Safe City Ch.182

Chapter 182: Moon Silk Weapons Depot

Tagu no longer held anything back. Once the words were out, he didn’t even wait for the cleric to ask before promptly giving them the location of the large underground weapons depot.

“There are 3,522 sentences in the password. I can write them down for you.”

Cheng Qisheng stroked Aether’s head. “Well, this is…”

What exactly did Moon Silk’s weapons represent?

They were the kind of weapons that, if any city lord came to this planet and got their hands on Moon Silk weaponry, their first reaction would definitely be to find every possible way to get more of it for their own Safe City.

Cheng Qisheng was no exception.

But all along, she’d been thinking about defeating the [Company] and obtaining the weapons she wanted from them.

She hadn’t expected that, despite the [Company]’s habit of stripping everything bare wherever it passed, there would actually still be a weapons depot on Moon Silk that had slipped through the net.

Cheng Qisheng didn’t want to wait even a second.

The address Tagu provided was indeed a former heavily irradiated zone called the Saen Dead Zone.

“Dead Zone” was the term New Humans used for places of radiation. Although the radiation in that area had gradually faded over the past few years, and the townspeople and various factions living nearby had begun venturing inside to scavenge, the name “Dead Zone” had never changed.

Cheng Qisheng didn’t know exactly where the Saen Dead Zone was. After all, Moon Silk was a fairly large planet, and after the apocalypse, there were plenty of uninhabited regions whose locations were probably known only to the locals in the surrounding areas.

But that didn’t matter. All she had to do was close her eyes, skim through the hazy memories of her believers, and search for the keywords.

Hmm… It sounded almost like using a web browser.

Saen Dead Zone… Saen Dead Zone…

Cheng Qisheng slowly opened her eyes.

“Found it.”

—

Across the desolate land, a vehicle with a conspicuously raised chassis, its entire body resembling some colossal beast, sped rapidly over the earth.

Moon Silk was in the middle of its wasteland era. There certainly weren’t any kind-hearted people like [Ota] out there building roads across Broken River.

So the roads were notoriously rough. Mud, potholes, uneven ground—all of that was perfectly normal.

Only, this particular road was even steeper and more treacherous.

Even with shock absorbers and sufficiently thick tires, the people inside the vehicle still felt themselves being jolted violently around.

Fortunately, the sixteen-person team known as Lots of Meat didn’t seem to mind at all.

Team captain Lan Yecai sat in her seat, her body swaying left and right whenever the vehicle bounced.

She simply treated it as part of the atmosphere, holding a microphone and belting out:

“When I get rich!!!”

Healer Kula held another microphone and screamed along at the top of his lungs:

“I’m gonna donate to the temple!!!”

“WOOHOO!!!!”

Kula handled the finale, and once he finished singing, the other teammates inside the vehicle enthusiastically applauded.

At this point, the team member driving, Chang Shuibi, turned off the speakers. Keeping her eyes on the road and without turning her head, she asked:

“There are mountains on both sides. Do we go left or right?”

Chang Shuibi was already used to her teammates singing whenever she was driving.

Everyone in the team knew how to drive. Even Kula, who hadn’t known how at first, had gradually learned. So they always took turns behind the wheel.

And Chang Shuibi’s driving style was particularly wild. Riding in her vehicle was practically like riding a roller coaster, so the other team members would take advantage of the opportunity to belt out a few songs.

Lan Yecai quickly proposed a way to decide:

“Vote, draw lots, or rock-paper-scissors? What do you guys think?”

She hooked one hand over the railing of the upper bunk and, relying solely on the strength of her arms, effortlessly pulled herself back onto her bed. Then she hung upside down from it with her legs.

It was a good way to exercise even inside the vehicle. For a team like Lots of Meat, which spent almost the entire journey moving forward and rarely got out of the vehicle, it was particularly practical.

So if anyone happened to see the inside of this vehicle during the day, they would probably find themselves staring at a bunch of people hanging upside down from their respective bunks like bats.

She casually adjusted her position and raised one hand.

“Let’s vote. I choose the left.”

Kula had been with his teammates for a long time now.

He was no longer the socially anxious person he’d once been, inexplicably sucked through a rift in space-time and deposited on Green Billow Star, who was terrified of interacting with other people.

His recent enthusiastic singing was proof enough of that.

During this period of roughing it on the road—although his teammates stubbornly insisted on calling it an adventure—Kula had eaten and slept alongside everyone else. They had crossed massive rifts where gigantic mutant plants would emerge from the ground, driven through oases in the desert, spoken with the locals, and even gotten into conflicts with them.

And that wasn’t all they’d been through.

When they were chased by mutant beasts, Kula had been carried on his teammates’ backs as they fled.

