Chapter 27: Weapon of Vast Whiteness
The land was silent, and the group chat was silent as well.
The other city lords who weren’t present at the scene had seen Meow Meow’s call for help, and they had also seen Blue Sea’s reply.
But since they had no idea what was happening, they knew they shouldn’t casually interrupt. They were afraid that if they sent messages, the big-shot city lords in the middle of an emergency might miss each other’s replies.
It wasn’t that everyone was particularly considerate.
Rather, this was clearly a life-or-death situation. If they ended up interfering…
Well, if the city lords using the group chat died, that would be one thing.
But if they survived?
Then they’d have made enemies.
Zhou Yue stopped reading her novel and sat tensely on her bed, staring at the screen. Meow Meow was a Tier-3 city lord. If even she was asking for help, how terrible must the crisis be?
She had to stay ready at all times. The moment Meow Meow’s profile picture turned gray, she would immediately take her Safe City and leave this world.
Anything capable of trapping a Tier-3 Safe City and preventing it from escaping was something she needed to run from—run fast.
…
Wen Huahua was the same, anxiously pacing circles around his room.
Although he had only arrived in the second world, the previous world had contained a huge number of Safe Cities. He had met plenty of city lords and called many people “boss.”
But among all those city lords, Blue Sea was the only one he had sincerely acknowledged as his boss.
She was powerful, gentle, and kind to others, yet sharp and formidable toward her enemies.
These past few days, it might have seemed like he was the one constantly currying favor with her, passing along information he gathered from other city lords.
But Blue Sea had given him plenty in return.
If not for Blue Sea, he would have starved to death long ago.
She had taught him how to manage residents and how to balance kindness with authority.
And although he regarded her as his boss, she had never acted superior or looked down on him. Sometimes, Wen Huahua even felt that he and Boss Blue Sea could genuinely be called friends.
‘What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?’
If Boss Blue Sea died, there was no way he could stay in this world either. But things had only just started improving for him. His residents had only just adapted to the zombie world. If he left now, what if the next world turned out to be even worse?
His eyes remained fixed on the last message Boss Blue Sea had sent him.
[Blue Sea Safe City: Okay~ We’re heading off for the final battle now. Talk later =v=]
Below it was his own fawning reply:
“Boss, Boss, go ahead! When you get back, I’ll tell you all the gossip.”
Gritting his teeth, Wen Huahua made a decision within those few short seconds.
—
Just as Cheng Qisheng finished admiring the spectacle of the Holy Bullets, Aether suddenly spoke up.
“City Lord, Cilantro Safe City has transferred 2,315 crystal cores to you.”
“Huh?”
Cheng Qisheng shifted her gaze to the virtual screen. Sure enough, there was a crystal core transfer notification, along with a message.
[Cilantro Safe City: Boss, no need to reply. Use these in case of emergency.]
Cilantro Safe City—
The moment Wen Huahua completed the transfer, he started regretting it.
He knew he was making an irrational gamble.
If he won, he would earn Blue Sea’s goodwill.
If he lost, he would truly be finished.
Those were all the crystal cores he had.
If Boss Blue Sea was gone, he wouldn’t even be able to leave this world.
“AI, it looks like we’re probably going to die in this world. Are you scared?”
The AI replied, “The AI does not possess the emotion of fear.”
Wen Huahua: “…Waaaahhhhh!”
The AI, which had been given the appearance of a pink fluffy ball, slowly floated in front of him.
“City Lord, you have a new message.”
“I’m not reading it! I’m about to die! Why would I read messages now?!”
“Understood. Blue Sea Safe City’s private chat has been closed for you.”
Wen Huahua shot upright.
“Wait! Wait, wait, wait! A message from my boss?”
He hurriedly opened the virtual screen.
Sure enough, there was a message from Blue Sea.
Blue Sea had rejected his crystal core transfer and sent him a reply:
[No need. The fight’s already over. Thanks, though. I’m busy right now—I’ll chat with you later~]
Wen Huahua: “…Ah!”
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
He won the gamble!!!
In reality, only about a minute had passed since the Holy Bullet was fired.
In the City Lord group chat, while the other city lords were still anxiously waiting, a new message finally appeared.
[Blue Sea Safe City: All taken care of =v=]
Instantly, questions flooded the chat. Every city lord seemed to have dozens of things they wanted to ask, and messages began scrolling by at lightning speed.
But Cheng Qisheng no longer paid attention to the group chat.
Instead, she turned her gaze outside the Safe City.
—
“What happened?”
Countless residents who hadn’t made it back into the Safe City in time stood on the vast, empty plain, now covered only with scattered crystal cores. Every face wore the same bewildered expression.
Someone asked the question.
But no one could answer.
The residents of Blue Leaf Safe City were especially confused.
