Chapter 84.2: Subspace and “Transmigration”
[Huansheng Safe City: I bought the Tier 2 version. Does that mean I should recall all my residents first, spend the crystals to upgrade it, and then mark everyone again? Or would upgrading it right now work?]
[Born-to-Gamble Safe City: Don’t upgrade it now. For area-of-effect items below Tier 5, upgrading them directly will invalidate all existing marks. In a place like Green Billow Star, once those marks disappear… I’d bet your residents will never make it back.]
[Luoyu Safe City: That’s right. Also, if even one marked resident moves beyond the locator’s coverage area, the locator will automatically reset. At that point, you won’t be able to find a single resident. @Huansheng Safe City, hurry and recall everyone while they’re still within range, then upgrade it.]
The Huansheng City Lord immediately felt both relieved and frustrated.
Although she had already reached Tier 3, she’d nearly been killed in the past because she trusted the wrong people. Since then, she rarely kept in touch with other city lords.
If this topic hadn’t come up in the group chat today, there was no way a city lord from an ancient civilization like her would ever have figured it out on her own.
In fact, she had only discovered the locator in the marketplace because she had thought of a similar concept herself and asked the AI whether such an item existed.
[Thanks for the warning. I’ll recall my residents and upgrade the locator immediately.]
To express her gratitude, the Huansheng City Lord—who hailed from an ancient civilization—sent three crates of shaobing to each of the three city lords who had shared the information about the locator.
Then she hurried off to recall her residents.
It wasn’t just the Huansheng City Lord.
At least a dozen other city lords who had been lurking in the chat were startled into speaking up.
[It can do that?!]
[That’s such a trap! The item description never says it’ll reset if someone goes outside the coverage area. Good thing the bosses pointed it out.]
[I bought the Tier 2 locator too. I’m recalling my residents right now.]
[Thanks for the warning, everyone. May all you bosses live long and prosper.]
One after another, the less well-informed city lords began sending supplies to the three who had shared the information as tokens of gratitude.
One of the city lords who owned a Tier 2 Locator decided to contribute a piece of intelligence of his own.
[Thanks, everyone. I’m short on resources, so I can’t offer much as thanks. Instead, let me share something I know. Take a look at this fish. [Photo] [Photo] It just looks like an ordinary fish that’s been contaminated by Subspace—a hideously ugly poisonous fish, right?]
The city lords idling in the group chat were all horrified.
[Ugh!! That’s so ugly! My eyes!]
[Something that ugly actually exists? And it’s a living creature?!]
Even Cheng Qisheng felt her eyes sting.
How should she describe it?
It had a bluish-green face, protruding fangs, bulging eyes, and a body covered in festering boils. Its torso was short and thick, with a massive fleshy tumor growing from the top of its head. It had no scales, and what passed for skin was black, shriveled, and deeply wrinkled.
From head to tail, there wasn’t a single part of it that wasn’t revolting.
The great Creator God of Blue Sea instinctively covered her eyes, feeling as though she’d just suffered a psychic attack.
Fortunately, after overseeing Dark Star for hundreds of billions of years, her mental fortitude was exceptionally high.
A few seconds later, Cheng Qisheng resolutely lowered her hand.
Sure enough, the city lord who had posted the photos followed up with another message.
[Sorry for assaulting everyone’s eyes, but I swear that’s exactly what it looks like. Its appearance isn’t the important part, though. What’s important is that the liquid inside the tumor on its head can accelerate plant growth.]
Accelerate plant growth?
Cheng Qisheng’s interest was immediately piqued.
The first thing that came to mind was the Long-Tendril Tree, whose fibers were used to manufacture Flight Wings.
At the moment, they still had tens of millions of Skywing Dragon wings sitting safely in storage because they didn’t have enough Long-Tendril Leaves to provide the necessary leaf veins for production.
The city lord continued:
[I’ve named this ugly fish Ugly Treasure. The name means that although it’s ugly, it’s actually a treasure. Don’t ask me how I figured out how to process it. All I can say is… hunger is a powerful force.]
