Chapter 20 – Golden Ticket

Wei An sat dazed for a moment before slowly getting up.

“Are you okay?” Gui Ling asked.

“I’m fine.”

Gui Ling studied him, as if checking whether he might suddenly drop dead.

But Wei An didn’t think he was going to die anytime soon. Whatever Gui Ling had injected him with, it felt surprisingly good.

He stood up, dusting himself off. Gui Ling rose as well, tilting his head slightly to observe him, still unsure of his condition.

The man’s hair was slightly disheveled from Tao Jinlai’s earlier inexplicable attack. The city’s hues reflected in his eyes, casting an advanced, weapon-like dark silver tint—gloomy and dull, as if he truly were some high-end relic of an ancient civilization.

Wei An reached out a hand, and Gui Ling passed him the injector.

Wei An examined it—a standard Federal military model.

“What was inside?”

“Basic stabilizer.”

Wei An paused. “The ‘Golden Ticket’?”

“That’s what they call it.”

Wei An was stunned. The “Golden Ticket”?

In the vast, chaotic domain of ancient technology, the “Golden Ticket” was absolutely legendary. Its original name, “Basic Stabilizer,” was plain enough, meant only to describe its purpose.

This substance could optimize volatile experimental subjects, stabilize and reorganize them, filling in the gaps—an incredibly potent injection.

There were even rumors that it was the true bridge between humans and the “other world,” a foundational pass that, once obtained, would make the higher realm truly recognize you as one of their own—hence the name “Golden Ticket.”

It also had an even older name: “Golden Apple.” No one knew the reason—perhaps it had its own history and stories, but all of that was lost to time.

Victims of the ancient civilization could sometimes feel the vague pull of that empire’s power, sinking into death, knowing it could complete and elevate the things within them. But it was also something they could never obtain. Everything in the darkness was fragmented and dangerous, and humanity knew almost nothing about it.

But the Golden Ticket was different—it was always effective, no matter the type or the suffering.

Now, it seemed to have crystallized within Wei An at some unknown level, soothing the violent hunger of the chaotic organ and shaping it into a mysteriously stable form.

Even if some rare treasures could occasionally be found in the ruins of the ancient civilization, the “Golden Ticket” was still far too astonishing—not something you’d just stumble upon during a single trip down here.

“Where did you get something like this?” Wei An asked.

Gui Ling pointed in a direction. “Some were scattered near the battlefield.”

“Take me there.”

Gui Ling turned and walked in that direction, with Wei An following behind.

As they passed the dead monster, Wei An glanced at it again. It truly did look like it was smoldering from the inside, defying all biological logic.

Then they stepped over the enormous head. Beneath their feet were the long golden locks of the withered deity. Once, they might have flowed like a golden river, but now they were just brownish trash. Its face was desiccated and lifeless, both sinister and sorrowful.

It was a nightmarish scene—the kind of dream filled with filth, apocalypse, and blasphemy.

The massive damaged area resembled a blackened, rotting dumpster chute, filled with grotesque things, like malformed hellish insects.

Wei An couldn’t help but ask, “What is this?”

“This is Idunn, the Goddess of Youth.”

“…A goddess?”

“Yeah,” Gui Ling replied, offering no further explanation.

Wei An couldn’t resist another glance at the enormous head. He didn’t want to look—everything here unsettled him—but it was like an evil stellar remnant at the level of thought, exerting an uncomfortable gravitational pull on the mind.

“I think I’ve heard the name Idunn in some ancient text before,” he muttered. “Something from Wusen, maybe. They sacrificed a lot of people to this ancient goddess, saying enough blood and filth would earn her favor…”

“Not that one. This is from Norse mythology,” Gui Ling said.

His voice was quiet—both of theirs were, really—as if this dead world shouldn’t echo with human speech.

They skirted around the head. As they crossed the area where limbs had been severed, the entire ground was stained a dull, corrupted black-brown, as if splashed with vast swathes of paint, stretching endlessly.

It took Wei An a few seconds to realize what it was.

“Is this… blood?” he asked.

Gui Ling’s gaze was distant, as if sleepwalking. He gave a soft “Mm,” unwilling to discuss anything related to it.

A chill ran down Wei An’s spine. He was walking across an ocean of ancient blood, and the scent of that bygone era’s carnage seemed to seep into his bones.

It took them a while to step off the discolored stone slabs. The scale of the tragedy was unimaginable.

The air carried a decayed stench. Along the way, they occasionally saw rotting flesh oozing from sewers or doorways. A gray mist draped over the lonely Sunken City like an endless shroud.

Both of them were dressed in stylish modern clothes, traversing this bleak cityscape as if they had wandered into the wrong place. Wei An didn’t ask Gui Ling if he had found the contract upgrade program. Maybe he had—the wish for self-destruction always succeeded in the end.

