73: Top-quality "original" goods? Su Qingyu's three-second dismemberment technique

Passing through that filthy bottom-level gate.

Climbing up the rickety external staircase for dozens of meters, the surrounding scenery finally began to change.

If the bottom level was a stark hell of survival,

then this area known as the "Middle Level" Black Market was a slaughterhouse flashing with cheap neon lights.

Narrow aerial corridors were crammed on both sides with various stalls illegally built from sheet metal and plastic tarps.

The simple sour stench in the air faded, replaced by a more nauseatingly complex mixture of smells.

It was the scent of inferior industrial oil, high-concentration medical disinfectant, and the smell of some kind of rotting meat forcibly masked by spices.

This odor was so thick it felt like it could clog a person's throat.

The goods here were no longer moldy starch blocks either.

On the stall to the left,

hung several rusty old era assault rifles and refurbished mechanical prosthetics, oil dripping from the barrels onto the ground.

On the stall to the right, stood rows of murky glass jars.

Under the dim yellow light, in pale yellow Formaldehyde solution, floated organs that had just been harvested from who knows whose body:

vibrant red kidneys, cloudy eyeballs, even an entire section of spine still connected to white nerve bundles.

"Fresh! Just harvested!"

"Type AB blood, host never had radiation sickness, still within shelf life!"

The stall owner, holding a long blood-stained pair of tweezers, excitedly tapped the glass jar wall, producing crisp "ding-ding" sounds.

His tone wasn't like he was selling human body parts, but more like hawking freshly baked bread.

Jiang Ran pulled down his hat brim, his gaze coldly sweeping over these stalls.

Su Qingyu, walking behind him, tried her best to remain calm, but her body instinctively tensed at the sight of those gruesome "merchandise."

As a doctor, she was all too familiar with how these organs left the human body—it was live extraction.

She subconsciously raised a hand to pull at her cloak's collar, trying to cover her mouth and nose to block out the nauseating smell.

It was this tiny motion that exposed her.

Her wide sleeve slipped down with the movement, revealing a section of her fair wrist.

It was a patch of skin, pale and delicate, without any radiation black spots or festering scars.

Under the flickering pink neon lights, that patch of skin was so white it was almost dazzling, like a piece of mutton-fat jade in the dark night.

It formed a hell-and-heaven contrast with the surrounding festering, blackened faces.

"Hiss..."

In a dark corner, several shadowy figures squatting under an exhaust fan abruptly stopped what they were doing.

They were several men with sinister gazes, reeking of thick bloodlust.

Hanging from their waists were oddly shaped curved blades and tools resembling medical bone saws—

Here, they had a special name: "Disassembler."

The one-eyed man leading them fixed his murky eye on the hand Su Qingyu had just withdrawn.

He greedily licked his dry, peeling lips, a suppressed gurgle escaping his throat:

"Premium... original equipment."

In this wasteland where everyone suffers from radiation sickness and is covered in sores,

such perfectly clean, flawless "biological parts" were a hundred times more expensive than any precise mechanical prosthesis.

Several cold gazes converged in the darkness, no words needed.

Then, these shadows silently stood up, like a pack of hyenas that had caught the scent of blood, and quietly followed... This was a dead-end alley located between two connecting skyscrapers.

Ahead, the path was blocked by several old industrial air conditioner outdoor units still roaring and vibrating, a wave of heat mixed with dust hitting their faces.

Jiang Ran's footsteps halted.

The series of deliberately muffled footsteps behind them instantly became brazen.

Five men wearing leather aprons stained with old blood walked out of the shadows, fanning out to block the only exit.

Their weapons weren't conventional swords or knives.

Instead, they were modified elongated scalpels, toothed electric bone saws, and spreader clamps used to violently pry open ribs.

In this alley, they weren't robbers, they were butchers.

"Run? Why aren't you running?"

The leader, One-Eyed Dragon, grinned, revealing a mouthful of broken yellow teeth.

The scalpel in his hand, thin as a cicada's wing, flipped nimbly between his fingers.

Reflecting the purple neon light from above, it looked like a slithering silver snake.

