Chapter 78.1: Perfect for Logistics
Cheng Qisheng bestowed a Great Blessing upon all of the Old Eighth, ordering them to get some proper sleep before tallying the spoils of battle.
Every member of the Old Eighth possessed exceptional physical strength. Once combat began, they would automatically trigger buffs such as Pain Resistance, Fatigue Resistance, and Enhanced Senses.
Ordinarily, a person could only choose between explosive power and endurance. But when the people of Blue Sea fought, they maintained peak explosive power over an extended period.
Even so, they were still flesh and blood. After fighting at such intensity for an entire day and night, it was impossible for them not to be exhausted.
It was just that their brains were so overstimulated they simply didn’t notice how tired they really were.
If the government had ordered the residents—still intoxicated by the thrill of battle—to go rest, they certainly wouldn’t have been willing.
But when the divine oracle came from the Great Creator God they worshipped…
That was a different matter.
—
Cheng Qisheng had developed yet another new method of bestowing blessings.
For some time now, she had been trying to figure out why her famous “head-patting technique” was capable of producing a blessing.
After several rounds of experimentation, the Great Creator God concluded that it was more like using psychic power to soothe a believer’s body and mind.
According to Gu Gaga’s records, psychic abilities were extraordinarily versatile.
They could serve as the user’s eyes and hands—for example, Cheng Qisheng had previously spread her psychic power across the entire Dark Star.
They could also be used to attack others, such as scrambling someone’s brain.
Naturally, they could also be used to protect others through psychic power.
Until now, Cheng Qisheng had always believed that this last application was the one she used most often.
But after thinking it over carefully, she realized something didn’t add up.
Back when Dark Star had suddenly appeared in her room, Cheng Qisheng had been completely cornered and had no time to wonder where it had come from.
Now, however, after learning just how versatile psychic power truly was, she began to form a suspicion.
Perhaps Dark Star hadn’t come to her on its own.
Perhaps it had been captured by her psychic power—pulled back to her.
To be more precise, the planet she had seen inside her room had never actually been there in the physical world.
In reality, Cheng Qisheng’s body had remained on Blue Star, while her psychic power had crossed billions of light-years to reach Dark Star’s true location.
If that were the case, then Dark Star’s previously accelerated flow of time would also make sense.
That was why the Dark Star she saw could never be captured by a camera, nor could anyone else see it.
The only reason was that Cheng Qisheng had never realized she was using psychic power to do all of this. When she set fires, poured water, moved mountains, and overturned seas on the Dark Star “projection” she had pulled to herself, her psychic power had been carrying out those actions in the real location simultaneously.
After the Safe City was established, however, it became like the other Safe Cities. Spatial distance no longer mattered, and the flow of time became normal from Cheng Qisheng’s perspective.
That was the relatively scientific explanation. Any more supernatural answer would probably have to wait until she became a high-tier City Lord.
—So the worsening of her Mortal Body Syndrome back then really hadn’t been unfair at all.
After her brainstorming session, Cheng Qisheng came up with a new idea.
If psychic power could brush across the bodies of believers, easing their pain and driving away the cold, then what would happen if it gently brushed against their Chains of Faith?
—Now she knew the answer.
The Blue Sea residents had originally been so excited they couldn’t fall asleep, still intoxicated by the thrill of battle. But after her psychic power swept across their Chains of Faith, their expressions visibly relaxed.
Cheng Qisheng randomly selected one believer and experienced their current sensations.
—It felt as though their mind had soaked in a comfortably warm hot spring, the mental exhaustion slowly melting away.
After fighting nonstop for an entire day and night, all the Blue Sea residents—except those assigned to patrol and keep watch—fell peacefully asleep under the care of their god.
Looking at her sleeping believers, Cheng Qisheng let out a breath.
Bestowing blessings through the Chains of Faith was far more exhausting.
Under normal circumstances, with Blue Sea’s hundreds of millions of people, she could only perform an ordinary blessing three or four times a day before reaching her limit.
Bestowing blessings through the Chains of Faith, however, left Cheng Qisheng feeling drained after just a single use.
Still, she was certain the latter was far more effective.
Exactly how much more effective would have to wait until her believers woke up.
After seeing so many item cards, Cheng Qisheng felt that her two blessing methods deserved proper names as well.
She pondered for two minutes…
…Then gave up. Naming things was simply beyond her.
So she searched through various web novels online and borrowed a couple of terms.
The first type, which primarily strengthened the body, would be called Divine Favor Blessing.
The second type, which primarily nurtured the mind, would be called Divine Protection Blessing.
As for any future blessing methods she developed, she’d just keep following the same naming pattern.
Cheng Qisheng took out a fresh notebook and carefully wrote down the names and methods of the two blessings. Then she flipped through the remaining blank pages.
Somehow, she had a feeling she’d be inventing many more kinds of blessings in the future.
…
Day and night on Dazzling Star were never truly quiet.
Snow beasts howled constantly.
The sound resembled wolves, yet it was somehow even more chilling.
During the day it wasn’t so bad, but at night, Dazzling Star was pitch-black, the blizzards roared, and the snow beasts’ cries echoed through the darkness. It was more terrifying than any horror movie.
