The shovel came down with a rush of wind.
Xi Wei bent his knees and rolled halfway to the left. The shovel blade grazed his ear and chopped into the wasteland, making the ground vibrate.
The dust billowed up and coated his face, bitter and gritty.
Zhao Tiezhu’s kick followed right after, catching him in the lower back. Xi Wei pitched forward and crashed chest-first into a stack of rusted steel plates. Pain made his vision go dark.
“Still trying to dodge?”
Zhao Tiezhu crouched and grabbed the back of his collar, lifting him like a dead dog. “I told you, that meteorite belongs to the mine.
Are you fucking deaf?”
Xi Wei lay motionless, but his fingers clutched the meteorite in his arms so tightly his knuckles turned white.
The meteorite was about the size of a fist, its surface covered by a layer of dark blue mineral crust. When he licked it, he could feel a faint magnetic pull.
He had spent six whole days digging through the garbage pile, all to scrape together next semester’s tuition for Chu Shiya.
