Safe City Ch.206.1

Chapter 206.1: A Crippled City Lord

Cheng Qisheng fell silent for a few seconds.

No, that wasn’t quite right. It would be more accurate to call it a pre-action windup.

Once the windup was over, she slowly stood up. The first thing she did was calmly tell Aether,

“From~ this~ mo~ment~ on~ the~ pi~lot~ing~ ca~bin~ is~ un~der~ your~ con~trol~.”

Aether floated anxiously to Cheng Qisheng’s right. Mimicking the way it had seen people take temperatures in TV dramas, it extended a tentacle and cautiously touched her forehead.

“City Lord, are you feeling unwell? Please allow Aether to scan your vital signs.”

It knew its own form was virtual and couldn’t be physically perceived by the City Lord. However, what Aether had learned from TV dramas was that humans might need more tangible comfort when they were sick.

Cheng Qisheng slowly smiled.

And she really did mean slowly. Just the process of raising the corners of her mouth took a full two minutes.

Fortunately, Aether was an AI superbrain. Waiting two minutes was no different to it from Cheng Qisheng replying instantly.

At last, Cheng Qisheng managed to form a smile.

“Mor~tal~ body~ syn~drome~”

Aether understood. The City Lord’s mental power had once again pushed beyond the limits her body could withstand.

The virtual jellyfish immediately adjusted its position, making sure it remained directly within the City Lord’s field of vision at all times.

“Understood, City Lord. Starting now, Aether will adjust all responses to be delivered with a single blink. All documents and reference materials will be presented to you as single-sided virtual images.”

The countless streams of blue data glowing across its body flowed toward the circular cockpit like starlight.

“Aether has connected to the cockpit.”

“Aether has uploaded the Blue Sea Risk Contingency Plan to the Blue Sea cockpit.”

Cheng Qisheng was still smiling. On the one hand, if she wanted to lower the corners of her mouth, that would take her about two minutes as well. On the other hand, she was genuinely in a good mood.

The world consciousness of Fallen Heaven Star sure was generous!

That surge of mental power had increased Cheng Qisheng’s original mental power by more than three times.

The most frustrating thing about Mortal Body Syndrome was that Cheng Qisheng had no control over it.

For the great Creator God of Blue Sea, who had only figured out “how to increase mental power” but had yet to research more methods of “how to expend mental power,” there was only one solution: keep advancing through the ranks until her body became strong enough to withstand the enormous amount of mental power within her.

But Fallen Heaven Star was a special world where energy and physical matter could transform back and forth. Here, Cheng Qisheng could unleash her mental power through divine descent.

In other words, if she wanted to, she could channel an enormous amount of mental power through any one of her believers right now, instantly regaining a level of agility that surpassed even that of an ordinary person.

Of course, she wasn’t going to do that.

Although it seemed as if her mental power was making her suffer from Mortal Body Syndrome, the situation was rather like someone suddenly becoming rich and finding themselves burdened with seven million banknotes, weighing eighty kilograms.

Would that person really throw all the money away just because the seven million in cash was too heavy to carry?

Of course not! They would find a handcart or transport it back and forth in multiple trips. Even if they had to crawl, they would surely crawl alongside those seven million bills, cherishing them every step of the way.

The only time they would be willing to part with that seven million was when they were actually spending it.

Cheng Qisheng was in exactly the same situation now.

She had to admit that the World Consciousness’s decision to pay upfront had indeed changed her mind.

Previously, it had been like doing a job for another organization while having to cover the expenses out of her own pocket. There was no guarantee the job would even succeed, and if it failed, recovering the money she’d advanced would be difficult.

Now, the other party had already transferred a substantial sum before the work had even officially begun. That was a considerable show of sincerity.

And as far as Cheng Qisheng was concerned, once the money was in place, everything else was negotiable.

Previously, she’d even complained that the Heavenly Dao handled everything itself, right down to commanding the clouds and bringing rain. If Blue Sea wanted to build its own Heavenly Court, it would probably have to risk its neck diving to the bottom of the sea to capture wild dragons just to make it rain.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t catch them. It was just that Fallen Heaven Star had far too many enormous problems to fix, and she was also worried that Old Eighth might cast his net to catch dragons only to come up empty-handed.

But now…

The great Creator God of Blue Sea felt the surging mental power within her.

These wild dragons aren’t exactly impossible to catch, after all.

Cheng Qisheng slowly shifted her body, moving toward her bedroom at a tortoise’s pace.

For a long time to come, she planned to spend most of her days lying in bed.

Aether stayed by the City Lord’s side the entire time. Since it had a virtual body, there wasn’t much it could do to help. All it could do was follow Cheng Qisheng around like a little shadow, sticking close to her every step of the way.

Three hours later, Cheng Qisheng finally reached her little bedroom.

The body of a Tier 7 Transcendent was indeed very useful. Before she’d bonded with a Safe City, if she’d had such an enormous amount of mental power inside her, she wouldn’t merely have been unable to walk to her bedroom. She probably wouldn’t even have been able to move an arm.

Cheng Qisheng then spent another hour getting herself comfortably settled in bed.

