Safe City Ch.171.1

Chapter 171.1: Assistance of a New Human Faction

Cheng Qisheng flipped through the pages one by one, reading about the worlds this high-tier city lord had experienced.

As she read, she gradually realized that the reason these worlds were described in such painstaking detail was probably because the respondent had been trying to pad out the word count.

In one particular world, the respondent had chosen to evacuate only five minutes after arriving.

Yet they had somehow used more than eight hundred words to describe why they had decided to evacuate, what they had felt during those five minutes (yes, literally just their feelings), and even included a post-event summary recommending that if they ever encountered a similar situation again, they should evacuate.

Even so, Cheng Qisheng continued to treasure the advice immensely.

The respondent was clearly a high-tier city lord.

They weren’t merely a pioneer who had gone before her; they were also an exceptionally capable individual who had successfully guided a Safe City all the way to the high tiers. They had experienced more than four hundred worlds alone.

Cheng Qisheng estimated that the other party had been a city lord for at least eight hundred years.

A high-tier city lord who had safely survived for so many years across all kinds of dangerous apocalyptic worlds—even when they themselves sometimes dismissed their reactions as some sort of “inexplicable feeling” or “a sudden sense that something was wrong”—might very well have been relying on experience they weren’t even consciously aware of, subconsciously warning them.

And now, Cheng Qisheng had learned something from it.

If something felt wrong in a particular world, or if an inexplicable sense of unease suddenly welled up inside her, she shouldn’t hesitate.

She should immediately recall her residents and run.

Yes, not running didn’t necessarily mean she would die.

But if she ran, there was a very good chance she would survive.

The respondent was a living example of that.

Since Cheng Qisheng was already someone who preferred to play it safe, she decided to learn from this respondent and take caution to the extreme.

She went through the book carefully, word by word. Even the sections where the respondent was obviously padding the word count, she made herself read them thoroughly.

And it wasn’t just her.

A group of experts from various fields had already gathered inside Blue Sea Safe City, studying this “Book of Experience” from a high-tier city lord.

Blue Sea Safe City wouldn’t simply follow the experiences recorded in the book word for word. But they could summarize everything that had happened in those apocalyptic worlds and use it to gain a better understanding of what kinds of situations they might encounter in the future.

The first eight worlds the respondent had encountered were more or less similar to Velvet Star or Dazzling Star. They were either straightforward natural disasters or mutated beasts invading the world.

By the ninth world, however, the types of worlds encountered by this Safe City began to diversify.

The respondent’s Safe City had even experienced a certain type of Rules Horror world.

When Cheng Qisheng reached this part, she initially thought she had read it wrong.

But when she flipped back to check, it really was a Rules Horror world.

Well, Aether had already confirmed that cultivation worlds existed among the apocalyptic worlds. So why couldn’t there be Rules Horror worlds too?

The respondent had clearly anticipated that the questioner might have doubts about this and provided a new piece of information:

“If your native civilization has a particularly developed literary tradition, then I recommend instructing your residents to thoroughly study the fantasy literature from your past.”

“When I encountered a Rules Horror world, I was extremely surprised, because in my native civilization, this was a setting found in a particular genre of fantasy literature. I had always assumed it was simply something people had imagined.”

“But later, I gradually realized that the novelists who created these new settings might actually have been unawakened ability users with particularly strong spiritual sensitivity. They were like receivers, unconsciously picking up information from the universe. They might simply go to sleep one night and wake up with all that information already in their minds.”

“The uninformed novelists simply called it [Inspiration].”

This information had nothing to do with what Cheng Qisheng had asked about. The respondent might have gotten carried away while writing, or perhaps they simply wanted to finish this “thesis” as quickly as possible and had generously thrown this information in for free.

Cheng Qisheng immediately sat upright on the sofa.

This was important information.

It wasn’t that fantasy novelists had invented settings such as “Rules Horror” worlds.

Those worlds had actually existed somewhere in the universe all along, and novelists with strong spiritual sensitivity had simply picked up on them.

With this piece of information, Blue Sea hadn’t merely gained the accumulated experience of more than four hundred worlds from the respondent. By studying the settings found in entertainment literature, they could also familiarize themselves in advance with the backgrounds of certain apocalyptic worlds.

Cheng Qisheng fell into thought.

Actually, Blue Sea’s entertainment literature had developed rather poorly.

Old Eighth and the others, however, seemed quite pleased with themselves.

Perhaps that was because they simply had nothing to compare it to.

No matter how fiercely the various factions of Blue Sea’s civilization had fought one another throughout history, fundamentally, they had all originated from the same source.

Before the great unification, when none of the countries had particularly impressive literary talent to begin with, it was only natural for Old Eighth and the others to consider the state of their own civilization’s literature perfectly normal.

But Cheng Qisheng had access to the literary works of her native civilization, Blue Star, so she could immediately see just how barren Blue Sea’s entertainment literature was.

—Though Old Eighth itself certainly didn’t see it that way.

Take the novel websites, for example. They were filled, practically without exception, with titles like My Years of Fighting in XXX.

Then look at entertainment media and film. The screens were always showing various kinds of action movies.

Even when it was a modern-day romance set in a peaceful society, the way the two protagonists developed feelings for each other was thoroughly Blue Sea-esque.

