Chapter 127.2: World Mission
Cheng Qisheng sat in the cockpit, having already drunk three glasses of strawberry juice.
With 130,000 crystals plus another 20,000, Blue Sea, which had still been dirt-poor the day before, suddenly had a reserve of 150,000 crystals.
With that, they could finally get the nutrient solution synthesizing machine up and running and produce large quantities of nutrient solution to distribute among the residents. That way, even if the residents spread out across the surrounding area, they wouldn’t have to worry about going hungry.
The spoils they had obtained earlier could also finally be put to use: the Tier 2 Basic Tool Forge, Tier 2 Military Equipment Forge, Tier 3 Vehicle Repair Factory, and Tier 5 Vehicle Factory.
Oh, right. They could also consider putting that Tier 1 Currency Minting Factory to use.
Although Aether was constantly running all kinds of calculations within the Safe City, making it easy for Blue Sea residents to keep track of their points inside the city, once they left the range of Aether’s influence, their personal point balances could no longer be updated.
So when residents traded with one another outside, they usually had to keep track of everything manually.
Back when they were on Green Billow Star, at the peak of it, Cheng Qisheng could hear the words, “Swear to my God that you owe me XX points. Once we get back to the Safe City, make sure you transfer them to me,” tens of thousands of times a day.
As Blue Sea continued to develop and its residents ventured farther and farther away, it was time to introduce some kind of paper currency system.
When she had first obtained the Tier 1 Currency Minting Factory, she had looked over its description. Although it was only Tier 1, the paper currency it produced was actually quite impressive.
It was counterfeit-proof, resistant to photocopying, fading, and alteration, as well as fireproof and waterproof. Cheng Qisheng had no idea what kind of black technology it used, but it was very much in keeping with the post-apocalyptic setting.
Most importantly, it was cheap.
One nuclear crystal could produce ten million banknotes, vividly demonstrating to anyone who used them exactly what it meant for “money in the apocalypse to be worthless.”
Still, Cheng Qisheng was rather curious. If even a Tier 1 currency factory was this useful, what on earth could a Tier 4 or Tier 5 currency factory produce?
Curious as she was, however, she had absolutely no intention of finding out. With those nuclear crystals, she might as well use them to upgrade the Vehicle Repair Factory.
It was easy to imagine that in this vast post-apocalyptic wasteland, vehicles would be extremely important.
As Cheng Qisheng planned everything out and jotted notes down in her little notebook, she suddenly sensed a large number of lifeforms appearing around Blue Sea.
She raised her head. Through the night-vision binoculars she was using to monitor the believers outside the Safe City, she saw clusters of glowing green eyes in the darkness.
There were truly a lot of them. At first glance, in the pitch-black night, they looked almost like fireflies swarming everywhere.
The points of light constantly shifted as they circled around the two Safe Cities, sniffing the air as though trying to determine whether there was any food inside that they wanted to eat.
Some of the Night Beasts left, while others joined them. They had probably picked up the scent of humans, but the city walls prevented them from getting any closer, so they could only wander back and forth repeatedly, searching.
Through the night-vision binoculars, their appearance could be clearly seen. The Night Beasts looked remarkably similar to one another. Their bodies resembled wolves, but the areas around their mouths were mostly rotten away, exposing stark white bones that reminded people of the zombies on Velvet Star.
They varied greatly in size. The largest could reach several meters tall, while the smallest were only about the size of a rabbit. Their entire bodies were covered in black scales, a coloration that allowed them to blend seamlessly into the darkness.
If not for their glowing green eyes, even the Blue Sea people, with their exceptionally strong night vision, probably wouldn’t have been able to spot them immediately.
Coriander was sending messages. She had probably switched to typing them out manually.
[Just stay quiet. They’re extremely sensitive to light and sound. The slightest disturbance will make them swarm and attack.]
[But they’re actually easier to deal with than mutated beasts. I’ve had people sprinkle grass juice around this area that interferes with the Night Beasts’ sense of smell. As long as we don’t turn on any lights or make any noise, and stay inside the buildings, the Night Beasts won’t be able to detect us.]
Adults could manage to keep themselves from making noise, but small children couldn’t.
