Chapter 4: The Second Anchored World_1

Achang's body was still in excruciating pain, but he was used to it and gritted his teeth in persistent endurance.

After some time, Achang felt his consciousness begin to blur. He was very sleepy, desperately sleepy.

The pain that tortured him without respite had unknowingly eased quite a bit.

He had not felt this way in a long time, it was so comforting.

Achang didn't resist the drowsiness, his consciousness went dark, and he fell unconscious.

He collapsed onto his office desk, falling into a deep sleep.

He had not felt this comfortable in a long time, the constant pain from his body had distorted his features in just one year.

Especially in the past six months, the changes were significant.

It was fortunate that his foster parents had gone on vacation. Otherwise, Achang could never have hid it for so long.

Being able to sleep now, even for just one night, was what Achang had been longing for.

But, the side effects of the cancer suppressant pills could not be warded off by just sleeping.

Achang was woken up by thirst five times this night, running to the bathroom three times.

It wasn't until dawn the following day that Achang dragged his weak body to bed and fell asleep.

He had diarrhea three times and now, he could finally sleep peacefully.

However, his face was now slightly yellow, indicative of an ill person, in contrast to the deathly pale it used to be.

The morning glow broke, and the autumn sun brought a hint of chill.

In the waste processing facility, even without Achang's supervision, Achang, being the veteran worker he was, organized the other twenty or so employees according to Achang's instructions from the previous day and continued with the normal work.

Nobody noticed that the adopted son of the workshop owners — the future workshop owner — was still asleep on his office desk.

Nobody woke him, as they were all used to this.

Ever since Achang returned to the workshop after dropping out of graduate school, he had become an epitome of a homebody, rarely being seen by others in the past couple of years.

Time unknowingly passed, and by the time Achang woke up, it was already three in the afternoon.

He had never slept this deeply before; when he eventually got up from his chair, he momentarily overlooked the fact that he was a late-stage pancreatic cancer patient.

"I've never felt this comfortable before."

Achang realized his condition and positioned himself in front of the mirror, scrutinizing his appearance.

His face was slightly yellow; his lips were pale; his eye sockets were sunken; his cheekbones bulged out as though there were goose eggs stuffed underneath the flesh.

The person in the mirror was hideous, but Achang smiled, a smile that soon turned into tears.

His body felt much lighter now, and he had the strength he hadn't felt in a long while; he was even able to raise his hands and imitate the exercises that the elderly often did.

The pain, which used to gnaw him incessantly like bone maggots, seemed to have never existed.

The cancer suppressant medication actually had an analgesic effect.

The medication was good; the only problem was the scarcity of it.

His throat was a bit dry, his stomach was on fire – he was feeling hunger, a feeling he hadn't experienced in quite some time.

Achang quickly freshened up, stuffed food into his mouth, and took big gulps of water.

The Omniverse Dumpster was his lifeline!

It was still early, but Achang had no time to lose; he handed the bookkeeping to Achang and instructed him on how to keep the accounts. After he returned to his room and locked the door, he neatly stored the empty pill bottle he had used yesterday, then immediately entered the Omniverse Dumpster again.

He had barely managed to complete the task due to physical weakness and time constraints the day before.

Starting today, over the next month, his physical condition would allow him to clean the garbage for a long time.

He would take advantage of this time to clean as much garbage as possible, and find as many useful items from it as he could.

Achang became akin to a sick bee, busily traveling back and forth between the garbage entrance and the garbage mountain.

Even though the amount of garbage he transported each time wasn't much, the frequency was remarkably high.

The volume of the task wasn't like a woman's desires, it didn't need to last long, it just needed to be frequent.

In the two days after finding the first cancer suppressant pill, Achang didn't have any similar findings.

He was working for more than fifteen hours each day.

Based on his experience of living at the premise, Achang started cleaning the garbage in the most efficient way—half an hour of work, followed by five minutes of rest.

During lunchtime, he asked Achang for a small favor.

With Achang's assistance, Achang could clean the garbage much faster, only, it would require time.

Trash was trash after all, and the probability of finding something good was very low, let alone something that could be useful for his cancer. That was even more of a long shot.

However, Achang did find some useful stuff amidst the garbage, such as, alloys from other worlds, books, or other bizarre things that didn't necessarily have to be thrown into the garbage chute.

He didn't exchange these items to the real world—Earth, but he had them all categorized and neatly arranged on a vacant lot in the Omniverse Dumpster.

After all, the daily task only required 200 kg of garbage, it never specified that all the garbage Achang laid his hands on had to be tossed into the garbage chute.

If he could survive, these items would have their values realized.

For three consecutive days, Achang cleaned 7.5 tons of garbage but found no items that could help with his illness.

He did collect a bunch of other miscellaneous junk though, weighing over 300 kg in total.

However, Achang did not bring these items out to the outside world.

