Chapter 174: Dongluo Rhino Bus
“Oh my God…”
It wasn’t just Yu Bo and her companions who were stunned. The other residents from Kadan’er City were equally dumbfounded when they saw the scene before them.
“This looks like some kind of illusion…”
If it had merely been several broad roads with streams of vehicles traveling along them, perhaps they wouldn’t have been so shocked. But with the circular airships speeding through the sky overhead, the scene was even more magnificent than many of their original civilizations had been before their own apocalypses began.
This was especially true for the few residents from ancient civilizations. They had never seen a truly technological civilization, because whenever they arrived in another world, those worlds were already broken and devastated by the apocalypse.
As a result, residents whose original civilizations were ancient were generally much more capable of adapting to the apocalypse than residents from more advanced civilizations. Things that seemed inconvenient in every possible way to the latter often made little difference to the former.
Take Yu Bo, for example. She had always been obsessed with getting a vehicle of her own. Otherwise, she either had to expend a tremendous amount of energy using her supernatural ability, [Talisman Paper], to draw teleportation talismans…
Or she had to rely on her own two legs and walk everywhere.
Sometimes, whatever she needed to do might only take five minutes, but simply walking there could take two hours. It was absolutely unbearable.
Ancient residents were different.
Walking for four, five, or even six hours was perfectly normal to them. Vehicles certainly amazed them, but those things were expensive. By comparison, walking was still the more economical option.
Many times, even when their friends from other civilizations described how convenient and comfortable life had been before the apocalypse, the ancient people would simply maintain an attitude of “I understand what you mean, but I don’t understand why you’re so unwilling to accept things.”
Their understanding of the apocalypse was simply that there were more monsters and constant natural disasters.
Unlike other residents, they didn’t yearn for the conveniences of advanced technology. As long as they had enough food to eat, most ancient residents were perfectly satisfied.
But now, as they gazed at the airships darting through the sky and the steady streams of vehicles traveling in the distance, these few ancient residents finally witnessed for themselves just how breathtaking an intact technological civilization could be.
Good heavens… If the residents of other civilizations had truly fallen from a life like this into their current circumstances, then their unwillingness to accept it really was understandable.
——Clang, clang, clang!
A sound like a bell being struck suddenly rang out. Only then did everyone notice that there was a structure beside them that looked somewhat like a station platform.
The ground began to shake violently, the tremors so powerful that anyone who didn’t grab onto something would have trouble even standing upright.
This was no good sign. On Moon Silk Star, tremors of this intensity often meant that a large mutant beast was making an appearance.
Everyone instinctively became alert, preparing to deal with whatever danger might suddenly emerge. But soon, the experienced residents of the Safe Cities noticed something.
The street vendors, who were clearly ordinary civilians, were completely unaffected by the violent shaking. They even calmly and skillfully pulled up the mesh screens on both sides of their stalls, then fastened covers over the tops to keep the food inside from being shaken out.
Then they looked toward the structure beside them. The people underneath it, some sitting, some standing, some gripping a pillar with one hand and a vehicle with the other, weren’t showing much of a reaction either.
This put the Kadan’er residents considerably at ease.
At least judging from the reactions of the people on both sides, this kind of intense shaking wasn’t some kind of danger signal in the Broken River Wasteland.
Judging from the handles installed all over the large structure, one could even tell that the people of Broken River encountered situations like this frequently. They were so accustomed to it that they barely gave it a second thought.
While steadying themselves, everyone tried to imitate the Broken River locals and remain calm and composed. Unfortunately, their bodies refused to cooperate. Their weapons remained clenched tightly in their hands, and they couldn’t bring themselves to relax their grip.
One person struggled to keep his balance and asked,
“Captain Yu, do you know what this is?”
Yu Bo was currently making sure that Liu Tiegu—whose lower body was rock-solid and whose bones were ridiculously sturdy—remained firmly planted. She and several other team members had placed their hands on Liu Tiegu and were using him as a human handrail.
