Chapter 20.1: Wartime
[Cilantro Safe City: Wow wow wow, even Blue Sea Boss went too! Now all five big shots are gathered together!]
[Cilantro Safe City: Aaaah! I really wish I could see it in person!]
[Cilantro Safe City: It must be so lively, right? Sob… It’s a shame I’m too weak, otherwise I’d love to be part of this historic meeting!]
[Cilantro Safe City: Huh? Why did the bosses suddenly stop talking?]
[Cilantro Safe City: Bosses?]
[Cilantro Safe City: …D-don’t scare people like that! Weren’t you all chatting just a moment ago? Why did everyone suddenly go silent?! Did something happen?!]
It wasn’t just Cilantro who was alarmed—every other city lord in the group chat became anxious as well.
Blue Sea not saying anything was normal. She had never been much of a talker in the first place.
But the four city lords who had arrived earlier had been chatting away just moments ago. For all of them to disappear at the same time felt almost like a ghost story to everyone else in the group.
After all, the city lord group chat could be operated with thought alone.
Normally, you would never see a situation where the city lords were enthusiastically discussing, “Blue Sea is on the way, we can officially begin the operation,” one second, and then become completely silent the next.
Could it be that the Tier-3 zombie had reached the five safe cities?
Were the city lords busy fighting it, leaving no one free to speak?
How powerful would that zombie have to be to occupy several city lords at the same time…?
Cilantro was especially anxious. He desperately wanted to @Blue Sea, his trusted powerhouse, and ask if everything was okay, but he forcibly held himself back.
What if Boss Blue Sea was in the middle of a battle? If he tagged her and the group chat interface suddenly popped up, distracting her and affecting her performance, that would be terrible.
As everyone in the group let their imaginations run wild—some even reaching the point of “If even the bosses can’t handle it, maybe I should just run away first”—Blue Leaf finally spoke.
[Blue Leaf Safe City: I just went to eat.]
As if that were a signal, the other three quickly appeared as well.
[Meow Meow Safe City: Meow~ I took a little nap.]
[Gu Gaga Safe City: One of my residents made a mistake, so I was scolding it.]
The others at least tried to come up with excuses, but Withered Star Safe City couldn’t even be bothered to pretend. Their reply was brief and to the point:
[Withered Star Safe City: Busy.]
Anyone could tell that something had happened, but the four city lords clearly had no intention of telling the truth.
Still, seeing them all reappear safely made the other city lords in the group breathe a sigh of relief.
As long as their cities hadn’t been overrun by zombies, everything was fine.
When Wen Huahua heard that they weren’t fighting, he immediately @ mentioned his Boss Blue Sea.
Blue Sea was the only one who hadn’t spoken yet. What if the four safe cities had teamed up and stabbed his boss in the back?
To be extra sure, he specifically tagged Blue Sea Safe City in the group.
[Boss, have you arrived yet?]
At that moment, Cheng Qisheng was watching footage transmitted by drones surveying the surrounding area. The virtual group chat screen popped up, and she glanced at it.
[Blue Sea Safe City: Arrived safely. Currently checking out the surrounding environment =v=]
Wen Huahua immediately let out a sigh of relief.
Good, good. As long as Boss was safe.
Now that nothing was wrong, his mind began turning. He felt this was the perfect opportunity to flatter the boss and strengthen his connection with her.
The boss had just arrived in a new city—a place full of zombies, crumbling ruins, and devastation everywhere.
After a safe city descended into such a location, roads would definitely need to be cleared before residents could move around normally.
He could send Blue Sea the portable gasoline-powered cutoff saw he had recently acquired as a gift, both to show his support and to demonstrate that he was firmly on her side!
The moment the idea came to him, Wen Huahua dug out the gasoline cutoff saw and prepared to teleport it over.
Just as he was about to instruct his AI assistant to send it, someone beat him to it.
—Blue Leaf Safe City has transferred one bulldozer to Blue Sea Safe City.—
Wen Huahua: “???”
[Blue Leaf Safe City: It’s pretty messy over there. Probably because that Tier-3 zombie passed through before. There are ruins everywhere. Since you’ve just arrived, take this bulldozer and put it to use.]
Wen Huahua looked at the gasoline cutoff saw in his hands, then at Blue Leaf’s full-sized bulldozer.
Wen Huahua: “…”
It doesn’t matter. The problem isn’t serious. His residents had scavenged some cured pork, and he could send that as a show of support.
Then the group chat notification lit up again.
