Chapter 55.1: Weak Blue Sea Residents
Cheng Qisheng informed Puya that her Safe City would be staying in the area for a while longer.
The residents had only just equipped their wings, and they needed a stretch of airspace free from aerial threats to practice flying.
As luck would have it, this region had absolutely no airborne dangers.
As for why there were none… that wasn’t important.
Quan Shazi immediately agreed without hesitation.
“Yes, yes, of course. No problem at all.”
The moment he saw countless black wings taking flight from Blue Sea Safe City, he knew for certain that Blue Sea had come for the Skywing Dragons.
So that’s how Skywing Dragons can be used!
No wonder they made us sign a non-disclosure agreement.
The only thing Quan Shazi felt was sudden enlightenment. He wasn’t jealous in the slightest.
Leaving aside the fact that he had no idea how to remove a Skywing Dragon’s wings and attach them to a human—or whether that ability was some innate racial talent unique to the people of Blue Sea—even if he did know how, he still couldn’t defeat the hundreds of thousands of Skywing Dragons the way Blue Sea had.
Forget hundreds of thousands.
Even a thousand of them would be enough to send Puya fleeing overnight.
Blue Sea had earned those wings through sheer strength.
Not only was he not envious, he didn’t even dare ask about them, afraid Blue Sea might think he, too, coveted the Skywing Dragons.
At this point, Quan Shazi no longer worried that Blue Sea Safe City might break their alliance and attack Puya.
With Blue Sea’s strength, if they had truly wanted to fight, they would have done so long ago. There would have been no need for Blue Sea’s City Lord to play diplomatic games with him.
What worried Quan Shazi now was something else.
The two Safe Cities were parked so close together that encounters between Puya’s residents and Blue Sea’s residents were inevitable. What if conflicts broke out?
The two cities had no grudges against each other and were cooperating normally. But if trouble started between their residents, that would be a different matter entirely.
He immediately issued repeated orders to his management team, instructing them to make the situation crystal clear to every resident:
“Absolutely do not start trouble, and don’t get into trouble either. If a Blue Sea resident provokes you… just endure it. They’ll be leaving after a while.”
The Puya residents who received this warning: “…”
“City Lord… are you saying you’re worried that we might get into a conflict with those towering, long-legged monsters of people—men, women, young, old, every single one of them built like a fortress—who can literally yank Skywing Dragons out of the sky with their bare hands by pulling on chains?”
Puya was critically short on energy. After arriving in this world, apart from the leadership and the guards, all of its residents had been dispersed to fend for themselves.
Most of those who had returned now had only come back because they feared Puya was on the verge of being destroyed.
After all, in the previous world, Puya had abandoned part of its territory and fled.
They were afraid they would be left behind.
Many of them had witnessed Blue Sea’s battle against the Skywing Dragons.
Even those who hadn’t weren’t blind. They could still see the vast sheet of blood-red ice that stretched across nearly the entire land.
The residents of Puya didn’t even dare strike up a conversation with the people of Blue Sea.
How could they possibly dare start a conflict?
Quan Shazi coughed awkwardly.
“I’m just reminding everyone, that’s all.”
Of course he knew that most people wouldn’t dare cause trouble. But there were always a few oddballs in any crowd, so it was better to take precautions.
Besides, although every interaction he had with Blue Sea made him nervous, he had to admit that this powerhouse was surprisingly good-natured. She even said “please” when she spoke—and used emoji.
What if Blue Sea’s residents were just like their City Lord?
Powerful, yet easygoing.
There were always people foolish enough to mistake kindness for weakness and push their luck.
Wen Huahua understood this perfectly, which was why he had deliberately intimidated Quan Shazi to make sure he didn’t entertain any reckless ideas.
After being frightened by Wen Huahua, Quan Shazi turned around and frightened his own residents instead.
“I’ve received reliable information. Blue Sea Safe City once wiped out a Tier-3 Safe City because its people were rude to Blue Sea’s residents.”
That wasn’t actually how Wen Huahua had put it.
What he had really said was that the Tier-3 Safe City had coveted Blue Sea, his boss had noticed their intentions, and then marched over and wiped them out.
But Quan Shazi felt that his version wasn’t exactly wrong.
After all, why had that Tier-3 Safe City made Blue Sea realize it coveted them in the first place?
The only possible explanation was that they had been rude while talking.
If everyone spoke politely, always said “please,” kept a gentle tone, and treated Blue Sea with respect—like he himself did, practically putting Blue Sea up on a pedestal—then there was no way Blue Sea would think they harbored any ill intentions.
“So if any of you run into people from Blue Sea, I don’t care whether you can understand each other’s language or not—be polite! If you can avoid them, avoid them. If you can’t, then use body language to show you’re friendly!”
He swept his gaze across Puya Safe City’s management before adding,
“I’ve heard that after Blue Sea defeated that Tier-3 Safe City, they didn’t take a single one of its native residents.”
Everyone sucked in a sharp breath.
Now the expressions on the managers’ faces became even more cautious.
Didn’t take a single one…
Did that mean they had killed them all?
Or had they simply left them behind in that world’s ruins?
In truth, there wasn’t much difference.
In one case, Blue Sea killed them directly.
In the other, they were abandoned to perish along with their doomed world.
Ordinarily, no Safe City would do such a thing.