The sound of the horn still echoed, growing increasingly urgent.

It stirred emotions, evoking thoughts of war, death, and endless loneliness—of everything fading away.

Once Wei An and Gui Ling reunited, they encountered no further dangers on their way.

Wei An guessed that the trash-like monsters were still gathering around them, but Gui Ling had dealt with them all. He couldn’t see the fish—it must have been busy elsewhere. It was always busy.

They didn’t have to walk far before Wei An saw traces of the human world.

First came skid marks, scorch marks from energy guns, scattered shell casings, then half-destroyed firearms.

Wei An even spotted a wrecked military vehicle, burned but still recognizable as Federal standard issue.

More signs of battle appeared—no bodies, which must have been cleared away, though not carefully. A dog tag stained with dried blood lay on the ground. Wei An also found a small fragment of a metallic skull with a manufacturer’s serial number—something that could only come from the remains of a modern Federal soldier who had undergone cranial data surgery.

This was one of the technologies derived from the ancient civilization, like parasitic firearms—developed from slave-control techniques of the ancient empire, later refined and militarized.

But despite the refinements, this technology remained highly inhumane. In the private military sector—and even in the Federal military’s covert operations—it was downright lawless.

Choosing to undergo this surgery was essentially selling your life, but people still did it. You never knew what kind of work people would take or what horrors they’d endure just to survive.

In any case, cranial data implants had a high failure rate, making these modified humans extremely expensive. Only elite units could afford them.

Wei An pocketed the fragment—connecting it to a terminal could yield some useful information.

The further they pushed, the more the land turned into a graveyard of guns, machines, and mangled flesh, the aftermath of repeated battles.

There were scattered modules of hastily erected barricades. These people must have tried to establish a foothold but failed. They had even built a rudimentary road—though the plaza itself had no roads, they had cleared debris, deployed escort vehicles, and laid down fluorescent path markers.

Wei An also spotted several supply depots stocked with guns, weapons, and lighting equipment—ready for use if they returned with enough manpower.

As he moved through the area, he thought to himself: The Sunken City was never meant for human entry. Maybe a few superhumans could survive here, but they were exceedingly rare. There was no stable path allowing large numbers of ordinary people to exist in this place.

Given all these vehicles and troops, it must have taken multiple sacrifices like the one at the Flâneur Hotel to open enough “gates.”

This was an operation of staggering scale—hard to imagine how many people had come here, and how many had died.

Just then, Gui Ling spoke up: “Here.”

He pointed to an overturned military cargo truck fitted with armor plating. Something massive had flipped it over.

The high-strength alloy cargo hold was heavily dented, having endured extreme heat and violent impact. Its core had been punctured into a hole, sealed by the heat, like a circular eye staring eerily at the sky.

This level of destruction had to be the work of a far more powerful monster—one Wei An hadn’t encountered on the way, likely because Gui Ling had quietly dealt with it. Now he understood why so many factions fought over this creature despite its catastrophic nature. It was useful.

Wei An approached the truck. The interior had been melted into a mess by the heat—metal, plastic, and firearms fused together, possibly with human remains mixed in—a filthy, indistinct mass resembling the nest of some alien creature.

But from the general shape, he could tell it had once held stacks of small safes—the most expensive kind used by the Federal military.

Gui Ling must have taken the “Golden Ticket” from one of the fallen safes.

It was partially destroyed. Inside, there had likely been injectors and several vials secured in cushioning, some of which had shattered.

Gui Ling had taken one earlier to inject Wei An.

Timing-wise, Gui Ling must have sensed Wei An entering the “gate” while he was here. He had grabbed the injector and vial before going to find him.

Wei An recalled the way Gui Ling had looked at him when administering the injection… He had seen something but hadn’t spoken of it.

It must have been something terrible—nothing good ever came from the ancient civilization—so Wei An didn’t press further. Instead, he crouched down and retrieved the remaining vials from the safe.

Three were left, all made of reinforced glass, slightly thinner than modern vials but with compatible sealing standards so they worked with standard injectors.

The slender design alone was enough to stir the eerie thrill of finding a powerful artifact in a horror game.

Wei An pocketed the vials and searched other containers.

He found seven more in total. Just the monetary value of these could buy a mining planet, a full set of aerospace and weaponry equipment, or fund an entire fleet—enough to declare yourself king.

And even then, calling it a “market price” was misleading because money couldn’t buy them in the first place.

Wei An stared at the haul. People always think you take risks in the Otherworld and reap rewards, but the truth is, getting dragged into the “Otherworld” and encountering danger is often man-made.

From what Wei An had been taught, all the good things in this world were fought over at the heart of power.

He glanced at the overturned truck. How many were in here originally?

Where did it come from?