Safe City Ch.123

Chapter 123: New World: Wasteland + Endless Night

From Blue Sea’s perspective, everything about the greater universe, including [Black Hole Annihilation], had always been based solely on Duxi’s account.

But as the saying went, Blue Sea had no way of knowing whether what Duxi said was true.

Yet what if it really was?

So Blue Sea spent a massive amount of crystals and leaped all the way to Tier 6.

Now that they had reached Tier 6, they naturally had to take a trip into the greater universe to look around and scout the place out.

At the very least, they needed to figure out what the greater universe was like, whether there were any dangers or benefits, how much of an advantage choosing their own planet offered compared with directly descending into a doomsday world, and whether the energy consumption of 1,000 crystals per day was worth it.

Cheng Qisheng gripped the floating handle and officially activated the cockpit.

What did it feel like to operate an entire Safe City?

Actually, not much.

Once Cheng Qisheng officially activated the cockpit, a virtual screen popped up in front of her.

Although there was an option to confirm everything with a single click, she still chose to check each facility one by one to make sure there were no problems.

“Air towers operating normally.”

“Temperature control is fine.”

“Pressure levels normal.”

“Energy reserves normal.”

Only after confirming each item did Cheng Qisheng finally feel reassured enough to press the circular object above the handle that had risen into the air.

—Whoosh!

The next second, the pure white sky in every direction was suddenly covered by vast expanses of absolute darkness.

The Blue Sea Safe City appeared in the greater universe as if it had teleported there.

—The spatial-jump function: each use consumes 1,000 crystals.

At the same time, the entire Safe City seemed to be enveloped in an invisible transparent barrier, allowing its residents to breathe normally in the greater universe.

“Wow~”

Cheng Qisheng obligingly let out an exclamation of amazement.

Aether cooperated as well, flapping its jellyfish-like body while earnestly taking in the scene before them.

The human and the AI brain stared at the view for half a minute.

Cheng Qisheng came to a conclusion.

“It’s actually pretty nice.”

Across the vast expanse of blackness, countless motionless stars were scattered densely throughout, looking like tiny white specks.

To the naked eye, the starry sky seemed much clearer than when viewed from a planet.

Although there were no dazzling colors, gazing at the vast, complete, magnificent expanse of the starry sky still filled one with a profound sense of awe.

Even when the Safe City was stationary, the sight was already breathtaking.

But once it started moving forward, the stars seemed to “transform” into an entirely different sight.

As the Safe City began “traveling at high speed,” the “white specks of light” seemed to converge toward the city. From Cheng Qisheng’s perspective, they appeared to stretch into slender, curved streaks, like continuous bands of colorful light that extended endlessly.

There was also fine dust that turned into brief streaks of bright white light, mixed in among them and shooting rapidly toward the rear of the Safe City, like countless meteors.

“My God!”

Some residents of the Safe City stood on their balconies, while others crowded onto rooftops, tilting their heads back and gazing at the dazzling spectacle above.

Through these “meteors,” they could clearly realize that they were traveling through the universe along with the city itself.

The Blue Sea residents’ eyes were filled with excitement. Some of the wealthier ones even pulled out their cameras to take photos and record videos.

Although they were awestruck, they had firmly believed since birth that “My God is omnipotent,” so what they felt was mostly exhilaration.

The residents who had joined Blue Sea later were different.

The impact on them was much greater.

Before joining Blue Sea, many of them had still been struggling just to meet their basic needs. And now, after arriving in Blue Sea, they could actually travel into the universe itself.

“Oh my God… No, my God…”

Amid the dazzling radiance of the stars being “stretched” by the Safe City’s high-speed travel, the number of believers in the Great Blue Sea Creator God suddenly increased by another large batch.

Cheng Qisheng had no time to count the newly added believers right now.

As the city lord, she could see far more than the residents could.

Her field of vision was “a complete circle.”

She could see not only the scenery above and to either side, but also everything below.

It was so realistic. Standing on the “ground,” Cheng Qisheng felt as though she were floating in the vast universe itself, her eyes filled with wonder.

If an ordinary human were placed in this situation, faced with that seemingly boundless expanse of darkness, even the most rational person would inevitably experience a brief bout of instinctive panic.

Fortunately, Cheng Qisheng had already cultivated Dark Star before, so she skipped the entire process of getting accustomed to it and immediately began experimenting with “speeding” the city along.

However, after speeding around for more than five hours, no matter how novel it was, even she was starting to get bored.

No matter how beautiful the scenery was, staring at a view that barely changed for five straight hours was bound to get tiresome.

When she had first arrived in the greater universe, she had even wondered what she would do if she encountered another Safe City.

But the greater universe was simply too vast.