When one of his teammates had nearly lost an entire arm, Kula had endured the splitting headache caused by overexerting his abilities and forcibly reconnected it for her.

At night, they would spray the vehicle with Green Grass Juice and draw the blackout curtains. Even though the vehicle was soundproofed, they would still move around quietly, turn on a small dim-yellow desk lamp, and huddle together inside to play cards.

The Kula of today knew his fifteen teammates like the back of his hand.

They were his friends, his coworkers, and, in a sense, his family.

So he could tell at a glance that Captain Lan Yecai had chosen the left simply because her bunk was on the left.

Another teammate, A’Shu, said, “I choose the right.”

Kula knew exactly why A’Shu had made that choice, too. He had his own system of logic: since he’d chosen left last time, he would choose right this time. And when they voted again next time, he’d choose left once more.

Yes, for the people of Blue Sea, deciding which direction to head in when venturing into unknown territory was about as simple as deciding what to have for dinner.

There was no need for careful deliberation. They had no idea what either road would be like anyway, so they could simply choose whichever one they felt like.

The team members gave their preferences one after another:

“Left.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

Once more than a dozen people had made their choices, they turned to Kula.

“What about you, Kula?”

Kula thought for a moment.

“I’ll go left. When I got out of bed this morning, my left foot hit the floor first.”

Captain Lan Yecai remained hanging upside down.

“Okay, I’ll count the votes.”

The moment she finished speaking, her expression suddenly froze.

It wasn’t just her. Everyone inside the vehicle, including Chang Shuibi behind the wheel, underwent a subtle change in expression at exactly the same moment.

Compared with their earlier relaxed and carefree demeanor, everyone’s faces—including Kula’s—now carried a faint trace of excitement and happiness.

Because the great God had delivered a divine oracle to them.

Almost in unison, everyone said:

“Yes, my God.”

“We shall obey the divine oracle.”

The vehicle, which had been speeding forward over the bumpy terrain, suddenly made a sharp turn.

After all, an assignment from their God was obviously more important than anything else!

As the vehicle swung around, Kula’s body, secured by his seat belt, was thrown heavily to the right. Relying on the abdominal strength he’d developed during this journey, he slowly straightened himself back up.

When they’d first set out, he would occasionally get carsick from all the jolting and sharp turns like this. But after enduring the entire journey, he’d somehow gradually adapted to this utterly ridiculous style of driving.

Kula’s physical constitution had also improved significantly. Although his teammates said it was probably the result of being tempered through countless hardships, Kula firmly believed that it was undoubtedly a blessing bestowed upon him by his God.

In any case, every Blue Sea person he’d encountered along the way had been incredibly fit and astonishingly powerful.

It had to be that as long as someone was a believer of their God, their combat strength would just keep increasing.

Kula firmly believed that there were no weak believers of their God!

So he would definitely grow stronger, too!

Amid this chaotic driving style, constantly speeding up and slowing down for no apparent reason, the Lots of Meat team turned back.

They were heading for an area they’d passed through not long ago: the Saen Dead Zone—

It wasn’t particularly difficult, since they’d only left the area that morning.

After accelerating, a group of Blue Sea residents sat in their seats, fastened their seat belts, and bounced along as they quickly made their way to their destination.

—Unfortunately, they were on a mission. Otherwise, they absolutely would’ve pulled out the microphones and belted out a few more songs.

The vehicle shot past a mutant beast that had only recently died.

There weren’t any small scavenging mutant birds gathered around it, which proved that its flesh was highly poisonous.

Its skull had been smashed open, while a stone standing beside it bore the words:

“Lots of Meat Team — Saen Dead Zone — We Were Here.”

Together, the evidence explained exactly why this powerful, highly poisonous mutant beast had gone from being alive to being dead.

The Lots of Meat team inside the vehicle had no interest in the corpse of a mutant beast they couldn’t eat. They merely glanced at it before turning their attention to something more important.

As team captain, Lan Yecai bounced up and down in her seat as she spoke:

“Our God has entrusted us with such an important mission, so we should do something worthy of the mission! What do you think we should—yeehaw!”

The vehicle practically flew off a steep slope.

A chorus of excited yells erupted inside.

Chang Shuibi, who was driving, awkwardly glanced back.

“Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t watching the road. I’ll be more careful next time.”

Lan Yecai waved her hand to show that it was fine and continued the previous topic.

“So, what song do you think we should play?”

A’Shu was pressed firmly against the back of his seat. He raised one hand.

“‘God’s Mission.’”

“Agreed!”

“Good idea!”

“That’s the one!”

Kula voted in favor as well. The lyrics of this song were mainly about a devout believer who, under the guidance of his God’s divine oracle, became a powerful cleric who continually pushed himself to grow stronger. It fit their current situation perfectly.

