Safe City Ch.148.2

Chapter 148.2: The Greatest Criminal Organization

The Green City City Lord continued:

“At the same time, three months ago, I used my own ability to intercept a secret message that [Zephyr Company] sent to [Norn Company].”

“There was only one sentence in the message. It read: ‘It failed. It woke up. The real shelter is in the wasteland. Destroy the evidence. Don’t let them discover that we tampered with it.’”

“At the time, I didn’t know what this sentence meant. But now, after receiving the information that [Ota] has appeared in the wasteland, I have a theory. The other [Companies], or at least the three major companies at present, are extremely wary of [Ota]. So they found a way to sabotage [Ota]’s shelter.”

“This also explains why that White-rank researcher was able to discover that [Ota] was constructing a shelter. This should have been a secret. Given [Ota]’s methods, its location shouldn’t have leaked.”

“Therefore, it is very likely that [Ota] built two shelters. One was deliberately constructed so that outsiders could secretly discover it, while the other was the true secret location, hidden from everyone’s eyes in the Broken River Wasteland.”

From the translated text, it was obvious that the Greenroot City Lord had become completely absorbed in his own deductions.

Every word revealed the Greenroot City Lord’s delight at having connected all the clues and perfectly pieced together the truth.

“[Ota] awakened in the true shelter, and [Zephyr Company] discovered it. That is why they sent that message. And from that sentence, we can also determine that at least [Zephyr Company] is extremely wary of [Ota]. From there, we can further deduce that [Ota] possesses [Heavenly Punishment].”

“Therefore, my conclusion is that [Ota Company] has a danger rating of five stars.”

Brilliant!

Absolutely brilliant!

There was a timeline, cause and effect, and concrete evidence.

—If Blue Sea weren’t the [Ota Company] in the wasteland, Cheng Qisheng would have wanted to applaud the Greenroot City Lord.

Cheng Qisheng had Aether send this report and the battle footage back to Blue Sea so that the Old Eighths could assess how credible the supplementary information was.

When it came to matters like this, the great Blue Sea Creation God still trusted the judgments and decisions reached by all the top minds and absolute experts gathered together across the entire Blue Sea civilization.

It was within Blue Sea’s expectations that the other companies would discover [Ota].

After all, Moon Silk Star was their home turf, and the technological level of the [Companies] was higher than Blue Sea’s. It was perfectly normal for them to discover Blue Sea.

Blue Sea had taken the possibility into account when it originally decided to impersonate an existing [Company].

The fact that [Zephyr Company] had taken no action probably meant that the real [Ota] had successfully intimidated it.

—[Luck] was still working its magic.

Cheng Qisheng poured herself another glass of milk while watching the believers bustle around the report.

At the same time, she multitasked, keeping an eye on the City Lord group chat. After purchasing the video, the various City Lords were discussing all kinds of information from the supplementary report.

Seven out of every ten messages were about [Ota].

Cheng Qisheng skipped over the meaningless comments like “It’s too strong!”, “How are we supposed to fight this?”, and “Is this what a real Company war looks like?”, selectively reading through the City Lords’ discussion.

[This is insane. The world mission actually wants us to deal with this thing?]

[Seriously, I don’t think I could even beat the weakest Company. Their weapons are absolutely ridiculous. Is this really a place a Tier-5 Safe City like mine should be?]

[Green City is seriously impressive. Being able to gather so much information and piece it all together into the “danger rating” we’re seeing now—that takes real skill. I’ll definitely come to you again the next time I need intelligence.]

[I watched the video. The three major companies are certainly intimidating, but they’re not enough to make me turn around and run. But what the hell do you mean Ota might also have Heavenly Punishment? That’s the Heavenly Punishment that wiped out half of Moon Silk Star!]

[Green City only said it was a possibility. Ota might not actually have Heavenly Punishment.]

[Is that so, my friend? Then why don’t you take a guess at why the three major companies, which have such overwhelming combat power and have been eliminating other factions all this time, received news that Ota had awakened three months ago, yet haven’t made a single move?]

[Anyway, I’m absolutely not going anywhere near the Broken River Wasteland. Even with the Cognition Lock, I don’t want to face an opponent like Ota.]

[You don’t necessarily have to fight them. The world mission isn’t mandatory. Right now, I’m just drooling over those weapons in the video. They’re insanely powerful. If I could get my hands on some of them, I’d feel much more confident no matter what world I went to in the future.]

[@Zeze Safe City, I’m thinking the same thing. If we’re going to do it, we might as well go for the best. I’m planning to find a way to have my residents infiltrate the various Companies and get their weapons. Want to team up?]

[@Mingmiao Safe City, sure. DM me.]

After seeing the two City Lords decide to cooperate, another City Lord tagged them:

[If the Companies discover you, they’ll target you. They’ve already wiped out more than thirty Safe Cities. Aren’t you afraid?]

[Mingmiao Safe City: Fortune favors the bold.]

[Zeze Safe City: Yeah. I already had some residents infiltrate the military, but after watching the video, I realized that if we want to get our hands on the truly good weapons on Moon Silk Star, we should probably go to the Companies. Even the ordinary weapons used by Ota can achieve the effects of ultimate weapons. Who wouldn’t be tempted by that?]

[Mingmiao Safe City: There’s definitely a risk, but the Companies put profit above everything else. As long as we don’t damage their interests before we’re exposed, it shouldn’t be a problem. Once we get the weapons, we’ll immediately evacuate Moon Silk Star with our residents. The Companies can’t exactly chase us off Moon Silk Star.]

Cheng Qisheng: The other [Companies] might not be able to, but [Ota] definitely can.

