Chapter 120.1: Tier 6 Upgrade
As usual, during the process of upgrading the Safe City, Cheng Qisheng had to take advantage of the upgrade to carry out another major round of construction throughout the entire city.
It was quite a tedious job, but whenever she thought about how much work this massive construction project would save them later on, Cheng Qisheng felt energized from head to toe.
Ever since the area of Blue Sea Safe City had suddenly expanded to more than 90,000 square kilometers, the Blue Sea government had already begun making detailed plans for how to use all the newly added land.
Consulting the plans, Cheng Qisheng looked down over Blue Sea Safe City.
First, 3,000 square kilometers had to be deducted from the planned area because this section had already been transformed into an inland river within the Safe City.
It was a massive undertaking. Since the Safe City couldn’t be excavated downward, the inland river was actually a contained body of water constructed above the surface, using cofferdams.
To ensure that the embankments could withstand the water pressure, the river had been designed as a series of stepped basins. The central main channel was fifteen meters deep and was primarily used for mooring warships and large vessels. The outer berthing areas were only around four to five meters deep and were intended for smaller boats.
Every new resident who arrived in Blue Sea and saw this enormous inland river would be rendered speechless for a moment, stunned that such a colossal project—something even a peaceful society would have difficulty completing—had actually been built by humans in a post-apocalyptic environment.
Cheng Qisheng had watched the entire construction process from start to finish.
It might sound a little absurd, but when she thought about it carefully, it actually made perfect sense: the biggest difficulty in constructing such a vast inland river wasn’t manpower or the density of workers at the construction site.
It was that they had almost run out of earthwork materials.
The saying that “every resource in the Safe City has to be collected” was proving to be more significant than ever.
If she hadn’t personally experienced the apocalypse, who could have imagined that one day, something as ubiquitous as soil would become a scarce resource?
There had been plenty of soil on Velvet Star, the first world Blue Sea experienced. However, at the time, the area of Blue Sea’s Safe City wasn’t very large. Most of the supplies they collected were resources such as food and fuel, while the soil they brought back was simply gathered with agriculture in mind.
The second world, Dazzling Star, was covered by a century’s worth of accumulated snow, with a deep layer of permafrost underneath. Forget digging up soil—even pebbles were rarely seen.
As for Green Billow Star, which was covered in seawater and practically had no land at all, there was even less to say.
Building the inland river had nearly used up all of Blue Sea’s surplus stockpile of soil.
But the benefits were also obvious.
First of all, Blue Sea now had an inland river of its own. In fact, it could also be called a closed artificial saltwater lake, since the water introduced into it came from Green Billow Star’s seas.
As everyone knew, Green Billow Star had two types of seawater.
One was the native seawater of Green Billow Star, while the other was the “seawater” of the Sea of Souls.
The Sea of Souls could not be taken away, so the seawater Blue Sea had brought in was the native seawater of Green Billow Star.
The bad news was that this seawater had been contaminated by the Sea of Souls. With Blue Sea’s current technology, they still had no way to remove its “toxicity,” so for the time being, they could neither desalinate it into freshwater nor use it as a reserve water supply.
The good news was that Green Billow Star’s native marine life had already adapted to surviving in this “slightly toxic” environment. Blue Sea could therefore use the inland river as an aquaculture area. At present, quite a few native marine creatures were already living in it.
A group of experts specializing in marine aquaculture had practically moved onto the inland river.
Every day, they either rowed small boats around to observe the creatures, carried various instruments to conduct tests, or, whenever they discovered that a particular species of fish had fallen ill, spent their days brewing medicinal concoctions like dedicated priests, practically wishing they could stand guard beside the fish tanks twenty-four hours a day.
The experts’ task was to observe the survival conditions of Green Billow Star’s native fish and, as much as possible, guide and protect them in forming a healthy ecosystem. (Every species introduced into the river had been approved by the experts as a “member of the ecosystem.”) Their goal was to allow these creatures to continue reproducing in Blue Sea for generations to come, turning them into a sustainable reserve “food bank” for Blue Sea Safe City.
