Safe City Ch.122

Chapter 122: Beginning a New Journey

Cheng Qisheng kept staring at the words [Remove the Toxicity from the Sea of Souls].

No Safe City lord could possibly refuse an expert capable of removing the toxicity from the Sea of Souls in an environment like Green Billow Star.

Just look at the amount of Green Billow Star seawater in the river within Blue Sea Safe City.

Its total volume was approximately 13 billion cubic meters. If its toxicity were removed and all of it were extracted into freshwater, it would be enough to provide drinking water for 400 million people for twenty years.

And unlike the water wells, which required crystals to operate, this would be a genuine, renewable water source.

Once the toxicity was removed from the seawater, it would mean that ordinary marine life from any world they encountered in the future could survive in it, rather than being limited to the marine life of Green Billow Star.

If that really happened, it would essentially be equivalent to having a gigantic refrigerator stocked with protein.

As Blue Sea continued to develop and expand its territory, it could keep adding new “seawater” from the various worlds it visited.

In the future, it might even truly transform into an “ocean.”

No Safe City lord could resist such an irresistible prospect.

And Cheng Qisheng was no exception.

So she sent this “deal” to the Blue Sea government exactly as it was.

If I can’t think about this calmly, then I’ll let my believers from all kinds of professions do the thinking for me.

—Thus spoke the Great Blue Sea Creator God.

As expected, the Blue Sea government immediately assembled a team and conducted a comprehensive analysis of the matter.

The first thing they had to determine was whether this seemingly advantageous proposal for Blue Sea would actually pose any danger to them.

Although City Lord Duxi had always behaved in a friendly manner, Blue Sea couldn’t possibly take his word for it without question.

No one would believe that Duxi had made such a decision on a sudden whim.

For him to choose this course of action, he must have gone through meticulous calculations, and he certainly had an ulterior motive of his own.

That motive might be exactly what it appeared to be on the surface: he hoped that once Blue Sea obtained the expert, they would be able to help him raise one thousand infants.

There could also be other motives hidden beneath the surface, motives that Blue Sea would have to uncover for itself.

They couldn’t exactly take Duxi at his word and simply believe him when he said that the expert he was sending was a mechanical lifeform and therefore incapable of seizing control of the Safe City’s authority.

Although Aether had indeed confirmed that mechanical lifeforms could not become Safe City lords, who could guarantee that this expert, who merely appeared to be a mechanical lifeform, really was one?

If they were going to make the trade, Blue Sea would definitely need a way to independently verify the expert’s identity.

And then there were the one thousand infants.

Who could guarantee that they were really infants?

Previously, all traded items had been exchanged remotely through teleportation.

But now, Duxi wanted to send people over. That meant the two Safe Cities would have to be connected to the same target location.

So was it possible that Duxi’s real goal was simply to obtain Blue Sea’s coordinates?

Although Duxi was currently only a Tier 4 Safe City lord while Blue Sea was Tier 6, he had claimed to have come from an interstellar civilization.

What if he happened to possess some ultimate weapon capable of destroying a Tier 6 Safe City?

After tossing all these questions out to the others, Cheng Qisheng poured herself a glass of orange juice, settled onto her newly purchased sofa, and watched as the believers from various professional fields launched into a frenzy of brainstorming.

In fact, every Safe City lord whose city had developed to a certain level would have their own team of advisers.

It was just that Cheng Qisheng’s “think tank” was much larger and more comprehensive.

Moreover, the lords of other Safe Cities had to remain wary of the people under them. In Blue Sea, however, the Great Creator God could place complete trust in her believers.

What Blue Sea was doing now was a classic example of “assuming malicious intent.”

To a certain extent, contact between Safe Cities was equivalent to contact between two countries.

When one “assumed goodwill,” there would always be risks that could not be accounted for. But by “assuming malicious intent,” they could use the worst-case scenarios they could think of to prepare countermeasures or make adjustments in advance.

The meeting continued with passionate discussion for most of the day.