And it wasn’t just the children of Blue Sea. A short while ago, Blue Sea had also brought a thousand infants and young children from the Duxi civilization into the city.
Oh, right. Speaking of the babies sent over by Duxi…
That mechanical-lifeform expert who had come with them still hadn’t “booted up” yet.
Out of caution, Blue Sea had decided not to “boot up” the expert inside Blue Sea Safe City. Instead, they would wait until they reached the new world and find a suitable location before “booting” him up.
For now, the expert had yet to “wake up.” Every day, he simply ate, drank, and slept in the nursery. The only ones actually there were the infants and young children.
Cheng Qisheng immediately shifted her attention to the Blue Sea nursery.
It was empty.
She lightly extended her mental power, and soon located where the babies were inside Blue Sea Safe City.
All the children had been moved into soundproof rooms that the Blue Sea government had hurriedly set up.
The Old Eighths had come through once again.
After Cheng Qisheng received the information about the Night Beasts from Coriander, she immediately had Aether relay it to the Blue Sea government.
At the time, the Safe City was still in the middle of the war, yet the Blue Sea government had already moved all the children into the soundproof rooms.
It was a major undertaking, but Blue Sea had clearly prepared for situations like this long ago. The soundproof rooms had already been set up in advance, so everything proceeded smoothly and was completed in less than twenty minutes.
And relocating the children was only one part of the Blue Sea government’s response.
At that very moment, countless Blue Sea residents were watching the Night Beasts. Some stood on the balconies of their residential buildings; others watched through the firing ports built into the city walls; still others muted their televisions at home and watched the live broadcast.
In fact, the live broadcasts themselves had already had their audio cut.
Beside each video feed was a series of lines of text describing the combat capabilities of the Night Beasts that could be determined from their appearance.
Their approximate numbers. Analysis of physical weaknesses. Deductions about sensory vulnerabilities. Approximate locations of vital organs. Based on the Night Beasts’ skeletal structure, the weak points around their joints. The types of terrain they were generally suited to fighting in, and the terrain they were poorly suited to…
The Old Eighths watched silently, calculating in their minds how they would fight if they encountered a Night Beast.
As for the newer residents, those without televisions were better off in a way. They simply followed the notification and maintained absolute silence in the darkness.
Those with televisions drew their curtains tight and watched as the various combat-power estimates on the screen continued to increase, gradually evolving into sections titled [Recommended Weapons for Combat] and [Estimated Combat Consumption].
The unease that had originally welled up in them because of the all-encompassing darkness and the huge numbers of Night Beasts surrounding the Safe City gradually settled down.
Two hours passed just like that.
…
In Coriander Safe City, Wen Huahua had been on edge every time the Endless Night descended ever since arriving on Moon Silk Star.
But this time, with Boss Blue Sea by his side, he finally felt reassured.
In fact, he felt like he could even get some sleep. After being on edge for so long, he was genuinely exhausted and sleepy.
Meanwhile, the Blue Sea higher-ups and various experts, who had all been transferred to the [Large Backup Conference Room with Soundproofing and Lightproofing], weren’t sleepy in the slightest.
They were studying Blue Sea’s surveillance footage, along with the distant “green lights,” to estimate the approximate number of Night Beasts in the surrounding area.
Known information:
The troublesome thing about the Night Beasts was their astonishing hearing. Once the Night Beasts in one area began fighting, their howls would attract Night Beasts from other areas.
—This was similar to the Skywing Dragons, which had once contributed their flight wings to Blue Sea.
Because of this shared trait, the Blue Sea people present all wore nostalgic expressions.
However, the Night Beasts’ combat strength was far greater than that of the Skywing Dragons.
This could be seen simply from the way the ground sank deeply beneath their feet whenever they stepped down.
Sure enough, each one appeared to possess roughly Tier 2 or Tier 3 strength. That also meant that there was approximately a Tier 2 or Tier 3 nuclear crystal inside every Night Beast’s head.
“We can’t fight them.”