Also stationed along the inland river alongside these experts were various heavy-industry factories.
Although this seawater couldn’t be used as drinking water, it could serve as coolant, quenching fluid, hydraulic oil, and so on for the heavy-industry factories. In other words, they could make use of it to the fullest.
Moreover, ever since they had been recalled, quite a few residents had given up renting accommodations and decided to live aboard their own ships instead, which was more or less equivalent to living in an RV.
You could say they were getting multiple uses out of a single river.
What Cheng Qisheng needed to do now was take advantage of the upgrade to reinforce the inland river as thoroughly as possible, which consumed yet another considerable amount of materials.
Fortunately, during their trip to Green Billow Star, the residents of Blue Sea had upheld their fine tradition of “take anything good you find” and “if it’s not good, it’s still trash, so bring it back anyway.” They had managed to collect quite a substantial amount of materials.
Now, the Great Blue Sea Creator God could only hope that the next world would have plenty of soil.
She would definitely have the residents dig it up like crazy.
Once the inland river had been reinforced, Cheng Qisheng turned her attention to the residential quarters.
First, she expanded their floor area.
Most of the residential units in the Outer City were expanded to fifteen square meters each, and elevators were added.
A small number of the Outer-City residential units were reserved for residents with special contributions, and their living conditions were made equivalent to those of the Inner-City residences.
For those who made even greater contributions, there were also apartment buildings available in the Outer City.
The Inner-City residential units were expanded to thirty square meters each, with a three-square-meter balcony and an elevator added to every unit.
Following the blueprints, Cheng Qisheng began arranging everything piece by piece.
First, she needed to redo the plumbing for the residential units. The process was complicated, but the actual operation wasn’t difficult. All she had to do was follow the blueprints and click here and there.
It felt like she had returned to the familiar experience of playing a home-decoration simulation game.
She laid down the cold-water pipes, installed solid copper wiring, dealt with the raised flooring, adjusted the positions of the drainage pipes…
It felt almost like she was constructing a network of blood vessels.
Once the water and electrical systems were in place, she partitioned off the bathroom, then used wooden boards—the material the residents had brought back in the greatest quantities—to divide the walls into individual storage areas.
Even someone as optimistic as Old Eighth couldn’t escape the influence of the post-apocalyptic environment. Most people had developed a fondness for stockpiling supplies.
You could walk into practically any residential unit and see piles of dried meat hanging inside the little compartments, along with all sorts of everyday necessities stacked away.
Cheng Qisheng could sense her believers’ vague emotions.
She could understand the feeling of satisfaction and security that enveloped them every night when, before going to bed, they took a moment to inspect all the supplies they had stockpiled.
The Great Blue Sea Creator God understood her believers’ mindset perfectly.
Every morning when she woke up and faced all the news on Earth about “another drought here,” “another flood there,” and “acid rain falling from the sky,” she also liked to take a stroll around her own enormous study, the cultivation area, and the artificial lake.
Whenever she saw the plants covered in leaves and fruit, and the fish freely swimming around in the artificial lake, she too felt an overwhelming sense of security.
So Cheng Qisheng simply made as many storage cabinets as possible, giving everyone more room to stockpile supplies.
Speaking of stockpiling, according to Blue Sea’s regulations, individual income tax was calculated based on points. As for supplies collected from outside that hadn’t been exchanged for points and had instead been brought home for personal storage, it was difficult to determine whether they should be taxed.
The higher-ups in the Blue Sea government had seriously discussed this exact situation: if residents brought supplies back from outside without exchanging them for points, should those supplies be taxed?
The final conclusion was that they didn’t need to be taxed.
Calculating how much those supplies were worth and how much tax should be deducted would itself consume considerable manpower. Besides, the supplies residents chose to keep were mostly dried goods that were easy to store, while the majority of the supplies and energy resources they collected from outside were still exchanged for points.