Hearing the question, she replied,
“When we were here before, we never encountered anything like this. We did experience tremors, though. But that was [Ota] clearing out mutant beasts. I told you about it before—it had power comparable to a superweapon.”
As they spoke, their voices were still trembling—not from fear, but because the ground was shaking so violently that anyone standing on it automatically spoke with a quaver in their voice.
Someone else said, “My original civilization had a similar clang-clang-clang warning sound. Usually, it only rang when a train was about to arrive. Could it be a train?”
Residents who had spent a long time in Safe Cities knew that, aside from certain special worlds, human civilizations that primarily developed technology generally followed fairly similar paths of development.
Most human civilizations had something like trains, so Moon Silk Star should have them too, right?
Yu Bo clung tightly to Liu Tiegu’s arm.
“Maybe? My original civilization had trains too, but I don’t think the commotion from a train coming through was quite this intense, was it?”
Liu Tiegu felt the shaking grow stronger. Even his iron bones were beginning to have trouble keeping him steady. He quickly sucked in a deep breath and dropped into a perfect squat.
“Hah!”
He planted himself even more firmly against the ground, making sure his teammates could keep their balance by holding onto him.
Fortunately, Yu Bo’s group weren’t the only ones with some skills. The other Kadan’er residents who had been sent out were all fairly capable as well. They weren’t going to be knocked off their feet by some underground tremors, and everyone managed to stay upright, albeit barely.
Yu Bo turned her head toward the large facility. She wasn’t just looking at the handrails embedded at various points across it. She also noticed the surveillance devices behind it, hovering high in the air like miniature airships. A mechanical eye at the center of each one flashed red as it stared straight at them.
Could it be that this shaking was actually [Ota] testing their strength?
After all, their entire group had entered under the pretense of looking for jobs.
Yu Bo had just had this thought when she suddenly heard one of her teammates’ voice shoot sharply upward.
“Boss!! It’s a mutant beast!!”
Yu Bo whipped her head around.
Sure enough, she saw an enormous figure barreling toward them.
The middle-aged resident on the left sucked in a sharp breath and murmured,
“It’s a Dongluo Rhino…”
Every Safe City resident who wanted to live a long life would purchase information on all the known dangers and creatures of the current world through the official information channels after arriving in a new world.
It might be a little expensive, but compared with their lives, any price was worth paying.
The Dongluo Rhino was a species unique to Moon Silk Star.
Before Moon Silk Star entered a state of war, it had been the largest land animal on the planet, standing 15–20 meters tall and weighing roughly 35–50 tons.
But after war broke out and [Heaven’s Punishment] descended, the massive amount of radiation caused the Dongluo Rhinos to mutate.
The new generation of Dongluo Rhinos could grow to more than fifty meters tall, with an even more astonishing body weight. They were practically walking hills.
The Dongluo Rhino wasn’t actually the largest of all the mutated creatures, but its hide was simply too tough. It was said that an area once claimed by [Norn Company] happened to be part of a Dongluo Rhino’s territory. They attacked the creature for a full three days, yet still couldn’t penetrate its defenses.
In the end, [Norn Company] had no choice but to find another area.
Yu Bo’s take on the matter was that Dongluo Rhinos were indeed formidable, but [Company] probably hadn’t deployed any super-heavy weapons against that one. After all, every one of those weapons was ridiculously expensive. [Company] put profits above everything else, and if they decided something wasn’t worth the cost, they would naturally withdraw.
Dongluo Rhinos were one of the rare mutated creatures that hadn’t turned into mindless monsters that attacked everything on sight. Their mutation hadn’t changed their diet either. They were still herbivores; the only difference was that their food had changed from ordinary shrub leaves to the tender leaves of mutated shrubs.
Herbivorous Dongluo Rhinos wouldn’t attack people without provocation.