[Anyway, after catching an Ugly Treasure, have your residents cut off the tumor on its head. Pour the yellow liquid inside into a pot and boil it for an hour until it becomes a thick glue—the kind that won’t pour out no matter how hard you try. Then keep heating it over a fire for another hour until it turns into something that looks like a bubbling abscess. Immediately splash it with water, and it’ll crystallize into a white substance. Spread those crystals over a plant’s roots, and it’ll make the plant grow much faster.]
What a complicated process.
What a miraculous end product.
Having recovered from the shock of the Ugly Treasure’s appearance, the city lords finally recognized its inner beauty.
One after another, they thanked the city lord for sharing such valuable information.
No matter what apocalyptic world a Safe City found itself in, securing a stable food supply was always the top priority.
The more materials that could accelerate plant growth, the better.
Information sharing was contagious.
Once someone took the initiative to share useful intelligence, everyone else who benefited naturally became more willing to contribute what they knew as well.
Before long, the group chat was filled with city lords sharing all kinds of information about Green Billow Star.
[I’ll share one too. Everyone knows spatial storage items are incredibly useful, but the ones sold in the marketplace are ridiculously expensive. Take a look at these green stones that can be fished out of the Sea of Souls. They’re actually Space Stones. Each one contains about one cubic meter of storage space. Keep an eye out for them—if one of your residents fishes one up, don’t mistake it for junk and throw it away.]
[Those are Space Stones?! Aaaah! I fished one up before! I thought it was useless and threw it away!]
[Here’s a scary one. One of my residents told me about it. Make sure your residents know this: if they’re out on a boat after dark, never chat and never call their companions by name. There’s a type of monster that eavesdrops on human conversations at night. It imitates human voices and calls out the names it hears. Anyone who answers will be eaten. After that, the monster takes on the appearance of the person it devoured and continues luring in more victims.]
[Holy crap! My residents ran into something like that! They came back saying there were monsters that could disguise themselves as people, but they couldn’t explain how it worked. So that’s the reason!]
[@Xibubu Safe City, if the monster can impersonate people, how can you be sure your residents… are still your residents?]
[Xibubu Safe City: Huh???]
[Don’t let him scare you, @Xibubu Safe City. Those sea monsters aren’t intelligent. They can only fool people at night when visibility is poor. In broad daylight, the disguise is obviously fake.]
[How does everyone have useful information to share? I’m fresh out of intelligence, so I’ll share a recipe instead. This fish [Photo] tastes best if you cook it like this…]
[I know those monsters that impersonate humans. They’re a type of sea monster, and they’re terrified of fire. Tell your residents to keep a torch burning on their boats at night, and the monsters won’t dare come close.]
[Since everyone’s sharing, here’s mine: don’t throw away any slippers you find. They might have come from an advanced civilization. Look at this slipper—if you stand on it, you can actually fly. Unfortunately, I only found one, so it’s pretty unstable.]
The city lord group chat had somehow transformed into an information-sharing convention.
Every city lord had some small discovery to contribute, and those who didn’t already know it eagerly took mental notes of each new piece of information.
Even the few city lords who had originally shared the information about the locators felt they had come out ahead—they had learned plenty of things they hadn’t known before.
Even the Huansheng Safe City, which had just finished using its locator to recall its residents, returned to share another discovery.
“A certain type of seaweed can purify water.”
Something like this would have been absolutely unthinkable in the city lord group chat before.
Information was a resource.
Resources meant crystals.
Even if a city lord discovered valuable information, if they couldn’t sell it, they certainly wouldn’t give it away for free.
One big happy family?
That was never going to happen between Safe Cities.
And yet, somehow, everything had unfolded in exactly that way.
The dozen-odd city lords who had watched Cheng Qisheng’s battle felt they had offended her. To make amends, they openly shared what they knew about Green Billow Star when she asked for information.
Then the city lord who mentioned the locator saw how eager those dozen city lords were to stay on Blue Sea’s good side and figured he might as well do the same, so he volunteered the information about the locator.
