Bai Ye's mood was complicated.

There was good news and bad news in front of him.

The good news was that although he'd transmigrated two hundred years into the future, into the Great Cataclysm Era—a world with shattered civilization, scarce resources, simple and brutal people, radiation everywhere, and Aberrant Monsters roaming all over the place...

He had a cheat.

And it was an insanely powerful one—Time Stop!

The bad news was... one minute.

That's right. One minute. His Time Stop ability lasted only one minute per day.

What the hell could you even do with one minute? It wasn't even enough time to get your pants off...

The only saving grace was that this one minute could stack. If he didn't use it today, then after midnight, it would become two minutes the next day.

Bang!

The roar of a gunshot cut off Bai Ye's thoughts.

What followed was a wave of savage cheering.

He looked up. Graysoil Town's Central Square was packed with people.

It was night. Bright incandescent lamps lit up countless shifting silhouettes in the square, and together with the wild cheers, the whole place looked like a pack of demons dancing in frenzy.

"Another one dead? That's already the third. Tsk tsk. Don't these barbarians ever get tired of this?"

Bai Ye stretched lazily, then shook some feeling back into his numb legs. The iron shackles on his feet clinked sharply.

Yeah. He was the slave of this pack of crude savages.

Graysoil Town was a human settlement of about eight hundred people. Towns like this were everywhere across the Wasteland.

At this moment, a table sat in the very center of Central Square.

Beside the table sat a young man in a loud floral shirt with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Across from him sat a corpse with its skull blown wide open.

The corpse still gripped a bizarre revolver, one forged entirely from white bone. Twisting, slender blood-red patterns crawled across the bone like writhing veins.

Those eerie veins didn't just cover the gun. They extended onto the corpse's right hand as well, stabbing deep into the flesh and rooting there viciously.

The grotesque sight looked like someone had five IV needles jammed into one hand, all pumping in at once.

Ssss...

Amid a scalp-crawling sucking sound, the revolver drained the corpse into a shriveled mummy.

The group standing behind the man in the floral shirt burst into delighted cheers.

"We won again! We won again!"

"As expected of Magic Hand Li You. Three wins in a row. Win a few more, and he'll probably satisfy the Containment Conditions of the Forbidden Item [Breath of Bones]!"

"Hahaha... [Breath of Bones] belongs to our West District!"

Compared to their excitement, the people gathered behind the dried corpse—the East District side—were deathly silent, all of them grim-faced.

"Which one of you is going up?" East District Commander Tan Jie swept a chilly gaze across his subordinates.

Everyone his eyes landed on guiltily turned their heads away, not daring to meet his stare.

Seeing his men stay silent, Tan Jie grew even angrier, but beneath that anger was a trace of helplessness. He only had a little over twenty core members under him, and three were already dead.

If more of them died, then his title of East District Commander would become a joke. And when that happened, how was he supposed to rule over the East District's Lowborn?

"Useless! Every last one of you is useless!"

The East District men all lowered their heads, terrified of drawing fire. Quite a few of them cursed him inwardly: If you're so capable, then you go up. Aren't you only making us do it because you're afraid to die too?

The East District's silence only made the West District more arrogant, and filthy taunts flew nonstop.

At the back of the crowd, a raggedly dressed boy with iron chains shackling his feet slowly curled his lips into a smile.

That person was Bai Ye.

He knew his chance had come.

A chance to escape the fate of slavery and seize control of a Forbidden Item!

Bai Ye's current identity was a slave of the East District. When he had first transmigrated yesterday, he'd still been one of the East District's Lowborn. Then he'd used Time Stop once, which led to a teeny tiny little accident, and by today he'd become a slave.

As he looked at [Breath of Bones] lying on the table, information about Forbidden Items flashed through his mind.

A hundred years ago, a Great Cataclysm had swept across the world, shattering civilization and causing animals, plants, and even certain inanimate objects across the globe to mutate to varying degrees.

Forbidden Items had arisen from that disaster, and [Breath of Bones] was one of them. It had mutated from an ordinary revolver and possessed bizarre powers.

To use a Forbidden Item, one first had to satisfy its Containment Conditions, because a Forbidden Item was no longer an object.

It was alive.

They had minds of their own, and only by meeting their conditions could one gain the right to use them—in common terms, making them acknowledge a master.

