Ini looked down at the object in the boy’s hands, a transparent plastic display box covered in various scratches. Inside was an old camera, its casing partially damaged, revealing the mainboard within. Ini stared at the camera, first in puzzlement, then with surprise. "Hey, you recognize this?" The boy opened the box and took out the camera. "Of course, the Menshu CTX-50 was a top-of-the-line camera from ten years ago, a classic from Menshu Group," Ini watched the camera in the boy’s hands and nodded, "Back then, this camera sold for over ten thousand federal coins. Even now, in the second-hand market, a well-preserved one would still go for five to six hundred federal coins. Where did you get this? The second-hand market?" "Bought it at the garbage disposal station. A scavenger was ready to sell it to me for ten federal coins, but I bargained down to six." The boy turned on the camera, which flickered as it booted up, and slowly came to life. He showed the display screen to Ini for a moment, "I thought it was broken initially, but it turned out to be just a damaged capacitor. I jumped it with a piece of wire directly onto the mainboard, bypassing the capacitor, and to my surprise, it booted up." Ini didn’t understand what the boy meant about the capacitor being damaged or what jumping it implied, but she understood that the boy got something worth several hundred federal coins for just six, and she nodded in admiration, "You’re so lucky, and quite capable too." "It was just good fortune." The boy glanced at the camera’s glitchy screen, still stuck on the flickering boot screen, "The camera is a bit slow to start, just wait a moment for me." With that, the boy passed by Ini and moved to the other side of the room. Ini nodded, turned to the side, and made way for the boy. She then saw him place the camera on a small cabinet near the door and take out a small cardboard box from underneath it, which contained several irregular, black chunks. The boy carried the small cardboard box to his mother’s bedside and then pulled out a small iron basin from a pile of sundry items. As he put the long, bar-shaped objects into the iron basin, Ini asked softly, with a hint of curiosity, "Charcoal?" She had seen charcoal in news and books, which were said to make real animal meat taste better when barbecued over it rather than when cooked electrically, a delicacy favored by the upper echelons of the Federation. However, only upscale restaurants and wealthy people could afford charcoal and real meat for barbecues. Ini had only heard about it, but had never seen it. The boy lightly nodded, stacked the charcoal to create some gaps, took out an electric lighter, and also some plastic bags to stuff beneath the charcoal, and lit the bags, gradually igniting the chunks, "Garbage brought from the east side usually includes these items. Many are barely used, straight from freshly-opened boxes. Seems like they’re discarded for being damp or misshapen, and the waste management plant sells them to us for cheap. We don’t have electricity here, nor a furnace, so we rely on these." The boy moved further into the room, lifted a kettle still dripping with water, and a homemade iron stand, hanging the kettle on the stand over the fire basin to boil water. He then rummaged through a cupboard near the bed, pulling out a set of clothes, glanced at Ini, and turning his back, he opened the door and stepped outside. The charcoal blazed, and the wind outside bumped against the posters sealing the windows, making a thumping sound. "Please, take a seat." The woman sitting on the bed reached from the other side and handed a round plastic stool to Ini. Ini hurriedly took the stool and sat down beside the bed, feeling somewhat cramped. "Jerin hasn’t given you a self-introduction yet, has he? That boy can sometimes be a bit reckless," the woman leaning against the wall said gently, cradling a thermos cup in her hands, "I’m Zhao Jia, and that kid is Jerin." Ini replied a bit nervously and quickly, then she looked up and glanced around, asking softly, "Have you always lived here?" "Ini, it’s a pleasant name," Zhao Jia lifted her head to look at the noisy window covered with posters, "Not always here. Before I fell sick, I lived in a cheap apartment in the central area of Nevus District. Then I got sick, was fired by the company, my credit card got locked due to overdue payments, couldn’t afford the rent for the apartment, so I had to bring Jerin here." Ini opened her mouth to speak but hesitated. "Are you asking about Jerin’s father? He died when Jerin was nine," Zhao Jia took a sip of hot water and sighed softly, "He used to work as a miner for Kopace Mining. A large component of the mining machinery collapsed, and he and a few workers nearby couldn’t run away in time; they were all crushed to death." Zhao Jia replied calmly, holding her cup, her voice a bit lower, "In a way, he was actually lucky. At least he didn’t suffer much in his passing." "Didn’t you get any compensation?" Ini