Mornings in District 13 always came with the wail of distant factory sirens and the beep-beep of reversing garbage trucks. The acid rain had paused for now, but the air still carried that uncomfortable stench of sulfur.

  When John woke up, he felt like he’d been dismantled and put back together wrong. Yesterday felt like a fever dream: getting expelled, buying drugs, hunting that cat, fighting the tycoon, buying a skeleton...

  He rubbed his eyes and tried to roll out of bed.

  Clack.

  Something cold and hard bumped his hand.

  John jumped, instantly awake.

  He saw the skeleton he’d dropped 25k on—Bone—standing ramrod straight at his bedside, holding a basin of... face-wash water?

  "Morning."

  That deep voice resonated directly in his skull, carrying the rigid seriousness typical of a soldier.

  "Up. Training. Time is 0600."

  John was dazed. "Tra... training?"

  "Your physical stats are garbage." Bone didn't have a mouth, but John could feel the disdain radiating from him. "Cardio: E-Rank. Muscle strength: F-Rank. Reaction speed: D-minus. And then there's that damn hemophobia."

  Bone slammed the water basin onto the nightstand with a loud thud.

  "A hemophobic Necromancer. That’s as absurd as a chef allergic to smoke. This must be fixed."

  "Can that even be fixed?" John smiled bitterly. "Doctors say it's a psychological block."

  "Psychological blocks exist because you are weak." Bone's logic was brutally simple. "When you are strong enough to blow an enemy's head off with one punch, you won't have time to be dizzy."

  "Now, get dressed. Follow me downstairs."

  ...

  Ten minutes later. The District 13 Waste Processing Yard.

  This was the slum's only "open space," piled high with used tires, scrapped mechanical limbs, and unidentified metal junk.

  John stood shivering in the cold wind in his beat-up hoodie. Bone stood opposite him, holding two old tires filled with cement that he’d dug out of the trash heap.

  "These are your dumbbells."

  Bone tossed the tires to John. John nearly face-planted; combined, these tires weighed at least forty kilos.

  "Lift them. One hundred reps."

  "One hundred?! You'll kill me!" John protested.

  "The people who will kill you are out there, not on the training ground." Bone’s voice was cold and merciless. "That tycoon won't let you off. That gang boss won't let you off. If you don't want your mom to die alone, lift them."

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  That hit John right in his weak spot.

  He gritted his teeth and used every ounce of strength to hoist the heavy tires over his head.

  "One!"

  Bone wasn't idle. He was demonstrating next to him.

  Although he had no muscle, his skeleton—tempered by spirit fire—possessed shocking explosive power. He grabbed a scrapped minivan with one hand, lifting it like it was Styrofoam, and started doing squats.

  "Muscles are a lie, bone density is eternal!" Bone brainwashed John as he repped. "Your bones are too brittle. You need conditioning!"

  Passing scavengers stared, dumbfounded.

  A scrawny kid and a skeleton lifting a car, sweating bullets in a junkyard (well, Bone wasn't sweating). The scene was too beautiful to watch.

  "Hey... Bone," John asked, gasping for air, "were you... really a boxer before?"

  "Yes." Bone set down the minivan, a trace of nostalgia in his tone. "I was 'Iron Fist.' I fought three thousand underground matches. Never knocked down."

  "Then how did you..." John didn't dare finish the sentence.

  "How did I die?" Bone finished for him. "Because I refused to throw a match. The boss told me to lose to a rookie on stims. I refused. So they broke my arms and legs with steel pipes in the locker room and threw me into a cement mixer."

  John's hands trembled; the tires nearly smashed his toes.

  "Must have hurt."

  "It hurt." Bone nodded, the blue fire in his sockets flickering. "But losing hurts more."

  He walked up to John and poked John's chest with a bony finger.

  "Kid, remember this. In this city, there are only two kinds of people. The kind that knocks others down, and the kind that gets knocked down and has to say thank you."

  "Which one do you want to be?"

  John looked into those burning eyes.

  He remembered the look in the security captain's eyes yesterday at the manor when he raised the stun baton.

  He remembered the look in Mr. Van Horn's eyes when he threw the check.

  "I want to be... the kind that stays standing."

  John took a deep breath and hoisted the tires again.

  "Eleven! Twelve!"

  Bone nodded with satisfaction.

  "Good. Don't stop. Mages need pecs too! Otherwise, what are you gonna tank with when your mana bar is empty?"

  ...

  Two hours later.

  John lay on the ground like a pile of sludge, unable to even move a finger. But strangely, though his body was exhausted to the limit, his mind was hyper-alert. The depression and helplessness that had been bottling up inside him seemed to have been sweated out.

  "Ten minute break. Then combat training." Bone was doing stretches nearby (his bones clicking and clacking).

  John rolled over and stared at the gray sky.

  He patted the remaining money in his pocket. After buying the skeleton and the meds, he had some left, but with the inflation in the black market, this wouldn't last two months. Plus, the Guild was cracking down harder on the black market; buying meds in the future might be impossible.

  "Need a long-term plan..."

  Bored, he swiped open the tablet Singularity had given him.

  Besides the [Underworld Connect] APP, there was an inconspicuous folder on the interface named [China Time-Honored Brand · Top Secret Medical Codex].

  Curious, John tapped it open.

  Instantly, a massive amount of information flooded his brain.

  The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon: Cyber Revision, Compendium of Materia Medica: Potions Edition, The Thirteen Subjects of Zhuyou: Psychotherapy Logs...

  These ancient Eastern medical arts, combined with modern psionic theory, formed a completely new treatment system—totally different from the Guild's "fix people like machines, replace parts when broken" philosophy.

  "This..." John's eyes lit up.

  Guild hospitals only cared about money, prescribing the most expensive drugs and treating patients like consumables. The poor in the lower sectors couldn't afford care at all; they could only wait to die or turn into monsters.

  There was huge demand here.

  And him—even though he was hemophobic, he had this tablet, he had Singularity as a backer, and now he had Bone as a bodyguard.

  "Since the legal hospitals won't save people..."

  John sat up, his gaze sharpening.

  "Then I'll save them myself."

  He looked at Bone.

  "Bone, stop training. We're going back."

  "No fighting?" Bone paused.

  "No, we're gonna pull a big job."

  John pointed toward his home, a cunning smile playing on his lips.

  "We're opening a clinic. To treat the diseases... the Guild won't treat."

  "A black clinic?" Bone's jaw clicked. "You'll get arrested without a license."

  "If the cure works, who cares about a license?" John patted the tablet. "Besides, we have this."

  "Let's go! Home! We're putting up a sign!"

  One man and one skeleton walked out of the junkyard.

  Though John was still scrawny, and Bone was still battered, in the morning light, their silhouettes looked like they held an ambition... to overturn this city.

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