But they were extremely territorial. It was said that of the soldiers [Norn] had sent in, fewer than one in ten returned.
As a result, whether they were New Humans or Old Humans, the inhabitants of Moon Silk Star had tacitly agreed to stay far away from Dongluo Rhino territory.
But now, it had appeared in the Broken River Wasteland, right in front of the residents of Kadan’er Safe City.
Those thunderous vibrations shaking the earth weren’t an earthquake, nor were they [Ota] testing their strength.
They were the sound of the Dongluo Rhino running.
“Go! Get out of here!!”
Some Kadan’er residents had already turned to flee, only to nearly fall flat on their faces the moment they moved because the shaking ground had intensified.
Another resident voiced exactly what Yu Bo had been about to say.
“Don’t panic. Look at the locals. This isn’t an attack.”
Everyone’s eyes once again turned toward the locals.
Sure enough, the local residents inside the facility remained perfectly steady.
As for the vendors, they were holding onto their stalls with one hand while looking up at the rapidly approaching Dongluo Rhino.
There was no fear or panic on their faces.
Only excitement.
And beneath that excitement, there was even a hint of pride.
——Boom!
As the Dongluo Rhino approached the area, it slowed its pace. Its enormous legs, each resembling a gigantic concrete pillar, came crashing down onto the ground.
Liu Tiegu stared blankly at the colossal creature before him.
Just one of its legs, measured across, was at least eight meters thick.
“…I understand now why the roads here are so wide.”
He had originally thought the roads were so wide that they seemed to have no visible boundaries simply because [Ota] had an unusual sense of aesthetics.
…
Song Xi was sitting on the Dongluo Rhino’s head. There, she had asked the mechanic Toya to install a driver’s cabin for her.
It was the kind that was firmly secured to the top of the Dongluo Rhino without causing the rhino the slightest harm.
She pulled the “Boarding” button inside the driver’s cabin. While the people were getting ready to line up and board, she opened the cabin door, leaned against the rhino’s horn, and reached down to stroke the rhino’s hide beneath her feet.
Song Xi was practically standing above the clouds now, but Blue Sea residents weren’t afraid of heights. Standing atop the Dongluo Rhino’s sufficiently broad head felt just as natural to her as standing on solid ground.
“Good boy, that’s a good boy. Come on, come on, time to eat.”
Song Xi brought out a large quantity of tender leaves, scooped them up with a giant net, and dumped them into the Dongluo Rhino’s mouth.
These weren’t mutated leaves, but precious natural food from Moon Silk Star.
Carrying the leaves wasn’t a problem. The difficult part was lowering the net, making a precise turn, and dumping the leaves directly into the rhino’s mouth. That took a fair bit of skill.
After all, there was quite a considerable distance between the top of the Dongluo Rhino’s head and its mouth.
But Song Xi wasn’t worried. She simply tied one end of a rope around herself and the other around the rhino’s horn, then lowered herself upside down and poured the tender leaves into the Dongluo Rhino’s mouth.
The enormous rhino, which had stopped in place, caught the fragrant scent of the natural food. It swished its tail, snorted, and happily began to eat.
Its huge eyes, gazing at Song Xi, held an unmistakably gentle expression.
Song Xi hadn’t gone to all the trouble of bringing this Dongluo Rhino back to the city only to leave it unemployed. The very first thing she did was find it a job with an official position.
Its salary was these tender leaves.
Otherwise, if Song Xi had to feed this colossal creature entirely on her own, even as the president of the Little Blue Sea Guild, her points card would be the one suffering.
Seeing how happily the Dongluo Rhino was eating, Song Xi was happy too.
Of course, the reason she could make this Dongluo Rhino obey her wasn’t simply because of food.
It was thanks to her [Gu Insects] ability.
Song Xi had spent nearly two hundred thousand nuclear crystals to raise her ability to Tier 4, funded by taking her guild around to rob people—ah, no, by doing mercenary work for them.
