Chapter 192.1: The Real [Ota] Still Exists
After witnessing firsthand how Blue Sea Safe City operated internally, large numbers of residents from other Safe Cities joined Blue Sea on the spot.
Those who didn’t join immediately all had people they still cared about or assets they had left behind in their former Safe Cities.
At this point, all they could do was hope their City Lords would bring their Safe Cities back into view, giving them a chance to pack up their entire families and flee.
As for the City Lords, with the generous rewards from World Mission and Blue Sea’s bounty notices targeting [Company] executives, they were already having far too good a time to think about leaving.
Even Safe Cities that hadn’t participated in the bounty hunts could approach Cheng Qisheng and pay some nuclear crystals to purchase the location of an underground mine.
Cheng Qisheng hadn’t set the price particularly high. After all, there were plenty of underground mines on Moon Silk, and Blue Sea couldn’t take them all away anyway.
For a small or medium-sized mine, she charged 360,000 nuclear crystals. That was an absolute bargain.
As long as the City Lords stayed behind to mine, bringing their residents together to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the work for half a year, they could earn back at least four times their initial investment, including labor and material costs.
Most importantly of all, Blue Sea Safe City was willing to sign contracts. Any Safe City that purchased an underground mine from her or had received a bounty reward even once would receive her guarantee that she would never launch an attack against them of her own initiative. This meant those Safe Cities could remain on Moon Silk and harvest its resources without worrying about being attacked by Blue Sea.
Now that was an irresistible offer.
They had clearly been terrified by Blue Sea’s strength, yet they still refused to leave. Wasn’t it precisely because Moon Silk was so rich in resources?
Even without mining, the second-order mutant beasts roaming everywhere, the mutant plants that could be put to use in all sorts of fields, and the scattered pieces of Moon Silk technology they could collect were already enough to make the City Lords as happy as mice spotting rice, foxes spotting chickens, or humans spotting a paycheck.
They had originally thought that as long as Blue Sea Safe City didn’t use the excuse, “I took down the Three Major Companies, so I’m the boss of Moon Silk now. You can’t just take my stuff whenever you want,” to stop them from gathering resources on Moon Silk, that would be good enough.
They hadn’t expected Blue Sea to deliver those resources right to their doorstep.
Three hundred and sixty thousand nuclear crystals was certainly no small sum, but the important thing was that the underground mineral deposits would absolutely allow them to recoup their investment and earn several times that amount in profit.
Blue Sea was truly benevolent!
For a while, the City Lords’ group chat on Moon Silk once again became a cheerful, harmonious place, all thanks to Blue Sea Safe City’s latest move.
As for Cheng Qisheng, all she had to do was hold the map of Moon Silk’s underground mineral deposits and open her mouth to name a location.
It was a win-win situation.
And so, practically everyone on Moon Silk had fallen into a mining frenzy.
Oh, no, that wasn’t quite right. Some people weren’t mining at all. Instead, they were running around hunting down [Company] executives.
Although the various Safe Cities were focusing primarily on mining, their City Lords were all at the fifth or sixth tier. They were hardly so socially inept that they didn’t know how to behave.
Since they had benefited from Blue Sea’s generosity, and Blue Sea was now the undisputed boss of this planet, they naturally had to find a way to give Blue Sea what it wanted.
Besides, the City Lords had plenty of residents at their disposal. They could easily have large numbers of people mining in one area while sending another group to hunt down company executives.
Whether they actually managed to kill any executives was another matter. But the whole process of sending people to hunt them down and demonstrating their support for Blue Sea was absolutely essential.
…
Lu Kan discovered that Moon Silk had changed.
Of course, with all three major companies gone, Moon Silk was bound to be different.
But that wasn’t what he meant. What he meant was that things had changed in a truly astonishing way.
First of all, after [Ota] took down the Three Major Companies and became Moon Silk’s new uncrowned king, it didn’t impose taxes on the New Humans.
The various lords, both great and small, who had heard about the shift in power and hurriedly brought people and gifts to pay [Ota] a visit returned looking like entirely different people. Not only had their taxes and fees dropped dramatically, but they even started paying people they recruited to work in the mines.
At first, Lu Kan assumed that only the lord governing his own area had changed. But as the owner of a small merchant caravan, he traveled through three different regions, and the people in all three had entered an entirely new way of life.
They mined, earned wages in [Ota] coins, and used those coins to buy food and other necessities.
Those once-impoverished little towns had gained a great deal of prosperity almost before his eyes. With so many people finding work as miners, they now had money to spend.
At first, Lu Kan hadn’t known exactly when [Ota] had taken down the Three Major Companies. Of course, as the owner of a small merchant caravan who kept himself fairly well informed, he had long since noticed the strange atmosphere among the four companies and suspected that a major battle between them was inevitable.
He had simply been puzzled when the local lord stopped collecting land taxes.
Then some of the smaller factions operating under the lords had also stopped going around capturing people and openly treating them as their sl*ves, as they had done before.
Only later did Lu Kan hear the news: [Ota] had won. It hadn’t merely seized one [Company] and taken its place. Instead, [Ota] had wiped out all three major companies.
Ota had announced to every lord that the entirety of Moon Silk now belonged to [Ota] and was considered [Ota]’s property.
And that property included human beings.
That meant they were all now [Ota]’s possessions, classified as first-level assets. This was why those factions no longer dared to openly seize people and ensl*ve them: doing so would amount to plundering [Ota]’s assets. The lords had also stopped collecting land taxes, because the land itself belonged to [Ota] as well.
And that brought things to where they were now, with Lu Kan witnessing all of this firsthand.
