Chapter 49.2: Relocating
Compared to them, however, Ruo Buyan was under far greater pressure.
She had once served as an inside agent, helping Blue Sea capture the Cosmic Lord Safe City, and had received a substantial amount of contribution points as a reward.
Even if she never accomplished anything else, those points alone would allow her to live comfortably in Blue Sea.
But she had no desire to spend her days living an ordinary, uneventful life.
Ruo Buyan wanted higher status.
She wanted more resources.
More laboratories.
More research equipment.
That was how she had spent the first half of her life in her original world—constantly climbing upward.
It had been a world with a rigid hierarchy, where everyone was expected to keep striving for greater achievements. Pursuing recognition and prestige had become second nature to her.
After arriving in Blue Sea, she was surprised to discover that most people there seemed to think,
“A high-ranking position is nice… but an ordinary job is perfectly fine too.”
This truly was a wonderful civilization.
But Ruo Buyan knew that no matter how much she admired it, she could never become like the people of Blue Sea. A personality shaped from childhood wasn’t something that could be changed overnight.
She threw herself into self-improvement, determined to become one of the Creator God’s faithful.
She memorized the Scripture of the Creator God. Every day, she stood in front of a mirror trying to brainwash herself. She practically wished she could change her name to Follower of the Creator God.
But it was no use.
No matter what she did, Ruo Buyan simply couldn’t become a believer.
Fortunately, she was still a scientist.
Even if she could never become one of the Creator God’s faithful, perhaps she could earn her place through a major scientific contribution—perhaps she could one day make it onto Blue Sea’s Honor Roll and become an important member of Blue Sea in her own right.
Most of the contribution points she had earned had already been spent renting laboratory space and research equipment. She also had to pay the other staff working in the lab, sign additional contracts for research materials, and cover countless other expenses. By the time everything was accounted for, her points were nearly exhausted. On top of that, she had promised to share portions of any future profits from her research with various collaborators.
When all was said and done, even if her project ultimately succeeded, she herself would probably receive only about ten percent of the profits.
And if she needed more support later on, she’d likely have to promise away another share.
But that’s how scientific research worked.
It consumed money like water.
Even so, she considered herself fortunate. She had even managed to secure a measure of investment from the Blue Sea authorities.
The investment itself wasn’t particularly large, but to Ruo Buyan, the amount of contribution points wasn’t what mattered.
What mattered was that, once the project had received official approval, she had been granted access to Blue Sea’s scientific research database.
Ruo Buyan had a vague feeling that the reason it had been so easy to obtain official funding was because of the contributions she had made during the Safe City War.
That realization only made her even more passionate about her research.
After arriving in Blue Sea, she had quickly realized that, even without her help, Blue Sea would have won that war eventually.
Yet her contributions in that single campaign had already earned her a comfortable position within Blue Sea.
So…
What if her research actually produced a groundbreaking result?
Just imagining the possibility filled Ruo Buyan with optimism.
Her future seemed brighter than ever.
She quickly finished her meal.
“I’ve got a new idea. I’m heading back to the lab first. Could you bring the snow beast over later?”
Ruo Buyan wasn’t particularly strong, so there was no way she could carry a two-meter-tall snow beast by herself.
“Of course, no problem! Go ahead, Professor Ruo. And don’t forget to get some rest!”
The members of the Pie from the Sky team cheerfully waved her off.
Once Ruo Buyan had left, the captain took a bite of meat and said,
“Eat up, everyone. After we’re done, we’ll deliver the snow beast to Professor Ruo. This afternoon we’ve also got to take Professor Ming out for a field trip so he can collect samples.”
Professor Ming was a materials science expert. The members of the Pie from the Sky team didn’t really understand what he was researching. They only knew that he liked digging through the snow to collect some kind of crystalline polymer from beneath the ice.
Apparently, he wanted to see whether those materials could be used to develop an ultra-low-temperature, cold-resistant sealing material.
One teammate asked, “What about Professor Liu?”
The captain had everything planned out.
“Of course I didn’t forget Professor Liu.”
“Professor Liu isn’t heading out until tomorrow morning. He’s coming back tonight to rest. Coincidentally, the other professors won’t need us tomorrow, so we’ll spend the whole day with Professor Liu.”