Now, when she controlled living creatures, she was finally no longer limited to issuing simple commands as she had been before. Nor would the creatures die after being under her control for about a week.
Now, she could sustainably control mutated animals while preserving their own consciousness.
With a clear goal in mind, Song Xi led a team straight to the territory of a Dongluo Rhino.
If she was going to control one, of course she was going to control a big one!
After going through a whole series of ordeals—including vomiting blood several times, suffering splitting headaches for about a week, and nearly getting trampled to death—Song Xi finally succeeded in placing a silver-white Gu insect inside the Dongluo Rhino’s brain.
Her goal wasn’t to make the rhino completely obedient to her.
If Song Xi were willing to vomit a few more mouthfuls of blood, she could indeed accomplish that. All she had to do was have the Gu insect burrow into the rhino’s neural region.
But she couldn’t do that.
If she truly took complete control of it, it would die after a while.
The Dongluo Rhino wasn’t like the snow beasts on the Dazzling Star.
Those snow beasts had a diet consisting of humans.
Dongluo Rhinos, on the other hand, were herbivores. It was entirely possible to keep one around and raise it indefinitely.
After all, what Blue Sea resident could possibly refuse to raise a gigantic rhinoceros whose footsteps caused the entire earth to tremble?
So Song Xi was now working on both fronts at once. On one hand, she used the Gu insect to control the Dongluo Rhino; on the other, she did her best to build an emotional bond with it.
So far, the relationship progress bar was looking pretty good.
Ever since the Dongluo Rhino followed her back to Blue Sea and tasted natural food for the first time, it hadn’t resisted her even once.
“Good baby~”
Song Xi had never even spoken this sweetly to Wang Moning. She patted the Dongluo Rhino’s hide beneath her feet and kept showering it with sweet words.
“Tasty, huh? Let me tell you, once my authority is high enough, I’ll even buy Long-Tendril Leaves for you to eat.”
“Just stick with me. I promise that if I have one piece of fruit, you’ll have one mouthful of leaves. You’ll be the happiest rhino in the world.”
Song Xi had no idea whether the Dongluo Rhino could understand human speech, but she firmly believed that affection was something you built over time. As long as she kept giving it enough sweet words and tender leaves, surely the two of them would gradually develop a bond.
While the “driver” kept repeatedly hanging upside down to feed the rhino tender leaves, climbing back up to fetch more leaves, and then hanging upside down again to continue feeding it, the Kadan’er residents stood there gaping in astonishment.
They watched as a series of escalators slowly descended automatically from above.
At the same time, the enormous structure beside them—which had looked like some kind of platform and, as it turned out, really was a platform—began broadcasting an announcement in the Moon Silk language.
“Ding-dong—the Dongluo Rhino has arrived at the station. Please queue in an orderly manner. Passengers getting off first, passengers boarding afterward.”
The Kadan’er residents stared dumbfoundedly as one person after another slowly descended on the escalators.
Yes, those escalators were actually powered.
They worked like elevators.
Once the people reached the bottom, they casually dispersed, while the people who had originally been sitting on the platform began stepping onto the now-empty escalators.
Each escalator could accommodate about ten people. Once it was full, someone would press a switch, and it would slowly rise.
On the platform, a person was just about to board an escalator. Once he was on, he noticed that their group was still standing there. He raised an eyebrow.
“You’re outsiders, aren’t you?”
Yu Bo: “……”
Believe it or not, she’d actually lived in the Broken River Wasteland for quite a long time.
The man continued, “The Border Station only has one bus—the Dongluo Rhino. If you don’t get on, you won’t be able to enter [Ota].”
The Kadan’er group: “……”
Even though they had already guessed as much just moments ago, hearing the other person actually call the Dongluo Rhino a “bus” still made everyone swallow hard.
Even [Norn] had been helpless against the Dongluo Rhino.
Yet in [Ota], it was actually being used as a bus?
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