At eight o'clock on the fourth morning, the employees at the suburban waste processing plant started their new workday.

Achang pulled a device resembling a conveyor belt to Achang's doorstep and helped him unload and assemble it.

After sending the curious Achang away, he relocated it, finally establishing a diesel-burning conveyor belt device between the Omniverse Dumpster, garbage entrance, and garbage mountain.

A wise man makes good use of everything around him. The idea of using a conveyor belt to transport garbage was something that Achang had thought of on the second day of cleaning the garbage.

He could use the tool, and after figuring out how it works, he asked Achang to help him design and assemble it.

Today, Achang finally fixed the transmission device.

Huang An was very excited, the installation of the transmission device has increased his trash cleanup efficiency by at least five or six times.

Just on the first day of using the transmission device, Huang An cleared 11.5 tons of waste.

This is more than what he cleaned in the previous three days combined.

Unfortunately, he still couldn't find any drugs for treating cancer or relieving pain.

Huang An understood that the cancer inhibiting tablet found on the first day was deliberately left behind by the entities controlling the Multiverse Trash Yard.

Finding a cure for cancer purely by chance in such a short time is basically impossible.

So, at the end of the day's work, Huang An headed towards another possibility-the door to World Travel.

He can't put all his hopes in one place, he had another way to possibly survive.

That is, to look for possible treatments in the anchor worlds.

When he was three meters away from the white portal, a long-lost voice rang out in Huang An's mind.

[Would you like to receive relevant information about the anchored world in advance?]

Huang An was startled for a moment then confirmed in agreement.

"Receive!"

Soon, he had an additional book in his hand.

[The Second World Mainstream Language – Daming Language Guide]Exchange price: 0.5kg Gold.]

The second world?

So, the first world must be Earth.

Huang An was stunned, he had a language guide in his hand.

There's only one item, and it's a book?

Isn't Mandarin the universal language across the Multiverse?

It seems like reading too much fiction can affect one's judgment.

Huang An steadied his mind, he weighed the nearly five-pound book in his hand, his emotions a little chaotic.

"In the second world, is there a way for me to survive? I need to learn this Daming language!"

Having made up his mind, Huang An quickly spent a pound of gold and exchanged for the book.

Opening the heavy cover, engraved with dark golden patterns, he was greeted with a completely new set of characters.

"Looks a bit like Classical Chinese, it's quite artistic, and there's even a Chinese comparison table, nice."

When it came to studies, Huang An was calm. He even found himself murmuring.

Despite him not looking very impressive and standing just over 1.7 meters tall, it didn't affect his talent for learning.

With its similarities to Chinese, Huang An was confident that he could master the entire book in a month and a half.

So, in the following days, Huang An split his time between cleaning up trash and studying the book.

It felt like he was in a literacy class from the last century.

In the meantime, Huang An was also making ample preparations to go into the second world.

Just from the language perspective, it was hard for Huang An to ascertain the exact situation of the second world. The only thing he was sure of was that he was headed to a place called Daming, where the technological development seemed lacking.

This was because Huang An didn't encounter many industrial vocabularies.

Hopefully, it isn't the Daming from Earth's history, otherwise, there'd still be no chance of survival.

However, the language was different. It should not be the Daming from his memory, which comforted Huang An.

Huang An was a cautious person, with a somewhat suspicious nature.

He had listed out a table, trying to account for all possible items he might need.

Just with regard to identity, Huang An listed out fifteen possibilities, and constructed a plausible past for each identity.

He had even accounted for the place where he might emerge in the cross-dimensional transition, the people he could encounter, and more.

The countryside had its reasons, the city had its own stories.

He would review them every day to avoid mistakes.

In terms of clothing, Huang An had ordered some long-sleeved hemp clothes online.

Five sets in total, all kept in the Multiverse Trash Yard which could act as a storage device.

The style of the hemp clothes was a bit retro, but regardless of the era or fashion in Daming, the simple russet garments would not stand out.

As for finances, RMB was definitely useless, Huang An only brought about ten liang (approximately 50 grams) of broken sliver along with a liang of gold.

The silver and gold had been accumulated over the years, so he was not out of pocket.

The decision to bring only that much was also meticulously thought out by Huang An.

Keep your wealth under wraps. This amount of wealth was not excessive, easy to conceal.

Kept individually, both the silver and gold were placed in the pockets sewn into the inside of the hemp clothes.

Silver and gold are naturally accepted currencies, and would hold their value the world over.

Huang An did indeed find the descriptions of gold and silver in the "Daming Language Guide", and their descriptions as "precious metals".

As for weapons, Huang An chose a blade about a foot long that once belonged to his father.

The blade was sharp and finely crafted.

For that reason, Huang An used the tools in the waste processing plant to age it, and applied a layer of natural paint to it to make it appear dirty.

He was afraid of encountering evildoers who might kill for treasure.