Chapter 147.2: The Three Major Companies + 1
As the convoy passed through a certain area, the Tata Territory officials inside the vehicles couldn’t resist rolling down the windows. They stared through the protective mesh at the scenery outside.
“Good heavens!”
“The land around here is actually producing crops!”
On both sides of the winding road were vast stretches of cultivated farmland, extending so far that they couldn’t see the end.
Land on the wasteland was extremely difficult to cultivate. Even after clearing and tilling it, there was no guarantee that seeds planted in the soil would even germinate.
Yet in the fields lining both sides of the road, countless lush green plants were growing vigorously.
The high-ranking officials from Tata Territory stared blankly at the crops.
“So much…”
“There really is this much?!!”
One of the Tata officials sitting in the passenger seat, a man of considerable standing, murmured to himself:
“So this is the [Company]?”
“[Ota] hasn’t even been out of the shelters for very long.”
The convoy continued forward, but the farmland didn’t disappear.
More and more fields unfolded before their eyes.
People were working in the fields. When they saw the convoy passing by, some looked up briefly, while others didn’t even raise their heads, simply keeping their heads down and continuing with their work.
They weren’t worried in the slightest that the people approaching might be bandits.
That alone showed just how much control [Ota] had over this region.
The convoy traveled another stretch of road when the sound of artillery suddenly reached them from the distance.
They hurriedly closed the windows and grabbed their weapons, ready at any moment to be caught up in a battlefield and unleash a fierce barrage of fire.
But up ahead, there was only a squad of [Ota] soldiers guarding the road.
When they saw the convoy approaching, they waved for them to stop.
The high-ranking official in the middle vehicle hurriedly got out and went over to greet them.
Before they could smoothly go through their practiced routine of “slipping nuclear crystals into someone’s hands,” the soldier in charge had already spoken.
“Wait a moment. They’re clearing out a large mutant beast up ahead.”
“Of course, esteemed sir. How long will we have to wait?”
The soldier tilted his head slightly, apparently receiving information through his state-of-the-art tactical helmet.
He said, “Five.”
The Tata official blinked. “Five hours?”
The soldier said, “Four.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“One.”
—BOOM!!!!
The Tata officials instinctively covered their ears and assumed defensive postures. The tremendous high-intensity pulse of sound caused sharp pain in their ears, and expressions of agony appeared on their faces.
But the attack wasn’t aimed at them.
Up ahead, on the right, a mountain could vaguely be seen in the distance.
With an earth-shaking roar, it suddenly collapsed.
The ground trembled. Rocks came tumbling down, while a colossal wave of dust surged into the sky, swallowing the entire area in an instant.
The soldier remained standing exactly as he had before. He hadn’t even moved his feet an inch, as though the violent winds generated by the explosion simply didn’t exist.
He calmly waved his hand.
“It’s done. You can go.”
He turned around, stepped aside, and gestured for the convoy to continue.
The Tata officials fell silent.
And Yu Bo and the others—who had disguised themselves, secretly hidden among the Tata vehicles, and planned to hitch a ride with their convoy out of [Ota] territory so they could return to their own Safe City and call in reinforcements—were left speechless as well.
They had been sneaking around in one of Tata’s cargo trucks, and now they could only stare at the scene in silence.
One vehicle after another quietly drove away.
The Blue Sea soldier remained where he was, watching them grow smaller and smaller in the distance until they completely disappeared from sight.
“Argh! My ears! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!!”
The cheerful voices of other Blue Sea people rang out through the [Mind Network]:
“We warned you that we were about to fire a Holy Bullet. You didn’t put on your protection. What did you expect?”
The Blue Sea soldier crouched down, shaking his head in an attempt to make the pain go away, while replying mentally:
“I was wearing this uniform! It’s so good-looking and cool! How could I possibly do something as tasteless as wearing ear protection?”
“Besides, didn’t we calculate the distance beforehand? It’ll only hurt for a little while. It won’t cause any mechanical damage, and it’ll be gone soon enough.”
After all, Blue Sea only wanted to intimidate Tata. They weren’t actually trying to injure anyone from Tata Territory. This distance was precisely the sweet spot—they had even specifically sent someone to measure it beforehand.
Cheng Qisheng watched the scene, caught somewhere between laughter and exasperation.
She gently patted the soldier on the head, helping ease the pain in his ears.
The soldier immediately went from “I’m cool, so I’m right” to a docile little lamb.
His unruly attitude instantly transformed into blissful reverence as he bowed his head respectfully toward the sky.
“Thank you, my God!”
Over here, the soldier was thanking his God.
Over there, the Tata officials were covering their ears while thanking their lord.
“As expected of our lord. Truly, she saw this coming. She was able to gauge [Ota]’s strength after just one encounter, and even sent us to deliver gifts and establish friendly relations. If Lord of Tata hadn’t reacted so quickly, that mountain today might have been Tata Territory tomorrow.”
“What?! What did you say?! Speak louder!!”