Chang Shuibi adjusted the playlist.

“Got it.”

Soon, “God’s Mission” began to play. On this desolate stretch of land, where there wasn’t a single living person in sight apart from their team, its melody made everything seem lively.

…

Cheng Qisheng was listening to the song, too.

As she listened, she spread her mental power in all directions.

Unfortunately, her mental power was only useful for the extraordinarily expensive treasures sold in the Safe City Mall.

It seemed that she couldn’t use it to detect a weapons depot from this native world.

But that was fine. Old Tagu had a map of the Saen Dead Zone from before the apocalypse. Although a hundred and fifty years had passed since then, the important structures in that region had not changed much over those years, largely because of the radiation.

Following the map, Cheng Qisheng guided the believers forward until they reached their destination.

Lan Yecai was the first to jump out. She looked around the surrounding area, then opened the vehicle’s trunk and took out several shovels.

Then she turned her head with a flourish.

“Let’s start digging!!”

Kula joined the digging army.

According to their God’s divine oracle, there was very likely an underground weapons depot beneath them. With that weapons depot, Blue Sea would certainly become even stronger.

If someone had told him ten years ago that one day he would be happily and eagerly digging away at the ground alongside a group of companions in a region that had once been saturated with radiation, he definitely wouldn’t have believed them.

Who could have predicted it?

The world was unpredictable, and here he was, genuinely having the time of his life digging.

And their team even had a Strength-type superhuman among them, so they were digging ridiculously fast!

Cheng Qisheng was in an excellent mood as well.

After sweeping her mental power across the surrounding area, she could roughly tell that no one had dug around here in at least the past few years.

Old Tagu had said that he wasn’t the only person who knew the location of this underground weapons depot.

Back then, among the children of the thirty-one Black Researchers, once those who never married and those who never had children were excluded, and those who had several children were counted accordingly, there should have ultimately been twenty-four of the original children who survived.

Like Old Tagu, they each had their own mission. They lived in anonymity across different parts of Moon Silk, and at the appropriate time, they would spread the formula for Green Grass Juice to the general public.

Likewise, once they saw a chance to overthrow the [Company], they could activate this large-scale weapons depot.

As things stood, Blue Sea had arrived at exactly the right time.

The radiation in this region had only just dissipated, and over the past few years, the [Company] had been completely dominant on Moon Silk. There hadn’t been any serious new factions capable of challenging it.

Cheng Qisheng now suspected that there was a good chance that even if Blue Sea hadn’t descended into the Broken River Wasteland, but had instead arrived somewhere else, the descendants who had been scattered across those regions—now elderly men and women—might have handed over the location to them after making contact with [Ota].

Cheng Qisheng was beginning to feel grateful that the city lords of Moon Silk were all such cautious, survival-minded people.

If there really were another Safe City, like Blue Sea, entrenched somewhere and using the name of the [Company] to demonstrate its strength, then the “Tagu” in that region might very well have handed them the method for opening the weapons depot as well.

After all, it didn’t matter who the dragon slayer was.

What mattered was who was capable of slaying the dragon.

And whoever could slay it would be the one handed the dragon-slaying sword.

Cheng Qisheng watched as the Lots of Meat team dug away with all their might, while Blue Sea residents from the surrounding areas that were relatively closer to the Saen Dead Zone were also making their way over.

Unfortunately, the Saen Dead Zone was too far from Blue Sea. Otherwise, she could have sent Zhu Feifan over as well. After all, he and Ma Yuetian had already earned the title of “Blue Sea’s Best Diggers.”

Digging out a weapons depot that had been buried underground for four hundred years was no easy task. With only these sixteen people, it would probably take them half a year to reach it…

“We found it!!”

Lan Yecai excitedly stood up with her shovel. She shook her head, sending the dirt caught in her hair flying.

“My God! There really is something down here!!”

Cheng Qisheng: “…”

She looked at the sand and soil the Lots of Meat team had dug through—at most, they’d gone down around ten meters.

Then she looked at the strange black material emerging from the center of the pit.

Wait.

Were Moon Silk’s weapons depots really buried only ten meters underground?

Wasn’t the whole point of an underground weapons depot that it should either be hidden inside a mountain cavern far from human habitation, or dug at least a hundred or two hundred meters underground?

They’d only buried it ten meters deep. Wouldn’t just about anyone be able to dig it up?

Forget about now. Even before the apocalypse on Moon Silk, wouldn’t some random real-estate developer have discovered this weapons depot while doing construction?

The great Creator God’s question was conveyed to Old Tagu through her loyal believer.

Tagu considered it perfectly normal.

“The depth at which an underground weapons depot is buried isn’t important. What matters is that unless the person standing before it is holding the access code, no one can open it.”