—Meow Meow Safe City has transferred ten crates of beef to Blue Sea Safe City.—
—Gu Gaga Safe City has transferred ten crates of fruit to Blue Sea Safe City.—
—Withered Star Safe City has transferred one excavator to Blue Sea Safe City.—
No messages were attached. They simply sent supplies to Blue Sea without another word.
Wen Huahua: “…”
Seeing this, even he could tell that the four big shots were trying to curry favor with Boss Blue Sea.
But… why?!
Boss Blue Sea had arrived less than twenty minutes ago!
In such a short time, what could she possibly have done?
Forget it. If everyone else was flattering the boss, that only meant he should flatter her even harder.
Gritting his teeth, Wen Huahua sent everything he had just thought of, all at once.
What? Compared with the other bosses’ gifts, his stuff looked cheap?
Maybe so, but these were already the best things he could offer. Sending something was better than sending nothing!
Cheng Qisheng was busy receiving the supplies from the four safe cities one by one. They had all tacitly attached nucleus crystals to cover the transfer fees.
In private chat, while they were sending supplies through the group, all four city lords also sent the exact same sentence:
—[Now that you’ve accepted the gifts, you can’t attack us.]
The moment she read that line, Cheng Qisheng understood what the four city lords had been doing during those ten-plus minutes of silence: they had definitely been coordinating through private messages.
On the surface, the supplies looked like tribute payments. In reality… they were tribute payments.
Blue Sea Safe City’s combat strength was obvious to the naked eye, and none of the four city lords wanted to gamble against it.
So, faced with the enormous threat she represented, the four had temporarily formed a bloc.
Sending identical messages served two purposes: first, to show that all four were willing to offer gifts in exchange for peace; second, to signal that they had already reached an agreement—if Cheng Qisheng launched an attack on any one of their safe cities, the other three would not stand by and watch.
Cheng Qisheng calmly looked at the four identical messages.
This was exactly the situation she wanted.
Eliminate every potential threat—make sure the other safe cities would neither attack her nor attack one another.
They would form alliances, remain wary of each other, and test one another’s intentions, but they would never unite against Blue Sea Safe City.
The combat power Blue Sea had displayed was simply too overwhelming. It was obvious to everyone that even if all four city lords joined forces, attacking her might still end badly. No one was willing to gamble on being the unlucky one who paid the price.
At the same time, in order to give Blue Sea something to be wary of, these safe cities would also be unable to start wars among themselves for the time being.
As a result, no safe city would be able to seize another city’s core and wealth through warfare, advance to Tier 4 or even Tier 5, and become a force capable of threatening Blue Sea—
As long as everyone stayed put and maintained this seemingly balanced state, Blue Sea could remain the dominant power.
Smiling, Cheng Qisheng sent the same reply to all four of them:
[Thanks for the gifts. Don’t worry, I won’t start a war. Let’s all survive together =v=]
Inside the four safe cities, the four city lords all let out huge sighs of relief.
Then came another frenzy of private messages.
[I guessed Blue Sea would be strong before, but I never imagined… she’d be this strong.]
[How did she manage to gather her forces and get everyone to obey her commands so quickly? Was she an emperor in her original world before the safe cities appeared?]
[Maybe. Even if she wasn’t an emperor, she was probably some kind of national leader, like a president.]
Because Tier-3 city lords couldn’t yet create private group chats, the four were communicating through one-on-one private messages. Each person was simultaneously chatting with the other three.
Fortunately, they were all superhumans. Even with conversations this chaotic, none of them got mixed up.
[Why is her safe city so large? It’s already bigger than a normal Tier-3 safe city.]
[Blue Sea defeated Cosmic and absorbed his core. The extra territory is probably from the Cosmic Safe City. I can’t tell exactly how many residents she has, but there are a lot of buildings. She must have at least thirty million people. That’s insane… Does anyone know how old Blue Sea is?]
[No idea, meow. Besides, knowing her age wouldn’t really tell us anything, meow~ Lifespans are different across civilizations.]
[Lifespan isn’t important. Once you reach Tier 3, you unlock the Lifespan Lock, so everyone’s effectively a long-lived species from then on. The real issue is: whether we cooperate or not, we first need to find the base where the virologist is located, right?]
[And how are we supposed to find it? Everywhere is either piles of ruins or swarming with zombies. On top of that, we have to worry about that Tier-3 zombie coming back. This is a completely doomed starting situation.]