After all, Blue Sea had a proper economic system.
Residents had to pay rent, and water and electricity came with utility bills. Apart from some residents who lived in apartments, everyone else had to eat at the cafeteria, which was another considerable expense in points.
Even if they wanted to head over to the dueling arena for a satisfying fight, wouldn’t they still have to spend points to buy a ticket?
The government of Blue Sea Safe City primarily existed to ensure that its residents could live normal lives. Since the supplies people stockpiled would eventually end up in their stomachs anyway, there was no point in making a fuss over it.
Besides, since everyone lived in the “Temple,” which was the land of the gods, Blue Sea’s residents were exceptionally self-disciplined.
They loved stockpiling supplies, but they weren’t deliberately trying to evade taxes.
Whenever they entered a post-apocalyptic world, every resident of Blue Sea’s Inner City would, without anyone having to tell them, deliberately eat and drink outside as much as possible, minimizing the consumption of Blue Sea’s own food reserves.
In short: Use whatever you can from outside, and save your own supplies and energy resources whenever possible.
So with such considerate Old Eighths, how could Cheng Qisheng, their Creator God, not want to make their living conditions a little better?
She spent some of their materials and ran a large number of centralized oxygen-supply lines from the air towers, connecting them to the various compartments in the residential units.
That way, the residents who had previously been unable to completely close off their rooms for the sake of ventilation and could only hang curtains over the entrances could finally install actual doors.
She also installed showers and faucets in the bathrooms. Although the space was a little cramped and people might only be able to stand inside, at least they’d be able to take showers in their own homes from now on.
Old Eighth were actually quite fond of cleanliness.
They had two different standards when it came to keeping their bodies clean.
One standard applied outside: when they were surviving in the wilderness, hunting, or traveling for work, whether they took a shower or not didn’t matter.
The other standard applied at home.
Old Eighth had an extremely strong sense of territory, along with a powerful desire to protect and control their own homes.
So where did this desire for control manifest itself?
It manifested in the fact that an Old Eighth’s home might be very messy, but it would absolutely never be dirty. If grime and dust accumulated on their own “territory,” they would feel deeply uncomfortable, almost as though some wild beast had invaded their domain.
—And in this respect, they were very much like Cheng Qisheng.
When she had previously stayed with relatives or lived in a school dormitory, her daily routine had really just been ordinary washing and grooming.
But after she got a little home of her own, things changed completely. Whenever she came home after going out, the first thing she did was take off her outer jacket and pants at the door. If there was even the slightest bit of dirt on her bed, she’d immediately change the bedding and clean it. She wasn’t quite at the level of having mysophobia, but she had clearly become much more particular about cleanliness than she had been as a child.
Even on the rare occasions when she was too lazy to clean, the most she could tolerate was dust that had “naturally accumulated” inside the house—not dirt that had been brought in from outside.
Old Eighth had inherited this trait perfectly.
They could go more than ten days without showering while they were outside, and they could let their beards grow into a scruffy mess across their faces. But the moment they returned to the Temple, the first thing they did was take a proper shower, get themselves nice and clean and smelling fresh, and then happily go home.
So back when most residents didn’t have their own shower stalls, the public bathhouses were always packed. Anyone who wanted to take a shower had to make an appointment for a time slot in advance through their phone. Otherwise, they would only end up standing in a long queue after arriving.
But now things were different.
Everyone had their own shower stall.
Old Eighth were finally free to shower whenever they wanted.
After a great deal of work, Cheng Qisheng looked with satisfaction at the newly constructed shower stalls in the residential units.
To expand the residential units, all the residents had temporarily moved outside after receiving the notification. Cheng Qisheng didn’t even need to guess how happy the Old Eighths would be when they returned to their newly renovated homes and discovered that they had shower stalls and could finally install doors.
Just thinking about it made Cheng Qisheng happy too.
