Chapter 79: Little Nations
The trio who founded the nation had laid an excellent foundation for the people of Blue Sea.
Little Blue Sea Nation now boasted a population of over a million, and every single citizen had become a believer. If nothing unexpected happened, the three founders were probably sitting comfortably in the top three spots on Blue Sea’s rich list.
If they could do it, then why couldn’t the rest of them? They were Blue Sea people too.
Besides, Dazzling Star was now overrun with snow beasts because of the beast tide. There was no longer any need to worry that, after gathering people together, there wouldn’t be enough prey to hunt.
After Lu Song’s group of Blue Sea residents flew off, those who remained in Little Blue Sea Nation were inspired as well. Before long, another wave of people departed one after another.
There had never been a better opportunity to “pick up” the people of Dazzling Star, and the Blue Sea civilization had never lacked residents bold enough to take risks.
Of course, founding a nation was no joke. Although more than a thousand Blue Sea residents had declared their intention to establish their own countries, the number who actually succeeded was relatively small.
One thing was certain, however: regardless of whether they succeeded in founding nations or not, Blue Sea Safe City was destined to gain a massive influx of new believers.
The Blue Sea residents who had ventured out were busy gathering up the people of Dazzling Star.
Those who remained inside Safe City began the long process of wrapping things up.
The corpses of Skywing Dragons were carried one after another into specialized processing rooms, where pairs of wings were successfully grafted with vein networks.
Countless Blue Sea residents watched the progress of the waiting list with eager anticipation.
There were a total of two million Long-Tendril Leaf Veins that could be used to manufacture Flight Wings. After subtracting the amount already consumed in previous production, there were still enough materials to produce over one million additional pairs.
More than a million pairs sounded like a lot, but with hundreds of millions of Blue Sea residents, it was no different from an army of thousands trying to cross a single-log bridge.
Still, those who didn’t make it into this batch of Flight Wings had no reason to be discouraged. The Long-Tendril Trees were still growing, and the number of Long-Tendril Leaves continued to increase. As long as qualified residents remained patient, the day would eventually come when their own pair of Flight Wings reached the front of the queue.
The Blue Sea residents whose contribution points hadn’t met the qualification threshold for the waiting list, however, had a much harder time accepting it.
The temperature on Dazzling Star was visibly dropping with each passing day. Blue Sea certainly wouldn’t be staying here much longer. For all they knew, this campaign against the Skywing Dragons might be their last.
What if, after leaving Dazzling Star, the next world didn’t have magical beasts like the Skywing Dragons—creatures capable of producing the perfect Flight Wings?
For a time, countless residents poured their contribution points into the market, spending lavishly to buy even more contribution points in an attempt to squeeze into the top fifty million spots in the queue.
As a result of this spending spree, Blue Sea Safe City’s economy was booming at an astonishing rate despite the icy, snow-covered landscape.
The Skywing Dragons’ greatest value lay in manufacturing Flight Wings, but the corpses of the remaining snow beasts didn’t go to waste either.
As the Creator God, Cheng Qisheng naturally didn’t have to do any of the labor. Once her believers had finished cleaning up the battlefield, all she had to do was glance at the figures in the report.
The land-dwelling snow beasts alone totaled an astonishing 320 million of all sizes combined. From them, the cleanup teams recovered 7.36 million item cards of various rarities.
By Dazzling Star’s standards, the item card drop rate was perfectly average—neither particularly high nor particularly low.
But because so many snow beasts had been slaughtered, even an average drop rate was enough to make Cheng Qisheng fabulously wealthy with over seven million item cards.
Among them were 3.9 million Tier 1 item cards, 3.4 million Tier 2 item cards, and six Tier 3 item cards.
It was only while the Blue Sea government was sorting through the item cards that they discovered there were actually six Tier 3 cards.
The main reason was that everyone had been caught up in the chaotic melee, and the land snow beasts varied tremendously in size.
Some were as massive as small mountains, while others were no bigger than an adult’s arm. Some had horns, some were covered in drifting fur, some sported enormous tusks protruding from their mouths, while others, when they spread their limbs, revealed dense rows of razor-sharp inward-facing barbs beneath them.
Everyone’s attention had been fixed on the battle unfolding right in front of them. No matter which snow beast they were fighting, as long as they kept fighting, that was all that mattered.
Even when a snow beast was killed on the spot and dropped an item card, the Blue Sea residents wouldn’t stop to pick it up. Instead, they immediately turned their attention to the next living snow beast.
That was something that would have been absolutely impossible in any other civilization.
On any other battlefield, the moment spoils of war appeared, people’s first instinct would be to stash them away before someone else could snatch them.
Yet among the Blue Sea residents—virtually every one of whom had taken part in the battle—not a single person pocketed an item card for themselves.