But tonight was different.
After the Blue Star residents had enjoyed a free hot shower, changed into their pajamas, and settled into the warm, insulated housing protected beneath the Air Tower’s coverage, they all slept soundly in the residential quarters.
Meanwhile, the region where Blue Sea Safe City had descended was utterly silent.
Not a single sound could be heard.
After all, every snow beast capable of breathing within a thousand-li radius had been summoned by the Skywing Dragon flock during yesterday’s battle.
And afterward…
They stopped breathing.
A duck-billed flying snow beast had barely approached the area before the overwhelming stench of blood made it let out a startled screech and flee in panic.
Several land-dwelling snow beasts slowly wandered over, sniffed the air, then quietly turned around and left as well.
No matter what became of Dazzling Star in the future, for at least the next three to five years, no snow beast would dare approach this region.
Blue Sea Safe City stood quietly amidst the endless night, its gentle lights shining brightly against the darkness.
Accompanied by the blizzard’s steady roar—like soothing white noise—the residents of Blue Sea lay beneath warm blankets and drifted peacefully to sleep.
Kailina quietly slipped in from outside.
As a native of Dazzling Star who had only recently recovered from her illness, she hadn’t taken part in the battle. Instead, she had found herself a logistics job.
She had just come from the cafeteria, where she’d been hard at work.
By the time the residents woke up, they would surely be ravenous after the previous day’s fighting. The logistics staff had been working through the night, and employees like Kailina, who worked the night shift, had stayed busy until five in the morning.
She actually wanted to keep working.
The people of Dazzling Star had never been afraid of hardship or exhaustion. Years of surviving the apocalypse had conditioned everyone except the children to push their bodies to the absolute limit.
But the supervisor of Cafeteria No. 336 stopped her.
“Kailina, you’ve been working all night. Your shift’s over. Eat some breakfast and go get some rest. I know you love this job, but you’ll have plenty of time to work in the future.”
“You’ll have plenty of time in the future.”
To the Kailina of the past, those words would have sounded like nothing more than a dream.
The people of Dazzling Star hardly had such a thing as a “future.” Their peaceful days were always interrupted without warning.
The ever-falling temperatures…
The increasingly dangerous snow beasts…
A life that required fighting every single day just to scrape by…
All of it had left the people of Dazzling Star with the mindset that surviving today was no guarantee of surviving tomorrow.
Blue Sea, however, was different.
The people of Blue Sea enjoyed the present—they delighted in battling snow beasts with reckless enthusiasm.
They also looked forward to the future—eager for even more Skywing Dragons to appear so they could continue battling them with the same fervor.
Kailina did her best to understand Blue Sea’s passion for combat.
But what truly astonished her was the fact that Blue Sea even had retirement pensions.
One of the kitchen assistants at Cafeteria No. 336 was already receiving one.
He was sixty-two years old. Though his hair was completely white, he still moved with remarkable agility and vigor.
The old man told Kailina, “I paid into my pension insurance before the apocalypse. When we relocated, the government copied all the records and converted everything according to the points system. Now I receive 450 points in pension benefits every month.”
It wasn’t an especially large amount, but even if the elderly Blue Sea resident chose not to work, those 450 points would be more than enough to support his daily life.
Of course, he had still come to work. Otherwise, Kailina wouldn’t have met him.
“My stamina isn’t what it was when I was young, but handling logistics is still easy enough. The young people are out there risking their lives, so we old folks ought to contribute what we can too.”
Kailina was utterly captivated by this pension system.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t just her—all the people of Dazzling Star were fascinated by it.
Every Dazzling Star resident had begun paying into the pension program every month, and Kailina was no exception.
Just thinking about the fact that this job allowed her to contribute toward her retirement insurance made her work even harder.
After being forced off the clock by the supervisor, Kailina had no choice but to change out of her work uniform and head to the cafeteria for her staff meal.
There was meat, steamed buns, chopped preserved vegetables, and a steaming bowl of hot soup.
Since they had just harvested an enormous number of snow beasts, the cafeteria had been especially generous with the meat today. The piece on Kailina’s plate was as large as the palm of her hand.
Before joining Blue Sea, Kailina had never thought snow beast meat tasted good.
But once Blue Sea confirmed that snow beast meat was safe to eat, the city’s chefs immediately put their culinary skills to work. They tried every method imaginable—steaming, boiling, stir-frying, deep-frying, braising, stewing, roasting, marinating, pan-frying… In a remarkably short time, they had experimented with virtually every cooking technique.
After identifying the handful of methods that produced the best results, those recipes spread throughout Blue Sea almost overnight, ensuring that not only the cafeteria chefs could prepare snow beast meat, but also Blue Sea residents living on their own while out in the field.
Kailina ate her staff meal one bite at a time with an expression of almost reverent devotion. Afterward, she said goodbye to her coworkers, headed upstairs, and made her way to Exit 39 of the cafeteria.
She had only been waiting at the stop for a short while when a bus glided over along the elevated floating roadway.
Even though she found herself marveling at it several times every single day, Kailina still couldn’t help thinking after boarding the bus—
This place is truly incredible.
