Chapter 70.2: Little Blue Sea Nation
The people in any single region naturally hadn’t accumulated that many item cards.
But the trio wasn’t staying in one region.
They raced across the snowfields on their snowmobiles without stopping.
Taking turns resting so that someone was always driving, they traveled day and night. After discovering the brilliant idea of exchanging snow beast carcasses for item cards, they hardly passed a single native of Dazzling Star along their route without stopping to trade.
Wang Moning and Shen Jinyang were still a little shy when it came to dealing with strangers.
But they both followed Song Xi’s lead.
Song Xi’s way of thinking had always been refreshingly straightforward.
Along the way, she’d noticed that the natives of Dazzling Star all seemed to be living rather miserable lives—they were hungry, poorly clothed, and struggling just to survive.
“So if we show up carrying snow beast carcasses,” she’d reasoned, “of course they’ll welcome us!”
So what if they didn’t speak the same language?
When she’d first met Wang Moning, the two of them hadn’t been able to understand each other either. It hadn’t stopped them from communicating.
And if the locals didn’t welcome them?
Well, the natives weren’t especially strong. If things turned hostile, the three of them could simply turn around and run.
Most of the locals didn’t own snowmobiles.
There was no way they could catch them.
So Song Xi led the other two from shelter to shelter, knocking on every door they found.
They had even knocked on people’s doors in the middle of the night, gesturing wildly to ask whether they wanted to buy a snow beast carcass.
Sometimes the two sides couldn’t agree on a price, or the other party couldn’t afford the whole carcass.
In those cases, the trio would draw their blades on the spot, butcher the beast into portions, and carry the remaining meat to the next household to continue bargaining.
Along the way, they also encountered people who tried to rob them, laid traps for them, or ambushed them as snow bandits.
But the three women had fought their way through hordes of zombies before.
They dealt with every one of those situations without much trouble.
If they thought they could win, they charged in and robbed the robbers instead.
If the enemy had overwhelming numbers…
…they ran without hesitation.
The most dangerous incident came when they were surrounded by a gang of snow bandits with impressive combat strength and well-made weapons.
The bandits even had snowmobiles of their own.
The trio had no choice but to abandon their beloved rides.
With practiced efficiency, they pulled out a wooden sled, lassoed a passing snow beast, and then drove a spear hard into its backside.
The beast bolted in agony, dragging them behind it as it disappeared into the snowy horizon.
Even now, Wang Moning still couldn’t forget the utterly dumbfounded expressions on the faces of those dozens of snow bandits.
By charging across the snowfields this way all the way to the present, the three women had not only become remarkably skilled at butchering snow beasts…
…they had also accumulated piles upon piles of silver building cards obtained through trades with the locals.
Those building cards represented decades of savings painstakingly accumulated by the natives of Dazzling Star.
The locals didn’t dare upgrade their shelters, and the extra building cards were useless just sitting around. Aside from keeping a few in reserve, they traded the rest to Wang Moning and the others.
Golden item cards were much rarer.
So far, the trio had only managed to obtain three through trading.
They had personally earned seven more by hunting snow beasts.
Every single one of them had been opened.
It was from one of those golden item cards that they had obtained the Guixu Storage Relic.
At first, they hadn’t paid it much attention.
Since they were constantly on the move, they rarely used item cards in the first place, let alone converted physical objects back into cards.
Everything changed after they received the divine oracle.
Once they learned that the natives of Dazzling Star could become believers and be exchanged for contribution points…
And once the language barrier disappeared…
The three of them suddenly had a brilliant idea.
“We stacked every silver building card we’d collected together,” Song Xi said enthusiastically. “At first, it produced a Tier 7 building.”
Her eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Then we used the relic to convert it back into an item card, took it to the area with the largest population of Dazzling Star natives nearby, and deployed the Tier 7 building there.”
Shen Jinyang picked up the explanation.
“We told them we came from the divine nation of Blue Sea. Then we described what life in Blue Sea was like and explained that as long as they joined the Little Blue Sea we were building, they would one day be able to return to the Divine Kingdom once Little Blue Sea had developed enough.”
Wang Moning scratched her head sheepishly before adding,
“For the people who joined Little Blue Sea, if they were strong fighters, highly respected, or especially intelligent, we’d appoint them to official positions. Then we’d help them clear out the powerful snow beasts nearby.”
“If they offered us building cards, we’d stack every single one of those cards onto our Tier 7 building card.”
“And then we’d continue traveling along our route without stopping, day and night,” Song Xi continued. “Everywhere we went, we’d show the locals our Tier 7 fortress, promise that Little Blue Sea would protect them, and grant them territories and noble titles if they joined us.”
Granting noble titles was actually quite simple.
In each region they passed through, the trio would identify the strongest and most reliable local native, then publicly declare that person to be the Baron, Count, or Viscount of that area.