Safe Cities could only remain in disaster worlds, and disaster worlds were defined by scarce resources.
Manpower was a resource too.
Throwing it away like that would be an enormous waste.
Even if they kept the survivors as slaves, they could still be made to do plenty of exhausting manual labor.
Quan Shazi’s warning frightened Puya’s management badly enough that they immediately relayed the message through every level of the city administration.
The order was simple:
Behave yourselves.
Treat everyone from Blue Sea with the utmost courtesy.
Don’t drag the entire city down to its death.
Several residents who were notorious for constantly complaining about Puya Safe City—people who were forever saying things like “Puya should just be destroyed already”—were reported, arrested, and locked up.
In the past, the management had mostly ignored people like that.
After the apocalypse, everyone was struggling to survive. There would always be people who felt life was unbearable—too afraid to die themselves, yet eager to drag everyone else down with them. Somehow, that made them feel better.
From the management’s perspective, such people weren’t a major problem.
They could curse the heavens and blame the world all they wanted, but every day they still showed up for work to earn their food.
As long as they were working, they were still useful to Puya.
Who cared what they said?
But now…
Things were different.
Even if there was only a 0.01% chance of offending Blue Sea, Puya wasn’t willing to take the risk.
Residents were reported one after another.
The ones who habitually mouthed off.
The ones who liked to b*lly others.
The ones who always took advantage of people’s kindness and pushed their luck.
Lock them up!
Lock up every last one of them!
Not a single one was to be allowed anywhere near Blue Sea’s residents.
While Puya was treading on eggshells, the people of Blue Sea didn’t notice in the slightest whether the residents next door smiled, bowed, or greeted them whenever they crossed paths.
The entire city was still riding the high of victory.
The battle’s results had already been tallied.
A total of 426,213 pairs of usable wings had been collected.
There were also two unusable wings.
Those belonged to the handiwork of one particular ability user.
During the battle, he had gotten so fired up that he broke through from Tier 1 to Tier 2 on the spot.
Unfortunately, he had misjudged his newfound strength.
With one powerful yank, he had literally ripped both wings off one side of a Skywing Dragon.
He had frozen in disbelief.
After the battle, still unwilling to give up, he carried the detached wings while dragging the Dragon’s corpse over to a staff member and asked hopefully,
“Can these still be made into flight wings?”
The answer was no.
Harvesting a Skywing Dragon’s wings required trained specialists. The nerve connections had to remain intact so they could be connected to the interface ports.
Once the nerves were destroyed, the wings were useless.
Moreover, a Skywing Dragon’s wings had a unique structure. They came in two pairs—four wings in total—and all four were needed for stable flight.
The remaining pair from only one side couldn’t fly, even if each wing were given to a different person.
The newly advanced tier-2 ability user looked as though he’d been struck by lightning.
He had fought alone, without a team.
The single Skywing Dragon he had killed was the only one he’d managed to bring down.
By then, the battle was already drawing to a close.
Even if he wanted another one, there weren’t any Skywing Dragons left to kill.
“There’ll be another chance,” the staff member comforted him. “Our God has already issued a divine decree. We’ll be collecting flight wings wherever we go from now on.”
Then the staff member added with a straight face,
“Next time, don’t pull on the wings.”
“Pull on the head.”
The tier-2 ability user could only sob.
Next time he fought a Skywing Dragon…
He would definitely remember that lesson.
You can’t assume killing one is enough. You need to kill several as spares!
The more devastated that unlucky tier-2 ability user felt…
…the happier the more than 420,000 Blue Sea residents who had received flight wings were.
True, most of them had automatically lost more than half of their savings to pay for the wings.
True, they had all taken on sizable loans.
But they were still overjoyed.
Now that they had wings, what was there to fear?
Wouldn’t it be easy to hunt even more snow beasts?
Once they killed enough snow beasts and brought back piles of item cards, they’d pay off those loans in no time.
Of course, far more than four hundred thousand people had taken part in the battle against the Skywing Dragons that day.
But only those four hundred thousand had earned the qualification to receive flight wings.
Blue Sea designated a special section of airspace where they could fly up and down freely, getting accustomed to their newly acquired wings.
Tian Buke was one of them.
He was an ordinary resident of Blue Sea.
Among Blue Sea’s population, his combat ability wasn’t particularly impressive. Before the apocalypse, he had been nothing more than an average college student. After the apocalypse, although he had gone outside the city to fight from time to time, he spent most of his days working as a laborer on construction projects.
The contribution points he earned weren’t especially high, but they were enough to support his daily life.
He lived in the communal housing.
He ate at the city cafeteria.
In every respect, he was just another ordinary citizen of Blue Sea.
Unlike many other Blue Sea residents, Tian Buke loved fighting.
But he treasured his life even more.
Ever since arriving on Dazzling Star and learning that survival in this world required venturing out into the wilderness, he had been quietly worried.
He knew his own strength wasn’t anything special.
His combat power was only 41.
He poured every contribution point he had saved into forging better weapons and purchasing defensive armor.
Then he trained like a madman.
Even so, he had only managed to raise his combat power to 46.
Only 46.
Tian Buke felt utterly miserable.
He had already trained as hard as he possibly could.
But there was no helping it.
He simply wasn’t born with exceptional fighting talent.