[No wonder this triggered a rescue mission. This city has been destroyed so thoroughly. Just standing on the city wall and looking down makes me physically uncomfortable. This might get me criticized, but honestly, seeing Blue Sea Safe City actually made me feel safe…]
Cheng Qisheng had no idea that her Safe City was giving the other city lords a sense of security.
Meanwhile, Blue Sea’s drones had already returned with photographs of the other four Safe Cities.
All of them shared one common characteristic: their walls and gates were completely unchanged, exactly as they had originally appeared. None had been modified the way Blue Sea had customized hers.
A Tier-2 Safe City looked exactly the same as Blue Sea’s city when it had first advanced to Tier 2, while a Tier-3 Safe City was merely a larger version of a Tier-2 one.
Well…
It wasn’t exactly disappointing, but there was certainly no visible sign of the unique characteristics of their respective civilizations.
It was completely different from what Cheng Qisheng had imagined. She had expected the Catfolk civilization’s city to look like a giant cat nest, or the Treant civilization’s city to resemble a towering world tree.
But when she thought about it, it made perfect sense.
For the city lords, the walls of a Safe City already came with their own defensive properties. Rather than spending precious resources and labor remodeling the exterior, it was far more practical to invest those efforts into developing the city itself.
Everyone was simply trying to survive.
Just like her.
At this very moment, in order to keep living well, Cheng Qisheng was slowly continuing her rehabilitation exercises.
…
Inside Blue Sea Safe City, its residents were also gearing up with weapons in hand, ready to fight for survival.
The drone swarm returned in the shortest possible time, bringing back all available information about the surrounding environment.
Looking at the photos and videos, Marshal Alice realized something immediately:
If the previous two deployments had been cities where all humans had turned into zombies, then this city was more like a place where zombies from the entire world had gathered.
There were simply too many of them—far exceeding the population a single city could ever support. They roamed every corner. If a person were unlucky enough to fall into a zombie horde, they would likely be torn apart within three seconds.
Marshal Alice began simulating tactical plans in her mind.
—Deploying large-scale military weapons would create too much noise, attracting the Tier-3 zombie. If they engaged in battle before the city had been properly cleared… no, that would end in a full missile bombardment scenario.
And more importantly, the virologist would be gone.
Most crucially, although Blue Sea was already rebuilding a military factory, resources were still limited. The existing heavy weapons had to be conserved as much as possible.
—What about using small-scale weapons to expand outward from the Safe City?
No. That would reduce noise, but also slow expansion. The efficiency would be too low, and delays would increase the chance of unforeseen changes—such as the wandering Tier-3 zombie successfully evolving into Tier-4 somewhere out there.
—Or eliminate the Tier-3 zombie first?
No. It was still better to clear out all ordinary zombies first.
Even now, the army was still too small. Against Qianli City and Miang’an City, Blue Sea’s forces were more than enough—but in this city, they were clearly insufficient.
Yet Marshal Alice also understood clearly: this was already the largest military force Blue Sea had ever assembled. Until more resources were found, troop expansion could not continue.
She ran through one plan after another in her mind, only to discard them one by one.
In the end, Marshal Alice picked up one of the photographs from the desk.
—The ruins everywhere, the crumbling high-rises, and the hungry zombies occupying every inch of land—this was the true apocalypse.
Humans were the minority here. Just one glance was enough to make fear and loneliness rise instinctively in one’s heart.
But the people of Blue Sea were not alone.
They had left their homeland and squeezed into “caves,” eating coarse grain and working every day.
In such an environment, every Blue Sea citizen carried the most basic instinct embedded in human genes:
—They wanted better food and better housing.
Marshal Alice made her decision.
She set down the photo and issued orders one by one.
“Open the military merit exchange channel.”
“Open the military merit-to-housing exchange channel.”
“Raise military food standards to Level 2.”
Finally, after communicating with the President, she added two more directives:
“Open the city gates and restore the crystal exchange channel.”
“Civilians may rent tactical watches and take loans to purchase weapons, interest-free for three years.”
—At the same time, the Civil Affairs and Welfare Bureau issued a city-wide announcement: under wartime conditions, the previously rationed fine grain supplies would no longer be limited.
Any resident holding the “Kill Zombie 100” title issued by the AI system—whether soldier or civilian—would receive a 30% discount on food purchases during wartime.
—Distribution stations across all districts also began transporting goods in bulk, announcing that ration limits were lifted starting today.
—Meanwhile, within the safe city, over a thousand residential apartment buildings that had long been under construction but never opened finally unlocked their doors.
Staff stood at the entrances, informing people that apartment units ranged from 30 to 110 square meters.