It was remarkably easy to do.
Since they had traveled through nearly every settlement along their route, they had met almost everyone living there.
The trio would tell the newly appointed noble that the surrounding territory was now under his or her administration.
“If you ever encounter a snow beast you can’t handle,” they would say, “go to Little Blue Sea for help. We’ll send guards to deal with it.”
Those “guards” were, in reality, the first group of Dazzling Star natives to join Little Blue Sea.
They were effectively the trio’s trusted followers.
After all, in the beginning, the three women had been supporting them at their own expense, using their own item cards.
“We realized something back when we were trading snow beast meat for item cards,” Song Xi explained. “Although the natives of Dazzling Star live scattered across the wilderness, the people in any given area are usually all members of one large family—or perhaps two or three closely connected clans.”
Even if they hadn’t originally been related by blood, decades of living together and intermarrying meant they had long since become one extended family.
They had established ways of communicating with one another, helped each other survive, and placed enormous importance on kinship.
That meant if they could persuade one person, the entire clan would usually become citizens of Little Blue Sea.
More importantly, the natives of Dazzling Star had long since lost any real concept of nationhood.
And in the beginning, Song Xi and the others didn’t demand anything from these families.
As long as they verbally acknowledged themselves as citizens of Little Blue Sea, the trio would help eliminate the dangerous snow beasts lurking around their settlements.
For people who struggled to survive every single day…
…that offer was simply impossible to refuse.
Train guards.
Gain citizens.
Clear snow beasts.
Collect item cards.
Use those item cards to support more guards.
Recruit even more guards.
Gain even more citizens.
That was how Little Blue Sea’s early development snowballed—through one brutally straightforward cycle after another.
Even Cheng Qisheng couldn’t help feeling impressed.
If this had happened in another world, those great clans might very well have joined forces to rob the trio instead.
But Dazzling Star was different.
Natives who belonged to a family or clan did everything they could to avoid starting conflicts with other people.
Because for them, combat carried an enormous risk.
Cold-weather clothing was the first thing to be damaged in a fight. Even a small tear could let the planet’s deadly cold seep in. Once that happened, both they and their loved ones could be overwhelmed by the freezing temperatures almost instantly.
In less than a minute, a person could freeze solid.
Aside from snow bandits, most ordinary natives of Dazzling Star would never willingly fight other humans.
Besides, in Little Blue Sea’s early days, it didn’t even possess any real territory.
The trio simply roamed from place to place, demonstrating their strength wherever they went before granting the local inhabitants land and noble titles.
The turning point came when Song Xi suddenly realized something.
The three of them were working themselves to the bone.
They were constantly subsidizing everyone with their own item cards, hunting snow beasts every day, and the stockpile they had accumulated over the course of their journey was beginning to run dangerously low.
How was it that Blue Sea could support its residents so generously…
…and yet never go broke?
Was it because Blue Sea collected taxes?
But the trio couldn’t imagine the natives of Dazzling Star willingly paying taxes to Little Blue Sea.
The locals already lived on their own land and provided for themselves.
Why should they hand over taxes to some newly founded nation?
After discussing it among themselves, the three decided that their citizens ought to move into the national fortress.
That way, collecting taxes would become perfectly reasonable.
But another problem immediately presented itself.
The reason the natives originally lived scattered across the snowfields was because snow beasts preferred to hunt isolated individuals.
If large numbers of people gathered in one place, the snow beasts would gradually leave the area and search for easier prey elsewhere.
If the trio gathered all their citizens together…
…the nearby snow beasts would disappear.
And without snow beasts, there would be no item cards.
Without item cards, the fortress could no longer function.
The three of them racked their brains.
They worried.
They debated.
They thought until their heads hurt.
And still they couldn’t come up with a solution.
Listening this far, Cheng Qisheng assumed that the trio’s eventual answer would be to move only the elderly, the weak, and the children from each territory into the castle.
After all, the fortress offered a warm, comfortable environment where those most vulnerable natives of Dazzling Star could finally live in peace.
For the able-bodied adults of Dazzling Star, who placed tremendous importance on family, seeing their loved ones living comfortably would give them far fewer worries.
They could devote themselves wholeheartedly to hunting snow beasts, and they would be much more willing to contribute item cards so that their families could continue living in the warmth and safety of the castle.
It was, in Cheng Qisheng’s opinion, the ideal solution for the natives of Dazzling Star.
Of course, to turn it into a fully functional system would require the Blue Sea government to work out the finer details.
The plan would need constant refinement.
They would have to carefully manage how they approached and persuaded people, prepare ample supplies of item cards, and bring enough soldiers to demonstrate Blue Sea’s overwhelming military strength to the locals…
Cheng Qisheng was already prepared to hear her three believers recount just how difficult all of this had been.
