Safe City Ch.176

Chapter 176: Mine! Mine! All mine!

Yu Bo suppressed her nervousness and stood in the darkness, doing her best to make her expression look calm.

But honestly, it was really difficult.

She had no idea whether these airships were some kind of new technology from Moon Silk. Once they enclosed a person, they truly didn’t leave even the slightest gap.

And Yu Bo’s subconscious danger alarm was going off like crazy.

She could guarantee that these airships were completely sealed together. In other words, if they wanted to, not even fresh air would be able to enter this space.

The airships’ outer shells were visibly sturdy as well. Yu Bo would bet that even if she attacked them with the weapons she had on her, she wouldn’t leave so much as a scratch on their hulls.

How was this supposed to be an inspection procedure?

Even if [Ota] wanted to use this as an airtight prison, it would work perfectly well.

Surely [Ota] couldn’t possibly be so obscenely wealthy that they could casually spend this much money on something like this, right?

At any rate, if it were Yu Bo herself, she would only conclude that going to such lengths and using so many airships to inspect a single person could only mean one thing:

This wasn’t an inspection at all.

Had [Ota] discovered something suspicious about them outsiders and deliberately set a trap?

Yu Bo lowered her head and felt around in the darkness, checking the platform beneath her feet.

The only possible way out was this platform.

But there was a drop of several dozen meters beneath it.

Yu Bo could escape using her supernatural ability, but not all of her teammates could survive a fall from that height.

Just as Yu Bo kept her expression calm while frantically thinking about what to do next, soft, bright light—strikingly luminous against the darkness—descended from the airship above.

What she didn’t know was that, at that very moment, scanners were sweeping over her body one after another.

And on the inspection screens of various airships, one piece of information after another began appearing.

[Gender: Human female]

[Bone age: 49 years]

[Condition: Alert / Anxious]

[Nutritional status: Mild malnutrition]

[Ability level: Tier 3 (Overall assessment: Safe City resident)]

Some ability users had exceptionally sharp hearing and eyesight. To prevent them from overhearing the results, Blue Sea’s airship monitoring screens displayed everything in text.

Lilith had also enclosed the displays in a magical anti-peeping barrier, ensuring that even if an ability user possessed an ability like [X-Ray Vision], the magical barrier would block their view.

In any case, Blue Sea’s ability user residents who possessed [X-Ray Vision] had already tested it.

Cheng Qisheng had no need to worry about anyone spying on her. She was currently splitting off part of her mental power to observe the Safe City residents who had entered that day.

Another Tier 3 ability user.

She held Aether in the palm of her hand and complained to it:

“And a mildly malnourished again. I can understand residents being malnourished back when the Safe City was only Tier 1 or Tier 2, but how come these other Safe Cities have already reached Tier 5 or 6, and their ability users are still suffering from malnutrition?”

Cheng Qisheng could clearly feel that once a Safe City reached Tier 5 or 6, the amount of nuclear crystals that could be earned in the worlds they descended into increased by a hundredfold, even a thousandfold or ten thousandfold.

She wasn’t talking about the enormous fortune they’d made through the Truth Stone.

She meant the sheer quantity of nuclear crystals available on Moon Silk.

A Tier 3 ability user only needed to be willing to work themselves to the bone. Even without much combat experience, they could slowly grind away at it, and by spending a month wearing down a single Tier 2 mutant beast, they could obtain one Tier 2 nuclear crystal—equivalent to ten thousand ordinary nuclear crystals.

And Tier 2 mutant beasts were everywhere on Moon Silk. Tier 3, 4, and 5 mutant beasts weren’t exactly rare either.

“At that rate of earning nuclear crystals, shouldn’t the city lords be able to casually buy a food production line from the marketplace and have enough to feed all their residents?”

Cheng Qisheng still hadn’t forgotten how, back when she was a novice city lord, she had once searched the marketplace for a steamed-bun production line.

Purchasing this production line only cost one million nuclear crystals.

—Hahahaha. She could actually use the word “only” for a figure of one million now.

And for just one thousand nuclear crystals a month, the production line could make enough steamed buns to feed three hundred million people.

What did one million nuclear crystals represent on Moon Silk?

The city lords merely needed to send people out to kill fifty Tier 2 mutant beasts.

In theory, once a Safe City reached Tier 5 or 6, it should already have escaped poverty. At the very least, its residents should have achieved the basic freedom of being able to eat their fill.

And if nothing else, surely they should have more than enough water, right?

Aether answered based on the information it had obtained from the previous Tier 5 city lord:

“Because supernatural residents have such abundant energy within their bodies, they need to regularly replenish themselves with meat. Otherwise, they are indeed prone to malnutrition.”

Cheng Qisheng knew this. It was also mentioned in the Octopus City Lord’s [Book of Answers].

