Safe City Ch.126

Chapter 126: Moon Silk Star

The idea of using the [Safe City Locator] to take out Chimi Safe City was extremely tempting.

Ever since Blue Sea first made its debut, every Safe City that had taken the initiative to attack Blue Sea had ended up becoming nourishment for Blue Sea.

Only Chimi Safe City had managed to escape several times thanks to its astonishingly fast mouth.

Actually, the two sides had never truly fought the first time around, and Cheng Qisheng hadn’t been particularly obsessed with Chimi Safe City either.

—She had merely written its name down in her little notebook.

But the first time they met, Chimi had fled at lightning speed, which was understandable.

The second time they met, before she could even react, Chimi had once again fled at lightning speed.

This, however, had actually stirred up Cheng Qisheng’s competitive spirit.

It was like a slow-moving cat encountering a mouse that could run incredibly fast.

The moment the cat took one step forward, the mouse would go whoosh and disappear.

Question: If you were this cat, how would you feel right now?

But the great Blue Sea Creator God ultimately managed to hold herself back and suppress the idea of using the locator on Chimi Safe City.

For one thing, using such a powerful weapon as the locator against Chimi simply wasn’t worth it. Why use a butcher’s cleaver to kill a chicken?

For another, she felt that even if she used the locator, she probably wouldn’t be able to catch them.

Cheng Qisheng estimated that Chimi wouldn’t give her enough time to actually pinpoint the location of Chimi Safe City.

Even if she really succeeded in locking onto them, given Chimi’s incredible mouth speed, there was a very good chance that they would zip out of the world before Blue Sea could even open a war passage.

Cheng Qisheng looked at the name Chimi Safe City written in her notebook, closed it, and issued a divine decree, ordering her believers to take the [Safe City Locator] back to the temple and put it away safely.

—There would always be another chance.

As long as Safe Cities did not disappear completely, there would always be another opportunity to encounter Chimi Safe City.

Every apocalyptic world was different. Some worlds were extremely attractive to Safe City Lords—Green Billow Star, for example—and escaping from a world also required nuclear crystals.

She simply refused to believe that Chimi could immediately evacuate every single time it saw Blue Sea.

If fate brings them together, they will meet again.

[Boss, this is fate! It just so happened that you descended into this world right when I was about to kick the bucket!]

[Fate! Truly something beyond words!]

Coriander was still enthusiastically showering Cheng Qisheng with flattery.

Of course, he wasn’t solely focused on buttering her up. After a few flattering remarks, he immediately transmitted all the information he had gathered about Moon Silk Star to his boss.

In fact, during the period since Coriander Safe City had parted ways with Blue Sea Safe City, it had gone through a total of two worlds.

Whenever they arrived in a new world, once they had confirmed that Blue Sea hadn’t come, Wen Huahua would do his best to compile detailed information about the new world’s background and all sorts of other data.

That way, the moment Blue Sea’s boss arrived, she would immediately be able to learn about the world’s background.

Even though neither of those two new worlds had brought them into contact with Blue Sea, Wen Huahua had persisted in preparing the information anyway.

He knew very well that his strength was far inferior to that of Blue Sea’s boss. The “protection money” he could offer would also become increasingly insignificant as Blue Sea’s boss continued to advance through the tiers and grow wealthier.

Therefore, Coriander Safe City needed to continuously increase its own “usefulness” to Blue Sea, making its boss feel that having a little underling like him around would make things much more convenient.

And hard work had paid off.

Look at that—hadn’t they run into Blue Sea’s boss now?

The information Wen Huahua had painstakingly prepared had finally found a use.

Cheng Qisheng had no idea what was going through Wen Huahua’s mind. She opened the files and took a look.

Whoa! There was a lot of information!

Moon Silk Star was a planet that had once experienced great glory.

Its technological level was highly advanced. Although it had not yet reached the level of an interstellar civilization, it could be said that its inhabitants had made extremely thorough use of the resources available on their own planet.

Their downfall had not been caused by an external force like that of other apocalyptic planets.

Instead, it had originated from a great war.

At this point, Cheng Qisheng’s interest was piqued.

Human infighting?

Now that was something she knew all about.

Among the civilizations she had raised, Numbers Two, Four, and Five had all been destroyed as a result of internal conflict.

Just thinking about it made her want to shed a few bitter tears.

Sure enough, after going through the information, the reasons behind the civil war on Moon Silk Star were more or less exactly what she had expected.

Overpopulation led to competition for resources, countries vied for hegemony, corporations recklessly meddled with genetics, and the economy collapsed.