The Tata official who had been speaking looked at a colleague he had never particularly gotten along with and assumed that the man couldn’t hear properly because of the massive shockwave just now.
An opportunity like this wouldn’t come twice.
He immediately seized the chance and, without changing his expression, said:
“You idiot. You absolute moron. If I could, I’d use my knees to kiss your brow ridge.”
The Tata official covering his ears had just regained his hearing when he heard those words. His eyes immediately widened.
“? Who are you calling an idiot? Oh, you want to fight?! Come on!”
The Tata official who had seized the opportunity to insult him: “……”
He recovered that quickly? Looks like [Ota] also has an extremely precise understanding of the effective range of that terrifying weapon.
He wanted to continue pondering the matter, but in the next second, the other man had already lunged at him.
They were all subordinates of Lord of Tata. Regardless of their personalities in ordinary circumstances, every one of them had inherited at least some of their lord’s instinct for combat.
The two of them immediately started brawling.
“That’s enough, that’s enough! Stop fighting!”
“If you go back with your faces all swollen and bruised, Lord of Tata will think [Ota]’s people beat you up!”
“Shut up! If you’re going to fight, take it up onto the roof!”
The two high-ranking officials fighting each other pretended not to hear a thing.
Moon Silk was crawling with mutant beasts, and there were even enormous mutant birds flying through the sky. Unless they were insane, there was absolutely no way they would leave the heavily fortified vehicles.
“Ah! This is so annoying! Tutu! Turn on the music!”
The vehicle carrying the officials turned on its music. The escort vehicles in front and behind had no idea what was going on, but following the principle of “learn from your superiors,” they turned on their own music as well.
Amid the shouts of people trying to break up the fight and the blaring music, the Tata convoy continued onward in high spirits.
At top speed, they soon left [Ota] territory.
Yu Bo and the others seized the opportunity and rolled out of the vehicles.
One of the young men in the group looked slightly pale. Yu Bo caught him.
“Hua Luo, are you okay?”
Hua Luo shook his head.
“I don’t even know where my ability was applied. It drained almost all my stamina. I can’t move at all right now.”
His supernatural ability was [Expectation], a luck-based ability. Events that an ability user [expects] to happen had a certain probability of actually occurring.
But [Expectation] needed an anchor.
Without an anchor, the expected outcome couldn’t simply appear out of thin air.
And excessively far-fetched [Expectations] wouldn’t work either.
For example, Hua Luo couldn’t simply [expect] that they would openly get out of the vehicle while the Tata people conveniently pretended not to see them.
The [Expectation] Hua Luo had just used was that the convoy would play music, because they already knew that every vehicle in the Tata convoy was capable of playing music.
With the music providing cover, they could use the noise to jump out of the vehicles and quietly slip away.
“Okay. Don’t talk for now.”
Yu Bo gave her orders.
“Tiegu, carry Hua Luo. It’s too dangerous out here. Let’s find somewhere safe and get back to the city immediately.”
The group chose a secluded valley between the mountains. Yu Bo was protected at the very center by her subordinates. She clasped her hands together and focused her mind, using her two index fingers pressed together like a brush as she began to draw.
Lines flickering with fiery light appeared in the air, gradually forming a half-meter-tall talisman.
This was Yu Bo’s ability: [Talisman Paper].
Right now, she was drawing a teleportation talisman.
Cold sweat broke out across Yu Bo’s forehead, and her fingers trembled slightly, but she stubbornly continued drawing.
Mutant beasts gradually began closing in from all around. Some of the others guarded Yu Bo, who couldn’t afford to be distracted, and Hua Luo, who had temporarily lost his combat ability, while the rest threw themselves into a bloody battle.
Finally, half an hour later, the talisman was completely formed and descended over Yu Bo and the others.
Yu Bo didn’t even have time to wipe away her sweat. She shouted at her subordinates still fighting:
“Let’s go!!!”
The group immediately abandoned their battle with the mutant beasts chasing them and hurriedly gathered together. The talisman overhead suddenly blazed with red light.
The next second, there was no sign of them in the mountain valley.
All that remained were groups of mutant beasts sniffing around the area in frustration, desperately trying to find the prey that had mysteriously vanished.
…
“Hm?”
After spending an entire day building houses, Cheng Qisheng had slept like a log.
When she woke up, she suddenly noticed that someone had @mentioned her in the group chat.
Now that was unusual.
Ever since arriving on Moon Silk, Cheng Qisheng had been keeping an extremely low profile. After all, they had to pretend to be the [Company].
She hadn’t said a single word in the group chat. Even Coriander had reduced how often she chatted.
There were now more than four hundred city lords in the Moon Silk City Lords’ group chat.
Cheng Qisheng was just another silent lurker among them. In theory, no one should have noticed her at all.
She opened the group chat and scrolled down, only to find that things were exactly as she’d suspected.
The person who had @mentioned her hadn’t just singled her out.
They had directly @mentioned every single city lord.
The city lords’ group chat didn’t even have an @everyone function. With more than four hundred city lords, manually calling out to every single one of them was no small undertaking.
