Chapter 51: A Windfall! (Please keep reading)

The shift from offense to defense was far easier than anticipated. The seemingly impregnable Warehouse No. 2 was blasted open from the side by some specialized detonator, and Warehouse No. 3 suffered even greater devastation—it appeared to have been hit by a large-scale spell attack that blew open an exit straight to the basement.

The two high-level experts originally hired for protection did step in, but to everyone’s surprise, the attackers also deployed several elite professionals, engaging them in a fierce, evenly matched battle. Amidst the chaos, someone shouted in the factory, “If you’re so eager to risk your life for money, you might as well carry a few more crates!” This incited some of the factory’s own guards to give in to temptation; they tore off their security uniforms on the spot and melted into the tumultuous crowd.

Rebellion, right where they stood.

Watching the surveillance feed from the secret control room, the old fat man collapsed onto the floor. He had anticipated that there would be many foes out to get him, but he never imagined they would dare wage such a large-scale battle right in the heart of the city. He frantically called for reinforcements from nearby guilds and the authorities, only to learn that many areas across the city were under attack—manpower was in critically short supply.

Most of the seized goods were being loaded onto nearby trucks and black vans. Amidst the confusion, Yishen found it remarkably easy to reach one of the truck clusters, slipping through with a series of silent teleports. Four battered trucks stood nearby, their plates removed, clearly prepared in advance for this operation. There were some people on guard near the trucks and vans, but most of the main fighting force was still busy plundering inside the factory, leaving the perimeter lightly defended. Yishen slipped unnoticed into one of the trucks.

Yishen’s current mastery of magic allowed him to directly lock onto all materials within a designated white zone. Most items dropped by monsters could be broken down, with only a few worthless things ignored. After targeting a crate, he didn’t even need to open it for the system to prompt him to decompose the contents.

Within seconds, the cargo inside the crate dissolved into strands of white light that flowed into Yishen’s body.

[Ding! You have performed Spell Specialization. The absorbed materials have converted into 104 specialization points.]

[This session’s specialization has granted you: Intelligence +68, Stamina +40, Willpower +41, Strength +22, Agility +21, Skill: Fireball (D).]

...

A single crate yielded Yishen two or three hundred attribute points—almost the equivalent of him solo-clearing half a dungeon! And this was only a relatively small crate, with most items at level 15 to 20.

The process was swift. Yishen quickly moved on to a larger crate.

[Ding! You have performed Spell Specialization. The absorbed materials have converted into 316 specialization points.]

[This session’s specialization has granted you: Intelligence +101, Stamina +67, Willpower +88, Strength +40, Agility +41.]

...

After specialization, the crate was emptied in an instant. It seemed to have contained some kind of wooden material around level 30—already in the intermediate range—which granted Yishen a huge boost in attributes.

With a soft clatter, Yishen swept through all eleven crates in the small truck. The two drivers up front vaguely felt the vehicle grow lighter, but, busy with their radios and scanning the surroundings in hopes of escaping, they never noticed Yishen’s presence.

...

With one small truck’s cargo absorbed, Yishen returned to the materials factory. His next target was a black van.

Only one person was loading cargo into this van. Before the man could even drive off, Yishen seized the opportunity, broke everything down, and gained a heap of attributes.

Truthfully, Yishen hoped to find a crate packed with skill books—that would have made his development much easier—but it seemed the old fat man wasn’t so extravagant as to store piles of such precious items together.

Over the course of more than an hour, Yishen intercepted materials from nine vehicles. The most laden held over ten crates; the lightest only one or two. Altogether, he estimated he’d seized over forty crates—far exceeding his expectations.

In fact, he could have taken even more. These people weren’t particularly high-level. If he got involved in the fighting and killed a few, he could have acquired even more resources. In the end, though, Yishen restrained himself; even when discovered by drivers or guards, he showed mercy, holding back from needless slaughter.

During this time, Yishen identified four to six different factions at play. He even ran into members of the Motorcycle Gang, but since they were only taking two small crates, he let them go.

Yishen had originally thought the materials stored here would be worth about a hundred thousand contribution points, but judging by what he’d already absorbed—

The value of the materials Yishen had broken down alone exceeded four or five hundred thousand!

No wonder the students’ recent protests had included resistance to price monopolies by the various trade guilds. These people hoarded massive quantities of goods at low prices, then suppressed and co-opted apothecaries, turning the materials into finished products and selling them at exorbitant rates. Young people of lower levels trying to develop could only be mercilessly exploited, and if a small materials factory could stockpile so much, the larger factories and guilds must hold even greater reserves.

For the factions that raided the materials factory that night, there was one particularly baffling phenomenon: a significant portion of their cargo simply vanished without a trace! At first, they suspected their own men of pulling tricks to pocket the spoils. Only later did they realize another force was targeting their trucks, intercepting their gains mid-operation. While they fought tooth and nail at the front, someone was quietly undercutting them from behind. The bosses of several factions were so infuriated they nearly coughed up blood.

Rumors spread, and soon the criminal underworld put a bounty on Yishen’s head, determined to catch the mysterious thief.

Of course, Yishen didn’t consider himself a thief.

How could the actions of a learned man be called theft? At most, he considered it a kind of “acquisition.”

In fact, he didn’t even think it counted as that. He was simply engaging in a little black-on-black justice—these goods were already illicit; by helping digest and break them down, he was even reducing their exposure risk.

Before dawn broke, Yishen returned to his rented room. Zhu Qing had already left school, so Zhu You had gone home that afternoon, leaving Yishen alone in the apartment.

Yishen glanced over his own stats and skills.

No one gets rich without windfall gains, and these nine or ten truckloads had quintupled his attributes, along with seven or eight new spell specialization skills.