It wasn’t that the people of Blue Sea were free of greed. As long as they were human, they had their desires.
They wanted more contribution points, better lives, access to more advanced combat courses…
But throughout this battle, their God was watching.
The divine blessings that descended from time to time were proof enough.
Under their God’s gaze, every Blue Sea resident did their utmost to display both their strength and their obedience.
Besides, wasn’t the AI calculating everyone’s contribution points anyway?
The people of Blue Sea trusted the system. When it came time to tally the results, not a single point of credit that rightfully belonged to them would be overlooked.
With no worries whatsoever about anyone claiming their spoils, the Blue Sea residents fought with reckless fervor. As long as a snow beast appeared within their field of vision, a crowd would surround it in an instant.
The handful of Tier 3 snow beasts received exactly that treatment. They were tough opponents, but no matter how hard they were to bring down, they were ultimately swallowed by Blue Sea’s overwhelming human-wave tactics.
In fact, many of the Blue Sea residents who killed them never even realized that the snow beasts they had just slain were Tier 3.
Their corpses received no special treatment either. They were hauled back to the city together with all the other snow beasts, and only the six faintly glowing Tier 3 item cards testified that they had ever existed.
Among them were three white cards, one green card, and two black cards.
There weren’t any rare gold Tier 3 cards, but that was more than enough.
Cheng Qisheng’s gaze settled on the two green Tier 3 cards.
Little Blue Sea Nation had already tested it. Stacking item cards of the same type could upgrade them.
So if she combined nearly all of the green item cards in Safe City—including the one related to medical treatment—what exactly would the final result be?
As soon as the thought occurred to her, Cheng Qisheng acted.
At her command, the Blue Sea government immediately got to work. 350,000 Tier 1 green item cards, 320,000 Tier 2 green item cards, and four Tier 3 green item cards were stacked together.
A faintly glowing item card floated into the air.
Across its surface was a line of tiny text:
Green Item Card (Tier 12)
Cheng Qisheng blinked.
“…?”
So the item card ranking didn’t stop at Tier 10 after all?
Today was the first time she had ever seen a Tier 3 item card, yet in the blink of an eye, she was already looking at a Tier 12 one.
Could the upper limit of item cards be Tier 100?
Or perhaps even Tier 1,000.
She quickly dismissed the speculation. Whether or not she would ever witness a thousand-tier item card in the future, what she wanted to know right now was what this Tier 12 card would produce.
A squad of Blue Sea soldiers carefully selected a vast open area in which to activate the card.
Blue Sea had just claimed an enormous stretch of territory, and since this world wasn’t suitable for construction anyway, there was no shortage of empty land.
Maintaining a solemn expression, one of the officers activated the item card.
The card spun through the air before descending onto the open ground. Ripples spread through the atmosphere, and a massive green building materialized before everyone’s eyes.
It covered roughly 10,000 square meters, stood about thirty meters tall, and had five stories.
Hovering above it were a few familiar lines of text.
[Facility Name: Standard Pharmaceutical Factory (Tier 12 Item)]
Cheng Qisheng wasn’t surprised by the notation that followed. Although the items in the system shop and those obtained from item cards clearly originated from the same source, they obviously used different grading systems. It was only natural to distinguish between them.
She continued reading.
[Facility Function: Manufactures pharmaceutical injections (any medicine obtainable from item cards of the same category can be produced).]
[Facility Requirements: (Comes with a Complete Pharmaceutical Compendium and Pharmaceutical Raw Materials Index.) When raw materials are unavailable, crystals may be used as a substitute.]
[Facility Equipment: Biological Raw Material Grinder | Multifunctional Filtration and Purification Unit | Ratio Synthesis Machine | Independent Packaging Line | Biopharmaceutical Efficacy Analyzer | Fully Automated Toxicity Screening Chamber | Sterile Sealed Synthesis Pod… ]
The factory came equipped with an astonishing array of machinery. The list of equipment alone stretched on and on—well over two hundred different machines. Some names made their purpose obvious, while others were completely incomprehensible.
Even without understanding what every machine did, Cheng Qisheng knew they were all invaluable.
Green item cards could produce a wide variety of medicines. Besides ordinary pharmaceuticals, the most valuable products they could yield were healing injections.
These came in several categories, with trauma injections being the most remarkable. A person could suffer a wound so deep that the bone was exposed, yet after receiving a single trauma injection, the injury would heal at an astonishing speed.
Even Old Seventh, whose civilization had already reached the interstellar age, had never managed to develop medical injections this advanced.
Ever since the Blue Sea government discovered how effective these medicines were, they had deliberately been stockpiling them.
But no matter how much they stockpiled, it could never compare to manufacturing them themselves.
Now that Blue Sea possessed this pharmaceutical factory, they could produce these healing injections on their own.