[Ota] had a remarkably deep affection for underground mines. No matter where Lu Kan went, the people in that region were sure to be hard at work mining every single day.
One thing worth noting was that, at least in the regions Lu Kan had visited so far, [Ota] coins were accepted and widely used.
People were more than happy to receive [Ota] coins. For a newly introduced currency, it had certainly spread at an astonishing speed.
Moon Silk’s people were now facing a whole host of changes: a new currency for trade, new taxes and fees, new jobs, new food, new social interactions, and a new way of life.
“Over there!!!”
“Quick, chase them!!!”
Lu Kan and his caravan watched as a vehicle sped past them. Behind it, several people without vehicles took off in hot pursuit, running so fast that they could keep up with the car using nothing but their own two legs.
Yes, this was another new development.
For the sake of safety, merchant caravans generally tried to travel through areas that had once been saturated with radiation but were now relatively safe.
The people of Moon Silk were reluctant to leave their hometowns, so these vast stretches of land, once known as the [Name] Death Zones, made excellent shortcuts for merchant caravans.
There were few mutant beasts in these areas, and no humans lived there. Even during the Eternal Night, the number of night beasts gathering in these places was relatively small.
Most merchant caravans had their own routes through the Death Zones. They would quietly make their way through these uninhabited regions, enjoying the rare feeling of having the entire place to themselves.
But recently, things had changed.
For some reason, despite these Death Zones being remote, far away, and sparsely populated, nobody had ever bothered coming here before—not apart from small merchant caravans like theirs.
But people who looked like important figures had inexplicably started showing up in these places.
Then, for equally inexplicable reasons, all sorts of strange people would come after them, trying to hunt them down.
“This is the third time this has happened, isn’t it?”
Lu Kan stood beside his trained mutant donkey and motioned for the other members of his caravan to remain just as still as he was. They waited for the pursuit up ahead to come to an end.
Based on his experience from the previous two encounters, if the pursuers managed to catch their targets, they would probably be in an excellent mood afterward. They might even come over to his caravan and buy some expensive food to celebrate.
Under similar circumstances, Lu Kan would have long since taken his caravan and fled as fast as possible. After all, on Moon Silk, the rule had always been that whoever had the bigger fists got the final say. These people were mutants with all sorts of unusual abilities. If they took a fancy to his goods and decided to rob him, his caravan might well lose the fight, even with its own weapons.
But now he had some experience to draw on, didn’t he?
This wasn’t Lu Kan’s first encounter with such a situation. The people who had been hunting those important figures during the previous encounters really had wanted to take some of his goods by force.
However, when one of them tried to approach the caravan, his companions stopped him.
The group argued for a while in a language Lu Kan couldn’t understand. In the end, they reached an agreement, left the caravan alone, and instead took out [Ota] coins to buy some food and water.
The second time, Lu Kan encountered another group. They also spoke a language he couldn’t understand, but they were much friendlier. They even spent an entire night of the Eternal Night alongside the caravan and, in halting Moon Silk, explained why the previous group had wanted to make a move but ultimately held back.
“You can think of it this way: we were all sent out by our respective lords, and [Ota] considers every one of you a resident—in other words, an asset. Our lords don’t dare offend [Ota]. They’ve repeatedly warned us not to cause trouble for them while we’re out and about. So even if someone takes a fancy to your goods, they wouldn’t dare actually do anything about it.”
At the time, Lu Kan hadn’t understood. “But this place is so remote. Even if those people really did something to us, how would [Ota] ever find out?”
The man gave him a mysterious smile.
“To be honest, they aren’t sure whether [Ota] would find out, either, or whether it has some way of gathering information like this. But if [Ota] does find out, their actions will be considered a provocation against [Ota], and the territory they belong to could end up being treated as enemy territory.”
“The people we’re hunting are enemies of [Ota]. They’ve already lost any ability to fight back, yet [Ota] is still offering an enormous bounty for their capture. That’s what happens when you go against [Ota].”
Lu Kan listened in growing alarm. At the time, he had thought that this explained why those people had fled to the Death Zones, and why others were still pursuing them there.
Fortunately, he was just a nobody. He had never even had the opportunity to offend [Ota].
He cautiously asked, “Then, do you know what [Ota] has planned for us?”
The man’s expression grew somewhat complicated. Perhaps Lu Kan was mistaken, but he even thought he detected a trace of envy in the other man’s eyes.
“All I can say is that [Ota] doesn’t do anything without a purpose. Since it won’t allow our lords to harm you, that proves it has plans for you.”
He gave Lu Kan a hug. Although they had only known each other for a day and a night, they had gotten along remarkably well. So he offered Lu Kan a piece of advice, too.
“Remember this: if one day [Ota] says it wants to take you somewhere, you must agree, no matter where it says it’s taking you or whether you even understand what that place is. You must agree to go with [Ota]. No matter what, follow it.”
At the time, Lu Kan had been utterly bewildered by those words, but he had still hurried to agree.
It was true that the New Humans had received little education and had limited knowledge. But they were still ordinary human beings who could recognize what was good and what was bad.
And the fact was, ever since [Ota] had wiped out the Three Major Companies, life for the New Humans had been getting better with each passing day.
Lu Kan had also noticed a sharp decline in the number of times he was targeted by robbers. After all, people could now find mining jobs almost anywhere that paid enough to cover their food and drink, with some [Ota] coins left over to save.
That was a much faster way to make money than robbery.
Even without the advice from his new friend, if [Ota] wanted him to do something, Lu Kan would agree without the slightest hesitation.