Marshal Alice looked at the successive analysis reports being brought in and reached a somewhat regretful conclusion:
“According to the information sent by Coriander Safe City, the Night Beasts can detect the faint scent of humans in the air. The more humans gathered in one place, the more Night Beasts will be attracted. There are already roughly 200 million Night Beasts gathered nearby, so it’s best to wait until the night passes.”
Some of the Night Beasts’ characteristics were quite similar to those of the Snow Beasts.
Fortunately, however, the Night Beasts’ sense of smell could be masked by a gas called Grass Juice.
As long as Grass Juice was sprayed around the area, no matter how many Night Beasts arrived, they wouldn’t attack the city walls. They would merely keep sniffing around nearby until the sky grew bright, at which point they would retreat.
Therefore, once night fell, the people of Moon Silk Star would turn off all their lights, hide inside buildings, spray Grass Juice around the surrounding area, and quietly wait for the Night Beast tide to pass.
Cheng Qisheng was also looking over the Night Beast analysis reports. Upon hearing what the expert analysis team had said, she suddenly frowned slightly.
She remembered that one of the main reasons she had chosen to descend onto Moon Silk Star was because, when observing the planet from outer space, she had seen countless scattered points of light far below.
Moon Silk Star was quite bright during the day, so those lights could only have been turned on during the night.
But if Night Beasts were spread all across Moon Silk Star and were sensitive to light, how could such vast expanses of lights exist? There were even so many that they could be seen from the depths of the greater universe.
Coriander, who still hadn’t gone to sleep, had just lain down in bed. The moment he saw this message, he immediately perked up.
[If you really saw such a huge expanse of lights, Boss, then I think there’s a very high chance it’s the [Company]. Because even before the Night Beasts appeared, there weren’t many forces on Moon Silk Star that had enough energy to keep their lights on at night, and they were all located very far apart.]
[So it’s possible that the [Company] developed something capable of concealing them from the Night Beasts. After all, Grass Juice was developed by the [Company] too.]
Before Grass Juice was developed, people could only hide underground.
In fact, even now, there were still many New Humans who had no choice but to live underground, because Grass Juice was still quite expensive for them.
Cheng Qisheng stared at Coriander’s message, sinking into thought.
Anyone who had read even a few science-fiction novels, or watched similar movies, should probably be able to make the connection…
The Grass Juice that masked the Night Beasts’ sense of smell had been developed by the [Company]. Now, it was possible that they had also developed something capable of concealing people from the Night Beasts’ sight—they simply hadn’t made it public.
It went without saying that the [Company] alone could use Grass Juice to continuously rake in huge amounts of supplies and wealth from the people of Moon Silk Star.
And with the World Mission being to eliminate the [Company], it was genuinely hard not to suspect that the Night Beasts had been unleashed by the [Company].
—This kind of clichéd plot was practically everywhere in apocalyptic movies from Blue Star.
Cheng Qisheng didn’t want to view reality through the lens of movies, but the [Company]’s actions were even more outrageous than anything in a movie. Their move of blowing up the cryogenic pods during the apocalypse in order to drive up prices was simply beyond comment.
[Coriander Safe City: Actually, I thought of that too. It’s mainly because the timing is just too coincidental. The Night Beasts appeared only a month ago, and Grass Juice was already developed, with large quantities of the finished product being distributed and sold in various places.]
[Coriander Safe City: Some of the New Humans from the native population whom I’ve encountered before also believe that the [Company] did it. But no one can produce any evidence. To be honest, even if they did produce evidence, what good would it do? They’d still have to buy Grass Juice to stay alive. They can’t deal with the Night Beasts, and they can’t deal with the [Company] either. All they can do is keep living their lives.]
Cheng Qisheng: [What a stereotypically evil villain.]
Wen Huahua also sighed.
[Yeah. Before, whenever I saw movie characters with similar setups in their original civilizations, I’d think they were ignorant and short-sighted, or that the screenwriter was an idiot. But now that I’m actually experiencing it firsthand, I finally understand what they mean when they say art comes from life.]
Moreover, while they found the [Company]’s actions utterly outrageous, things looked different from the [Company]’s perspective.
The world had been reshuffled from the ground up. Every government and political force had been completely wiped away. With everything thoroughly overturned, the [Company] no longer had even the slightest restraint on it.
