Chapter 175: First Stop
The group had no choice at all.
Their city lord had sent them here to seek admission into [Ota], and since they were on someone else’s territory, of course they had to follow the other party’s rules.
They stiffly stepped onto the “elevator.”
It was much like taking an elevator up a high-rise building. The only difference was that this “elevator” had no cabin. They could clearly see themselves rising at incredible speed, rapidly leaving the ground farther and farther behind.
Liu Tiegu gripped the “elevator” railing nervously. Like everyone else, he stayed huddled tightly around Yu Bo.
None of their supernatural abilities had anything to do with flight, but if they encountered danger, Yu Bo could use [Talisman Paper] to teleport all of them from this absurd height back down to the ground.
The expressions of the other Kadan’er residents weren’t much better. If something went wrong and they fell from this height, they’d really end up scattered in pieces all over the place.
Compared with these outsiders, who were visibly terrified as they were distributed among the various “elevators,” the locals were far more at ease. Most of them weren’t looking down at the ground at all. Instead, they were tilting their heads back and looking upward.
This made some of the Kadan’er residents desperately try to keep their expressions under control.
On the one hand, before coming to the Broken River Wasteland, they had always assumed that the ordinary people here would look more or less like the locals of other apocalyptic worlds.
Although the combat power of the Moon Silk New Humans was generally quite high, shouldn’t such a barren wasteland have left the locals here thin and frail, constantly on guard, and desperately hungry for food and water?
According to their original plan, the residents of a Safe City should have been able to win these people over with a little food, or get them to work for them.
Even if the residents of the Safe Cities never said it aloud, they would more or less feel a sense of superiority when facing the natives of other worlds.
That sense of superiority came partly from the information imbalance, and partly from the fact that these apocalyptic worlds were still in the midst of their respective catastrophes, while the residents of Safe Cities could at least follow their city and escape from what was, relatively speaking, a more dangerous apocalyptic world.
But now, the Kadan’er residents looked at the locals. They weren’t all particularly robust, but every one of them was clearly in good condition—energetic, relaxed, and completely at ease.
Then they looked at the wariness on their own people’s faces, and the nervous unease that made them look like wild animals that had been captured and thrown into a zoo…
The Kadan’er residents: “……”
—Just who exactly were the locals living in a dangerous wasteland, and who were the Safe City residents protected by towering walls and possessing supernatural powers?
“Ding-dong!”
Just as quite a few of the Kadan’er residents were beginning to question their entire understanding of life, the familiar chime rang out. The “elevator” delivered them onto the back of the Dongluo Rhino, dozens of meters above the ground.
On this slightly arched platform, formed by the Dongluo Rhino’s thick, rough back—about twenty-three meters wide from side to side and thirty-five meters long from front to back—a passenger platform had already been quietly laid out.
It followed the natural curve of the Dongluo Rhino’s spine perfectly. There was a thick base underneath, presumably serving as shock absorption, while four-meter-high safety railings surrounded the platform. Rows of fixed bench seats stretched neatly toward the back.
And above that, there was another level.
And another.
“Good heavens…”
Yu Bo felt that, apart from those words, she was completely incapable of coming up with anything else to say.
[Ota] wasn’t merely using the Dongluo Rhino as a bus.
They were using it as a double-decker bus—and then some.
One of the Kadan’er residents quietly edged over to her. (They were actually standing on the Dongluo Rhino’s back right now.) He lowered his voice and asked,
“Captain Yu, what’s going on here?”
Yu Bo: “……Don’t ask me. When I left, it wasn’t like this either. All I can say is, forget whatever advice I gave you before. The Broken River Wasteland has changed beyond recognition.”
What on earth had happened here while she was gone?
“Passengers, please board and disembark in an orderly manner. Passengers boarding the vehicle, please take your seats and fasten your seat belts.”
There were at least seven levels of facilities on the Dongluo Rhino. Yu Bo estimated that it could carry at least two thousand people in a single trip.
There was more than enough room for all of them.
She chose a seat and sat down. Her teammates immediately selected seats around her, positioning themselves around Yu Bo.
Then, in perfect unison, everyone began fastening their seat belts.
Even though the belts were a little too tight, and their material looked less like ordinary safety belts and more like specially reinforced restraints designed to tie someone up securely, even Liu Tiegu, who hated being restrained more than anyone, obediently fastened his belt with utmost seriousness.
After all, they had all seen the speed at which the Dongluo Rhino could run.
If they didn’t fasten their seat belts properly, they figured they would probably be thrown off after the Dongluo Rhino took just two steps.