They could be rented or purchased.
As long as they had enough crystals, anything was possible.
In an instant, the entire Blue Sea erupted in excitement.
—
When these messages were sent to residents’ phones, Wang Moning was carefully laying bricks.
Before, when Song Xi told her that working as a construction worker felt like “resting,” she had thought it was ridiculous.
But after actually doing the job herself, she realized that compared to fighting zombies, laying bricks really did feel like rest.
No need to constantly stay alert for zombies suddenly jumping out to bite her. No need to eat cold meals. No need to search everywhere for water. Every day came with a stable income—she just had to quietly and diligently work.
What’s more, the people of Blue Sea were quite friendly. Seeing that she was short, someone would often casually help her out. That constant sense of goodwill made Wang Moning both flattered and strangely happy.
But despite that happiness, while she skillfully continued laying bricks, she still felt something odd in her heart.
It was the kind of feeling that came after surviving a dangerous life and returning to a stable one—what had once been considered normal now somehow felt… dull.
Every day was the same routine: wake up, wash up, eat, go to work, eat lunch, keep working in the afternoon, eat dinner, then go home.
Structured. Predictable. No changes.
The only source of excitement was occasionally going to watch movies with Song Xi and the others, or watching coworkers compete in absurd feats like stacking more bricks on their heads than anyone else while still dancing with their lower body.
Strange—wasn’t this what life was supposed to be?
Before the apocalypse, her life had been even more boring: school, sleep, school, sleep, exams, school.
Back then, she had never seen anyone balance fifty bricks on their head while keeping their upper body perfectly still and dancing with their lower body.
While continuing her practiced bricklaying, Wang Moning sighed.
Wake up, Wang Moning. This is the life you wanted—stable, safe, with steady income. What exactly are you still not satisfied with?
“NINGNING!!!!!”
Song Xi’s voice carried from far away.
Wang Moning lowered her head and saw her captain looking extremely excited, grabbing a rope and nimbly jumping down from the wall.
“What is it, Captain?”
Song Xi was indeed in high spirits—in fact, she was practically vibrating with excitement.
“Didn’t you read the messages?! Quick, look! It’s wartime status now! This is our time to shine!!!”
Wartime status… did it really need to be this exciting? She had heard that during the previous war with another safe city, Blue Sea’s people were actually quite calm.
Confused, Wang Moning went to the storage area to retrieve her phone. She noticed that not only her, but many workers were also checking their phones, all wearing expressions just as excited as Song Xi’s.
She carefully read through the messages one by one.
And then… she also became excited.
“House purchases are available now?!”
Song Xi nodded furiously. “You can buy them! You can even rent them! As long as you can pay three months’ deposit!”
“We can also buy as much meat as we want?!”
Song Xi’s grin stretched almost to her ears. “Yes!!! As long as you can eat it, even ten bowls a day is fine!”
“The welfare supply stations don’t have purchase limits anymore?! I’ve always wanted to get two more quilts—I love the feeling of being wrapped up in blankets!”
Song Xi waved her hand. “We’re going right now!”
Wang Moning was extremely happy and went with Song Xi to buy quilts. She also picked up two sets of clothes on the way.
Oh right—she should get some fabric for a curtain, and a pillow too. Sleeping on clothes wasn’t ideal. A small electric bedside lamp was important too; there was no electricity in the residents’ quarters, and her eyesight wasn’t as good as Blue Sea natives, so even finding a chamber pot at night required memory alone. Since she was getting a lamp, she might as well get a flashlight too. And toilet paper…
What was supposed to be just buying two quilts ended up turning into a full shopping spree. Wang Moning and Song Xi stayed inside the store all morning, until the AI system issued a notice saying they could no longer remain in the area and had to move to another operational zone. Only then did they leave, each carrying large bundles of items.
Just in time for lunch, of course they had to go to the cafeteria and eat to their heart’s content.
O my god above, thank you—Blue Sea and Velvet Star actually have similar tastes!
There was even braised pork!!!
Wang Moning bit into the braised pork, savoring its delicious flavor, almost moved to tears.
Before the apocalypse, she had actually avoided such fatty food, worried about gaining weight. But after fighting zombies, she finally understood—this wasn’t fat at all. This was a precious little protector of the internal organs, a kind of stored fuel inside the body!
After eating her fill, she was delighted to discover that the cafeteria had even introduced fruit juice drinks.
Happily, she and Song Xi each bought a cup, and with full stomachs, they slowly left the cafeteria.
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