Safe City Ch.162.2

Chapter 162.2: …why hadn’t any Safe City descended?

Right now, she really wanted to know what kind of absolute genius had created the Safe City and the Mall in the first place.

Their ability to dress things up with words was simply too powerful.

Cheng Qisheng pulled her thoughts back and focused her attention on the Truth Stone. Once the binding was complete, she roughly understood how the Truth Stone operated.

It could be understood as having two components.

The ten-meter-tall red jade slab was essentially its peripheral device.

Something like a computer’s monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers.

The smaller piece of red jade, meanwhile, was equivalent to its main unit.

Something like the computer’s core chassis, containing the CPU, motherboard, hard drive, and RAM.

As the Truth Stone’s owner, Cheng Qisheng could now use its “main unit” to remotely control its monitor and other peripheral interactive components.

In other words, she could move the Truth Stone herself, and she could also make the Truth Stone move on its own.

As for how exactly the Truth Stone was capable of asking questions about anything and everything in the world, Cheng Qisheng would have to test it herself.

She thought for a moment, then used the same method she used to send divine revelations to her believers to ask the Truth Stone:

“Truth Stone, who is the existence that created the Safe City?”

The ten-meter-tall red stone slab responsible for displaying the answer immediately changed.

A huge vortex appeared at its center. The vortex spun faster and faster until, finally, it stopped.

The red stone slab displayed row upon row of densely packed zeros.

At first, Cheng Qisheng thought this was simply part of the process for answering a question. The stone was covered entirely in zeros, which she assumed was similar to the densely packed magic runes that appeared on Lilith’s magical creations when they were operating.

It wasn’t until the Truth Stone transmitted an emotion of waiting that she noticed the 9 at the very beginning, above the enormous stone slab covered in ten-meter-high rows of zeros.

This wasn’t the answer.

This was the number of crystals required to answer the question.

Cheng Qisheng: “…”

She didn’t even bother counting.

Put it this way: each of those zeros was roughly as narrow as a strand of hair, and they covered the entire ten-meter-tall Truth Stone. Even if she used Zhu Feifan’s sea-monster brain to do the math, she could tell that she couldn’t possibly afford it.

She had originally hoped she might be able to get some information for free, so Cheng Qisheng was a little disappointed.

“Do I have to pay nuclear crystals to ask questions too?”

The Truth Stone immediately panicked.

Then, apparently afraid that Cheng Qisheng would get angry, it hurriedly sent her a series of vague images explaining the situation.

A massive amount of information surged toward Cheng Qisheng like a tidal wave.

If it had been anyone else, even if their mind hadn’t been overwhelmed by such a flood of images, they probably would have needed some time to recover.

But Cheng Qisheng wasn’t particularly affected.

She had been able to withstand the passage of hundreds of millions of years on Dark Star. This was merely a large quantity of images. To her, watching them was no different from watching television.

In the images, someone would ask a question, and the Truth Stone would determine how many nuclear crystals were required to answer it.

The questioner would then provide the nuclear crystals, after which the question would be transmitted through the vortices on the Truth Stone to countless worlds.

The nuclear crystals transformed into energy carrying the question and traveled to the beings capable of answering it.

And when these beings—some human, others all kinds of strange creatures—answered the question, part of the energy transformed from the nuclear crystals would remain around them as payment for answering.

This energy would change according to the state of the world where they lived.

For example, if the being answering the question came from a cultivation world, the energy would be converted into spirit stones from that cultivation world.

If the being answering the question came from a magic world, the energy would be converted into magic stones.

Cheng Qisheng could even see a bizarre, grotesque world filled with ghostly shadows. A thin, withered black hand that had answered a question accepted the ghost money transformed from the nuclear crystals.

This was part of the rules.

Cheng Qisheng could sense that the Truth Stone itself actually had no desire whatsoever to distribute energy to the beings answering the questions.

But that was simply how the rules worked. It could only deliver an answer to the questioner after first paying the one who provided the answer.

Once the questioner received the answer, the transaction was considered complete.

The remaining nuclear crystals belonged to the Truth Stone.

Yes.

It got a cut too.

The stereotypical impression people had of creations like this was that they would always be perfectly impartial.

But that wasn’t actually the case.

The Truth Stone really would only reveal the correct truth.

But nobody had said it couldn’t line its own pockets.

Actually, thinking about it carefully, it made perfect sense.

It was a living creature. It had its own emotions, and because it was afraid of dying, it had readily agreed to bind itself to Cheng Qisheng.

So it wasn’t particularly surprising that it would line its own pockets, steal from under everyone’s noses, and skim every last bit of crystal that passed through its hands.

Cheng Qisheng could see that the Truth Stone often adjusted its prices according to whom it was dealing with.

For the exact same question, if it saw that the person asking was wealthy versus relatively poor, the number of crystals it demanded would be different.