But the problem was, wasn’t “meat” simply the flesh of mutant beasts?

This person was a Tier 3 ability user.

Surely she couldn’t even afford meat?

“Most Safe City lords gradually raise the cost of living for their residents as the city advances in level, in order to maintain the city’s stability. That may be why this supernatural resident is mildly malnourished.”

After all, the meat of mutant beasts could be used as currency in virtually every Safe City.

Aether added:

“According to the records in Aether’s database, Blue Sea Safe City is actually an exception. Under the city lord’s instructions, even though nuclear crystals are now much easier to obtain than before, the monthly rent for a new resident’s housing unit remains the same as it was when the city was only Tier 1.”

“Other Safe Cities would not allow this to happen. Once residents realize that they only need to pay a small price to live indefinitely in a stable and secure Safe City, they can easily become complacent and unwilling to venture outside the city to fight.”

“Even if a city lord can use their authority to expel residents who refuse to work hard, the remaining residents will only pretend to work hard. If things continue that way, it will spell disaster for any Safe City.”

Cheng Qisheng understood.

“So the other Safe Cities keep raising the cost of living? They force their residents to venture outside the city and fight, then bring nuclear crystals and the corpses of mutant beasts back?”

Aether swayed its jellyfish-like body.

“Yes, City Lord. This is done for the continued survival of the Safe City as a whole. Furthermore, Safe Cities need to continually upgrade their defensive walls and various facilities, all of which require enormous amounts of nuclear crystals. With each successive upgrade, the number of nuclear crystals required increases as well. Under these circumstances, other city lords can only obtain more nuclear crystals from their residents.”

It was just like what Blue Sea had done in the beginning.

If she wanted to obtain the points—the nuclear crystals—in her residents’ hands, she had to make them spend those points on their daily lives.

The difference was that Cheng Qisheng had chosen to preserve the cheap monthly rent for ordinary residents’ housing, while developing large numbers of luxury apartments and villas and having the factories develop new vehicles. She used better apartments, luxury residences, and new-energy vehicles that could bring residents greater convenience to extract the points from their hands.

Put bluntly, Blue Sea’s residents would willingly spend large amounts of nuclear crystals in exchange for a better life.

The other Safe Cities had chosen the most primitive method:

Raise the price of food and housing.

For the residents there, simply eating their fill was already exhausting enough.

The key was that these Safe Cities were all located in apocalyptic worlds, where food would only be scarcer. As a result, the residents wouldn’t feel particularly resentful. Instead, they would readily accept the high cost of living.

And so, even a Tier 3 ability user had to struggle just to secure a place to live in her own Safe City, leaving her body in a state of slight malnutrition.

Cheng Qisheng shrugged and made no comment on the methods used by the other Safe City lords.

The relationship between city lords and their residents could be described as mutually supportive, but it was perhaps more accurate to say that they kept each other in check.

Ninety percent of the city lords would never personally put themselves in danger. They spent most of their time inside the City Lord’s Residence, relying on their residents to bring them nuclear crystals and all kinds of supplies.

The residents, meanwhile, needed the protection of the Safe City. They needed their city lord to lead them away from one hopeless apocalyptic world after another and take them to new apocalyptic worlds that had not yet been completely destroyed.

The city lords guarded against their residents staging rebellions, while the residents had to worry about being exploited too harshly by their city lord.

Residents might see a better Safe City and choose to leave their original one.

And city lords could search the countless worlds for more residents to replace them.

The two sides distrusting each other was perfectly normal.

But Blue Sea was different.

The residents of Blue Sea and the Safe City they called their temple were one and the same.

To other city lords, their residents didn’t belong to them. Only the Safe City itself belonged to them. So for the sake of the Safe City’s overall interests, they were willing to sacrifice the interests of their residents.

But to Cheng Qisheng, the Creator God of Blue Sea and its city lord:

—Mine! Mine! All mine!

The Safe City was hers.

The nuclear crystals were hers.

The residents were hers.

Whether she used vast quantities of nuclear crystals to upgrade the Safe City’s facilities and buildings, or used vast quantities of nuclear crystals to improve the lives of her own residents, either way, it was the right thing to do.

If the Safe City was developed and built up, she was happy.

If her residents grew strong and healthy enough to eat an entire cow in one sitting, she was happy too.

And the residents of Blue Sea would never abandon Blue Sea.

Blue Sea didn’t need to charge exorbitant entrance fees like the other Safe Cities, nor did it need to take a thirty-seventy or fifty-fifty split of the nuclear crystals its residents earned.

Because all Cheng Qisheng had to do was issue a divine oracle, and every Blue Sea resident would willingly—indeed, almost joyfully—hand over every single nuclear crystal they possessed to the temple without keeping even one back.