In short, during the ensuing global chaos and all-out war, there was no safe haven left anywhere in the world. Even the countries that had previously remained neutral were forced to enter the war for the sake of self-preservation.

Some countries deployed genetic weapons. Others spread viruses. Still others set their sights on the mantle and used “Mantle-Piercing Glazed Glass”, deploying it within enemy territory and using external forces to trigger explosive volcanic eruptions. These eruptions generated tsunamis kilometers high, wiping out more than half of the enemy nation’s territory.

Once the first country began attacking the natural environment itself, the situation became even more completely out of control.

Eventually, after fifty years of war, one country developed [Heaven’s Punishment].

[Heaven’s Punishment] was an ultimate weapon similar to a Holy Bullet, but far more powerful.

The destruction it caused was even more terrifying than that of the “Mantle-Piercing Glazed Glass.”

The country that developed [Heaven’s Punishment] intended to use it to eliminate all the other nations on Moon Silk Star and establish itself as the sole ruler of the entire planet.

And at first, that country actually succeeded.

[Heaven’s Punishment] became the greatest weapon ever invented in Moon Silk Star’s history, forcing every other nation to bow before it.

However, twenty years after the war ended, something unexpected happened.

During the testing phase, [Heaven’s Punishment] had shown no signs of producing radiation. Yet twenty years after the war, large amounts of radiation gradually began to permeate the regions that had previously been struck by [Heaven’s Punishment].

The radiation continued to accumulate, eventually spreading even to areas that had never been hit by [Heaven’s Punishment].

Until, in the end, the entire planet was blanketed in radiation.

Only then did the people of Moon Silk Star realize that [Heaven’s Punishment] had a delayed isotope decay effect.

And twenty years was precisely the point at which that decay reached its critical threshold.

At that point, they went looking for the scientist who had led the team that developed [Heaven’s Punishment].

Only to discover that he had already committed s**cide shortly after the war ended.

When this genius scientist developed [Heaven’s Punishment], he was already 145 years old. For the people of Moon Silk Star, who had successfully extended their lifespans to 200 years, that was hardly an age where he could be considered decrepit.

Yet throughout the first 145 years of his life, every single one of his friends and relatives—from his parents to his children, including an eight-year-old grandson and a five-year-old granddaughter—had all died in the war.

As time passed, [Heaven’s Punishment] had originally been developed under chaotic circumstances, and much of the initial research data had not been preserved.

The people of Moon Silk Star could not even determine whether the genius scientist who had personally developed it—and later committed s**cide—had known that [Heaven’s Punishment] would release massive amounts of radiation twenty years later.

At the time, the people of Moon Silk Star tried everything they could think of to purify the radiation, but nothing worked.

The radiation caused massive numbers of people to die. Newborn babies began exhibiting various deformities, while their life expectancies plummeted.

Plants and animals alike began to mutate, and Moon Silk Star was no longer suitable for human habitation.

After performing calculations time and again, contemporary scientists estimated that it would take approximately eighty years for the [Heaven’s Punishment radiation] to gradually dissipate.

And so, large numbers of shelters equipped with cryogenic technology began to emerge.

Then something utterly absurd happened.

At this critical moment, when the survival of civilization itself was at stake, the several major corporations that possessed cryogenic technology actually took the opportunity to raise the prices of their cryogenic pods.

Cheng Qisheng thought she must have read it wrong when she got to this part.

She flipped back and read it again.

Nope. She hadn’t misread it.

The major corporations had indeed raised the prices of their cryogenic pods, while the various national governments and factions on Moon Silk Star did absolutely nothing to stop them.

In fact, they even got in on it themselves, using the opportunity to make money and freeze even more wealth and resources along with themselves.

Some corporations even deliberately caused several explosions in order to push cryogenic pod prices even higher, destroying large numbers of completed cryogenic pods to make the public feel a greater sense of crisis.

Cheng Qisheng: “……”

She flipped back again to make absolutely sure.

Yep.

The various national powers on Moon Silk Star still hadn’t done anything about it.

In the end, the only people who successfully entered the cryogenic pods in large numbers were high-ranking officials and talented individuals approved by the various countries, their families, and 40 million civilians selected by lottery.

Cheng Qisheng stared at the number “40 million.”

Forty million civilians sounded like a lot. There were plenty of Safe Cities that didn’t even have that many people.

But Moon Silk Star was a supermassive planet. Even after the enormous population losses from the prolonged war and the massive number of deaths caused by radiation, records showed that Moon Silk Star still had a population of 1.8 billion at the time.