The Blue Sea Safe City had been traveling forward at faster-than-light speeds for more than five hours, yet forget about encountering another Safe City—they hadn’t even come across a decent-sized planet.

Most of the planets were merely dark-red, spherical gaseous celestial bodies covered in drifting clouds and storms. Cheng Qisheng could only observe them from a distance.

After all, the virtual screen had clearly indicated the radiation and heat levels of these planets.

Their surface temperatures alone reached several hundred to over a thousand degrees Celsius, while their internal temperatures were even higher, reaching tens of thousands of degrees.

Roasting a Safe City would probably be no problem at all.

Not to mention the extremely high atmospheric pressure inside them, along with violent atmospheric storms far more intense than the strongest storms on Green Billow Star.

All Cheng Qisheng could do was lead the Blue Sea Safe City along at a safe distance, following along at a position neither too close nor too far away, watching as those dark-red planets slowly rotated.

It was truly, unbelievably enormous.

Even from a great distance, the Blue Sea Safe City—with its area of more than ten thousand square kilometers—looked like a tiny ant beside it.

No, actually, it was even smaller than an ant.

Its surface area was roughly equivalent to more than five hundred Dark Stars.

Fortunately, the Safe City had an automatic navigation-route avoidance function. Otherwise, if she accidentally plunged straight into one while driving, it would be game over.

Although these planets were extremely dangerous to the Blue Sea Safe City in its current state, Cheng Qisheng now understood why Duxi had said that the planets of the greater universe were resources in themselves.

Not to mention that, with more advanced technology, they could extract various fusion fuels, harness the enormous energy contained within them, and mine the various rock and metal resources detected by the cockpit’s scanners.

Even these enormous planets that constantly radiated infrared heat could be put to use. As long as one had sufficiently advanced technology, arrays could be constructed in orbit to convert their thermal energy into electricity and harness it for one’s own purposes.

The amount of electricity generated by a single enormous planet like this would be enough to sustain Blue Sea for hundreds of billions of years.

Unfortunately, an incredible energy source was right in front of them, yet Blue Sea lacked the technology to exploit it.

Cheng Qisheng stared at it reluctantly for another dozen or so seconds before finally having Aether resume their journey.

Just wait!

Once Blue Sea grew powerful enough to exploit planets like this, she would definitely come back!

For the rest of the Safe City’s journey, after Cheng Qisheng confirmed that everything was fine, she handed control over to Aether.

As the City Lord’s AI assistant, Aether’s authority was second only to Cheng Qisheng’s. It could connect to the cockpit and control the city’s navigation without having to “sit” in the driver’s seat, and its powerful computational capacity allowed it to multitask effortlessly.

Having an AI assistant as part of the Safe City’s rules really was an incredibly wise decision!

With an AI assistant around, countless city lords wouldn’t have to work themselves to death from overwork during the early stages of building their cities.

With nothing left to do, Cheng Qisheng sat in the “greater universe,” eating watermelon while a downloaded TV series played on a tablet beside her.

Technically, the cockpit could “close the curtains.” For example, she could set the lower section to display the appearance of a floor instead of showing the vast universe, making it seem as though she wasn’t constantly liable to take one step and fall straight into space.

But compared with a pitch-black, bottomless view, Cheng Qisheng felt that not being able to see what was happening outside in time was far more unacceptable.

What if?

What if some kind of cosmic monster suddenly attacked from underneath the Safe City?

Such things had even been documented in Blue Star science-fiction movies.

Like aliens, Ultraman, giant monsters, and so on…

Cheng Qisheng was wondering whether she should watch Alien in an environment like this.

Watching it while surrounded by the greater universe felt like it would have quite the atmosphere.

Aether had been floating in front of the tablet, piloting the Safe City while watching a melodramatic TV series on the screen, when it suddenly drifted back to the virtual display.

“City Lord, another Safe City has been detected ahead.”

Cheng Qisheng immediately perked up.

What would happen when two Safe Cities encountered each other in the greater universe? Would they simply pass by peacefully, or would they immediately start fighting?

She had never taken her hand off the floating handle, ready to initiate a jump and quickly leave the area at any moment.

The Safe City within the detection range was invisible to the naked eye. She could only use the image displayed on the virtual screen to roughly estimate its size.

The scan showed that the other city was approximately 25,000 square kilometers in area.

In other words, it was a Tier 6 Safe City, with an overall area belonging to the standard base area of a Tier 6 Safe City: 25,600 square kilometers.

They were both Tier 6, but Cheng Qisheng considered herself a newcomer. Blue Sea was currently dirt-poor, so it would be best to peacefully find a doomsday world and get through this period first.