Professor Liu specialized in botany. Escorting him was the easiest assignment—they just had to race across the snowfields on their snowmobiles until they found one of the rare but genuine cold-resistant plants that grew on Dazzling Star.
The captain summarized the schedule once more.
“After lunch, we deliver the snow beast to Professor Ruo. Then we pack our gear and take Professor Ming out to collect samples. We’ll come back tonight, and tomorrow morning at five we’ll head out with Professor Liu and stay in the field all day. Any questions?”
The team answered in unison,
“Nope!”
“Great!!”
The captain grinned.
“Thanks for all your hard work, everyone. Our grades weren’t exactly impressive, and we’re not particularly strong fighters either. There’s no way we’d get rich relying on ourselves.”
“But as long as any one of these three professors makes a breakthrough…”
“We’re going to strike it rich overnight!”
The whole team was fired up.
“Strike it rich!!”
…
Ruo Buyan spent the entire night working in the laboratory.
Thank goodness Blue Sea had Starfruit Juice.
The stuff was incredible. If she’d had something like it back in her home world, she might have earned her promotion five years earlier.
Unfortunately, Blue Sea didn’t have nutrient solution.
Otherwise, she could have stayed in the laboratory twenty-four hours a day.
Hungry? Drink nutrient solution.
Sleepy? Drink starfruit juice.
Her productivity would have skyrocketed.
With a sigh, Ruo Buyan forced herself to stop daydreaming.
The starfruit juice kept her body from suffering too much from the all-nighter, but mentally she felt miserable.
Her research had hit a wall.
When she had first discovered that snow beast body parts could be repurposed, she had been ecstatic.
She bought snow beast carcasses one after another for dissection, accompanied the Pie from the Sky team into the field to observe living specimens, and repeatedly verified her hypothesis.
But before long, she encountered a bottleneck.
Although a snow beast possessed only a single primary neural pathway, once its major limbs were severed, those limbs were packed with internal nerve bundles. The only parts that fit Ruo Buyan’s original concept were the spikes, outer shell, and hooves.
The problem was…
Those parts weren’t very useful.
Surely Blue Sea’s people weren’t going to fight snow beasts by running around poking them with a single spike.
And even setting that aside, the interface she had developed so far could remain stable for only three days at most.
As she pored over stacks of research materials, a new idea suddenly came to her around noon.
“The wings… When these snow beasts fly, the base of their wings shifts, but the muscles in their bodies don’t contract and expand in sync with the wingbeats! The wings of flying snow beasts… those would be much better suited for this research!”
Her eyes lit up as she stared at footage on her computer screen—a video recorded by one of Blue Sea’s residents showing a flying snow beast in action.
“I need a flying-type snow beast.”
“Approve it.”
While carrying out her routine review of Blue Sea’s affairs, Cheng Qisheng noticed Ruo Buyan’s request for a flying snow beast as research material.
Flying snow beasts were extremely rare in the region where Blue Sea Safe City was located.
Perhaps it was because land-dwelling snow beasts couldn’t run very far, while flying snow beasts could simply fly to wherever people were.
There was another reason as well.
Although flying snow beasts looked enormous, most of that size came from their long wings, making them appear much larger than they actually were.
In reality, they carried very little meat, and their chances of dropping an item card were especially low. Unless one attacked first, Blue Sea’s residents had no desire to pick a fight with a flying snow beast.
As a result, if Ruo Buyan wanted the corpse of a flying snow beast, her only option was to submit a request to the authorities and see whether they had one in storage.
Or, more accurately, whether they were willing to support her project by issuing a mission for residents or the military to hunt some and build up a stockpile.
Cheng Qisheng found Ruo Buyan’s idea quite intriguing.
At moments like this, the advantages of a Safe City that welcomed people from other civilizations really became apparent.
Blue Sea possessed formidable military strength, but it genuinely lacked outstanding scientific prodigies.
Its research followed well-established paths. The overall standard was above average, with the occasional innovation, but true breakthroughs were undeniably rare.
That was probably because Blue Sea had spent so much of its history fighting wars.
