Lao Wu sighed deeply and said earnestly, “In this lifetime, I hope never to see an A-level Stone Beast.”

Qi Huan felt a bit downcast. He understood the meaning behind Lao Wu’s words. If an A-level Stone Beast appeared, it would mean there was no safe place left on the Waste Star.

That two-headed python was a C-level Stone Beast. Such a level of Stone Beast is rare, and you might not encounter one even in two months. For the Wan family’s small disassembly shop, it was a rare big business. Wan Lao Er was busy attending to those two guests, even serving a plate of bright red lychees.

The lychees here were as big as plums, with a yellowish hue to the seed. As for the taste, Qi Huan wasn’t sure, as he couldn’t afford them. They were displayed in the front yard’s food store’s fridge, and a small box with two pieces cost twenty silver coins.

Lao Wu didn’t disappoint Wan Lao Er either, successfully extracting a C-level beast core the size of a chicken egg.

“Thanks for the hard work,” Wan Lao Er came over and patted Lao Wu on the shoulder, his face full of excitement.

In the disassembly of Stone Beasts, hunting teams are after the beast core, beast teeth, and beast bones, with the core being the most important. It is equivalent to a high-level energy stone of the same grade and can be directly absorbed. Beast teeth and bones need to be refined before they can be used.

The remaining skin and meat are like the scraps of ore, with a low yield from refining. Most hunting teams usually find it troublesome to take them back and generously give them to the disassembly site as an extra ‘tip.’

The disassembly fee for Stone Beasts is split, with the disassembler taking 20%, and the rest going to the disassembly site. This means Lao Wu’s income from this job should be 1000 silver coins. If it were before, Qi Huan might have thought Lao Wu was getting too little, but now, after seeing the debt details from the Human World Restaurant, he could guess that starting a disassembly site must require a significant upfront investment, which would take years to pay off. Moreover, such opportunities are rare, and Lao Wu’s acceptance indicates that this is the market price.

Qi Huan himself was prepared not to get any money, as most of the disassembly was done by Lao Wu, and he was just ‘learning’ and helping out on the side.

After completing this big job, it was already past eight. Qi Huan hesitated as he looked at the Long Face Beast he had only cut two-thirds of. He hadn’t even finished one today, and it seemed he wouldn’t even make 10 silver coins.

“Stop looking at it. Take the morning off tomorrow, and finish the rest in the afternoon,” Wan Lao Er said generously, giving Qi Huan a pat. “Today, I’ll settle 80 silver coins for you as a hard work fee for helping with the Stone Beast.”

Qi Huan was a bit surprised, not expecting to get a share of the Stone Beast money.

Lao Wu also had a smile on his face. Seeing Qi Huan’s confusion, he explained, “The beast core we extracted today reached a C-level, and they gave an extra reward of 500 silver coins.”

“If that beast core were sold to the base at the Command Hall, it could fetch at least six figures,” Wan Lao Er said with undisguised excitement.

“Is a bigger beast core better?” Qi Huan’s mind was stirred, thinking of the beast core he was given last night, and he asked them.

“Size is one aspect, but the key is the color. The richer the color, the more expensive it is. You can check the purchase announcements at the Command Hall when you have time; they display various grades and prices.”

Qi Huan used 60 silver coins to pay off some debt, only taking 20 silver coins. He picked two pieces of beast meat for the little fellow at home, bought a bag of green wheat flour, and wandered around the discount section, picking up two boxes of tofu and a box of slightly wilted fruit.

In the afternoon, seeing those two hunting team members eating fruit made him crave it, but he was short on cash, so he could only buy this to satisfy his craving.

Before leaving, a restaurant sent over a portion of salt-baked clams. Qi Huan got two, and he understood why the Wan family’s nutrition seemed slightly better than other base residents. They could occasionally enjoy a treat. The original owner was probably a bit ‘fatter’ than Quan Hai because he could occasionally enjoy some treats at the restaurant.

On the way, two hunting teams were fighting, reportedly over a beast core. About thirty or forty red security robots arrived, flashing their bright headlights, blocking half the street. Qi Huan had to take a detour. When he got home and opened the door, a gray-black shadow was already waiting at the door, hungry.

Looking at the little dumpling-like soft shadow, Qi Huan felt a bit touched. For now, he and the little fellow were relying on each other for survival, weren’t they?

“Sorry, I worked overtime today,” Qi Huan apologized, running to the kitchen to fry some beast meat for it.

His own dinner was easy to solve. He took some leftover braised bone meat from yesterday and cooked it with tofu, quick and delicious.

After making dinner, Qi Huan opened his personal terminal and browsed the Command Hall’s purchase page while eating.

The Command Hall is essentially the base’s official online service hall, handling various internal applications for base employees and providing buying, selling, leasing, withdrawal, and paid task services for hunting teams.

The first page of the purchase section was about energy stones. Qi Huan flipped through it and roughly understood the classification.

Energy stones are divided into low, medium, and high levels.

Below E-level is considered low, priced at 600 silver coins per piece. For example, ordinary airships and household robots use E-level energy stones. The kitchen appliances and washing machines in his kitchen use F-level, priced at 50 silver coins per piece, and the lights use the lowest level, G-level, at 3 silver coins each.

The selling price is 1.1 times the purchase price, meaning if you sell an energy stone to the base for 100 silver coins, buying it back would cost 110 silver coins.