After the apocalypse began and the Safe Cities descended, they had followed His Majesty the Emperor through world after world. Along the way, they had witnessed technologies far beyond anything the Blue Leaf Dynasty possessed, as well as countless powerful weapons.
Machines that could fly through the sky.
Weapons that could kill from great distances.
Explosives capable of shattering entire mountains.
But they had never seen anything like this.
This…
This overwhelming terror.
It was as though divine light had descended from the heavens, and in a single instant, everything ceased to exist.
There were no corpses.
No building ruins.
Even the ashes left behind were minimal.
Many zombie bodies had been completely vaporized. Only by looking carefully could one make out faint human-shaped silhouettes on the ground.
Those tiny shadows were all that remained of a body.
It was terrifying.
For people from a feudal dynasty, this was practically—
No, it was a miracle.
Many residents of Blue Leaf Safe City dropped to their knees and began kowtowing toward the heavens.
The transcendent experts, thanks to their higher status, knew a little more than ordinary people.
But even they could not hide the shock on their faces.
The good news was that none of the city lords felt embarrassed by their residents’ reactions.
Because the city lords themselves were even more stunned.
Blue Leaf was practically slumped against his dragon throne, his heart pounding as if it were about to leap out of his chest.
“Th-That was… the legendary Weapon of Vast Whiteness?”
Most of the ministers stood behind him, while a few still maintained protective positions in front of him.
Now that the white light had faded, everyone could clearly see the scene before them.
No matter how shocked they were, they weren’t so stunned that they had completely frozen in place.
The ministers who remained in their protective stances were mainly trying to make sure His Majesty got a good look at their faces.
When the Emperor was in danger, naturally they had to protect him.
But now that the danger had passed, they still wanted to make sure they received full credit for their loyal service.
So the ministers continued holding their protective poses as they answered:
“Yes, Your Majesty. It appears to be the Weapon of Vast Whiteness.”
Blue Leaf Safe City had always been committed to learning more about modern civilizations and gathering information from them.
Among the many things they had learned was the existence of a terrifying weapon.
A weapon capable of instantly vaporizing everyone and everything within a designated area.
The affected region could even encompass an entire city.
Different civilizations called it by different names, so the Blue Leaf Dynasty had given it its own title: the Weapon of Vast Whiteness.
The meaning was simple:
After it is used, nothing remains but endless whiteness.
Yet even the minister who had coined the name had never actually seen such a weapon.
After all, who could carry a civilization-ending weapon while fleeing through worlds? The people from modern civilizations had only spoken about it.
Now, however, that very minister stood more stunned than anyone else, staring blankly at the vast stretches of empty ground below.
“So… this is the Weapon of Vast Whiteness…”
A force that destroyed everything.
A force that didn’t even leave corpses behind.
Many people found themselves trembling uncontrollably.
It had nothing to do with courage.
It was simply a human instinct.
Just moments ago, every one of them had stood beneath the reach of that terrifying weapon.
A little closer…
And they too would have become nothing more than a faint, human-shaped shadow scorched onto the earth.
One of the ministers struggled to suppress the tremor in his voice.
“Y-Your Majesty, this Weapon of Vast Whiteness is unimaginably terrifying. This humble servant begs Your Majesty to relocate the dynasty and avoid this disaster.”
Blue Leaf swallowed hard.
“No. We are not leaving.”
“You don’t know the full story. Blue Sea only activated the Weapon of Vast Whiteness in order to save the Catfolk.”
Why had Blue Sea saved the Catfolk civilization?
When the Tier-4 zombie attacked Meow Meow, she could have simply withdrawn without suffering any losses.
If it had been for crystals, she could have just dropped a Weapon of Vast Whiteness immediately, without warning Meow Meow to activate her shield.
During these past days, the four Safe Cities had operated together. Based on the combat strength of each city’s residents, it wasn’t difficult to estimate roughly how many crystals each city had earned from clearing zombies.
Blue Sea could have waited until Meow Meow’s city fell and both Blue Leaf and Withered Star evacuated.
Then she could have purchased a shield and activated the Weapon of Vast Whiteness.
At that point, all the spoils—including the crystals stored within Meow Meow Safe City—would have belonged to Blue Sea alone.
But she hadn’t done that.
She had told Meow Meow to activate the shield first.
She had protected everyone.
Only then had she unleashed the Weapon of Vast Whiteness.
—
In the group chat, Meow Meow was currently meowing frantically.
Mixed among the messages were confused questions from the city lords who hadn’t been present.
But Meow Meow had no attention to spare for them.
The fur on her tail was still standing on end.
At first, she was so excited that she simply let out a stream of incoherent meows. The AI assistant couldn’t even translate them.
After pausing for a few seconds and calming herself down, she finally managed to form actual words.
[We survived, meow meow meow! Thank you, Blue Sea! Thank you so much!! I almost thought I was going to die here, meow meow meow!]