Cheng Qisheng wasn’t in a hurry, and neither was Duxi. The two sides settled into an unspoken waiting game.

Eventually, Cheng Qisheng took the Blue Sea government’s answer and sent it to Duxi.

[Blue Sea Safe City: I will purchase a Trinocular from the Safe City Mall to scan the expert you send over and verify whether he really is a mechanical lifeform.]

[Duxi Safe City: No problem. Completely acceptable.]

[Blue Sea Safe City: The one thousand infants will also be scanned with the Trinocular, and Blue Sea will conduct a series of examinations on them, including taking blood and saliva samples. They can grow up like ordinary Blue Sea residents, but until they earn our trust, they will remain under constant surveillance by Blue Sea and will have micro-explosives implanted in them. The moment I determine that something is wrong, they will die instantly at my command.]

[Duxi Safe City: That’s acceptable, as long as you guarantee that you won’t ab*se them or deliberately allow them to die.]

[Blue Sea Safe City: Now I’m confused. You’re willing to send over a highly capable expert in exchange for having these infants live in Blue Sea, yet you don’t care that they’ll have micro-explosives implanted in them?]

[Duxi Safe City: Because everything you’re doing is to ensure the safety of Blue Sea Safe City. I can understand that. If you didn’t make any preparations at all and simply agreed to my request, I’d actually be more worried that they might arrive in Blue Sea only to perish along with it not long afterward.]

Cheng Qisheng had always felt that there was a faint sense of death in the way Duxi spoke.

It was especially apparent now.

He sent another reply:

[Duxi Safe City: Likewise, to prevent you from assuming that I have other powerful talents at my disposal because of this matter, and thus deciding to wage war against me, I can tell you frankly that I came from an interstellar civilization. I have more than enough trump cards in my hand.]

[Cheng Qisheng: I believe you have more than enough trump cards. But you came from an interstellar civilization, after all. Surely you can afford to raise one thousand infants?]

This time, Duxi was silent for more than ten seconds.

He was deliberating over whether he should tell Blue Sea part of the truth.

After thinking it over, Duxi decided to tell her.

[Duxi Safe City: I told you before, didn’t I? My civilization once had a population of one hundred billion.]

[Duxi Safe City: When the subspace erosion invaded our world, the toxicity wasn’t limited to what Green Billow Star has experienced. Back then, every person in my civilization accumulated toxins in their bodies every day. Adults could rely on genetic medicines to alleviate the effects when the toxins flared up, but infants and young children couldn’t.]

[Duxi Safe City: To keep them alive, my civilization used cryogenic technology to forcibly put all infants and young children into suspended animation. You can imagine how many children there were.]

Cheng Qisheng tried to imagine it.

The number of infants and young children among a population of one hundred billion…

Gasp!!

So. Many. People!

Just thinking about it made her head feel like it was about to explode.

[Blue Sea Safe City: That’s certainly a huge burden. But you could simply keep them frozen indefinitely, or thaw them in batches as your Safe City develops.]

[Duxi Safe City: Cryogenic technology has a time limit. I won’t tell you exactly how long it is, but I can tell you this much: at my current rate of development, once the cryogenic period ends, there is absolutely no way I’ll be able to afford to raise all those children.]

Oh!

So that’s why he was sending the children elsewhere.

Cheng Qisheng suspected that if this really was the situation, Blue Sea probably wasn’t the only Safe City Duxi had approached.

He might have sent children to every Safe City he’d observed and deemed viable.

Of course, he knew that not all of these children would survive after being sent away.

Some city lords might break their agreements, while some Safe Cities might be destroyed along with all their residents.

But spreading the children around like this really did give them the greatest possible chance of preserving more of the infants and young children.

In a sense, sending the children out in all directions, like scattering seeds everywhere, was also a way of ensuring the continuation of his civilization’s bloodline.

[Blue Sea Safe City: I’m guessing the expert you’re sending over won’t be able to remove the toxicity from the seawater very quickly, right?]