His gaze passed over Jiang Ran, sticking firmly to Su Qingyu.

That look was like a butcher appraising a premium pig for slaughter, evaluating where to cut for the most tender meat.

"Little lady, don't be scared."

"We brothers are just a bit short on cash, want to borrow a kidney from you."

One-Eyed Dragon chuckled, stepping closer, his tone flippant and cruel: "Don't worry, your brother here used to be a proper hospital surgeon."

"As long as you stay nice and still, I promise a quick cut, sutures without scars, won't even affect your future with men."

The accomplices around him let out a wave of lewd, low laughter.

The spreader clamps in their hands clicked menacingly, as if they couldn't wait to hear the sound of breaking bones.

According to the usual script of wasteland novels or hero-saving-beauty stories,

at this moment, the man beside her should step forward, shield the woman, and roar or draw a gun.

One-Eyed Dragon thought the same.

He had even given his underlings a look, gripping his bone saw tighter, ready to first dismember this foolhardy man into pieces.

However, Jiang Ran's next move left these butchers stunned.

Not only did he not shield Su Qingyu, he even took half a step back.

He even nonchalantly turned sideways, leaning against the oil-stained wall beside him.

"Click."

The crisp sound of a lighter echoed, a flame dancing.

Jiang Ran lowered his head, leisurely lighting a cigarette.

He took a deep drag, the pungent smoke slowly dispersing in the cold alley, blurring his expression.

"Don't dirty your clothes."

Jiang Ran looked at Su Qingyu's back, his tone as flat as if reminding her to bring an umbrella when going out:

"Make it quick."

"Heh, you know what's good for you, kid."

Seeing Jiang Ran retreat, the disdain in One-Eyed Dragon's eyes grew.

He took Jiang Ran for the kind of coward who'd sell out a woman to save his own skin at any moment.

Such people were too common in the wasteland; they'd sell their wives for half a can.

Without any caution, his grimy hand reached directly for Su Qingyu's hood, the vulgar words still spilling from his mouth:

"Come on, let big brother see if that face is just as..."

Just as his fingertips were about to touch the rough canvas,

Su Qingyu, who had been standing quietly, suddenly changed.

If the moment before she was a silent piece of porcelain,

then this moment, she transformed into an unsheathed Tactical Folding Knife.

No scream, no unnecessary trembling.

"Swish—!"

A sharp, chilling gleam erupted from within her cloak's wide sleeve, like a venomous snake striking.

One-Eyed Dragon only saw a blur before his eyes.

A sudden chill shot through his outstretched wrist.

Then, the hand that was meant to grab her hung limply like a puppet with its strings cut, connected only by a flap of skin.

Before his pain receptors could send the signal to his brain, Su Qingyu's figure had already crashed into his chest.

Not a loving embrace, but a standard close-quarters combat positioning.

At this moment, Su Qingyu's eyes were as cold as if she were performing surgery on a dissection table.

Those months of hellish training on the black iron,

and countless life-or-death battles against mutated beasts, had long forged her muscle memory into lethal techniques.

Side step, duck, backhand slash.

Her movements were so fast they only left afterimages in the eyes of the accomplices.

"Thud! Thud! Thud!"

Three consecutive, soft yet heart-stopping sounds of fabric tearing.

That was the unique sound of a Special Alloy Dagger precisely severing tendons.

No wild hacking, only scalpel-like precision.

Each cut landed accurately on the median nerve and flexor tendons inside the wrist.

Three seconds.

In just three seconds, Su Qingyu's figure stopped, standing quietly at the end of the alley.

Not a single drop of blood stained that dagger, only the blade's edge shimmered with a cold gleam.

Behind her, those five originally ferocious Disassembler stood frozen for a moment, as if paralyzed.

Then, almost simultaneously, five jets of blood shot out from their wrists.

"Ah—!!!"

Belated agony finally ignited piercing screams.

"Clang!" Several times, their bone saws and scalpels clattered to the ground.

The five men clutched their bleeding wrists, kneeling uniformly in the filth like spineless mongrels.