Chapter 264: All Things Usable
"Old Car" wasn't a single person. It was one person after another.
Zhen Tong had only become Old Car earlier this year.
She was a child of the mud ponds, displaced and homeless since she was young. She had started out scrounging for scraps with another gang, before becoming an auto assembly worker under Old Car and eventually awakening as a transcendent in the scavenger profession system.
Without Old Car's gang, she likely would have become a prostitute or joined the Trash Clan, dying an early death.
Zhen Tong was lucky, but her story wasn't unique. There were many kids just like her here in Old Car Territory.
Old Car never showed their true face. Over the years, they had moved territories several times, but their image remained exactly the same: an entire body encased in a Mech Chassis, features completely hidden behind a helmet.
"I cannot die," Old Car had told them once, voice rasping like a glitching electronic synthesizer.
It wasn't until early this year that Zhen Tong finally understood what those words meant.
It had been a routine hunt for a Vanguard Species, yet their group suffered catastrophic losses. Old Car, the strongest among them, had stayed behind to cover the retreat. Zhen Tong—a Fifth Speed Tier scavenger—had stayed with him.