Chapter 117: Eyes in the Sky
From the steadily increasing number of believers, Cheng Qisheng confirmed some good news.
She was actually a late-game player.
Yes. Although Blue Sea might appear extremely powerful in the early stages, in reality, both Cheng Qisheng and Blue Sea were late-game players.
As Blue Sea Safe City grew stronger and stronger, new residents were also converting into believers at an increasingly rapid pace.
Take the twenty-some residents who had come from other Safe Cities, for example. They hadn’t even officially entered Blue Sea yet. They had merely taken a look from outside at Blue Sea’s cargo transportation system, as well as its hundreds of thousands of chain elevators, whose numbers were still continuing to increase—and they had already become her believers.
The principle was very simple.
A Safe City covering 800 square kilometers and one covering nearly 100,000 square kilometers created completely different visual impacts.
It was roughly like an ordinary young college graduate earning a monthly salary of three or four thousand, living more or less the same kind of life as everyone else.
Then one day, he mysteriously told his friends, “Actually, the reason my life has been going so smoothly is because the god I worship has been protecting me.”
—At most, his friends would think he was superstitious and perhaps a little eccentric.
But suppose there were a self-made billionaire who became the richest person in the world just three years after graduating, lived in a huge estate, and had people waiting on him wherever he went.
Then this person mysteriously told his friends, “Actually, I’ve achieved all this because a god has been protecting me. And there’s no price to pay for receiving the god’s protection. All you have to do is believe in Them.”
—There would be an 80% or greater chance that his friends would immediately prostrate themselves before the god’s statue and refuse to get back up.
To the natives and residents of other Safe Cities of the same tier, the residents of Blue Sea Safe City were essentially that billionaire.
People naturally wanted to live better lives.
The better Blue Sea Safe City developed, and the greater the impact it made on people, the more quickly new residents who came into contact with it would convert into believers.
Cheng Qisheng had previously worried that other Safe Cities could continue accepting more residents, while the core members of her own Safe City would always have to be believers. She could only keep the number of Outer City residents from growing too large. Would that cause Blue Sea to run out of steam in the later stages?
Now, there was no need to worry about that anymore.
Judging from the current rate at which believers were increasing, the number of new residents being converted and transferred into the Inner City was far greater than the number who remained in the Outer City.
When the Blue Sea civilization first evacuated Dark Star, its population had been 360 million.
Now, after passing through three worlds, the Inner City population had grown to 385 million.
Because of their shared faith, these newly joined believers integrated into Blue Sea remarkably smoothly.
And under the influence of the Loyalty Mark, these new residents would absolutely never do anything detrimental to Blue Sea. Everyone was united as one, continuously making Blue Sea stronger.
The stronger Blue Sea became, the higher the rate at which new residents converted. Those new believers then joined in the effort to build Blue Sea, making it even stronger, which further increased the conversion rate…
Cheng Qisheng let out a breath.
It was like rolling a snowball.
The Blue Sea civilization would grow larger and larger as it rolled along.
And all she had to do was make sure this enormous snowball kept rolling steadily forward.
Cheng Qisheng divided her primary attention between two places.
Part of it was focused on the accumulation of Tier-3 Nutrient Solution Synthesizing Machines.
The other part was stationed outside a delivery room in the Temple.
In addition to that, she distributed countless fragments of her mental energy throughout various parts of Green Billow Star, keeping track of her believers’ conditions at all times.
Maintaining this kind of attention—like countless threads running in parallel while simultaneously looking down through the eyes of various believers—had originally been quite exhausting.
But ever since Cheng Qisheng had swallowed the fragment of Rule from Kansidang’s domain, it had become noticeably less tiring.
Now, even when Cheng Qisheng slept, she could enter a sort of “AFK mode.”
It was somewhat difficult to describe.
If she absolutely had to put it into words, Cheng Qisheng felt as though she could split herself into two parts.
Part of her was genuinely asleep.
The other part was like a high-precision surveillance camera. If any of her believers encountered danger, the camera would automatically sound an alarm, waking the part of her that was sleeping.
These “cameras” could be considered Cheng Qisheng herself, or they could be called illusory forms created from her mental energy.
Interestingly, Cheng Qisheng had discovered that even shaping mental energy required a certain amount of logic.
If she wanted to be able to see Blue Sea and her believers at any time, then for the purpose of seeing, the simplest solution was to give her mental energy eyes.
It was rather abstract, but it worked extremely well. Once it had eyes, her mental energy could cover a much wider area.
Fortunately, ever since Wang Moning had nearly gone blind from taking a glimpse of the Blue Sea Creator God last time, she had been extremely well-behaved.
Otherwise, Cheng Qisheng genuinely wondered whether, with her mental energy now spread throughout Blue Sea even while she slept, Wang Moning might one day look up and sense that the entire sky was filled with the Creator God’s enormous eyeballs.
Cheng Qisheng felt that she was straying farther and farther down the path of becoming something that wasn’t human.
Fortunately, although her mental energy was currently transformed into countless enormous eyeballs scattered across the sky, following her believers around—
The Cheng Qisheng in real life was still an ordinary, normal person who needed to eat (though she actually wouldn’t die from going hungry for several days anymore), needed to sleep (though she could also function without sleep), and cooked for herself.
Because today was the day the Nutrient Solution Synthesizing Machines would undergo a stacking upgrade, Cheng Qisheng had specially made herself a glass of juice.
