Chapter 151.1: “Survey Teams”
Cheng Qisheng had a similar thought.
She had watched with her own eyes as the Blue Sea residents had turned what should have been an expedition into the outside world—where they had to face the darkness of the endless night and the mutant beasts that covered Moon Silk Star—into something resembling a game’s party-formation lobby.
The key point was that Old Eighth genuinely hadn’t done this intentionally.
Normally, in an apocalypse like this, people forming teams to venture outside should involve teammates first making sure they knew and understood each other, or cautiously probing and testing one another when they first met, remaining extremely guarded.
Then, only after they had gone through life-and-death crises together—saving each other once, being saved in return, and perhaps experiencing a few things that touched their hearts—could they gradually become true teammates willing to entrust their backs to one another.
But that “normally” didn’t apply in Blue Sea.
Everyone heading out of the city this time was a believer. Even if they had never met before entering the free team-formation hall, they were willing to entrust their lives to one another.
After all, everyone was a believer of their God. If one of them encountered danger, the other believers would certainly come to their rescue.
There was no need to get to know each other. As long as they confirmed that the other person’s combat rating or attack specialty matched the team, that person could become a good teammate.
In a game, you formed parties by looking at attributes simply because it was a game. Dying didn’t matter.
In Blue Sea, they formed parties by looking at combat ratings because they trusted one another. No matter whom they picked, that person could seamlessly fit into the team.
Although the current team-formation system had been meticulously calculated and designed by Blue Sea’s experts, Cheng Qisheng still decided to select one team and observe them throughout the entire process.
She chose Kula.
Speaking of which, Kula had also contributed to her “door-opening technique.” The trace of “subspace aura” she had absorbed from him back then had been quite delicious.
She hadn’t expected that Kula would become one of Cheng Qisheng’s believers as well.
From Kula’s perspective, he could see a young woman sitting on the ground, holding up a sign that read:
“Combat, 85, 6/7.”
A man carrying a backpack and supplies walked over, took out his phone, and displayed his combat rating.
The two sides exchanged fewer than two sentences in total. The woman sitting on the ground stood up with her sign, called over the other five teammates, and just like that, the seven of them successfully formed a team and headed toward the hall’s inspection area together.
Their bags and supplies were already packed. Once they passed the inspection, the seven of them could immediately queue up to leave the city and, from then on, travel together across Moon Silk Star.
Kula was deeply shocked by this.
Yet after the initial shock wore off, he somehow felt that it wasn’t bad at all.
He had been afraid to meet people in the first place because he was afraid that others would hurt him. Now that such a possibility no longer existed, Kula could simply choose which team he wanted to join from among the teams competing for him, based solely on their attributes and combat ratings.
In the end, Kula chose a fifteen-person team in which every member had a combat rating of at least 75.
The team had an ability user with a strength-type ability. Not only was she incredibly strong, but when she activated her ability, she could also transform into a state with skin of bronze and bones of iron. Her entire body would swell to more than a size larger, allowing her to shield her teammates from attacks when they encountered danger.
There was also another ability user whose ability was [Stealth]. When activated, it could temporarily make a living being ignore the user’s existence. What was more, the ability could also be used on other people.
Although it lasted for only one short minute, that was already enough to save a life at a critical moment.
From Kula’s criteria for choosing teammates, it was obvious that his main priority was survival.
He had his own calculations, too. A seven-person team was clearly made up of people who were all very strong, and wherever they went, the dangers they encountered would certainly be greater as well.
Kula knew his own limitations. Although he possessed healing abilities, with his physical constitution, he would only become a burden if he joined such a team.
A fifteen-person team like this was just right for him. There were plenty of people, along with a dedicated silver-haired logistics specialist. Everyone’s primary responsibilities within the team had been clearly assigned, so all Kula needed to do was focus on his healing.
After Kula joined, the fifteen-person team became a sixteen-person team.
“Here’s the profit distribution. I made a few modifications to the standard template Blue Sea published. Take a look and see if you think it’s reasonable. If there’s anything you think should be changed, we can discuss it and make the changes right here and now.”
The person who had organized this team was Lan Yecai. Like most Blue Sea residents, she had originally held an ordinary job back in Dark Star. After the apocalypse, she traveled through one world after another, fighting all kinds of exotic beasts and steadily increasing her combat rating.
Lan Yecai held one of the simplest beliefs shared by Blue Sea residents:
If you wanted to increase your combat rating, you couldn’t stop fighting.