That information ended up helping several other city lords.
Wanting to return the favor, those city lords shared intelligence of their own.
The people who learned from them responded by contributing still more information.
Under almost any other circumstances, even if the exact same events had occurred, such a chain reaction would have been nearly impossible to reproduce.
After all, the city lords were still competitors, at least to some extent.
But Green Billow Star was different.
It was simply too vast—and it was still expanding.
The Sea of Souls contained an inexhaustible supply of resources… or, more accurately, junk.
Even with over a hundred Safe Cities scattered across the world, there was little real conflict of interest between them, making relations among the city lords unusually peaceful.
By now, once all the major and minor discoveries were counted together, the amount of shared intelligence was approaching—or even exceeding—a hundred separate pieces of information.
Barring any surprises, those hundred-plus Safe Cities on Green Billow Star would likely enjoy a significantly higher survival rate than Safe Cities in other worlds, simply because they had chosen to share information with one another.
And the entire chain of events had begun with nothing more than a single question from Cheng Qisheng:
[Is it possible to fish up things from your original world?]
Cheng Qisheng marveled at how strange the world could be while instructing Aether to record every single piece of information and distribute it to all of Blue Sea’s residents.
It had to be said that, although Blue Sea hadn’t even begun a full-scale exploration of Green Billow Star yet, the information shared by the various city lords alone was enough to make one realize just how resource-rich this junkyard…
No.
This treasure trove really was.
However, this world required residents to spread out across the seas. To survive comfortably on the ocean, every resident sent out would need at least a small boat.
Since Tian’ou had been here for so long, he should have accumulated quite a stockpile of boats, shouldn’t he?
Blue Sea had almost finished sorting through the spoils of war.
Cheng Qisheng shifted her attention to see what Tian’ou Safe City and Mingqin Safe City had left behind besides crystals.
The first thing she checked was land area.
Mingqin was only a Tier 3 city, so its territory was an ordinary 8,970 square kilometers.
But Tian’ou was different.
He had fought more than a dozen Safe City Wars on Green Billow Star. Although not every battle had ended with territorial gains, the amount of land he had accumulated was still considerable.
39,764 square kilometers!
A smile spread across Cheng Qisheng’s face.
That was 39,764 square kilometers!
Adding Mingqin’s 8,970 square kilometers, this single Safe City War had increased Blue Sea’s territory by more than 48,000 square kilometers.
Blue Sea’s total area had only recently reached 41,299 square kilometers.
Now it had practically doubled again.
This feels amazing.
If every future Safe City War could feature an opponent like Tian’ou—weak, yet sitting on an enormous territory—that would be perfect.
Cheng Qisheng opened Blue Sea’s status panel.
Safe City — Tier 3
Actual Territory: 90,833 km²
Deployment Territory: 567 km²
Cheng Qisheng raised an eyebrow.
Wait a second.
Tian’ou’s 39,764, plus Ming Qin’s 8,970, plus Blue Sea’s original 41,299…
Shouldn’t that total 90,033 square kilometers?
Where had the extra 800 square kilometers come from?
She double-checked the victory report from Aether after the Safe City War.
The reported territories of the two defeated Safe Cities were indeed correct.
Closing her eyes slightly, Cheng Qisheng spread her spiritual awareness across the entirety of Blue Sea Safe City.
She found it.
A battered stretch of land, still damp with seawater, had somehow become attached to the undeveloped outskirts of Blue Sea.
The previous world, Dazzling Star, had been far too cold for large-scale construction. As a result, the newly acquired territory from Mianyin, Mingxia, and Dihai Safe Cities had seen very little development.
Only a portion of it had been cleared to accommodate the stacked item-buildings and house the newly arrived Dazzling Star residents.
The rest remained sealed off.
And at the very edge of that sealed region, another section of land had inexplicably extended outward.
Exactly 800 square kilometers.
Cheng Qisheng was certain that this extra land hadn’t existed when Blue Sea departed Dazzling Star.