Combined with the Medium Medical Restoration Center they had previously acquired from Mingxia Safe City, Blue Sea Safe City’s medical capabilities had undergone nothing short of a monumental leap.
Stacking hundreds of thousands of green item cards together had been well worth it.
Watching the medical experts specially selected by the government enter the pharmaceutical factory, Cheng Qisheng smiled with satisfaction.
One by one, their expressions shifted from confusion… to surprise… and finally to sheer ecstasy.
“These machines… these are incredible!”
“Can all the medicines listed here really be manufactured? Even a specific treatment for this disease?”
“No wonder the trauma injection is so effective. The formula is unbelievably complex. Xiao Zhang, do me a favor and go back to fetch my things. I’m sleeping here tonight—I won’t be going home.”
Perhaps these experts wouldn’t be able to reverse-engineer anything from the pharmaceutical factory itself.
But perhaps they would gain new medical insights from it, allowing Blue Sea’s healthcare system to become even more reliable.
Whatever the case, Cheng Qisheng was certain of one thing:
Blue Sea Safe City was becoming a better place with each passing day.
Food was indispensable in any post-apocalyptic world.
Accordingly, every part of the snow beasts was put to good use in Blue Sea.
The meat became food. The pelts were made into clothing. The bones were fashioned into signal flares.
The claws and fangs of certain snow beasts could also be sharpened and crafted into deadly weapons.
If you felt that this method of processing snow beasts, while comprehensive, wasn’t particularly innovative—or that the standardized, factory-made products were rather expensive—that wasn’t a problem either.
The government opened contribution point exchange stations. Anyone who had participated in the battle could spend their contribution points to redeem either an entire snow beast carcass or individual body parts.
In other words, if a Blue Sea resident had single-handedly killed twelve snow beasts during the battle, then, provided they wished to do so, they could exchange their contribution points for the complete carcasses of all twelve beasts.
Before long, the aroma of roasting meat drifted throughout Blue Sea Safe City.
Some people happily converted their contribution points into regular points and enjoyed hearty meals in the public cafeterias.
Others, skilled in curing meat, claimed their allotted snow beast carcasses and carefully prepared strips of preserved meat to carry with them on future journeys.
Some painstakingly tanned snow beast hides by hand, crafting highly sought-after fur coats, blankets, and rugs.
Others rented factory equipment, their eyes gleaming with excitement as they fired snow beast fangs in the furnaces before hammering and welding the two-meter-long tusks onto steel shafts with a chorus of metallic clangs.
…
While the residents of Blue Sea busied themselves with their work, all across the vast expanse of Dazzling Star, the winged Blue Sea explorers who had flown to distant lands gradually found the people they wished to make their citizens.
Not long after a blizzard had passed, Lu Song crawled out of a snow pit. He then began digging out the people of Dazzling Star buried inside, one by one, each of them so frozen that they were barely conscious.
He immediately combined item cards to construct a Tier 4 building, moved everyone inside, and fetched hot water for them to drink.
Qi Yi and Qi Er were naturally with him. Otherwise, Lu Song would never have dared venture this far from Blue Sea.
“So, this is where we’re settling? We’re not going any farther?”
“No. This is the place.”
Looking at the people of Dazzling Star slowly recovering, and seeing the gratitude in their eyes, Lu Song finally let out a sigh of relief.
“Let’s give our country a name.”
Qi Yi and Qi Er had never been gifted when it came to naming things.
They had inherited that trait from their parents—it was obvious enough from their own names.
“You do it.”
Lu Song looked at the shivering survivors from Dazzling Star.
“Everbright Nation. That’s what our country will be called.”
…
In another region…
It was the same endless snowy wilderness, but here, a young woman with wings spread across her back had just slain a towering snow beast.
Behind her, the people of Dazzling Star erupted into cheers.
Turning around with blood still smeared across her face, the young woman smiled faintly.
“I’m going to found a nation. Will you join me?”
“Our country’s name will be Rose Nation.”
She twisted off the snow beast’s head. Before its blood could even reach the ground, it froze solid in midair, resembling a crimson sword.
“The blood of our enemies shall bloom as brilliantly as roses.”
…
“East Sea Nation is officially founded! May we all live on together!”
Standing atop a rise, a married couple looked down at the people of Dazzling Star who had placed their complete trust in them. With solemn expressions, they raised their left arms high.
“Today, we will wipe out every snow beast in this region! Let East Sea rise to glory—and avenge all those who have fallen!”
Thousands of people from Dazzling Star stood below them, their faces filled with conviction, their eyes blazing with hatred for the snow beasts.
They had just lost their homes.
And now, someone was willing to lead them in taking revenge.
So why not?
Thousands of people from Dazzling Star raised their weapons high.
“Kill every last snow beast!”
“For the glory of East Sea!!!”