The world might have become a wasteland, but the [Company]’s own life remained comfortable and privileged, and they possessed absolute power.
Resources from all over the world would continuously flow into the [Company] through various channels. Under this constant supply, the [Company] would grow stronger and stronger, and its control over the wasteland and ordinary humans would naturally become increasingly powerful.
So what if conditions on Moon Silk Star got worse?
Their own lives hadn’t gotten worse. In fact, they were living even better than they had before the apocalypse.
[Coriander Safe City: The [Company]’s influence on Moon Silk Star is truly enormous. After developing Grass Juice, its position became even more extraordinary. That’s probably why the mission was specifically designated as confidential. If it weren’t confidential, there would definitely be Safe City Lords defecting to the [Company] in exchange for benefits.]
Cheng Qisheng strongly agreed with Coriander.
Put simply, the greatest goal of the Safe City Lords was to keep their Safe Cities alive. Everyone was working for the sake of their own civilizations. There certainly wasn’t any notion of “all our Safe Cities are one unified whole” or anything like that.
As long as they got something out of it, what did they care whether anyone else lived or died?
—That was how most Safe City Lords thought.
If it weren’t for the cognitive lock, then after learning the mission details today, there would probably be a Safe City trying to contact the [Company] and negotiate for a reward by tomorrow.
[Coriander Safe City: Boss, are you planning to take on this World Mission?]
After seeing the difficulty of the mission, many Safe City Lords had simply given up. Instead, they settled down on Moon Silk Star, looting supplies and purchasing all kinds of weapons they needed.
To be honest, even a Safe City Lord who was just coasting along could make a fortune in an environment like Moon Silk Star.
After all, every Safe City had grain reserves, while naturally produced food on Moon Silk Star was extremely expensive.
Taking out just a portion of their grain reserves could get them quite a number of high-tech weapons in exchange.
Naturally, the powerful forces throughout Moon Silk Star, along with the formidable strength of the New Humans, also put considerable pressure on the Safe City Lords.
If they had their residents gather together in one place to live, it would easily attract the attention of other factions and invite attacks.
But if they scattered their residents across different locations, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the native population.
So many cautious Safe City Lords would descend onto Moon Silk Star, trade some of their grain for weapons, and then immediately make a run for it. They wouldn’t stay even half a minute longer than necessary, taking the saying “It’s better to earn a little less and make your money safely” to the absolute extreme.
Wen Huahua had originally planned to simply coast along.
Back on Velvet Star, he had nearly been unable to leave the world because he didn’t have enough residents, and the experience had left him with quite a psychological scar. Ever since then, whenever he took action, he would do everything possible to avoid casualties among his residents. If they could run, they ran, doing their best to preserve as many residents as possible.
But this time, even after hiding in an area with practically no one around, they had still been precisely located by Sanluo Safe City, which then directly descended upon them and initiated a war.
That had thoroughly shaken his fragile little heart.
Wen Huahua realized that he was Tier 5 now. Sometimes, fortune really did favor those who took risks. He couldn’t keep acting like he had back when he was Tier 2 or Tier 3, where all he could do whenever danger appeared was run.
Otherwise, the final outcome would be everyone dying together.
Now that he had Boss Blue Sea as his backer, Wen Huahua steeled himself and decided to use this world to properly train both himself and his residents.
He frantically declared his loyalty:
[Boss, whatever you want to do, I’ll follow you unconditionally! My residents too! Even if you want to use us as the vanguard, as cannon fodder! We don’t mind!!]
[Cheng Qisheng: No need for cannon fodder or vanguards.]
Even if she were willing, the Old Eighths certainly wouldn’t be.
Besides, simply launching a direct attack wouldn’t work.
This world was far too vast, and it was an enormous melting pot with all kinds of factions layered on top of one another. They were intertwined like the roots of a tree, making the situation extraordinarily complicated.
But hadn’t the World Mission essentially handed the Safe City Lords a cheat code?
The Cognitive Lock.
Now that was a good thing.
Cheng Qisheng asked:
[From what I’ve read in Moon Silk Star’s historical records, during the twenty years before the Cryogenic Era, the various national governments gradually weakened, while the major corporations rose to prominence. Some corporations even operated behind the scenes, secretly controlling governments, right?]
