wipe them out, because rainbow crystal smuggling was an enormous business, and the prominent people tangled up in it were beyond counting.
Nobody was fool enough to make enemies of these people. Not even the Governor dared.
On the first night of the crackdown, deep inside an underground casino in the slum, in a room built into a pitch-black mine shaft, the thug called Mad Dog was half-kneeling on the floor, humbly reporting the day's events.
"Honored sir, Wuchang has entered the underground shafts safely, by our most concealed passage. Ye Tian and his people have no way of detecting it."
"Mm. You've done well. Keep watching, and report any intelligence to me."
"Yes, sir. Also — if Wuchang chooses to trade with us, what instructions do you have?"
"Offer him thirty percent above the black market price. And as for any reasonable requests he makes, accommodate them as far as you can."
Mad Dog had no idea what counted as a reasonable request, but he didn't dare ask the man seated in front of him. In the end, the round-faced boss standing beside the man came to his rescue.
"Whatever falls inside your authority, make it convenient for him. Whatever falls outside it, come and ask me, and I'll make the call for you."
"Thank you, Boss Jiang. Thank you..." The respectful Mad Dog did not dare raise his head; he bowed himself sideways out of the room.
The round-faced man was the biggest black market smuggler in Huang'e City; he controlled roughly half of all the smuggling in the city, and on Huang'e people respectfully called him the fourth big boss — meaning that apart from the three official big bosses, his power was the greatest.
And yet a magnate of such renown looked extraordinarily deferential before the man in front of him. He didn't even dare sit.
The reason was simple enough. That man's name was Minghe.