Yu Bo finished checking her own seat belt, making sure she was securely strapped in from head to toe. She then turned around to remind her teammates to check theirs one more time, just in case something went wrong.
But when she turned her head, she suddenly noticed that the locals had somehow produced pure-white masks made of a material that looked somewhat like steel and strapped them over their faces.
What were they doing?
Yu Bo noticed that not everyone was wearing one of these masks. Some of the locals had them on, while others didn’t. She was about to ask what was going on when the ground beneath her suddenly shook.
The Dongluo Rhino had departed.
—BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
Sitting up here, they could hear the violent vibrations of the Dongluo Rhino’s four feet pounding against the ground even more clearly as it began walking.
The shock absorbers underneath did their job. Yu Bo could feel the vibrations, but they didn’t cause her any discomfort.
That was, until the Dongluo Rhino had been trotting along for about five minutes.
Then, it suddenly began accelerating.
Just as it accelerated, one of the team members turned his head and tried to speak to Yu Bo.
“Boss, I think th—th—th—th—th—”
A gale came rushing at them almost instantly, slamming into the passengers’ bodies and faces. Yu Bo narrowed her eyes with all her might. She watched as the entire face of the teammate beside her was distorted by the fierce wind.
He tried to speak, but every time he opened his mouth, the wind rushed straight inside, leaving him utterly incapable of getting another word out.
Okay.
Yu Bo now understood why some of the locals wore masks.
They were protecting themselves from the wind.
Because the Dongluo Rhino was so tall, and because it was moving so fast, the passenger facilities on its back couldn’t simply be built like ordinary structures.
Large, solid structures were more likely to be blown over by the powerful winds. Open structures with gaps and unobstructed centers, like the one they were sitting in now, had much greater resistance to the wind.
Damn science.
But what about the locals who weren’t wearing masks?
Did they have some special way of avoiding this problem?
With her face scrunched up under the force of the gale, Yu Bo struggled against the wind pressure and turned her head, desperately trying to see how those unmasked locals were dealing with it.
It took considerable effort for Yu Bo to finally move her head enough to look behind her.
Her eyes, which had been narrowed against the wind, widened in disbelief.
The dozen or so locals who weren’t wearing masks were sitting perfectly steadily in their seats, simply letting the wind slam into their faces.
Some of them even had expressions of enjoyment, as though having their faces battered by a gale were somehow a pleasurable experience.
Yu Bo: “……”
She struggled to slowly turn her head back around.
It was understandable.
This was an apocalyptic world. There were plenty of lunatics around.
Besides, these facilities had probably been specifically designed with wind resistance in mind. Considering the Dongluo Rhino’s speed, they should have been experiencing even stronger winds. The fact that the only effect was having their faces blown completely out of shape was already pretty impressive.
Just as Yu Bo was thinking this, she suddenly felt as though the entire structure had risen into the air along with the rhinoceros.
Wait.
What was going on?
Her seat was on the far left, so she immediately struggled to turn her head and looked down.
The moment she did, Yu Bo sucked in a deep breath.
Outside, they were at least several hundred meters above the ground.
Far below them were buildings that could vaguely be recognized as belonging to towns.
The Dongluo Rhino—
It was carrying them straight over the towns.
Yu Bo stared at the towns rushing past below and could almost imagine that, if this enormous rhinoceros wanted to, it could use those incredibly thick limbs to land directly on a town with one of these leaps.
No wonder even [Norn Company] had been unable to deal with it back then. Its hide was incredibly thick, it was fast, and it could even jump this high. Who could possibly take it down?
Ah, no.
[Ota] had managed it.
They hadn’t even killed the Dongluo Rhino.
They had captured it alive and put it to work for them.
—BOOM!
—BOOM!
—BOOM!
With enormous impacts that seemed powerful enough to shake heaven and earth itself, the passengers rose sharply into the air along with the Dongluo Rhino, then plunged back down just as violently.
They leaped over one town after another, one small mountain after another.
Yu Bo finally understood what all those layers of shock-absorbing equipment were for.
This Dongluo Rhino was basically a combination of a bus and an airplane.
One moment they were on the ground, and the next they were soaring through the sky. She had never experienced anything this thrilling in her entire life.
—BOOM!
After the Dongluo Rhino landed steadily once again, it slowed down and began trotting.
A few minutes later, the Kadan’er residents, who had remained completely silent throughout the entire journey with pale, ashen faces, heard another announcement chime.
“Ding-dong!”
“[First Stop] has arrived.”