In high spirits, she continued installing the Blue Sea Information Terminals.
They were basically fifteen-inch screens mounted directly onto the walls of each room. When the speakers played, the sound could fill the entire room.
Actually, these things hadn’t been included in the original residential-unit renovation plans.
But who could blame her when the Rose had hauled up an entire electronic-waste dump?
Yes, a dump.
When the Rose first saw layer upon layer of intact screens piled up inside it, they had thought that they had somehow hauled up a brand-new electronics factory.
After studying them carefully for a while, they discovered that it was actually a garbage dump. The Rose had hauled them up from there, and what they had recovered was only one section of the dump. These screens, which were still fully functional and could even be considered quite good, had simply been thrown away as garbage.
But that was fine.
Blue Sea didn’t mind.
The screens also used silicon-based chips, copper wiring, and electrical signals. Blue Sea only needed to resolder the ribbon cables and connect the interfaces to its own driver boards before they could be put to use.
Perhaps these screens were obsolete products to that civilization, but to Blue Sea, they were all treasures that could be used with just a few minor modifications.
Cheng Anjing used her Mind Domain ability to summon a huge number of ships. Like ants carrying food back to their nest, they transported a total of 730 million screens back to Blue Sea.
Naturally, Blue Sea happily accepted them.
The Old Eighth’s principle was simple: If there’s something available, use it. Not using it is wasteful. (Except for Holy Bullets.)
And so, the residential-unit renovation plan gained a new addition: Blue Sea Information Terminals.
After being modified by Blue Sea, these fifteen-inch screens were directly connected to the central server.
Naturally, Aether, the supercomputer of Blue Sea Safe City, could also connect to them at any time.
At present, the Blue Sea Information Terminals had the following functions:
They displayed the date, time, temperature, weather, wind direction, and so on. (When they entered a different world, they sometimes needed to readjust the day-and-night cycle.)
In the very center of the screen, it would display messages such as:
Elevator No. XX in the residential unit: Crowded
Elevator No. XX: Available
At the top of the screen, it would first indicate which world the Safe City was currently in. Since they were currently on Green Billow Star, the words “Green Billow Star” would remain fixed in the upper-left corner of the screen.
All the information after that would scroll continuously. Most of it consisted of notices such as what hours the water or electricity would be shut off under special circumstances, or announcements of various missions issued by the government.
In addition, residents could tap [Personal] at the bottom of the screen to check their remaining points, various bills, loan programs, and assets registered under their name.
And whenever there was an emergency task for the entire population, the screens would turn completely blue and issue an announcement.
If there was some kind of dangerous situation, the screens would turn completely red, while the speakers blasted a piercing alarm, guaranteeing that even the soundest sleeper would be jolted awake.
To be honest, all these functions could be handled by a phone too.
But for some reason, once they installed a screen in each room, connected it to the supercomputer and central server, and gave it the fancy name [Information Terminal], the residential units inexplicably seemed much more high-end.
Naturally, the thoughtful Blue Sea government hadn’t forgotten to complete its economic cycle through the government’s points-for-recycling program. They had even specially launched paid services for the Information Terminals.
If residents were willing to pay for a monthly subscription to the TV channels, they could watch TV shows and movies on the terminals, as well as the daily news!
There were also music channels, radio channels, information-query services, and more, just waiting for them to discover~
As for how the terminals would be maintained and operated afterward, that wasn’t Cheng Qisheng’s job anymore. She simply huffed and puffed her way through installing every last terminal, then gazed with satisfaction at the many residential units that had become significantly larger than before.
Although elevators had been added, the Great Blue Sea Creator God thoughtfully decided not to remove the chains.
Residents who didn’t want to wait for the elevator could still cosplay as Tarzan like they had in the past.
After one final inspection of the structural integrity of the walls, the stress values of the load-bearing walls, the oxygen levels, and the fire-suppression water pressure, Cheng Qisheng nodded in satisfaction.
Construction complete!!