Before leaving, she had specifically checked the entire Safe City to make sure no Blue Sea resident had been left behind. While doing so, she had also scanned the undeveloped areas.
Everything had been perfectly normal then.
After arriving on Green Billow Star, however, Tian’ou had immediately triggered a Safe City War.
Once the battle ended, she had been busy gathering intelligence about the world, watching Blue Sea clean up the battlefield, and following the expedition team that was fishing for Holy Bombs.
She simply hadn’t noticed when this extra piece of land had appeared.
Cheng Qisheng carefully examined the area.
Eight hundred square kilometers…
That was the starting territory of a Tier 1 Safe City.
A suspicion began to form in her mind.
She swept her senses toward the City Lord’s Mansion.
Sure enough, inside she found several photographs belonging to the people of Dazzling Star.
The photos were still dripping with water.
The administrative hall of the City Lord’s Mansion was in complete disarray.
Dark stains—possibly blood—marked the floor.
Photographs hung from the walls.
The warehouse still contained crate after crate of item cards, along with piles of cold weapons.
The faces in the photographs had already blurred beyond recognition.
But their distinctive silver-white hair, characteristic of the people of Dazzling Star, was still unmistakable.
It was a Safe City that had once belonged to the civilization of Dazzling Star.
At some point in the distant past, a Safe City had descended upon Dazzling Star.
Cheng Qisheng guessed it had happened a very long time ago.
Back then, the people of Dazzling Star clearly hadn’t suffered the technological collapse yet—they had still possessed cameras and photographs.
But the Safe City of that civilization had failed to carry its people away from their home world.
Perhaps it never gathered enough residents.
Perhaps it had been destroyed by snow beasts.
Or perhaps it had been swallowed by a blizzard.
Whatever the reason, the city lord and the Safe City had failed.
Neither the city lord nor the residents had left behind so much as a corpse.
The endless snow of Dazzling Star never stopped falling.
Layer upon layer of reinforced ice gradually sealed the abandoned Safe City away, until no one even knew it had ever existed.
None of the Safe Cities that descended upon the world afterward discovered its frozen remains.
Even the later generations of Dazzling Star’s people never realized that they, too, had once possessed a Safe City.
And now…
Its territory had silently become part of Blue Sea Safe City.
There had been no notification from the Central AI.
No world quest.
Those 800 square kilometers had simply become Blue Sea’s.
Cheng Qisheng gazed at the unexpected addition.
Was it because she had taken so many of Dazzling Star’s people away with her?
No one could answer that question.
Still, there was no reason to refuse land that had practically fallen into her lap.
Eight hundred square kilometers could support a great many buildings.
If it were used for farming, the crops grown there could feed several million people.
Cheng Qisheng immediately sent a divine message to Qin Zhi, informing her of Blue Sea’s new total territory and instructing her to dispatch people to recover the resources scattered across the newly acquired land.
It didn’t matter that everything was soaked and dripping with water.
There would certainly be useful items among the ruins.
And Item Cards, at the very least, would still function.
After a moment’s thought, Cheng Qisheng added one more instruction.
“Gather every photograph you find in that area… and bury them here on Green Billow Star.”
Although the highland where Blue Sea Safe City now stood would eventually be swallowed by the sea…
And although Green Billow Star itself would one day be pulled into Subspace…
At least for now, it was a warm world.
The people of Dazzling Star would have liked it here.
At that very moment, the tens of millions of Dazzling Star residents had just finished lining up and were slowly making their way out of the Safe City.
Blue Sea hadn’t allowed them to participate in the battle at all.
In Blue Sea’s eyes, they were valuable logistics personnel, so they had been kept safely in the rear throughout the entire Safe City War.
Only now, after the fighting was over, were they finally allowed out to help recover the Holy Bombs.
Countless Dazzling Star residents stared at the boundless ocean before them…
The brilliant sunshine overhead…
The blazing warmth in the air…
And the light summer clothing they were wearing.
Their eyes were filled with utter disbelief.
“Our God…”
This place…
…is simply wonderful.