However, Lan Yecai wasn’t the kind of person who deliberately put herself through needless suffering. In an environment like Moon Silk Star, if they didn’t make proper preparations in advance, there would be plenty of hardship waiting for them.
That was why she had specifically stated in the contract that she hoped everyone could jointly rent a vehicle.
Not only would this save them a tremendous amount of travel time, but if the endless night suddenly descended, they could seal the vehicle’s windows and cover the exterior of the car with Green Grass Juice, allowing them to avoid the packs of Night Beasts that were still difficult to deal with at present.
Kula was the first to raise his hand in agreement.
Having somewhere to shelter from the wind and rain was fairly important to him. He was still afraid of the pitch-black nights, and being able to stay inside a vehicle with his companions while waiting for the endless night to pass was much better than hiding in some cave or digging a pit underground.
The other team members also expressed their agreement one after another.
They didn’t mind roughing it in the wilderness, but if they could travel in greater comfort, then of course that would be even better.
And with a vehicle, they could carry more supplies, too.
Everyone began discussing the matter enthusiastically, eagerly offering their opinions. They were so naturally familiar with one another that you would never have guessed that most of them were meeting for the very first time today.
“I heard the vehicles are all being retrofitted in batches now. After the modifications, they won’t need their energy replenished for an entire year. The rental fee is a little expensive, and there’s an additional charge if we want to have it customized, but there are sixteen of us. Once we split the cost, it’s actually not too bad.”
“We can’t rent one that’s too small, either. We’ll need quite a bit of space just for sleeping.”
“That’s not a problem. All the current Blue Sea vehicles have been made taller, so we can stack the beds in multiple levels.”
“If such a tiny energy module can last an entire year, does that mean we can run the air conditioning in the vehicle, too?”
“Of course we’re going to run it. Otherwise, what do you think sixteen people crammed into one vehicle are going to smell like without air conditioning?”
“Oh, my God! This is amazing! I haven’t used air conditioning in eight hundred years!”
Kula watched everyone chattering back and forth without anyone showing the slightest hint of awkwardness, as though they were old friends catching up. He nervously opened his mouth and finally managed to contribute:
“I can repair machinery. I can handle the modifications myself.”
No one thought his interruption was awkward. Everyone simply picked up the conversation naturally.
“That’s great! How about we go get the vehicle first, then buy the materials?”
“Good idea! We can pick up all the supplies we’ll need for the trip while we’re at it!”
The sixteen of them arrived at the vehicle dealership, which was indeed packed with people. Fortunately, ever since Coleen had successfully replicated the portable energy module, Blue Sea had been working around the clock to mass-produce the modules and retrofit them into existing vehicles.
Besides, the principle behind the energy module wasn’t that it genuinely only required a tiny amount of energy. Rather, a massive amount of energy had been compressed into that small module. The rental prices for the new vehicles equipped with them were quite expensive, which naturally filtered out some residents who were short on money. So things hadn’t yet reached the point where there was literally one vehicle and countless people fighting over it.
At present, Coleen was working on the problem of how to collect more energy, hoping to bring down the rental prices of vehicles and other forms of transportation.
This newly named team, “Lots of Meat,” successfully rented a vehicle that would belong to them for the next two years.
Why did they choose the name Lots of Meat?
Because team leader Lan Yecai had decided to name the team after something all its members had in common.
And every single one of them loved eating meat.
When Kula heard the name, he actually wanted to ask, ‘Isn’t this a little too random?’
But when he saw all his teammates wearing expressions that clearly said, “Ohhh! This name is absolutely perfect!” he decided not to say anything.
Perhaps this was simply Blue Sea’s naming standard. Now that he was a Blue Sea resident, he might as well follow the local customs.
The vehicle was driven out, and in an instant, not only did the Lots of Meat team light up like Moon Silk people seeing food, mutant beasts seeing Moon Silk people, or Blue Sea residents seeing mutant beasts, but they all swarmed around it.
Cheng Qisheng was also observing the new vehicle equipped with the energy module through her believers’ perspectives.
This was her first time seeing the finished vehicle herself. Previously, she had only known in broad terms that the energy modules were being mass-produced and that large numbers of Blue Sea’s vehicles had been recalled to various factories for retrofitting.
The huge number of residents stranded inside the Safe City had considerably accelerated the pace of production and modification. During this period, the Old Eighths had nowhere to vent all their pent-up energy, so they had poured it into factories and construction sites instead.