Instead, Song Xi said,
“And then I awakened a supernatural ability. Thank you, my God!”
The deity receiving those thanks: “…?”
She already knew Song Xi had awakened supernatural powers.
Ever since Blue Sea had reached Tier 3, residents had been awakening abilities from time to time. With Blue Sea’s growing population, there were now quite a few ability users.
Combined with the tens of thousands of priesthood positions that had been “released” into the population, the chains of faith were expanding at an astonishing rate every day.
Nowadays, Cheng Qisheng no longer bothered checking on every believer who awakened an ability.
But…
What did founding a nation have to do with Song Xi’s supernatural power?
Almost instinctively, Cheng Qisheng peeked into a hazy fragment of Song Xi’s memory.
She saw Song Xi pinning down a massive snow beast.
A tiny worm emerged from the palm of her hand and burrowed straight into the beast’s head.
The snow beast, which had been struggling violently only moments before, immediately became docile.
It obediently allowed a harness to be fastened around its body.
Trailing behind it was an extraordinarily long…
…snow train.
In Song Xi’s memories, these “snow trains” departed every morning, carrying Little Blue Sea’s soldiers toward distant regions.
Then, by evening, they returned loaded with snow beast carcasses and soldiers carrying freshly acquired item cards.
The great Creator quietly swallowed the coconut jelly in her pearl coconut milk tea.
I thought you solved the problem through clever planning…
Turns out you just unlocked a cheat ability?!
Song Xi’s awakened supernatural ability was called Gu Worms.
She herself functioned as the Mother Gu, capable of producing and controlling Child Gu.
At the moment, she was only a Tier 1 ability user, so she could produce only a single type of Child Gu. As her rank increased, she would unlock additional varieties.
For now, the Child Gu functioned much like parasites.
They obeyed every command issued by the Mother Gu, though they couldn’t carry out instructions that were too complicated.
At present, Song Xi could only command an infected host to run along a predetermined route or remain quietly in place.
So every day, at fixed times, she would direct the snow beasts pulling the snow trains to travel to distant locations.
Calculating the timing precisely, she would have them stop at each designated “station.”
A small squad of guards stayed aboard every train.
When they reached the terminal station, their job was simply to turn the snow beast and the train around.
Then, once the appointed time arrived, the train would race back the way it had come.
Day after day, the snow beasts ran back and forth like this.
Any ordinary animal would have collapsed from exhaustion long ago.
But snow beasts possessed incredible stamina.
They could survive for a very long time without eating at all—after all, ordering an infected host to eat counted as a command that was too complicated for the Child Gu to execute.
They were practically the perfect hosts for Song Xi’s parasites.
Each Child Gu currently survived for about five days.
During those five days, Song Xi worked the infected snow beasts relentlessly.
Once a beast finally died, she would collect the item card it dropped.
Then they would capture a new snow beast, hitch it to the snow train, infect it with another Child Gu…
…and repeat the cycle all over again.
With the snow trains in operation, distance was no longer an obstacle.
The trio simply moved the vast majority of their citizens into the fortress.
The relocation process was a little bumpy at first.
So they appointed the first group of arrivals as Messengers, promising that the more people they persuaded to relocate, the longer they would be allowed to live in the warm Tier 7 fortress free of charge.
And so Little Blue Sea’s population grew larger and larger.
Those who moved in first recruited more people.
The newcomers, in turn, went out to recruit still more.
Before long, the process was sustaining itself.
As Little Blue Sea acquired more and more building cards, the Tier 7 fortress was eventually upgraded into a Tier 8 castle.
The snow trains operated every single day.
During the day, everyone went out to hunt and fight.
At night, they returned to the warmth of the castle to rest.
—Provided they paid their housing tax, of course.
The tax was collected in the form of item cards.
Those unwilling to pay could choose to live outside the castle instead.
They simply had to purchase a Snow Train Pass with item cards, allowing them to commute back and forth.
And… that was pretty much the end of it.
The three of them simply let the whole thing run itself.
After all, before the apocalypse, none of them had been the management type.
Song Xi had been an outgoing, enthusiastic rich girl.
Wang Moning had been a high school student completely absorbed in her studies.
Shen Jinyang had been a promising athlete with a bright future.
In the beginning, Song Xi had merely raised her fist and declared that if they founded a nation, they could return to Blue Sea.
The other two figured there was no harm in trying, so they joined in.
Whenever they encountered a problem during the process of founding the nation…
…they solved it.
Then, once the country was actually established and Little Blue Sea somehow started thriving…
…the three of them had absolutely no idea what to do next.
So whenever something went wrong, they simply picked whoever looked the smartest, appointed that person to some official position, and told them to handle it.
If they couldn’t solve the problem…
…they replaced them with someone else.