Ruo Buyan’s proposal certainly sounded unconventional. Whether it ultimately succeeded or not, Cheng Qisheng felt it was worth encouraging.
Besides, she believed that even if Ruo Buyan failed to create what she had originally envisioned, the research would still produce some valuable results along the way.
Although Ruo Buyan wasn’t one of Cheng Qisheng’s fellow believers, Cheng Qisheng could still tell that she wasn’t someone who merely went through the motions.
If the project failed, no one would take it harder than Ruo Buyan herself.
Not only did Cheng Qisheng approve Ruo Buyan’s request, she also authorized additional research funding, granted her access to more resources, and instructed Aether to keep an eye on Ruo Buyan’s progress and report back if anything noteworthy happened.
Another month passed before Cheng Qisheng received a notification from Aether.
“City Lord, Resident Ruo Buyan has submitted a new request.”
She opened it.
This time, what Ruo Buyan was requesting was…
a single leaf from the Long-Tendril Tree.
The Long-Tendril Tree was grown from the red seed that the elderly Long-Tendril being had sold to Blue Sea.
Since it came from the Long-Tendril Civilization and even the old Long-Tendril being didn’t know its original name, Blue Sea simply named it the Long-Tendril Tree.
Even though it didn’t have a single tendril.
Under Blue Sea’s meticulous care, the tree had now grown to a height of ten meters. Each leaf was about half a meter long, and at present it had exactly 213 leaves.
According to Blue Sea’s estimates, it was still only in its juvenile stage. Once it reached maturity, it might grow to several hundred meters tall.
Which fit everyone’s image of what a tree capable of producing spaceship materials ought to look like.
Blue Sea had been studying its leaves all along, but aside from being tougher than ordinary leaves and having more pronounced veins, they seemed no different from normal foliage.
At the very least, they clearly couldn’t be used as spaceship hulls in their current state.
The young Long-Tendril being would occasionally come to visit the tree. They had also picked up the leaves and examined them repeatedly.
Unfortunately, nothing remotely resembling the scene everyone had secretly hoped for ever happened—
The Long-Tendril being didn’t pick up a leaf only for it to suddenly recognize its rightful owner, assemble itself into a spaceship, and proclaim,
“Welcome home, Long-Tendril!”
The leaves remained completely inert, and the young Long-Tendril being sensed no ancestral inheritance or mysterious calling.
Even so, because the elderly Long-Tendril being had insisted that the tree’s leaves could one day be used to build spaceships, Blue Sea continued to treat it as an invaluable resource.
Any research institute wishing to obtain even a single leaf had to pass through multiple layers of review and approval.
And now…
Ruo Buyan had submitted such a request.
Cheng Qisheng barely hesitated before instructing the central AI to approve it.
For some reason, she had an inexplicable intuition.
Ruo Buyan was going to surprise her.
Two months later, when Blue Sea Safe City could barely find any new snow beasts in the surrounding region and was forced to prepare for another relocation…
Cheng Qisheng’s intuition proved itself right once again.
It was remarkably accurate.
…
The Great Creator God held a roasted sweet potato in one hand, staring at the scene inside Safe City so intently that they forgot to take a bite.
Above the city, Ruo Buyan was flying through the air.
Four wings extended upward from her back, each one roughly three meters long.
They had obviously been harvested from a flying snow beast.
Their silhouette was razor-sharp, with the skeletal framework exposed and the lines strikingly angular. The wing membranes were pitch black and stretched taut. At first glance, they looked downright sinister, delivering an overwhelming visual impact.
As Ruo Buyan descended from the sky, the enormous black shadow cast by her outstretched wings swept over the ground. The dozen or so Blue Sea personnel participating in the test below instinctively tensed their backs.
Ruo Buyan had excellent eyesight and keen powers of observation.
This pair of flight wings was her own invention, so she knew exactly how evil they looked. When the four wings flapped up and down, the motion was minimal, making them appear stiff and rigid.
Combined with the exposed skeleton and the long, blade-like profile, they looked like something straight out of a demon’s body from any angle—though Blue Sea apparently didn’t even have the concept of demons.