Blue Leaf and Withered Star both stared intently at the group chat, waiting to see how Blue Sea would respond.
After a short while, Blue Sea’s reply finally appeared.
[Blue Sea Safe City: @Meow Meow Safe City You’re welcome. We’re allies, after all~]
Whew!!!
A collective sigh of relief seemed to sweep through the cities.
For Blue Leaf and Withered Star, the answer was more important than the rescue itself.
Blue Sea’s response confirmed one thing:
She possessed a weapon capable of erasing an entire battlefield in a flash, yet she still chose to honor alliances and protect her allies instead of exploiting them for profit.
That realization made the terrifying Weapon of Vast Whiteness seem a little less frightening—and made Blue Sea herself far more formidable.
Blue Leaf let out a huge gasp, nearly slipping off his dragon throne before several ministers rushed forward in a flurry to steady him.
“She… she said she’s allies with Meow Meow.”
“Blue Sea only saved Meow Meow because they’re allies.”
Blue Leaf’s lips curled upward—then kept curling higher and higher. Strangely, none of the ministers found anything odd about it; instead, they too began smiling uncontrollably.
Blue Sea wasn’t just allied with Meow Meow’s Safe City.
Their Blue Leaf Safe City was also Blue Sea’s ally!
Across the way, in Withered Star Safe City, City Lord Withered Star was also staring fixedly at the word “ally.”
He had never really believed in alliances.
To him, relationships between Safe City lords were always just cooperation at best—and at worst, outright hostility. The existence of city cores meant everyone could be both partner and enemy at any time.
“Allies?” he had always thought. “Just temporary coalitions built on interests and mutual suspicion. Only fools believe in that.”
But now…
Blue Sea actually saved an ally.
And more importantly, there was no need to fear that she had ulterior motives.
If Blue Sea truly had ill intentions, who could possibly stop her anyway?
For the first time, Withered Star realized he had begun to trust the idea of allies.
That trust didn’t come from emotion.
It came from a very simple logic:
She could have killed me—but she didn’t. That means she really sees me as an ally.
At this moment, all three Safe Cities felt extremely fortunate that they had agreed to form an alliance.
Even if Blue Sea demanded all the crystals right now, not a single city lord would object.
Of course, Cheng Qisheng would never do something like that.
What she wanted had always been long-term gains, not short-sighted plunder.
More importantly, she could afford to say that—because the Tier-4 zombie crystal nucleus was unquestionably hers, giving her enough leverage to calmly plan everything ahead.
With that crystal, Blue Sea Safe City would be able to advance to the next tier.
The city gates opened wide, and Blue Sea’s army marched out in an orderly formation, showing none of the desperate urgency they had had when rushing back earlier.
Outside the city, however, the residents of the Withered Star region were still completely immersed in the aftermath of what they had just witnessed.
“A miracle!!”
“That must be the divine punishment sent down by the Creator God!!”
“The great deity has saved us all!!”
The residents of Velvet Star had no concept of such a weapon. Many locals—and even some outsiders—knelt and bowed toward the sky, chanting the sacred scriptures of the Creator God taught in the temples.
Among them were even people who had been intellectuals before the apocalypse. With just a bit of rational thought, they could have concluded that this power was certainly some kind of advanced weapon, not divine punishment at all.
But they chose to believe otherwise.
If they became believers of the Creator God, they could truly join Blue Sea. They could truly survive.
Whether it was divine punishment or a weapon, it was undeniably a power beyond imagination—one capable of destroying worlds.
A power… enough to make someone willingly become a believer.
Within Cheng Qisheng’s network of faith, faint points of light began to appear for the first time, flickering softly.
Their number kept increasing, one linking to another.
Only then did she finally smile.
Believers—this was her true foundation.
Qin Zhi was currently asking what the next step should be.
Cheng Qisheng, having watched Old Eighth grow up, immediately understood the unspoken meaning behind the question: whether they should take the opportunity to eliminate the other three Safe Cities, or intimidate them further and seize all the spoils for themselves.
“No,” she said gently.
“My children.”
“They will be our allies—those who fight alongside us and share information with us. Through allies, we will gain even more.”
Unlike other civilizations, she could not continuously absorb external populations and convert them into direct combat power. Only believers could become her true residents.
But that didn’t mean there was no workaround.
If she couldn’t directly absorb other civilizations in large numbers, she could still make other Safe Cities her allies.
A different path.
A roundabout victory.
Cheng Qisheng gently patted Qin Zhi’s head.
She would become a very good ally—protecting her allies, taking care of them, and becoming an existence recognized by all of them.
And her believers, under the protection of these allies, would be able to reduce casualties to a minimum.
“Yes, my God.”
Qin Zhi felt the gentle warmth brought by the great deity, as though she could hear a distant whisper in her ears:
—“Get ready, child.”
—“Blue Sea will become even stronger.”