[Duxi Safe City: Correct. You can think of these one thousand children as automatically binding him to you. He will help you remove the toxicity from your seawater, but the amount he can process at first won’t be very large. It will be a slow, steady process. You cannot prevent him from visiting these children. If he discovers that Blue Sea is treating them poorly, he will immediately enter self-destruct mode.]

[Duxi Safe City: For Blue Sea, raising one thousand children in exchange for a massive supply of water should be a very worthwhile deal. As long as Blue Sea honors the contract, this expert will continue serving Blue Sea.]

Cheng Qisheng couldn’t help wanting to applaud the civilization Duxi came from.

They had reduced the knowledge level of the younger generation, keeping Duxi Safe City at a relatively low level of civilization so that it could gradually develop and advance step by step.

They had placed all the infants and young children in cryogenic suspension, allowing them to barely survive the disaster.

The cryogenic technology had a limited duration. Sending the children away indeed couldn’t guarantee their survival completely, but Duxi’s civilization had already done everything it possibly could.

One thousand children were bound to an expert whom no Safe City lord could refuse, motivating other Safe Cities with the promise of benefits to raise those children to adulthood.

And these experts who had somehow been transformed into mechanical beings must have been carefully selected, and they must have volunteered. Otherwise, how could they possibly fulfill their role as “supervisors”?

This time, it was Green Billow Star. There was a huge amount of seawater that could only be used after its toxicity was removed, so Duxi offered her an expert capable of detoxifying seawater.

If it were a world like Velvet Star, he would probably offer a virologist or some other expert specializing in viruses.

And if it were Dazzling Star, it would probably be an expert capable of reducing energy consumption, or perhaps someone capable of putting the ice on Green Billow Star to use.

No wonder Duxi had made sure to warn her in advance that he had trump cards up his sleeve.

A Safe City that clearly had countless experts at its disposal like this—how many people would be green with envy?

Cheng Qisheng began to suspect that Duxi’s various plans and the way he phrased things had all been carefully laid out for him by a large number of imperial officials and other relevant personnel before Duxi’s civilization was wiped out.

Or perhaps, more accurately, Duxi’s civilization had preserved all of its infants and young children.

By transforming into a mechanical civilization, they had allowed many “experts” who were bound to those infants and young children to survive.

But what about everyone else from Duxi’s civilization?

Even if it wasn’t everyone, there were probably quite a few highly talented individuals among them. It was just that, due to the Safe City’s current tier, they couldn’t be “unsealed” yet.

Just like now: Cheng Qisheng had advanced to the Tier 6, so the expert Duxi was offering was also a level of intellect that a Tier 6 Safe City could support.

If she reached the Tier 7 or 8, would the experts he sent then be even more formidable?

Cheng Qisheng took a huge gulp of orange juice.

Now this was a true late-game player!

If her guess was correct, then at every tier of Duxi Safe City, there were carefully matched experts waiting to be “unsealed.”

Duxi Safe City, having been classified as a low-tier civilization, could both piggyback on the growth path of a low-tier civilization and, after advancing into the higher tiers, gradually recover the capabilities of a high-tier civilization.

The more Cheng Qisheng thought about it, the more convinced she became that the other members of Duxi’s civilization had definitely been “preserved” in some way as well.

It wasn’t the most secure route, but it was a route that could ensure the survival of all the people from Duxi’s civilization.

But there was still one risk standing in their way.

What if Duxi Safe City was destroyed before it could endure long enough to reach the higher tiers?

—Which brought them right back to the children.

Even if Duxi Safe City were destroyed, at least some of the children he had sent away could survive.

The bloodline of Duxi’s civilization would still live on.

Cheng Qisheng didn’t know whether her speculation was accurate. In any case, after Duxi told her about the infants being placed in suspended animation, he should have been able to figure out that she could use that information to vaguely deduce many other things.

[Blue Sea Safe City: All right, we can make the trade. Blue Sea will prepare an armed defense, and once I receive the people, I will immediately leave Green Billow Star.]