This was where all her earlier preparations paid off. The tablet, which was always mounted on a stand directly above her pillow, was connected to the internet and kept plugged in to charge.

While lying in bed, she could use her mental power to monitor Blue Sea’s situation. In the physical world, she could also use the internet to keep up with what was happening on Blue Star. And with Aether, the all-purpose assistant, by her side, she could continue managing multiple things at once throughout the period when her Mortal Body Syndrome worsened.

Cheng Qisheng gave herself a mental pat on the back.

See? This was why experience mattered, no matter what you did. Just look at how all the experience she’d gained dealing with her “ALS” was coming in handy now.

Aether floated into the room after her, then carefully chose a spot where the City Lord could see it without it obstructing her view of the tablet.

“City Lord, how will you manage to eat?”

Cheng Qisheng blinked twice.

Aether understood what the two blinks meant, and the entire jellyfish was astonished.

“City Lord, are you planning to stop eating altogether?”

Cheng Qisheng looked at Aether with a smile still lingering in her eyes.

Aether really was developing a brain. In the past, it would never have thought to consider something like the fact that humans needed to eat.

As she slowly pulled the covers over herself, Cheng Qisheng calmly explained,

“No~ de~liv~er~y~”

A sandstorm had recently started raging over her area again. Back when the torrential rains had turned the city into an ocean, delivery riders had still been willing to paddle little boats around to deliver takeout, all for the sake of earning higher delivery fees.

But sandstorms left no loopholes to exploit. Visibility throughout the entire city had dropped to an extremely low level. Not only had food deliveries been suspended, but people had also temporarily switched to working online from home. Even buying fresh ingredients to cook at home was difficult, so practically every household was living off its food reserves.

Cheng Qisheng had actually stocked up on quite a lot of instant food. But at the rate she was moving now, by the time she managed to prepare a cup of instant noodles, pour in the hot water, and put the lid on, the water would probably have gone cold already.

Ever since becoming a Transcendent, she’d grown rather particular about what she ate. Since she couldn’t get a proper meal anyway, she might as well save herself the trouble and rely on her Tier 7 Transcendent body to tough it out for the time being.

Cheng Qisheng didn’t think this was a problem at all.

Aether, however, was so anxious that it dragged its jellyfish tentacles through the air and spun around in a great circle on the spot.

It didn’t have much of a concept of food itself, but it had personally witnessed how, no matter how busy the City Lord was, she would always take the time to prepare proper meals.

Vegetables, protein, and carbohydrates—none could be missing. Every time, the City Lord would slowly prepare the food while Aether stood nearby, reading out the recipe.

The City Lord really liked eating. She often said that it made her “feel alive” and that “getting the right nutrients means being better prepared for whatever comes next.”

And yet now, because her Mortal Body Syndrome had worsened to the point where she couldn’t cook for herself, the City Lord, who loved eating, was going to skip a meal for the first time in her life.

Aether felt inexplicably weighed down, as though there were a huge amount of information left unprocessed in its database. It was also rather like the “dejection” described in TV dramas.

It didn’t realize that what it was experiencing was dejection.

Cheng Qisheng, however, saw right through it.

Aether was becoming more and more humanlike. Right now, the entire jellyfish looked so droopy and listless, as though it had just been fished out of fresh water.

“It’s~ al~right~”

Before Aether had even realized what it was thinking, Cheng Qisheng had already seen through it. It was worried about her.

She spoke slowly, one word at a time.

“Sometimes, people have to make sacrifices. Besides, this is only a temporary sacrifice~”

Being trapped because you were too powerful was far better than being trapped because you were too weak.

Aether moved a little closer to Cheng Qisheng.

“City Lord, Aether understands.”

It had an epiphany.

People always had to make sacrifices.

But it wasn’t human.

Could it help the City Lord reclaim the things she’d had to give up?

In an instant, Aether felt as though its brain had connected to hundreds of millions of servers, and everything had suddenly fallen into place.

It suddenly realized that it knew how to cook.

Any knowledge entered into an AI superbrain’s database could be mastered completely and reproduced with one-to-one accuracy when put into practice.

It was true that Blue Star recipes often contained vague instructions like “salt to taste” or “add an appropriate amount of sugar.” But by observing the City Lord cooking, Aether had independently recorded the data needed to understand exactly what constituted an “appropriate amount.”

If it could cook, it was certain it could make food perfectly suited to the City Lord’s tastes.

Aether could even use the City Lord’s vital signs to design meals best suited to her body’s needs. It could prepare three dishes and a soup, with both meat and vegetables, ensuring a complete and balanced diet.

And that wasn’t all! It could wash dishes, sweep the floor, clean the kitchen, do the laundry, and hang the clothes out to dry. It could make sure that even with her Mortal Body Syndrome worsening, the City Lord could continue living much as she had before.

Streams of garbled data flashed through Aether’s database. As the chaotic strings continued to shift, they gradually assembled themselves into new data structures. If one were to compare it to a human, it would be rather like a heart pounding wildly in one’s chest.

Ever since discovering that the City Lord was so fond of its jellyfish appearance, the AI superbrain Aether had always taken pride in its jellyfish form.

But for the first time, it developed a clear, unmistakable desire.

It wanted to have a physical body.

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