Coriander replied instantly:
[Yes, Boss. That’s why the situation on Moon Silk Star was already terrible even before the Cryogenic Era. The [Company] only cared about profits, and almost every industry that could generate upward mobility was monopolized.]
[I suspect these [Companies] have been engaged in corporate warfare against one another—for example, tampering with another company’s cryogenic pods or cutting off its life-support systems. Otherwise, given how many [Companies] existed on Moon Silk Star before, there couldn’t possibly be only three major companies standing today.]
[Cheng Qisheng: That doesn’t matter. As long as we can confirm that numerous companies have “fallen asleep” on Moon Silk Star, that’s enough.]
Coriander vaguely guessed what she was getting at.
[Boss, you mean…?]
[Blue Sea Safe City: Yes. Exactly what you’re thinking. The various factions on Moon Silk Star are deeply intertwined and interconnected, while all ordinary Moon Silk people are being tacitly suppressed by these forces.]
The ordinary people of Moon Silk Star were already in a completely antagonistic relationship with the [Companies].
After all, the [Companies] could only maintain their positions and privileged lifestyles by exploiting these ordinary people.
Never mind all the various supplies and energy resources that ordinary Moon Silk people had to risk their lives to obtain.
Even if an ordinary Moon Silk person produced a mutant genius, their mutated body parts might be bought off them at a “high price” and implanted into a warrior of a [Company].
As for the avenues of advancement available to ordinary Moon Silk people, they had only two choices.
Either they joined a company, betrayed their own people, and became one of those doing the exploiting themselves.
Or they fought desperately against the system, only to be discovered by a [Company] and casually eliminated.
It was like a sl*ve owner discovering that one of his sl*ves wanted to rebel. They would do everything possible to eliminate that sl*ve before the situation had a chance to grow out of control.
Sometimes, the [Company] wouldn’t even need to act personally. Other [Lords] hoping to earn a favor from the [Company] might take care of the person first.
So why should Blue Sea’s residents disguise themselves as ordinary Moon Silk people who had emerged from a shelter and slowly work their way upward within Moon Silk Star’s unwritten rules?
Cheng Qisheng carefully sifted through the information and selected a [Company] that had only been briefly mentioned in passing.
It was an extremely mysterious company whose behind-the-scenes owner had barely ever shown their face, yet it had once manipulated an entire small country.
[Blue Sea Safe City: Even if we disguise ourselves as Moon Silk people, we’d still just be suppressed by all these factions together.]
So if these factions were so deeply intertwined that they were nearly impossible to eradicate…
What if Blue Sea could become one of those massive, deeply rooted branches itself?
…
Rui En was a member of Deer River Town.
She was thirteen years old this year. For New Humans, who might die once they reached their early thirties, Rui En was already considered an adult.
That meant she had to pay the adult tax this year—a hefty sum of “money.”
Rui En’s parents had been hunting harder than ever, while she, lacking sufficient combat strength, could only go scavenging in various places or hope that luck would favor her and she might discover some newly sprouted Cloud Mushrooms.
In order to scrape together enough money for this year’s adult tax, Rui En had hidden it from her parents and gritted her teeth as she ventured into a dangerous area inhabited by mutated beasts.
She had heard that a giant python lurked here. That was why, despite the area being filled with valuable items and supplies that others had left behind, as well as mutated plants that could be put to use, no one from the town dared come here.
The area was enormous. Rui En was hunched over, searching through the ruins, when she suddenly caught a foul, fishy stench.
She whipped around, tightening her grip on her weapon, and saw the enormous head of a giant python slowly slithering toward her.
Rui En clenched her teeth tightly and desperately studied the giant python.
If she could manage to strike it in the eye, there was a chance she could escape alive.
She would only have one opportunity.
Rui En steeled herself.
But at that moment, the fog in the daylight suddenly turned black.
Was this the Endless Night?
That was Rui En’s first thought.
But then she saw the giant python abruptly slither away, as though it had seen something terrifying.
Rui En turned around.
And what she saw was a gigantic city stretching so far that she couldn’t see where it ended.