She watched the messages flood the group chat, one after another, and confirmed that no City Lord had risen up and shouted, “Let’s work together and take down [Ota]!”

Just as she had expected.

After all, every City Lord only wanted to survive. They might not even be willing to fight a four-star [Zephyr Company], let alone [Ota], which was suspected of possessing [Heavenly Punishment] and had already demonstrated its strength in the Broken River Wasteland.

Cheng Qisheng opened the video of the [Company] fighting a Safe City and began watching.

She needed to use the firepower displayed in the footage to determine the combat capabilities the [Companies] possessed in their everyday battles.

The moment the video appeared, the entire sky was filled with flames.

It really was a first-person perspective.

Based on what the Greenroot City Lord had mentioned earlier, he had used an “ability” to obtain the footage of the two [Companies]. So his ability was probably also related to how he had managed to obtain this first-person recording.

The ground had already been melted through, exposing concrete and layers of metal-bearing rock beneath.

Black “carbon” ash was scattered everywhere across the ground.

They were the remains of people who had been carbonized after being hit.

This was the result of a plasma pulse rifle.

Even though it was daytime, the sky was pitch-black. Dust filled the air and drifted slowly downward like gray snow.

Falling alongside the gray snow were various pieces of ammunition roughly the size of grenades.

The moment they hit the ground, they could flatten several vehicles in an instant.

Every few meters, huge craters could be seen scattered across the ground, each more than a dozen meters wide.

Soon, a sound like a firework whistling through the air descended beside the “cameraman.” It exploded right next to him, blasting another enormous crater into the ground and revealing the source of all those craters littering the battlefield.

With one more crater appearing, the ground, which had barely been holding together, finally began to collapse entirely.

The screen went black.

One second later, the image lit up again.

It seemed to be a different location this time, and the “cameraman” was also a different person. He was sprinting desperately while using a wood-element ability to dodge the artillery fire raining down from the sky again and again.

But just as he was about to successfully escape the city, he spotted something in the distance.

A gigantic tank-like weapon.

BOOM!

With a deafening explosion, a shell struck the base of the city wall.

Everything around it began to collapse, and the area around the wall instantly became a sea of fire.

But this wasn’t ordinary artillery fire.

It was a flowing river of flames, almost like lava. It seemed to possess some kind of corrosive property. The fiery river continued advancing along the Safe City’s walls, and as it moved forward, sections of the towering walls collapsed one after another, as though they were melting away.

Whoosh!

The “cameraman” looked up.

He watched a streak of light trailing a long arc as it shot into the city.

At first, nothing happened.

Then, roughly two minutes later, a sound rang out, as though the earth itself were crying out in agony.

The entire Safe City began to shake violently.

The skyscrapers that had survived the bombardment began collapsing one after another, while the vehicles fighting back lost their ability to advance as the ground beneath them cracked apart.

The screen went black.

This time, it never came back on.

Cheng Qisheng tapped her fingers against the table again and again.

She recognized the final weapon.

It was a stratified tectonic oscillation warhead.

A superweapon that had once been conceived of on Blue Star.

Using its immense weight, it could punch through the surface strata and drill thousands of meters underground, reaching the main fault zones beneath the tectonic plates. An explosion would then cause the plates to shift and slide at high speed, triggering a massive earthquake.

If there was a mountain above it, the mountain would collapse.

If it was the sea, a gigantic tsunami would be unleashed.

However, judging from the video, its attack range was indeed smaller than that of the Holy Bullet.

If the Holy Bullet’s destructive power was roughly a 10, then this weapon’s destructive power was at least a 7.5.

But it was easy to imagine that the [Companies] certainly had far more than a few thousand stratified tectonic oscillation warheads.

The good news was that if Blue Sea encountered an attack like this, given the amount of nuclear crystals it currently had stored, it could easily purchase a corresponding defensive shield from the Safe City Mall.

And if all else failed, they could still run.

A Safe City equipped with a “cockpit” could move faster than a black hole.

Cheng Qisheng watched the video several more times. Based on the area of destruction, she determined that the Safe City where the “cameraman” had been located was probably a Tier-5 Safe City.

To be honest, the video was quite shocking.

If the two sides actually fought head-on right now, Blue Sea would absolutely be worn down by the sheer volume and variety of conventional weapons if they chose not to run.

The key was that Blue Sea could run.

And it could run very fast.

What happened next would depend on how the Old Eighths analyzed that report.

That afternoon, Cheng Qisheng received a message relayed by Aether:

“City Lord, the analysis results are out. The Green City City Lord’s theory is most likely correct. The [Companies] have mistaken us for the real [Ota].”

“According to the information we’ve gathered, the major [Companies] all awakened at roughly the same time. It’s highly likely that they had agreed upon a specific awakening date beforehand, while the real [Ota] failed to awaken according to the original schedule.”

Oh~

Cheng Qisheng leaned back against the sofa, temporarily abandoning the idea of picking up the entire city and running—or changing their cover story altogether.

The situation now was:

The Safe City City Lords believed that the Blue Sea version of [Ota] was the big boss and didn’t dare provoke it.

The three major companies on Moon Silk Star, armed with powerful weapons, also believed that the Blue Sea version of [Ota] was the big boss. They had hurriedly destroyed the evidence of their previous attempts to deal with [Ota].

Then, after discovering that [Ota] had stubbornly failed to show itself for three months, they were apparently planning to play dead and pretend nothing had happened.

The great Blue Sea Creation God, who had kept the Old Eighths hiding in the Broken River Wasteland and doing everything they could to avoid the local criminal powers, fell into deep thought.

So, when she tried looking at things from the perspective of the City Lords and the three major companies—

The greatest criminal organization currently existing on Moon Silk Star… was actually me?

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