Either it was something like, “For some reason, we ended up stranded in the wilderness, where surviving together brought us closer and we developed a tacit understanding,”

or it was, “By a stroke of coincidence, we were granted hunting permits, and while chasing prey across the vast grasslands, our blood was pumping with adrenaline—and that’s when we fell for each other at first sight.”

If even romance movies were like that, then there was even less need to mention the other genres.

The plots were actually quite entertaining. It was just that they were extremely repetitive.

Mystery: The protagonists suspect one another, and the situation turns into a battle.

Horror: Fighting under a terrifying atmosphere.

Action: Fighting from beginning to end.

Comedy: Hilarious fighting.

Animation: Teaching young viewers various combat techniques in relatively gentle ways, seamlessly weaving them into the plot whenever there was an opportunity.

It wasn’t that Blue Sea’s movies and television shows were overly formulaic.

It was simply that Blue Sea’s people genuinely loved watching this kind of thing—and they never seemed to get tired of it.

As long as the battle scenes were exciting enough, they could attract an audience, so of course the screenwriters and fight choreographers would keep piling on more and more combat scenes.

Then, after watching an episode of a TV series or finishing a movie, the people of Blue Sea would become incredibly excited and head outside to have some fun of their own.

There was nothing they could do about it.

Old Eighth’s innate combat instincts and the fact that everyone had such high-energy physiques meant they were naturally more fond of outdoor activities.

They couldn’t be like many people on Blue Star who didn’t particularly like going outside or exercising, and could gain enough mental satisfaction simply by curling up with their phones every day, reading novels, binge-watching dramas, shipping fictional couples, and chatting in group conversations with fellow fans they’d never even met.

Old Eighth and the others could only truly experience happiness after they had burned off all that excess energy.

As a result, while Blue Sea’s civilization did have fantasy literature, there was pitifully little of it. Compared with other civilizations, its literary landscape could practically be called a desert.

Cheng Qisheng quickly calmed down.

But that was fine.

This simply wasn’t what Old Eighth and the others were good at in the first place.

It didn’t matter if Blue Sea’s literary genres weren’t particularly diverse.

She was a Blue Star native, after all.

The breadth of entertainment literature genres on Blue Star could be considered extraordinarily diverse even compared with the other apocalyptic worlds Cheng Qisheng had encountered.

When the time came, she could simply let Aether look through it all, have her copy everything down, and send it back to Blue Sea.

Problem solved!

With that thought, Cheng Qisheng continued reading with peace of mind.

The respondent continued giving examples:

“For example, in my civilization, there was once a novelist who imagined that there might be another kind of creature in the universe—one with only four tentacles, which normally used two of them to walk and the other two to do other things. They even had only two eyes, and they ate zhang. Those terrifying creatures scared me so badly when I was young that I lost quite a few eyes.”

The more Cheng Qisheng read, the more familiar this description seemed.

Sure enough, the respondent’s next sentence was:

“It wasn’t until I became a Safe City Lord and came into contact with civilizations from many different worlds that I learned they weren’t imaginary creatures at all. They were intelligent beings called humans.”

Cheng Qisheng: “…”

So human civilization was considered a monster by other civilizations.

But what kind of civilization was this respondent from?

They ate “zhang”—octopus?

Cheng Qisheng asked the Truth Stone about it, and it immediately sent over the image of the respondent delivering the answers to it.

Sure enough, the respondent looked somewhat like a gigantic octopus, though not quite.

Its two primary eyes were enormous and gleaming. Its body was also covered with countless tiny eyes, while its head was lined with long, vicious fangs. Each of its tentacles was covered in tiny sharp teeth and suckers.

It was a rather horrifying appearance, the kind that would probably make an ordinary human feel physically uncomfortable just looking at it.

But then Cheng Qisheng remembered that this creature had once found the sight of humans—with their two legs and two arms—terrifying too…

And when she looked at what this city lord was actually doing in the image, the sense of horror instantly vanished.

The giant octopus city lord was delivering answers to the Truth Stone while simultaneously holding a small bottle resembling eye drops in each of its tentacles, dripping them into hundreds of its own eyes.

—Apparently, writing this Book of Answers was quite hard on the eyes.

The fangs atop the giant octopus city lord’s head opened and closed as it continued grumbling:

“My eyes are so damn dry. I’ve lost several already. Seriously, these eye drops cost one nuclear crystal per bottle. This counts as a workplace injury, right? Can you reimburse me for them as part of my payment?”

The image ended there.

The Truth Stone was probably extremely sensitive when it came to nuclear crystals. The moment it heard the word “reimburse,” it immediately ran off with the answers.

Although the image had been brief, Cheng Qisheng had already found a category among all kinds of fantastical monsters from Blue Star that fit the octopus city lord quite well.

Cthulhu.

A gigantic sea monster as tall as a mountain, its entire face covered with countless writhing tentacles. In Blue Star’s fantasy novels, it was regarded as some kind of evil god. Some works described how, when Cthulhu whispered, humans who heard those whispers would suffer mental contamination and descend into madness.

Cheng Qisheng, who had not only heard about Cthulhu’s whispers but had also witnessed it waving its tentacles, dripping eye drops into hundreds of eyes, and trying to get the Truth Stone to reimburse it for workplace injuries: “…”

Her high-tier-city-lord filter had shattered instantly.

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