There was no helping it, however. Of all the flying snow beasts, only this type of wing could be attached to a human body by using the veins of the Long-Tendril leaf as connection points.
As someone keenly aware that she was a physically fragile researcher, Ruo Buyan was terrified of provoking the Blue Sea people’s fighting instincts.
By now, she had learned that Blue Sea citizens seemed to be born with an innate talent for combat. She wasn’t about to gamble with her life.
She landed smoothly, reached behind her back, “removed” the wings with a casual motion, and handed them to the official inspector who had been sent to evaluate them.
“You all should give them a try.”
You people are strong, tough, and agile enough… you probably won’t mind getting hit, right?
The Blue Sea staff member was instantly overjoyed.
“You’re letting me try them? Thank you, Teacher Ruo!! This is so cool!!”
Ruo Buyan: “…”
She looked at the black skeletal wings.
“You think these look cool?”
They’re practically screaming ‘evil’ with that exposed skeleton, aren’t they?!
The staff member carefully cradled the wings in his arms and nodded enthusiastically.
“They’re incredibly cool!”
He asked with genuine curiosity, “Did you deliberately choose this design from all the different flying snow beast wings because it looked the coolest?”
Ruo Buyan: “…”
She glanced around at the other Blue Sea personnel present and found that they all wore expressions of wholehearted agreement.
Only then did Ruo Buyan realize that ever since joining Blue Sea, she had been so absorbed in her research that she had never paid attention to whether the Blue Sea people’s sense of aesthetics differed from her own.
“I noticed all of you tensed your muscles just now. Why was that?”
The Blue Sea staff member hugging the wings replied, “Because I wanted to fly too. I was excited.”
Ruo Buyan: “…I see. Well then, go ahead and fly.”
Under guidance, the staff member happily put on the pair of flight wings.
The connectors made from Long-Tendril leaf seemed almost alive. One end was attached to the wings, while the other automatically adhered to his skin the moment it made contact. Before long, they felt as though they had always been a natural part of the human body.
Unlike Ruo Buyan, who had needed to brace herself securely before the wings could be fitted, this Blue Sea citizen relied on his remarkable sense of balance and completed the attachment of all four wings while simply standing in place.
“Oh! Oh! I’m flying!”
“I can feel them! It really feels like I’ve actually grown four extra wings!”
Ruo Buyan stood where she was, watching the staff member slowly rise into the air with her invention, his face filled with delight.
Her heart swelled with pride.
I did it.
Even in another world, within an entirely different civilization, I, Ruo Buyan, can still make something of myself.
But… it wasn’t enough.
She still hadn’t truly become one of Blue Sea’s own.
Ruo Buyan couldn’t help but look up at the sky.
O great Creator God of Blue Sea…
“Have You seen what I’m capable of?
Have You noticed the contributions I’ve made to Blue Sea?
Please guide me. Let me become one of Your believers—a true citizen of Blue Sea.”
—
Cheng Qisheng watched the staff member soaring through the air and took another bite of her roasted sweet potato.
“…That actually worked??”
Then she looked over at Ruo Buyan.
Thank goodness I didn’t let someone this talented slip away back then.
What a pity!
Such an incredible talent! How is it that she still can’t become a believer?
Cheng Qisheng wanted to accept Ruo Buyan, and Ruo Buyan herself clearly wanted to join.
Both sides were completely willing.
Yet somehow, it just wouldn’t happen.
Just how unshakable was this researcher’s faith in science—and her resistance to anything involving gods?
Without becoming a believer, she couldn’t receive divine blessings.
So Cheng Qisheng could only reward her with something tangible instead.
She gazed at the four-winged flight apparatus, the corners of her lips curling into a smile.
Perfect timing.
Safe City was about to relocate.
In a world where it was impossible to calculate coordinates on your own, moving the city was a troublesome affair. If they accidentally relocated to another region with very few snow beasts, things would become difficult again.
But now that they had the ability to fly, Cheng Qisheng’s previous concerns were no longer concerns at all.
The battle-hardened people of Blue Sea had gained wings in this frozen world—
Cheng Qisheng finished the roasted sweet potato in her hand and brushed the crumbs from her palms.
“Time to move!”
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