But they couldn’t keep going like this forever.
It was like comparing lifting weights at the gym with cleaning the house. Both could be exhausting, but the results were worlds apart.
Even if the matter of [The Ota Company Is Actually the Big Villain] had never happened, Blue Sea would eventually have found a way to let its residents travel outside freely and get some activity.
Now, they were simply carrying out that plan ahead of schedule.
After all, if the other companies really were avoiding [Ota], they probably wouldn’t take the initiative to provoke employees coming out of [Ota].
Of course, there was still some danger involved.
After all, there was always a what if.
What if a resident went outside under the identity of an [Ota] employee and still ended up being targeted?
But there was another saying that remained true: they couldn’t simply stop moving around forever for the sake of safety. If [Ota] really continued hiding away in a single wasteland, the other companies would only assume that it was extremely weak at the moment.
Besides, the Blue Sea residents needed nuclear crystals to develop.
Once they could absorb nuclear crystals, Blue Sea would, as expected, usher in a major wave of ability user advancing to higher tiers.
Just how far they could advance would depend on how many mutant beasts they managed to kill outside.
In the time to come, Cheng Qisheng would devote more of her mental energy to the believers who ventured outside, keeping a close eye on how they developed.
The moment anything went wrong, she would recall all the believers. At the same time, she would see whether she could take down whichever [Company] had made a move.
If she really couldn’t, then they could only “make a run for it.”
Once they became stronger in the future, if she got the chance, she would come back.
But that was getting ahead of things—
For now, the [Companies] had yet to make any moves. It wasn’t time for Cheng Qisheng to write any of them into her little notebook yet.
She carefully examined the vehicle.
Calling it a car was actually a bit of a stretch. From the outside, it looked more like a mobile fortress.
The chassis had been thickened and reinforced. The windows had been replaced with thick, unquestionably bulletproof glass, with an additional layer of steel shutters over them. Electric winches had also been newly installed at the four lower corners, presumably for getting the vehicle unstuck or hauling obstacles out of the way.
A lookout platform could be raised from the roof, where they could also mount a sniper rifle. At the rear of the vehicle was a hydraulic liftgate for loading and unloading heavy supplies.
Inside, both the driver’s and passenger’s seats could rotate backward. The table in the middle of the vehicle could be folded flat, turning into a gigantic bed. If they pulled down the rods along the sides of the interior, wooden panels standing vertically against the “walls” would slowly descend, creating another large bed.
Sure, sleeping in a comfortable bed at home would obviously be much more pleasant, but as Cheng Qisheng looked at this mobile-fortress-like vehicle and its interior layout, she genuinely had the urge to say, I want one too.
She attributed the feeling to the tremendous sense of security the vehicle provided.
Anyone who saw it would probably develop the thought:
No matter what kind of environment I’m in, I can always hide inside this vehicle.
The rental company employee continued introducing the vehicle’s other features:
“There’s a small kitchen inside, with an induction cooker and a microwave.”
“Over here, we have two vacuum toilets. The shower area is on the left. When the water tank is filled to capacity, it can hold 500 liters. If none of you have a water-type ability user, we recommend filling the tank with drinking water. If you use it sparingly, including for cooking, it should be enough to last you more than ten days.”
“If you need to refill the water yourselves, the water purification system is here. It comes standard with the vehicle, and the instructions are posted on the wall.”
“The vehicle you rented doesn’t have a refrigerator. If you need one, you’ll have to pay extra to have it installed. You can also go to the market and buy a secondhand vehicle refrigerator yourselves. This is the loudspeaker system. A thermal-imaging scanning array can be installed on the roof, but keep in mind that it cannot detect mutant plants.”
“The small medical operating room is here. It’s barely large enough for one person to lie down with another person standing beside them. You’ll need to purchase the medicines and medical equipment yourselves. All of the city’s medical packages for people heading outside are currently the same price, and the lists of medicines are identical as well. You can simply purchase them at the temple.”
Not only did Cheng Qisheng become more and more impressed by the vehicle as she listened, but every member of the Lots of Meat team was also nodding repeatedly, their faces filled with satisfaction.
They had originally planned to modify the vehicle themselves.
Now, it seemed that it was already nearly perfect.
Sure enough, compared with individual ideas, the government—which had gathered experts from every industry—was far more reliable and thorough.
Lan Yecai lovingly patted the side of the vehicle.
This vehicle was simply perfect.
She really wanted to buy it outright, if only she had enough points.