[Duxi Safe City: Agreed. Give me the coordinates. To avoid any misunderstandings, once I deliver the people, I will immediately leave those coordinates.]

Cheng Qisheng issued a divine decree, ordering Blue Sea to prepare for battle.

The main priority was preparing the Holy Bullets.

Although Duxi’s explanation seemed quite reasonable, the same principle still applied: for a Safe City, “assuming malicious intent” was always safer than “assuming goodwill.”

Fortunately, the trade went smoothly.

After receiving the coordinates, Duxi indeed arrived almost instantly. Duxi Safe City wasn’t particularly small, either, covering a little over 10,000 square kilometers.

A gigantic mechanical object resembling a manta ray floated out from the sky above Duxi Safe City.

The next second, Duxi Safe City relocated, leaving the coordinates behind as proof of his sincerity in making the trade.

Only the enormous “manta ray” remained at the site.

The Blue Sea government cautiously dispatched a flight squadron, weapons in hand, slowly approaching the object. At the same time, numerous large-scale conventional weapons inside the Safe City behind them were aimed in every direction, ensuring that if an enemy appeared from any direction, they could launch an attack immediately.

Through the perspective of one of the believers in the flight squadron, Cheng Qisheng watched as they approached the enormous “manta ray.”

Its surface seemed soft, almost like a flying carpet from a fairy tale, with the edges slightly raised.

At the very center was a robot that looked exactly like the stereotypical image of a robot.

It stood approximately 1.8 meters tall, with sharply defined limbs and spherical joints. Its body had an exposed, silvery metallic appearance.

At that moment, its eyes were closed.

Surrounding it, arranged in neat rows, were exactly one thousand infants.

The babies looked much like humans as well, with two eyes, one nose, and one mouth. They had pale-green hair and fair skin, while two tiny, translucent antennae protruded from their foreheads.

They looked almost like the sea hares found on Earth.

At that moment, some of the infants were still fast asleep. Others were awake, squirming their chubby little feet as they tried to lift them into the air. Some quietly stared up at the sky with their eyes open, while others wriggled around uncomfortably and wailed at the top of their lungs.

Cheng Qisheng swept her mental power over them but detected nothing abnormal.

The flight squadron put on gloves and gas masks before picking up the infants one by one. They scanned each of them with the Trinocular Cheng Qisheng had just purchased from the mall, checking their vital signs.

The Trinocular was a handheld, multifunctional analytical instrument worth 2,500 nuclear crystals.

The thing was incredibly versatile. It could automatically detect and analyze the surrounding environment, detect life signals within its scanning range, and even perform medical diagnoses on people.

In Blue Sea, it was the sort of device that would normally only appear in an interstellar novel like ‘I Possess Great Power, So I Conquer the Universe’.

When Cheng Qisheng saw the Trinocular in the Safe City Mall, she became even more certain of her previous suspicion.

The names of the various items in the Safe City Mall were definitely altered according to the individual civilizations and knowledge of the Safe City lords.

Take the Trinocular, for example. It certainly wouldn’t be called that in other civilizations.

But its functions would be exactly the same.

The thing wasn’t available in the mall below the fifth tier. This time, she’d already spent a huge number of points upgrading the Safe City and the floating device. As the saying went, when you’re already deep in debt, what’s a little more? And when you have too many lice, you stop noticing the itching.

Besides, she had a guaranteed supply of nuclear crystals. Taking advantage of this matter with Duxi, she simply bought one while she was at it.

Hahaha. Being poor is so reassuring.

The Trinocular scanned the infants and young children from Duxi’s civilization, immediately displaying their various basic vital signs, a comprehensive three-dimensional scan of their bodies, and an analysis of their biochemical composition.

[Life Form: Carbon-Based]

[Subcategory: Human]

[Current Condition: Healthy]

[Sex: Human Female]

[Age: Two Months and One Day]

[Three-Dimensional Image of Internal Structures: Generated]

[Skeletal Structure: Generated]

[Safe Contact Recommendation: Normal Contact]

There were still rows upon rows of densely packed examination results below. Aether would forward all of these to the Blue Sea Temple, where the clergy would verify them.