—Juice made from a watermelon she had grown herself.
Yes, Cheng Qisheng had finally succeeded in growing a watermelon.
It was a little on the small side, but it was still a watermelon.
When Blue Sea Safe City’s area expanded to 94,036 square kilometers, Cheng Qisheng had allocated the additional area added to the City Lord’s Residence to the cultivation zone.
Now, when she opened the door at the end of the corridor, she could see a vast cultivation space measuring 18,842 square meters.
Converted to Chinese mu, that came to 28.26 mu of land.
If converted into basketball courts, it was equivalent to more than forty basketball courts put together.
Sometimes, when Cheng Qisheng opened the door, she even felt as though she had stepped into another world.
Though, considering how fast she walked, it really would take her so long to make a full circuit of the area that it felt like she had traveled through an entire world.
Ever since she had consumed the Rule from Kansidang’s domain last time, Cheng Qisheng could clearly feel that her sensitivity to space-time had deepened.
Now, she was working on synchronizing with this newly acquired power, wondering whether she could develop some new functions from it besides her “Door-Pushing Technique.”
But for now, the two things she was currently paying attention to were still the most important.
Cheng Qisheng slowly sipped her freshly squeezed watermelon juice as she watched her believers place the two nutrient solution synthesizing machines together.
Then, they pressed the Stack and Upgrade button.
What happened next was quite magical.
Through her believers’ perspectives, Cheng Qisheng could see exactly what they saw.
In an instant, the two machines seemed to have been melted together in a furnace before rapidly taking shape on the spot.
From Cheng Qisheng’s own perspective, however, she could see two streams of energy intertwining, devouring each other, and merging into one before slowly expanding into the new nutrient solution synthesizing machine that now appeared before everyone.
It was still Tier 3. It hadn’t upgraded to Tier 4.
But the floating information panel beside it had changed.
[Facility Name: Nutrient Solution Synthesizing Machine (Tier 3 +1)]
[Facility Function: Can produce ordinary nutrient solution (45% nutritional completeness. After drinking five or more bottles, consuming one serving of natural food will prevent any adverse effects on the user’s health.)]
[Production Capacity: 30 million bottles/day]
[Facility Energy Consumption: 100 nuclear crystals/day]
[Service Life: 94 years]
It worked!!!
Cheng Qisheng slowly raised her hand and drained the rest of the watermelon juice in one gulp.
Sure enough, the nutrient solution produced by the stacked synthesizing machine no longer damaged people’s health like it had before.
Although they still needed to eat some normal food after drinking five bottles, it was already far better than before.
Cheng Qisheng watched with great interest as a Blue Sea worker inserted 100 crystals into the machine’s “coin slot.”
The enormous nutrient solution synthesizing machine immediately began operating. One small glass tube after another, each filled with pale-white nutrient solution, was pushed out.
Although Blue Sea had already developed a certain degree of trust in the items from the Mall, they still subjected the pale-white liquid to rigorous testing. Only after confirming that there were no problems did one of the workers pick up a tube and take a sip.
Cheng Qisheng was curious and tuned in to her emotions.
Being a Creator God really did have its perks. She could even sense roughly what the food tasted like to this particular worker.
Hmm… Bland, like dry, tasteless water.
It was worth mentioning that the tube containing the nutrient solution had to be eaten as well.
According to the worker, it tasted like a piece of candy without even a hint of sweetness, and chewing it was like gnawing on soft glass.
The worker made a “What the heck is this?” expression, then tasted it again. Only after that did her expression settle into one that clearly said, “It’s not good, but it’s not bad either.”
“I’ll just say this: I’ll only drink it when I’m hungry.”
Cheng Qisheng wasn’t particularly surprised.
Judging by the way the Safe City Mall worked, a tasty nutrient solution would probably cost at least twice as much to synthesize, even if its effects and production volume were the same.
Although the nutrient solution was bland, both Cheng Qisheng and the Blue Sea people were quite pleased with it.
Nutrient solution took up very little space, was easy to store, and wouldn’t spoil. In the future, whenever Blue Sea residents traveled far from home, they could bring some nutrient solution with them.
This stuff could save lives in critical situations—like when Ma Yuetian and Zhu Feifan had nearly starved to death in the middle of the ocean.
And for just 100 crystals a day, it could produce 30 million tubes of nutrient solution.
What a bargain!
This meant that from now on, every Blue Sea resident would have a reliable backup whenever they traveled.
Cheng Qisheng was watching the Old Eighth units enthusiastically try the nutrient solution one after another, each of them making the same expressions as the workers before them.
Suddenly, her eyes lit up.
“Wah…”
From one of the delivery rooms in the Temple came the tiny cry of a newborn, so faint it was almost inaudible.
She cried only once before falling silent.
She was a Dazzling Star person, and her genes made her naturally quiet from the moment she was born. Both of her parents were believers, and at that moment, they were happily looking at their daughter, who had been born in a safe environment.
She would receive good care, grow up in a warm environment, and never have to experience the pain of hunger.
—This was the first child of a “new resident” to be born in Blue Sea Safe City.
And appearing alongside this tiny infant was a small faith chain.
Cheng Qisheng smiled, just as she had always hoped.
The children born to believers who had joined Blue Sea later would be just like every other Blue Sea baby.
From the moment they were born, they would carry the Loyalty Mark to the Creator God of Blue Sea.