Quite often, the questioner might pay 100 nuclear crystals. The answerer would receive 1, another 10 would be deducted for transmitting the question to the various worlds, and the remaining 89 would all go to the Truth Stone.

No wonder it had so much energy stored inside it.

It had gotten all of it by eating nuclear crystals.

It was the perfect embodiment of ‘the middleman pocketing the difference’.

Cheng Qisheng understood now. She reached out with her mental power and gently rubbed the area where the Truth Stone’s “head” would be.

“So you didn’t want to bind with me because once you were bound to me, I’d be the one deciding how much of the cut you get.”

The Truth Stone first sent Cheng Qisheng a feeling of ‘pitifulness’, then showed her some images of Truth Stones that had “lost weight from hunger” because they hadn’t been able to eat any crystals.

Cheng Qisheng thus learned that the Truth Stone needed to replenish its energy from time to time. If it couldn’t get enough energy—in other words, nuclear crystals—it would have to enter a dormant state, essentially using sleep to recharge itself.

And a Truth Stone that wasn’t sufficiently charged could only open a limited number of spacetime channels when processing questions. Many questions would be impossible to answer, creating a vicious cycle.

The Truth Stone couldn’t answer questions → it couldn’t earn nuclear crystals → it had no energy to absorb and became increasingly listless → it became even less capable of answering questions.

The images it sent over conveyed one central message:

“You can’t refuse to give me my share.”

Cheng Qisheng could sense that the Truth Stone’s mental state was roughly equivalent to that of a seven- or eight-year-old human child.

It still didn’t understand human nature very well, but it had already developed a certain cleverness. It had learned how to play pitiful and how to use its own interests to convince its master not to let it go hungry.

“Don’t worry.”

Cheng Qisheng was quite friendly toward children.

Especially children who could earn her huge amounts of nuclear crystals.

She had the Blue Sea residents bring over two thousand nuclear crystals, then personally used her mental power to wrap them up and feed them into its vortex.

“You won’t go hungry. But you—you’ve opened so many channels before. You should be able to answer plenty of questions. How did you end up in a state where you have to rely on going dormant just to accumulate energy?”

At the mention of this, the Truth Stone became even more aggrieved.

It sent Cheng Qisheng another batch of blurry images.

In them, the Truth Stone could be seen being kept in an opulent hall. Every so often, people would come to ask it questions, and it would jack up its prices as much as possible, eating until it was practically bursting with energy.

It had originally only been five meters tall.

It had been fed until it reached a full twenty meters.

Then, suddenly, one day, there was a violent shaking.

The magnificent hall, along with everything around it, shattered into pieces.

The Truth Stone was surprisingly durable. The destruction didn’t hurt it, and as it fell from the sky, it saw that the world outside was in the middle of a war.

One floating Safe City after another was engaged in fierce battle. More Safe Cities fell from the sky, crashing violently into the ground.

Of course, the Truth Stone knew about the existence of Safe Cities. It had even been sold through the Safe City Mall before.

The treant who had bought it, however, had been rather weak. Once the Truth Stone realized there wasn’t much nuclear crystal to squeeze out of him, it had simply slipped away.

Only later did it come to this Tier 5 Safe City, which couldn’t bind it either, but at least had enough nuclear crystals to keep it fed.

It understood that the Safe City that had been supporting it had been destroyed.

But it wasn’t worried.

After all, it knew that it was a treasure.

And treasures!

Were always fought over!

So it quietly remained in the ruins, waiting for the battle to end and for the victor to take it away.

But then the victor turned out to be completely incapable of recognizing a treasure when it saw one!!!

The victorious Safe City didn’t recognize the Truth Stone at all and simply passed it by.

The Truth Stone transmitted emotions of anger and grievance.

It had been abandoned on this planet.

The natives of this planet weren’t any better at recognizing its value. No one asked it any questions, and some people even thought it was valuable jade and tried to break pieces off it.

Although the Truth Stone could answer any question in the world, it couldn’t speak on its own.

It could only provide an answer when someone asked it a question. If nobody asked anything, it was no different from an ordinary stone.

Oh, no.

There was one difference.

It could run faster than a stone.

After trying several places and finding that nobody on Moon Silk would ask it any questions, the Truth Stone could no longer replenish its energy.

It gradually withered until it was only ten meters tall.

In the end, it had no choice but to choose an ocean and enter dormancy there, using sleep to recharge itself.

Only then did Cheng Qisheng realize that although the Truth Stone could use its own channels to carry questions to various worlds, it itself actually couldn’t leave the planet it was on.

It could only run around within the planet.

But it was sturdy enough that even if the planet were destroyed and exploded, the Truth Stone itself wouldn’t be affected. It would simply float through space, waiting for the next lucky person to fish it out.