[Greenroot Safe City: Everyone, I’ve figured out why more than thirty safety cities were destroyed one after another. It was the Company. A word of advice to everyone: the Company’s combat strength in this world is simply absurd. There’s no way we can take them down at our current level. Whatever you do, don’t take on the world mission. Just grab whatever benefits you can and leave it at that.]
The group chat instantly exploded with activity, everyone asking what exactly had happened.
[I thought this world was just too dangerous, and those safe cities didn’t survive the Eternal Night. Turns out they were wiped out by the world mission.]
[Didn’t they say there’s a cognitive lock? How would the “Company” even fight the safety cities?]
[To the person above: having a cognitive lock doesn’t mean the Company can’t notice us. They might have mistaken those safe cities for newly emerged local factions.]
[Agreed. It’s extremely difficult for any faction on Moon Silk to rise up in the first place. Forget the Company—the moment any faction shows even a little strength, there’s a chance the local lord or military corps will wipe them out. The law of the jungle here is practically carved into everyone’s bones.]
Cheng Qisheng didn’t join the discussion. Instead, she opened Lord Greenroot’s profile and saw that he had introduced himself as being from a Treefolk civilization.
That reminded her of Gugu Gaga, whom she had encountered in the first world.
Lord Greenroot, being from a Treefolk civilization, also fit everyone’s stereotypical image of a tree person quite well.
The reason he’d gone to such lengths to @everyone naturally wasn’t because he wanted to play the good Samaritan.
Lord Greenroot soon added another message:
[I have evidence that those thirty-plus safety cities were destroyed by the Company, as well as footage of three safety cities fighting the Company. Five videos in total, all filmed from the participants’ first-person perspectives and extremely clear. If you’re interested, you can purchase them directly in the group. 2,000 nuclear crystals per video. A confidentiality agreement is included. No haggling. Thank you, everyone.]
[Additionally, I have some rough information on Moon Silk’s three major Companies, along with estimates of their combat strength. Since the information isn’t completely reliable, I’m giving it away as a bonus. Anyone who purchases the videos, whether you buy one or several, can view this information for free.]
Lord Greenroot wasn’t done after making his announcement. He even remembered to advertise.
[I purchase all kinds of information on a long-term basis. If any of you have information you’d like to sell, feel free to contact me. As long as it’s information I’m interested in, the price is negotiable.]
And with that, the entire process was complete: bait the hook, sell the videos, give away the information as a bonus, and advertise his information-buying business.
Cheng Qisheng looked at the videos that had been posted for sale in the group chat.
So this was what it was like after reaching Tier 6. Even information had gotten more expensive.
And they were selling the videos individually, too. Two thousand nuclear crystals each—five videos would be ten thousand nuclear crystals.
But considering how many mutant beasts there were on Moon Silk, which also meant there were plenty of nuclear crystals, the safety cities capable of staying on this planet for the long term—Coriander aside—should all be fairly wealthy. In that case, the price seemed quite reasonable.
After all, gathering intelligence wasn’t exactly easy.
Come to think of it, being able to obtain footage of the [Company] fighting safe cities was already impressive. Two thousand nuclear crystals per video really wasn’t that expensive.
As someone who had only just entered the ranks of the wealthy herself, Cheng Qisheng successfully adapted to the prices after reaching Tier 6 and decided to buy one video first to see what it was like.
Lord Greenroot was clearly very experienced at this. The moment she completed the purchase, he opened a private chat and sent her a file containing information on Moon Silk’s three major [Companies].
Perhaps because the information wasn’t guaranteed to be accurate, and because it was a free bonus, there was no confidentiality agreement attached.
Cheng Qisheng casually forwarded it to Coriander.
Because obviously, someone who had been treating this world as a training ground and lying low the entire time definitely didn’t have the nuclear crystals to buy the videos.
[Coriander Safe City: AHHHHH, Boss, Boss, thank you so much!! Waaahhh, I’m sending you a million hearts!! (Bringing tea to Boss.jpg)]
Cheng Qisheng replied with a smiling emoji before opening the [Company] information and reading through it.
The very first sentence stated that Moon Silk had three major Companies, forming a tripartite balance of power.
Scrolling down, she found brief introductions to the three Companies.
[Zephyr Company]—
Location: Manluota.
Danger Level: Four Stars
[Zipa Company]—
Location: Har City.
Danger Level: Four Stars + One-Third of a Star.
[Norn Company]—
Location: Ragham.
Danger Level: Four and a Half Stars.
Below that was everything currently known about the three Companies. Cheng Qisheng was just about to read through it carefully when Lord Greenroot hurriedly sent her another file via private message.
[Greenroot Safe City: I just bought some new information. There’s an additional update. Please check the new file.]
Looking at the new file, Cheng Qisheng felt a vague premonition rising within her.
She opened it.
Sure enough, there was a new entry on the list of Companies.
[Ota Company]—
Location: Broken River Wasteland.
Danger Level: Five Stars.
Lol