lowered her head and asked carefully. "A funeral subsidy of three hundred federal coins per person, which took half a year to get to us." Zhao Jia sighed softly, "Some families thought it was too little and wanted more. They were beaten up by gang members on the way and then didn’t dare to ask for the money anymore." Hearing this response, Ini fell silent for a moment. The flames of charcoal burned brightly, reflecting on the woman’s profile, bringing a slight hush to the room. Eventually, Ini looked at the unlabeled medicine on the bedside cabinet and broke the silence, "Your illness is...?" Zhao Jia smiled as she glanced at the medicine, "The doctor said surgery was needed, but I used to be a waitress at a fast-food chain and didn’t have health insurance. I couldn’t afford the surgery. Later, after coming here, I saw a few underground doctors. They gave me some painkillers and medicine to alleviate the symptoms. We can’t afford the more expensive medicines anyway," She paused, looking at Ini and smiled, "Let’s not talk about this subject. Jerin mentioned that you came today to buy photos? Can photos still be sold for money?" Ini hesitated, then explained softly, "I’m here to gather information on the Mayor’s assassination incident. It happened last night, nearby. Jerin said he has photos of the Mayor’s battle, with Mechas and Floating Warplanes." "The Mayor was assassinated?" Upon hearing Ini’s words, Zhao Jia was taken aback. The terms ’Mayor’ and ’assassination’ seemed particularly distant to her. She never expected her child to be involved in such matters. She looked at Ini with some suspicion, "Last night?" Ini nodded, "That’s said to be the time." Zhao Jia, sitting on the bed, reminisced for a moment, "I remember now, I seem to have heard a lot of loud roars last night, I couldn’t see the outside scene from here and thought it was thundering, Jerin actually went out to have a look and took his camera with him. So that was the Mayor being assassinated?" She looked at Ini and sighed, "Last night must have been very dangerous. Jerin doesn’t tell me anything anymore, "I had intended to send him to school, but my health has been getting worse and I can’t take care of him or afford his tuition fees. Instead, it’s him who has to take care of me," She gazed at Ini with sincere eyes, "Jerin is under a lot of pressure. He might act impulsively sometimes. If he said anything unkind, please don’t take it to heart." Ini hurriedly waved her hand, "Actually, he’s quite easy to talk to." At that moment, the door was pushed open. The boy, who had changed his clothes, glanced at Ini, placed his wet clothes beside the fire to dry, then turned back and walked to the cabinet at the rear and took out his camera, looking toward Ini, He swiftly operated it, then handed the camera to Ini, "I brought up the gallery. Take a look." Ini took the camera and after a somewhat lengthy loading wait, an image filled with flames, showing through a somewhat pixelated display, appeared before Ini. In the photo, one could barely make out the blurry image of Floating Warplanes speeding past, along with distant Mechas and the explosion of flames in the sky. However, the photo was not well taken; the ineffective flames occupied most of the frame and the key subjects of the Mechas and Floating Warplanes were minimal and not very clear. "I took a burst of photos, there are more behind this." The boy rapidly said from behind her. Ini quickly pressed the photo selection button to switch to the next image. The button was somewhat unresponsive, but after Ini applied a bit more force, she managed to change the picture successfully. The scenes in the subsequent photos were also somewhat chaotic, clearly indicating that the photographer lacked rich photographic skills and experience and was just blindly shooting by feeling. Fortunately, there were many photos. As a top flagship camera from ten years ago, most of CTX-50’s features had been passed down to today’s budget cameras, but there were still one or two features that required high-end hardware, and they remained unique to premium models. This included CTX-50’s flagship feature at the time, ’Ultra High-Speed Clear Photography’, which was able to intelligently capture objects far faster than human reaction speeds, take pictures of high-speed moving objects, and ensure a relatively high-quality finish with clear object outlines. And it was all built into a lightweight camera weighing less than 300 grams. That’s why, even though the CTX-50 was ten years old, prone to glitches, often malfunctioned, and had connectors incompatible with current mainstream ones, it was still one of the hot models on the secondhand camera market. Ini had once thought of buying a secondhand CTX-50, had saved many secondhand shops, but ultimately chose the ’younger’, more ’bucket-like’ camera she wore on her person. And this CTX-50 that Jerin had now, was clearly not a well-maintained secondhand model on the market; even the screen was