Moon Silk’s shelters operated on roughly the same principle. Otherwise, why would everyone 150 years ago have been able to so confidently freeze themselves inside their shelters?

Because once the shelter doors were closed, no one outside could open them.

This kind of sealed security technology had only two possibilities: either someone with the password or access code could open the door, or someone inside had to open it.

Only weapons on the level of mantle-class weaponry could destroy it.

But if a mantle-class weapon were used, everything inside the underground weapons depot would be destroyed along with it.

Tagu smiled, and there was even a hint of mischief in his expression.

“It was built specifically to deal with an unexpected apocalypse. The researchers at the time had considered the worst-case scenarios, such as technological systems collapsing and so on. If they had buried the underground weapons depot too deep, then once the apocalypse actually arrived, there was a chance people wouldn’t be able to retrieve it.”

“Ten meters was just the right depth. It wasn’t so shallow that someone could casually dig it up, nor was it so deep that the people of Moon Silk wouldn’t be able to excavate it by hand in a crisis.”

Cheng Qisheng hadn’t even had time to think further—if that was the case, there was no way the [Company] could have failed to detect such a massive warehouse just ten meters underground—before Old Tagu proactively provided the answer.

He smiled, looking rather pleased with himself.

“My mother told me that four hundred years ago, the research institute didn’t bury just one underground storage facility. But the story they told the public was that, while developing new weapons, the researchers had accidentally created a highly poisonous gas. Once released, it would rapidly spread across the entire planet of Moon Silk, so the only way to deal with it was to bury it deep underground.”

“In reality, those were all smokescreens. Ordinary people couldn’t open the facilities, while the factions capable of destroying them knew about this history. Even if they detected something underground, they wouldn’t dare force their way inside.”

Wow.

Cheng Qisheng was genuinely fascinated by Moon Silk’s research institute from four hundred years ago.

The researchers back then really had thought of everything.

It truly had been a glorious era.

Unfortunately, they’d thought of countless possibilities, yet never imagined that the people who would eventually rule Moon Silk would become so foolish as to stop treating their own kind as human beings.

Cheng Qisheng continued watching the Lots of Meat team dig away furiously.

Digging out a small corner was only the beginning. This weapons depot was enormous, and they would have to keep digging until they reached the entrance to the roof hatch at the top.

Fortunately, the people of Blue Sea were all incredibly strong.

Even Kulawi Jidasumi Sanruo, who had joined later, was no longer as delicate and frail as he’d been when he first left Blue Sea Safe City. He swung his pickaxe with gusto, working as hard as anyone.

On the third day, just as the team stationed closest to this area was about to arrive, the Lots of Meat team finally managed, through their own efforts, to excavate the top hatch—a structure that occupied a surprisingly large area even when viewed from above.

“Whew!!”

Lan Yecai wiped the sweat from her forehead and rolled her neck. Following the divine oracle of their great God, she opened the cover at the very top of the hatch.

At the entrance to the weapons depot, which had been silent for four hundred years, a slightly mechanical voice suddenly sounded in the Moon Silk language.

“Please enter the command.”

Lan Yecai wasn’t startled by the voice.

It was only an intelligent lock. Blue Sea had a super-intelligent AI of its own, after all.

She took the cup of water Kula handed her and drank a few mouthfuls to moisten her throat. Then she took a deep breath and solemnly recited:

“Crab roe noodles, green-leaf flower, don’t feel like talking today, want a piece of meat, so annoying, will she say yes to the proposal, do we really have to record this, took a tumble, that weapon that looks like a cup was made by me, don’t know what to say, I’m really nervous, use my gun and kill them all, I just want to say that I’ve reached Black…”

As Cheng Qisheng relayed each command to the believer through divine oracles, she recited all 3,522 commands, as if she could see the vivid figures of the researchers on Moon Silk four hundred years ago.

There were 3,522 commands for the weapons depot.

Because there had been 3,522 researchers who knew about the project and participated in its completion.

Each researcher had randomly said one sentence to serve as a password.

The passwords might have been something related to food, the researcher’s state of mind at that particular moment, their hopes for the future, or simply a sentence they’d blurted out at random.

The 3,522 passwords together formed Moon Silk’s future.

Lan Yecai’s mouth had gone completely dry from reciting them. She also had to make sure she articulated every word clearly while speaking in the Moon Silk language. At last, she reached the final few passwords.

“…They’ve finished saying what they wanted to say, I want to get off work, what are we having for dinner today, hahahaha, future descendants, how are you?”

On the massive door, a blue fluorescent strip more than twenty meters long began to glow faintly.

The blue slowly transformed into a pure, pitch-black color—the signature color of the Black Researchers.

The mechanical voice sounded again:

“Password correct.”

“Moon Silk Weapons Depot: unlocked.”

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