Yet in the end, despite there being plenty of cryogenic pods still available, only 40 million civilians were lucky enough to be selected by lottery.

Another approximately 100 million Moon Silk people had spent everything they owned to purchase cryogenic pods and establish private shelters.

(Coriander’s note: This figure isn’t entirely certain, because apparently quite a few Moon Silk people also tried to make their own cryogenic pods.)

The high-ranking officials, talented individuals, and “lucky ones” entered cryogenic hibernation with enormous quantities of supplies and resources.

The remaining more than a billion Moon Silk people could only struggle to survive on an increasingly dangerous Moon Silk Star.

And then those more than one billion people did something major.

Driven by hatred, they systematically located several official shelters and used mantle weapons to trigger volcanic eruptions at those locations.

And just like that, the major national powers of Moon Silk Star were wiped out beneath the volcanoes.

[Coriander’s note: I suspect those people were secretly incited by the major corporations on Moon Silk Star. The timing of the appearance of the mantle weapons was simply too perfect.]

[Coriander’s note: Moreover, the current power structure on Moon Silk Star is made up of the exact same major corporations that existed back then.]

Cheng Qisheng agreed with Coriander’s suspicion.

Mantle-piercing weapons were rare and precious even during the war. How could it possibly have been such a coincidence that one happened to be sitting in some warehouse on the surface, that civilians happened to find it, and that the launch commands just happened to be stored on the computer?

Perhaps quite a few of those more than one billion civilians had realized this as well.

They simply didn’t care.

They simply hadn’t found the shelters belonging to the major corporations. If they had, they would have blown those up too.

—And now, exactly 150 years had passed since the [Cryogenic Era] began.

One by one, quite a few shelters had already opened, and some people from the old era had emerged.

At this point, the people of Moon Silk Star could broadly be divided into two major groups.

The first group was the New Humans.

They were the descendants of those hundreds of millions of abandoned civilians.

Yes, the radiation had killed most of them, but a small portion had managed to survive.

They had struggled to survive for decades, and the descendants they eventually produced adapted to Moon Silk Star’s radioactive environment. However, most of them suffered from various mutations, and their lifespans had been drastically shortened. They could generally live for only around thirty years.

These New Humans possessed considerable physical strength and could adapt to the various environments on Moon Silk Star. Their mutated bodies sometimes even made them stronger.

Occasionally, mutants would also appear.

But they had generally received little to no education. Only a very small number could read, while most survived by scavenging and hunting.

Over the past 150 years, the New Humans had also developed their own new factions, generally taking the form of [Lords] and [Caravans].

The other major group was the Old Humans.

The Old Humans were those who had emerged from the shelters.

Although most regions of Moon Silk Star were no longer filled with lethal levels of radiation, the planet’s ecosystem had already undergone a shocking transformation after being exposed to radiation for so long.

Resources were scarce.

Plants could bite people.

Animals could mutate.

And recently, Night Beasts had appeared as well. They attacked any humans they could see once night fell, and sometimes even formed Night Beast Nests.

The Old Humans, who had originally been nothing more than ordinary civilians, soon discovered after leaving their shelters that they couldn’t even beat a rat.

Some of them couldn’t accept reality and would rather remain trapped in the shelters until they died.

Others chose to face the new reality head-on. They learned to scavenge and hunt, struggling to survive while also keeping a wary eye out for the [Bandits] among the New Humans.

There were also some Old Human civilians with sufficient knowledge and skills who were able to find jobs within certain small factions.

As for the major factions among the New Humans, they were the [Companies].

Before the cryogenic period began, there had been a total of seven major corporate powers on Moon Silk Star. To this day, however, only four of those [Companies] had opened their shelters.

It was unclear whether the remaining [Companies] had been eliminated by the other companies, or whether they simply felt that the time wasn’t right yet and had not opened their shelters.

These Old Human [Companies] possessed enormous amounts of resources and talent. They had also brought many soldiers out of cryogenic storage with them, allowing them to quickly establish a foothold.

Besides these two major groups, Moon Silk Star was also home to bionic soldiers, robots left over from the old era, and cyborgs modified by the [Companies].

Coriander had specifically added a note here:

Even though this was a wasteland world, the major factions still possessed various weapons and resources from the old era.

If a Safe City actually went to war with them, it wasn’t necessarily guaranteed to win.

Therefore, everyone was currently pretending to be a faction that had just emerged from a shelter.

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