The outer-city residents might not have such a high level of loyalty, but that didn’t matter. Cheng Qisheng wouldn’t give them a chance to betray her, either.

Just like on this trip to Moon Silk, aside from Lu Song, none of the other outer-city residents had any idea what Blue Sea was actually doing.

They were enclosed within layer upon layer of buildings, carrying out jobs that could be performed inside a Safe City.

Once someone became a believer, they would earn her trust and gain access to the world of the inner city.

Inner-city residents = believers.

Outer-city residents = future believers.

They’re all hers!

Cheng Qisheng’s immense mental power slowly coiled above [First Platform] like a giant python as she watched residents from the other Safe Cities get off one by one and undergo inspection.

Tier 2 ability users.

Tier 3 ability users.

Hmm… No Tier 4s.

Looks like for Tier 5 and 6 Safe Cities, Tier 4 ability users were still considered relatively precious. They wouldn’t send people that valuable on a mission that was practically asking them to die.

The more highly valued ability users probably hadn’t been sent either, because every single one of these Tier 2 and Tier 3 ability users was malnourished.

That was fine.

The mental power of the Great Creator God of Blue Sea made another circuit, sweeping over the heads of one ability user after another.

It didn’t matter that the other Safe Cities couldn’t properly support their ability user residents.

Blue Sea could!

Cheng Qisheng eyed them hungrily.

Blue Sea actually had quite a large number of ability user residents already.

But who would ever complain about having too few ability user residents of their own?

Heh heh.

Since the other Safe Cities had sent these people here as cannon fodder…

They could forget about taking them back.

…

After Yu Bo came out of the security checkpoint (thank heavens, it really was just a security check), she couldn’t shake the feeling that the back of her neck was cold, as though some indescribable yet hair-raising presence had set its sights on her.

But she looked around in every direction. Above her, there were only the round surveillance cameras flying through the air. There was nothing else.

“Strange…”

Liu Tiegu had passed through the security check as well. He came over curiously and asked,

“Boss, what do you mean, strange?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a really weird feeling. We’d better be careful from here on out.”

She didn’t relax until every one of her teammates had safely made it through the security check.

Then she led the group cautiously farther inside.

Next came the job application process at [Ota].

Hopefully everything would go smoothly.

…

On top of the Dongluo Rhino, Song Xi was checking the time, calculating when her shift would end, when Cheng Anjing suddenly pulled her into [Mind Domain].

“President, the president of Changming Guild, Qi Yi, is requesting a private chat with you.”

Song Xi: “?”

She had worked with Qi Yi before, but they had no real personal relationship. Why was he suddenly requesting a private conversation?

“Sure. Put him through.”

Cheng Anjing skillfully switched their channel to private-chat mode, then went right back to playing games with Sylvia.

It hadn’t even been half a month since the Little Blue Sea Guild returned. As children, they had plenty of vacation time.

The private channel connected.

Qi Yi: “Our God above.”

Song Xi: “Blue Sea shall endure forever. President Qi, what can I do for you?”

Qi Yi’s excited voice came through the [Mind Domain]:

“President Song, we’ve just arrived at the border station. Could you please work overtime and come pick me up on the rhino?”

Song Xi: “?”

“What do you mean, ‘the rhino’? This is the Dongluo Rhino. It has a name. Her name is Luoluo.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry about that. Could you come pick us up on Luoluo? I’ll pay you overtime—double!”

Overtime pay for the Dongluo Rhino really was quite expensive.

In the past, Song Xi would have agreed immediately. Ever since she started taking care of the Dongluo Rhino, her desire to earn nuclear crystals had skyrocketed.

But today, she really didn’t feel like going.

“I already made plans with some friends to see a movie today. It’s the latest horror movie, and I heard the soundtrack is absolutely incredible. Why don’t you find a hotel at the border station and stay there for one night? I’ll come pick you up first thing tomorrow morning?”

Qi Yi lowered his voice.

“No, we can’t. We can’t afford to let things drag on. I’m in a hurry to take everyone back.”

He started raising his offer.

“How about three times! I’ll pay you triple overtime! I’ll even cover your movie ticket, how’s that?”

Whoa!!

Our God above. Qi Yi was notoriously stingy even among the various guild presidents, yet he was actually being this generous this time?

Song Xi was puzzled.

“Did you strike it rich?”

“More or less.”

At the border station, Qi Yi turned his head and glanced at the dozens of people whose faces were deathly pale, all of whom were being tightly surrounded by members of the Changming Guild, as though they were terrified that one moment of carelessness would give them a chance to run away.

He desperately suppressed his excitement, but his words still came through the [Mind Domain] brimming with exhilaration.

“We ran into a newly opened shelter for Old Humans.”

“There are a whole bunch of Old Human researchers inside. At least half of them are White-level!”

“And we brought every single one of them back!!”

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