After thinking it over, she moved her hand toward the raised circular object used for initiating a jump.

—Whoosh!!

The visual effect of the spatial jump appeared on the screen.

Except the one making the jump and fleeing wasn’t the Blue Sea Safe City.

It was the unfamiliar Safe City that hadn’t even revealed itself yet.

Cheng Qisheng: “……”

She glanced at her own Safe City, which covered more than 100,000 square kilometers, and figured the other side must have misunderstood something.

Still, it was a pretty good misunderstanding.

It had saved her 1,000 crystals.

…

The next day, the Blue Sea Safe City came across a planet that had, quite literally, been shattered into pieces.

It must have once been home to an intelligent civilization, because the fragments contained traces of numerous artificial structures.

But after scanning the remains, they found no signs of life whatsoever.

It was probably an early-stage spacefaring civilization, because scattered around the surrounding area, Cheng Qisheng could see the wreckage of spaceships.

She could even zoom in through the cockpit display and examine a section of a spaceship whose front portion had remained intact, yet she couldn’t find any trace of its pilot’s remains.

Perhaps when disaster struck the planet, its inhabitants had chosen to flee aboard their spaceships. But in the end, they had still been left behind forever in this dark expanse, along with their homeworld.

Cheng Qisheng didn’t know what had caused the planet to shatter into countless pieces, nor did she know whether any of its inhabitants had managed to escape when the disaster occurred.

But as she gazed at this grand yet tragic scene, all she could feel was gratitude that she had taken Duxi’s advice and upgraded Blue Sea to Tier 6, giving them the ability to flee a planet at any time.

Next time, if a similar disaster befell a planet where Blue Sea had descended, at least she would be able to lead Blue Sea to safety.

Inside the Safe City, the Blue Sea military was trying to figure out how to salvage the wreckage.

They couldn’t leave the city, so they had to rely on various tools and aircraft they had prepared in advance. They attached chains to the wreckage and used machines to slowly tow the pieces back.

These spaceship wrecks from an unknown civilization would be studied and analyzed by numerous relevant experts within the Blue Sea Safe City, with the goal of improving Blue Sea’s technological level.

The “salvage operation” lasted an entire day.

Cheng Qisheng listened as the believers excitedly discussed how many parts of the spaceships had survived intact and possessed tremendous research value.

It was easy to predict that Blue Sea’s technological level would receive a major boost as a result.

The news also meant that the “travel expenses” for the Blue Sea Safe City’s journey over the next few days were essentially covered.

But it wasn’t until another day and a half of travel had passed that Blue Sea finally spotted the first doomsday planet suitable for them to descend upon.

They began by scanning it from above.

The planet had already become a sea of flames, while the number of Safe Cities on its surface was rapidly decreasing.

It was impossible to tell whether they were evacuating or simply being destroyed.

Cheng Qisheng: “……”

She continued on.

Two more days passed.

Just when she was beginning to wonder whether she should simply choose a random planet to descend upon, a huge planet appeared along the Blue Sea Safe City’s flight path.

Against the darkness of the universe, the planet glittered with countless points of light. It was obvious that its native inhabitants had retained at least part of their technological capabilities.

The cockpit’s scans showed that there were 352 Safe Cities on this planet.

As everyone knew, the more Safe Cities a planet had, the richer its resources were.

After thinking for three seconds, Cheng Qisheng initiated a jump and arrived there.

In the group chat containing all 353 city lords, a new notification appeared as the new Safe City descended.

[—Blue Sea Safe City has descended into this world—]

The next second, another group-chat notification appeared.

[—Chimi Safe City has left this world—]

Cheng Qisheng was still trying to remember whether “Chimi” was the city lord who had joined Tian’ou in besieging her on Green Billow Star when a private message quickly popped up.

[Coriander Safe City: [Coordinates] [Coordinates] Thank goodness, thank goodness!! Boss, Boss, Boss, you’re here!! Save me, save me, save me, Boss!! I’m getting beaten up by a Tier 5!!!]

Cheng Qisheng: ?

It was as if she could hear a notification sound from fate itself.

[Respected City Lord, your little brother—the one who met you when you were both struggling from nothing, gave you all his crystals, offered you his resource income, and has remained utterly loyal to you from the moment you met until now—is currently being beaten up.]

Cheng Qisheng first checked the chat history to make sure this really was Coriander and not another Safe City with the same name.

Once she confirmed it was indeed Coriander, she had Blue Sea prepare the Holy Bullets and immediately descended at the coordinates.

The Tier 5 Safe City that had launched a war against Coriander Safe City was just about to win when, all of a sudden, a Tier 5 Safe City covering more than 100,000 square kilometers appeared before it.

“……”

What the hell?!!!

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