"To be honest, I regret it now too," Jiang Qi said, holding up the energy core and slowly turning it in front of White-Claw Crow. "The moment I fired, I realized something. Some things were never meant to stay in the hands of someone like me. After all, I simply don't have the ability to protect them."
His tone was heavy, sincere, and utterly convincing, as though he truly meant every word.
"Maybe from the very beginning, I should have just handed it over to Natuba. If he'd been loyal enough to you, perhaps this matter would have ended better..."
But this flawless performance was, at the moment, nothing more than music played to a deaf audience.
The instant White-Claw Crow saw the core in Jiang Qi's hand, everything coming out of Jiang Qi's mouth became meaningless background noise, automatically filtered out.
His eyes locked onto the object in Jiang Qi's hand like a crow spotting a jewel. He could not look away even if he wanted to.
Jiang Qi had not said what it was, but White-Claw Crow recognized it at a glance as a high-grade energy core.
His first thought was that, judging by the appearance alone, it had to be at least a B-grade—possibly even an A-grade core.
But once his prosthetic eye completed its scan, it gave him a far more shocking answer.
Judging from the energy reaction, it was actually an S-grade energy core.
In the Wasteland, the energy cores people could come into contact with were almost all civilian-grade.
Perhaps Bafeng City had industrial-grade or even military-grade cores, but its rulers would absolutely never allow them to flow out into the Wasteland.
So in the understanding of many wastelanders, energy cores existed only in these civilian models. In their minds, there were only five grades, from D to S.
This mistaken common knowledge had even reshaped the way wastelanders spoke. Even those who knew that higher-grade models existed would still casually refer to civilian cores by their letter grades in daily life.
And among those, a Civilian S-grade core was, in the eyes of many wastelanders, the highest possible class of energy core.
And in truth, in most parts of the Wasteland, that was more or less accurate.
How precious was a Civilian S-grade energy core?
To put it plainly, across the entire Flying Crow Gang, the best energy core they possessed was only a single Civilian A-grade core, installed in White-Claw Crow's heavy-firepower armored vehicle.
It wasn't that White-Claw Crow had never seen a Civilian S-grade core before.
He had.
But he had only ever seen one.
Now, staring at the core in Jiang Qi's hand, White-Claw Crow completely believed Jiang Qi's explanation.
If it was this thing, then yes—it was absolutely enough to drive Natuba to murder for treasure.
And more than likely, if Natuba had gotten his hands on it, he would not have handed it over to White-Claw Crow.
Natuba might have been a minor leader, but he was not truly one of White-Claw Crow's confidants.
In the Wasteland, loyalty was an extravagance. White-Claw Crow had never been the sort of man to overestimate other people's devotion to him.
In his view, if Natuba had acquired a core like this, he would more likely have used it as his letter of introduction, left the Flying Crow Gang, and gone directly to join Bafeng City.
In fact, if it had been most of the people in the gang, they probably would have made the same choice.
Only among the few genuine confidants White-Claw Crow truly trusted did he think there might be perhaps a fifty percent chance they would hand such a thing over to him.
And even then, if those same people had discovered that Jiang Qi possessed a core like this, they probably would have done exactly what Natuba had done—tried to seize it by force.
After all, taking valuables from townsfolk was hardly something gang members were strangers to.
Though Jiang Qi was Homa's apprentice, he had only just become one. At least in White-Claw Crow's mind, Jiang Qi couldn't possibly carry that much weight in Homa's heart yet.
What surprised him was that Natuba had been such useless trash—that he had not only failed to take it, but had ended up being killed in return by a brat like Jiang Qi.
As for the possibility that Jiang Qi had stepped forward to take the blame in order to cover for some other person or some other scheme...
Even if another nearby gang had been behind it, White-Claw Crow didn't believe they had the means to produce an S-grade energy core.
Unless the core was fake.
But White-Claw Crow did not believe a forged energy core could deceive his eyes.
After a long silence, White-Claw Crow finally reached out and took the energy core from Jiang Qi's hand.
"How did you deal with Natuba's corpse?" he asked.
"I dragged it into the garbage mountain and burned it," Jiang Qi replied. "At the time I wasn't thinking very far ahead. I only wanted to destroy the body first."
"Mm," White-Claw Crow answered. "That's fine too. He was the one who broke the rules first. What you did wasn't wrong."
The moment those words were spoken, an uproar broke out across the square.
That single sentence from White-Claw Crow settled the tone of the entire matter.
Jiang Qi's face remained calm, but the mountain-sized weight hanging over his heart had already crashed to the ground and welded itself there. He had never felt more solid, more secure.
It seemed he had won the gamble.
Not in vain had he spent such tremendous effort coaxing, cajoling, and half-tricking Glaxia into agreeing to sleep a little longer and temporarily lend him the core from her energy bay.
That object had not only helped Jiang Qi create a complete logical chain for the incident—it had also given White-Claw Crow enough benefit to make accepting that explanation worthwhile.
The first gave White-Claw Crow a way to step down gracefully. The second gave him a reason to take that step.
And in the end, Jiang Qi had finally achieved what he wanted.
Besides, Jiang Qi did not actually feel that heartbroken about giving up the S-grade core.
After all, it only had a little less than half its energy left. There was no way he could take an S-grade core to the power station for recharging anyway. So even if he had not handed it over to White-Claw Crow, he would have needed to replace it in a few days regardless.
Naturally, Jiang Qi was not the only one to relax.
Homa did too.
To be honest, when he saw White-Claw Crow walk up and confront Jiang Qi directly, Homa's heart had risen straight into his throat.
No one understood better than he did just how dangerous Jiang Qi's situation had been.
For all his high status in town and the fact that few people truly dared provoke him, Homa knew one thing clearly: if White-Claw Crow truly wanted to kill someone, Homa would not be able to stop him.
Fortunately, Jiang Qi had solved the matter himself—and, most importantly, had very decisively handed over the S-grade core in his possession.
If not for that, Homa truly didn't know whether he could have protected the boy.
Of course, the few gang members who had been close to Natuba were clearly dissatisfied with this outcome.
Forced by White-Claw Crow's authority, they didn't dare say anything, but from the looks in their eyes when they stared at Jiang Qi, it was obvious that they had no intention of letting the matter go so easily.
That, however, was something Homa didn't care about at all.
He had already made up his mind. From now on, Jiang Qi would move house and stay directly in his workshop.
He refused to believe those little bastards would dare stir up trouble inside his workshop.
As for the other gang members and the town residents, they didn't feel much one way or the other.
They didn't care about Natuba's death in the slightest. All they wanted was to make sure the trouble didn't spread to them.
The S-grade core certainly drew their eyes, but that was all. They understood perfectly well that something like that had nothing to do with them.
"All right, Homa—take your boy and go," White-Claw Crow said lazily, tucking the energy core into his coat. "I'll handle Natuba's aftermath. Your people don't need to involve themselves."
Then he raised his voice to the crowd.
"As for the rest of you, disperse. Go back to whatever you're supposed to be doing."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 135)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 110)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter67)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter85)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 60
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 65
From Junkman to Wasteland 50
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 35
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 40
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 37
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