The members of the flight squadron then flew over to the mechanical lifeform, which was clearly still powered off.

[Life Form: Mechanical]

[Subcategory: Humanoid]

[Current Physical Integrity: Intact]

[Basic Material Composition: Metallic]

Cheng Qisheng scanned past the mechanical lifeform’s extensive array of components, including its locomotion system, sensory system, energy system, and other mechanical structures, and went straight to the line near the bottom.

[Safe Contact Recommendation: Normal Contact]

At least according to the Trinocular’s test results, Duxi hadn’t lied.

She checked the private messages Duxi had sent.

[Duxi Safe City: The expert’s power switch is on his back. Just press it once. I’ll send you the children’s dietary requirements as well. We’re all human civilizations, so there shouldn’t be much difference.]

[Duxi Safe City: I’m also giving you the Wave Aircraft. Consider it compensation for the nuclear crystals you spent on the Trinocular. If you’re still worried, you can search for it in the mall and then use the Trinocular to test it.]

When both sides were cautious people, communication really did save a lot of trouble.

Cheng Qisheng first searched the mall and confirmed that the Wave Aircraft really did have this appearance.

And its price was considerably higher than that of the Trinocular. The thing cost 4,000 crystals each, and it also required crystals to operate.

Either Duxi was filthy rich…

Or the Wave Aircraft was simply a product of his civilization.

An interstellar civilization really did have deep pockets.

Cheng Qisheng then instructed her believers to test it with the Trinocular.

Only after seeing that the displayed result showed the exact same name did she finally relax completely.

[Blue Sea Safe City: Thank you, thank you! Don’t worry. As long as there are no problems with these children, I’ll treat them as if they were my own.]

Duxi: ?

Was this a translation issue?

“Treat them as if they were my own”? Blue Sea made it sound as though all of its residents were her children.

Although he found the wording rather strange, Duxi understood the attitude behind it:

[Thank you. I don’t ask that they receive any special treatment. As long as they’re able to live normal lives, that’s enough.]

That brought their conversation to an end.

The Great Blue Sea Creator God poured herself another glass of orange juice and poked Aether’s curious little “head.”

“Cheers to Duxi.”

Aether’s AI brain mimicked her:

“Cheers to Duxi.”

…

While Cheng Qisheng drank her orange juice, Duxi drank nothing. He simply walked through one door after another, eventually entering a gigantic space.

He raised his head and looked at the countless infants stacked densely above him, sleeping inside transparent cryogenic pods.

Duxi sighed.

“I hope those children are doing well.”

If, the next time they met, the children sent to Blue Sea were still healthy and alive, then he could put his mind at ease and send the next batch.

After finishing her orange juice, Cheng Qisheng left the infants and the expert from Duxi’s civilization to the Blue Sea government for study. (She could observe what was happening while doing other things at the same time.)

She then walked into the enormous spherical vessel and took a seat in the cockpit. Aether floated at her right side, responsible for assisting with the piloting.

Looking at the sky ahead and the lightning and thunder raging over Green Billow Star below, Cheng Qisheng took a deep breath.

Come to think of it, Duxi’s civilization had given Cheng Qisheng a useful reminder.

Perhaps Green Billow Star rejected the Lilithians because they came from a higher-level civilization.

It was just like how a low-tier Blue Sea Safe City would be dragged into a more dangerous world if it tried to accommodate the knowledge of a higher-tier civilization.

The situation on Green Billow Star was getting worse and worse. She couldn’t tell whether this was a side effect of Green Billow Star being dragged into subspace, or whether Green Billow Star was rejecting the Lilithians.

Either way, there was no way she was going to abandon the Lilithians.

Cheng Qisheng’s hand closed around the floating control handle.

“Let’s go. It’s time for Blue Sea to begin a new journey.”

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