Medium levels range from D-level to A-level. Starting from D-level, each level of energy stone is further divided into four quality grades: A, B, C, and D, and priced by weight. For the same D-level beast core, A-grade is 7000 silver coins per 100 grams, while D-grade is 4000 silver coins per 100 grams.

The price difference for C-level beast cores is even larger. D-grade is 50000 silver coins per 100 grams, while C-grade jumps by ten thousand to 60000. The one Lao Wu extracted today was estimated to be over 200 grams, which would earn over twenty thousand more silver coins if sold to the base compared to D-grade.

B-level is ten times more expensive, with D-grade at 500,000 silver coins per 100 grams. As for A-level, it’s astronomical, with the lowest D-grade starting at 5 million per gram.

Qi Huan clicked into the C-level page, checking the sample photos for each grade while taking a spoonful of tofu into his mouth, then froze with the spoon in his mouth.

According to the photo comparison, the beast core left by the silver-haired youth last night was likely B-grade, one level higher than Lao Wu’s! 70,000 silver coins per 100 grams!

Qi Huan ran upstairs with the spoon in his mouth, startling the little cat upstairs, its tail puffing up.

He took out the beast core to confirm, and it indeed looked very similar to the B-grade in the photos, though it was only about forty grams, it still amounted to nearly thirty thousand.

Qi Huan paced around the second floor, thinking and thinking, finally finding a small tin box to store the beast core, carefully placing it in the highest drawer of the cabinet where the green button was. There was no choice; although this small building was shabby, it was still safer than carrying it around. Hopefully, the silver-haired youth would appear again soon to take the beast core, so he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Returning downstairs to continue eating, he was thinking about what else to check when his personal terminal, still on the Command Hall interface, suddenly popped up a message, “Your Death Waiver has expired.”

What the heck is a Death Waiver? Qi Huan quickly clicked in, finding a programmatic notification informing him that the accompanying Death Waiver for the team agreement he signed with the Falcon Squad half a month ago had expired.

He had some impression of this Falcon Squad. The original owner recently had an income of 100,000 silver coins, paid by this squad.

Using keywords to search the base announcements, Qi Huan felt he might have figured out the original owner’s cause of death.

Under normal circumstances, ‘NPCs’ like them would only operate within the base. However, some hunting teams, for their own safety or other needs, might pay to hire people to go to the hunting area with them. The most ‘popular’ hires are repairmen and guides.

If both parties agree, they need to sign a team agreement, specifying the stay duration in the hunting area, specific services, and remuneration.

The original owner probably signed an eight-day team agreement with the Falcon Squad due to poor business and money shortage, responsible for cooking for the Falcon Squad in the hunting area. The 100,000 silver coins were an advance payment, with another 100,000 as the final payment.

Because the hunting area is extremely dangerous, the base requires ‘NPCs’ signing team agreements to sign a Death Waiver. If an ‘NPC’ encounters any accident, including death, in the hunting area, the base bears no responsibility.

Simultaneously, the base requires the hunting team to pay a deposit. If the ‘NPC’ really has an accident, the final payment goes to the second payee specified in the agreement, and the deposit is the hunting team’s compensation to the base.

Then, this Falcon hunting team encountered some Stone Beast and all died in the hunting area, leaving the original owner’s final payment in limbo.

What bad luck, Qi Huan couldn’t help but sigh for the original owner. Thinking about his own encounter with the explosion, he didn’t know who was unluckier, feeling a bit tasteless.

After tidying up the dishes, he opened the box of fruit, washed it, and prepared to enjoy his after-dinner fruit to change his mood with some food. Back home, they always had at least three or four kinds of fruit daily, but he hadn’t had any since coming here.

The fruit Qi Huan bought was called Shan Hong Guo, looking only the size of blueberries, with a coral red color.

He washed them without draining the water and couldn’t wait to pop one into his mouth.

A flood of sourness exploded in his mouth, shooting straight to his skull, making Qi Huan feel like his skull was splitting from the sourness.

What a soul fraud! What Shan Hong Guo, this is just a mini version of seedless hawthorn, isn’t it???

The sleepiness that had climbed onto his eyelids vanished without a trace from the sourness. Since he could sleep in tomorrow and didn’t have to get up early, Qi Huan decided to make some sugar syrup and turn them into mini sugar-coated hawthorns to take to the disassembly site as snacks.

The most crucial step in making sugar-coated hawthorns is the sugar syrup’s heat, which relies purely on experience. Quantitative parameters are useless. Qi Huan had failed before, following someone else’s secret recipe, which said sugar above 160 degrees wouldn’t stick to teeth, but at 170 degrees, it still stuck.

After making it many times, he could judge by the sugar’s color and bubble state, doing it with ease.

He skewered the fruit with toothpicks, three per skewer, making a full plate.

The next morning, Qi Huan was sleeping soundly when the door downstairs was banged on again.

It was still dark outside the window, barely five o’clock. Could it be someone coming for breakfast again like last time? Can’t they respect other people’s business hours? Qi Huan wailed internally, with two tufts of messy hair sticking up as he went to open the door, thinking all the way about how to politely refuse this business, maintaining a friendly attitude but a firm stance! After working hard for several days, he was determined to sleep in today!

He sleepily opened the door, only to find Quan Hai standing there, fully dressed.

“Is there another Stone Beast coming in?” Qi Huan was startled, waking up halfway.

“No,” Quan Hai shook his head, revealing the large backpack behind him, “I just got the news, there’s a garbage ship arriving this morning. Didn’t you say you wanted to come along and take a look last time?”