The Containment Conditions of [Breath of Bones] were simple:

Bet your life.

In this Wasteland where civilization barely existed, there was a wildly thrilling gambling game called the Wheel of Fate.

The Wheel of Fate was a game made specifically for gambling with your life.

A revolver had room for six bullets. The rules were simple: load one bullet, spin the cylinder, and wherever the bullet landed was pure luck.

The two gamblers took turns pointing the gun at themselves and pulling the trigger, handing their lives over to fate, waiting to see who that single bullet would hit. After a few rounds, whoever was still alive was the winner.

Before [Breath of Bones] became a Forbidden Item, it had already been used as the tool for playing the Wheel of Fate. Maybe it was because it had killed too many people, maybe for some other reason, but that ordinary handgun had turned into a Forbidden Item.

The Containment Conditions of Forbidden Items were usually tied to their past experiences, so its condition was to win at the Wheel of Fate. One win wasn't enough. You had to keep winning until it acknowledged you.

Only someone lucky enough and brave enough could earn [Breath of Bones]' favor.

Bai Ye glanced at the clock hanging on the stone wall of the square.

23:49!

Just wait a little longer...

We are "pawread dot com", find us on google.

It wasn't time yet. His ability wouldn't recover until after midnight.

"Tan Jie, if no one in your East District dares come up and gamble, then [Breath of Bones] will belong to our West District."

West District Commander Wang She let out a cold laugh. The metal prosthetic eye in his left socket flickered with an eerie red glow.

Tan Jie said darkly, "I found the Forbidden Item in the first place. Don't even think about laying a finger on it, West District."

"Oh?" Wang She let out a strange snicker. "How many days have you had it in your hands? Your East District people are trash. Not a single one of them can get the Forbidden Item to acknowledge a master. Right now, Graysoil Town has already been targeted by the Aberrant Monsters outside. Without a Forbidden Item, how are we supposed to fight them?"

"If your people can't make [Breath of Bones] acknowledge a master, are you going to stop my people from trying too?"

"Are you really going to bury all of Graysoil Town for your own selfish gain!?"

His words stirred all kinds of reactions among the town's residents. They didn't care whether the East District Commander or the West District Commander got the Forbidden Item.

They only cared whether they could stay alive.

Watching the wavering crowd, Tan Jie's expression turned uglier and uglier. He knew that if he tried to forcibly keep the Forbidden Item, he would definitely provoke public fury. For the sake of staying alive, these people wouldn't mind tearing their East District Commander to pieces.

But the thought of handing over the Forbidden Item just like that hurt more than killing him.

The East and West Districts had been at odds for years. They looked peaceful on the surface, but friction broke out often enough. Tan Jie knew very well that once the West District gained control of the Forbidden Item, then after they drove back the Aberrant Monsters, the next target would definitely be him.

Huff.

He took a deep breath and said in a heavy voice, "I, Tan Jie, would never destroy Graysoil Town for my own selfish desires. The Forbidden Item should belong to the capable, but..."

His tone shifted, and he stared coldly at Wang She.

"The East District hasn't lost yet!"

Wang She smiled in contempt. "Looks like you plan on getting all your own people killed before you give up. Fine then, keep gambling. I'd like to see which bastard from the East District still dares to come up!"

Tan Jie turned around, his grave gaze sweeping across the East District crowd. His underlings shrank back one after another in fright.

But his eyes did not settle on them.

Instead, his gaze passed over them and landed on the East District residents watching from behind.

"People of the East District, I, Tan Jie, make you this promise: if any one of you can make [Breath of Bones] acknowledge a master, then from this day forward, you will be my brother! You will be the East District Deputy Commander!"

The East District people looked at one another, but not a single person answered. The atmosphere instantly turned awkward.

Weren't there already plenty of "brothers" Tan Jie had gotten killed? Who the hell would dare be his brother?

Tan Jie's expression darkened with rage. His thinking was simple: even if his own men couldn't get the Forbidden Item, then at the very least it had to fall into the hands of an East District Lowborn. Anything was better than letting it end up with the West District.

What he hadn't expected was that even after offering terms this generous, not one of these Lowborn responded.

Just as his impotent fury was about to explode, a crisp clank of chains rang out.

"Move aside! Anyone listening would think the East District didn't have a single man left!" a young voice shouted arrogantly from the crowd.