Of course, being fished out while still on a planet was even better.

Especially if it was picked up by a Safe City. That would be equivalent to being carried to one world after another, where it could choose a new patron each time.

So when Zhu Feifan was salvaging the Truth Stone, it hadn’t even considered running away.

In fact, it had deliberately reduced its own weight and cooperated completely, allowing itself to be hauled up.

It wasn’t until it reached the shore and Cheng Qisheng’s mental power spread over it that it realized something was wrong.

Unable to speak, the Truth Stone conveyed one image after another, its emotions full of grievance, essentially explaining why it had ended up here.

As Cheng Qisheng stroked its “head,” she immediately zeroed in on the important part.

“You were brought here by a Safe City?”

“Safe Cities have been to Moon Silk before?”

The Truth Stone sent her an image.

It showed Moon Silk surviving its apocalyptic crisis, with the various Safe Cities departing one after another.

—At the time, it had been lying on the ground, cursing all those Safe Cities above for being completely incapable of recognizing a treasure when they saw one.

Not a single Safe City had taken it away!!!

Cheng Qisheng narrowed her eyes slightly.

Moon Silk had experienced an apocalypse before, but the crisis had been resolved by the Safe Cities?

She thought of all the bizarre things the [Companies] had done.

She thought of the Heavenly Punishment.

Then she thought of the Night Beasts that the [Companies] had apparently released.

And she thought about how, with the technological capabilities of the [Companies], they clearly had the ability to restore the wasteland to its original state, yet instead they simply entrenched themselves in certain areas and did nothing.

Cheng Qisheng suddenly had a theory.

Could it be that the wasteland apocalypse on Moon Silk had been exactly what the [Companies] wanted in the first place?

——

[Norn Company]

The door to a secret chamber opened.

The chairman, the highest-ranking executive of [Norn Company], stepped inside.

He tilted his head up and looked at the painting hanging at the very top.

It depicted a ravaged land, with enormous cities floating high in the sky.

The history of Moon Silk had long since been rewritten. Very few people knew that, before the wasteland, Moon Silk had experienced another apocalypse.

That time, it had been a true natural disaster.

Moon Silk had nearly been destroyed.

But then the cities in the sky descended.

They did everything they could to help Moon Silk survive the catastrophe.

At the time, the major factions had been overwhelmingly grateful. They had done everything in their power to assist those cities in the sky, and after the two sides came into contact, the leaders learned many things about Safe Cities.

They only descended when an apocalypse arrived.

As long as the Safe City itself remained intact, its City Lord could live forever.

Safe Cities also produced superhumans, whose lifespans could likewise be extended indefinitely.

When the apocalypse came, the leaders of Moon Silk prayed for it to end.

But once the apocalypse truly ended, they developed a new idea.

Two hundred years of life was still a little too short, wasn’t it?

The leaders of Moon Silk, who had originally wanted to try venturing into space, gradually changed their minds.

What was the point of entering space?

They would still only have those same limited lifespans.

Why couldn’t Moon Silk have its own Safe City?

Or rather, why couldn’t they become Safe City Lords themselves and obtain that eternal future?

The chairman of [Norn Company] greedily caressed the painting on the wall, gazing at the enormous Safe City depicted within it.

“When will you come?”

He murmured, his eyes filled with ambition and greed.

If an apocalypse brought Safe Cities—

Then let the apocalypse come.

The creation of the Heavenly Punishment had been a decision jointly made by all the [Companies].

As for the civilians who died, that wasn’t important.

As long as there were ten thousand of them.

At that point, whether it was a Safe City originating from Moon Silk itself or one that had come from another civilization, as long as they managed to seize the opportunity to make contact with it, the [Companies] would have a chance to replace it.

The greed on Chairman Norn’s face slowly turned into confusion and anxiety.

But why?

Moon Silk had already fallen into an apocalypse, so why hadn’t any Safe City descended?

He left the secret chamber, and one of his subordinates happened to hand him some documents. Among them were several photographs that had been attached as evidence.

“Chairman, several new factions have appeared. Should we send people to deal with them?”

Chairman Norn looked at the photographs in his hands.

A huge city.

One enormous city gate after another.

Its layout was exactly the same as the Safe City depicted in the painting in the secret chamber.

Yet when faced with the Safe City he had yearned for so desperately, he merely let out a cold laugh.

Under the influence of the cognitive template covering the entirety of Moon Silk, he didn’t sense anything unusual at all.

“Another folded city. Just how many people secretly built folded cities back then?”

“Send people to deal with it.”

He casually tossed the photographs aside, his eyes filled with contempt.

“We don’t need any more competitors.”

The situation on Moon Silk was getting worse and worse.

The day when the Safe Cities descended must be getting closer too, right?

He could hardly wait to see the day those cities finally arrived.

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