Chapter Twenty

The Battle in the Abandoned Mall

Following the scuffed marks she knew by heart, Yue Liuyi slipped past the chained doors, flowed through a window, and dropped onto the mall’s first floor like a shadow.

Of course, the mall was a carcass—an empty whale of concrete, long beached and silent.

It had once been a wholesale bazaar, a hive of trade; now no new customer would ever cross its thresholds. Bare shelves stood like rib bones. Discount placards lay snapped like dry twigs. The escalator’s rubber skin had been torn off like a snake flayed. Ceiling shades were smashed like shells; the bulbs were plucked clean.

Dim daylight slanted through the glass skylight, a pale blade laying bare the mess, dust floating like ash over the ruin.

“Ugh… worse than I pictured,” she breathed, a small cloud in the gloom before she moved.

Back when she ran with her friends, she’d sometimes prowl places like this for adventure, hearts thumping like sparrows. They rarely found anything useful, yet even collecting bottle caps felt like treasure hunting under a summer sky.

Times had turned like leaves. No trace of those boys remained, and the mall looked even older, like a scab picked raw by wind and time.

So the wasteland drifters weren’t doing well either, Yue Liuyi thought. The poor had stripped anything that could be sold. What stayed behind was husk and scrap, the tide’s leftovers.

Glass bottles, plastic sheets, composite boards, foam—trash that might fetch a few coins in the Inner Ring, but on Dreamwood Star it was worth less than dust.

What carried weight here was food and clean water, the fire to keep cold out, and gear to keep pollution at bay—things that sold dear as gold in a drought.

Good thing she wasn’t here for coin. She needed patchwork basics: foam panels for insulation, glass panes to mend windows, and fly-ash bricks to stiffen a wall like bone.

Those were everywhere, and this mall kept them safe from acid rain, sealed like seeds in a jar.

“So heavy… but with a bit of magic, I can haul more,” she murmured, breath quick, arms straining like cords.

After a few loops through the husk, she had everything she needed, and she turned to go, light-footed as a cat.

Then hurried footsteps shattered her plan—boots drumming the floor like a sudden squall.

Someone?

“Who’s there!”

Men spilled in from the far side, a handful of shadows. They clutched sticks. Hair matted like nests, faces ragged as torn cloth, and a reek rode before them like a foul tide straight to Yue Liuyi’s nose.

Wasteland drifters? Dressed like that, close enough.

With water scarce, they barely bathed for months; their smell carried far, a rank banner in the wind.

Hide!

She flashed left and folded behind a counter, her small body tucked tight, shelves rising around her like reeds on a riverbank.

“Who the hell trespassed on our turf! Get out here or I’ll break your damn legs!” one shouted, his voice a rusted saw.

They bellowed and stomped, fury puffed up like angry frogs. This abandoned mall was their nest now; they’d bar any intruder like dogs guarding a bone.

This is trouble.

She wasn’t afraid. Most of these drifters were unlearned layabouts, lazy as moss and weak as wet twigs. She could drop them without breaking a sweat.

But striking rashly would birth headaches like nettles. They’d cling like burrs—dump filth at your door, smear your name like soot, bang drums at midnight and shred your sleep.

Because of that, the wasteland drifters were the last people citizens of Linelor City wanted to provoke. They were hateful, yet not monstrous; throw them in a station and you rewarded them with shelter better than the wild.

Ordinary measures couldn’t punish them; they’d only rally like crows and peck back in a flock.

So—one strike, no face shown, end it in a breath.

She wound a strip of black cloth over her face, night over moonlight. That long sea-blue hair vanished under her hoodie like a river tucked under ice.

Then she sank into a half-crouch, her silhouette broken like a reed in wind, her height unreadable.

“There—there he is! I got him!”

“Roar all you want; I’ll see which son of a bitch dared step on our turf!”

They’d sighted her hideout and charged, sticks up like wasp stingers.

Sorry—raised by the World Tree, actually. Spit garbage, and all of you can eat floor.

Deep-black magic poured from Yue Liuyi’s hands, a midnight tide unfurling, flooding the abandoned mall from pillar to glass like ink in water.

“Wha—”

Before the drifters knew it, darkness bloomed in their minds like poppy smoke. One by one they folded, bodies thumping down like felled saplings.