pixelated, but its ’Ultra High-Speed Clear Photography’ feature was still functioning properly. Because of this, Ini could roughly sketch out in her mind the scene Jerin had ’seen’ last night from the photos he had taken. Even more so, the scene she reconstructed might have been clearer than what Jerin had seen himself. Because, judging from the time stamps on these photos, the ’assassination’ scene Jerin had captured might have lasted only a few dozen seconds in total. For a human, those few dozen seconds would fly by, unable to see clearly the high-speed flying objects. But the CTX-50 was able to ’capture’ these scenes into a series of still images, allowing Ini to see every detail. "Is this thing at the top, a missile?" After flipping through several photos, Ini pointed to a few bar-shaped objects at the top of the screen and asked. Jerin lowered his head to look at the scene in the picture, "Last night was too dark, I couldn’t catch these things with the naked eye, I just felt the rumbling explosions." Ini turned the photos to the first one, looking at the blazing flames in the middle of the photo, "what is this?" "It seems to be an exploding mecha," Jerin pondered, watching the flames, "I didn’t catch the part before it, it seemed to just explode suddenly." Ini lowered her head to look at the photos in the camera, flipping through them one by one, "So, initially there was a mecha that attacked the Mayor, and then it was destroyed by the floating warplane the Mayor was aboard, wait, is it ’driving’ or ’riding’?" Ini paused, recalling the scene she had seen in front of the Mayor’s Mansion the previous evening. It seemed that the floating warplane had closed its door after the Mayor came out and turned off all its lights as if it had powered down and shut down. This didn’t seem like there was a pilot inside. "In other words, this floating warplane might have only had Mayor Lin En inside, and he could actually be the one piloting it?" She muttered to herself, lowering her head and continuing to flip through the photos, "After destroying the mecha, what appeared to be South City’s Mecha Squad arrived at the scene, and then missiles appeared in the sky... these missiles seem to be camouflaged, with no visible paint or text..." She kept flipping through the photos one by one, "These missiles were all targeting that floating warplane; it seems like the Mayor was indeed inside... What are these mecha squads doing at this time? Taking aim?... Why didn’t the Mayor just take cover behind the mecha squad? Why did he turn around, wait..." Her photo-flipping hands suddenly paused, her gaze landing on the mecha squad still moving their gun barrels, "He’s using himself as a lure! He wants to save the mecha squad! No, wait..." Her gaze moved downward, focusing on a small section of rooftop revealed in the lower part of the photo, her voice lowering with a hint of urgency, "He’s not just trying to save the mecha squad..." Jerin, who was nearby, heard her muttering and looked up in confusion towards Ini. Ini raised her head and pointed towards the resident buildings at the bottom of the camera photo, as if explaining to Jerin and also to herself, "He has to intercept these missiles here, otherwise they’ll destroy the residential buildings below, and everyone here will die." She took a deep breath, her face showing disbelief and shock, continuing to quickly flip through the photos, "But if he uses himself as a lure, that means he’s putting himself in a situation where he could die at any moment, those are missiles... Is that really the Mayor inside?" She had never heard of a Mayor of Yilan City doing such a thing, nor had she heard of any Mayor from the Federation doing it, perhaps the ancient founders of the Federation might have? But that was how many years ago; those stories felt like legends of heroic deeds now. Her gaze continued to follow the moving floating warplane in the flipping photos. When Jerin was taking photos from behind, the lens seemed to be trying to keep up with the floating warplane, so the entire warplane was generally in the middle of the frame. And the missiles in the sky, the mecha from behind, were all constantly flying towards that floating warplane. Although she already knew the outcome, seeing those missiles chasing the floating warplane downward, Ini’s spirit tensed up, and her heart also started to beat more rapidly. Her wristband vibrated, a reminder that her heart rate had exceeded the limit. She flipped through the photos rapidly, slightly relaxed when she saw the mecha complete the first wave of interception through extreme maneuvering. However, upon seeing the remaining missiles bursting through the cloud of flames and continuing their pursuit of the floating warplane, her expression unintentionally tensed again, and she sped up the photo-flipping. And when she saw the warplane flying close to the rooftops of the lower buildings and pulling up to the limit under the pressure of the missiles, her actions came to a halt.