Ox and Horse Club.
Jieyan: "Did you guys see the update on the official website?! They fleshed out the entire lore for the three major factions!"
Fang Chang: "Saw it long ago. We've already had a whole round of discussions in the group."
Who Doesn't Understand Love: "Ah Guang is basically saying: 'I just created a new folder, and you making such a fuss about it makes you look like an idiot.'"
Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes: "Speaking of which, we haven't even reached closed beta yet and we already have three map-wide factions, yet the regional map for 'Boulder City' isn't even unlocked. I'm reasonably suspicious that seven Heavenly Kings will pop up after the open beta."
Who Doesn't Understand Love: "Ah Guang says: 'Isn't the city snowed in right now? Know what's good for you. Push me too far and I'll delete that new folder.' (side-eye)"
Ye Shi: "And then the Seven Heavenly Kings actually turn out to have eight people? (funny)"
WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Small-minded. You're thinking too small. Just wait until version 8.0 when the Lord Administrator burns down the shelter. Won't that take two whole expansion packs to whitewash his reputation?"
Kuang Feng: "Old memes are forbidden."
Lao Bai: "By the way, why did they suddenly add an Academy-affiliated NPC in the shelter? Are they planning to unlock the prosthetic implant feature?"
Fang Chang: "Hard to say. I logged on just now to take a look. The new NPC doesn't sell prosthetic implants. No matter what you say to him, it only triggers dialogue asking whether you want surgery."
Ye Shi: "+1. I also tried it a moment ago. If you annoy him, he asks if you want to get your head examined. In the end, Xiaoyu is still the cutest. (funny)"
WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Why Xiaoyu? Don't you think it's adorable when the boss lady stammers while cussing people out?"
Kuang Feng: "I never imagined a tiny game group could gather two different breeds of perverts."
Fang Chang: "Anyway, even though an NPC who can perform surgery was added, Brother Feng still needs to be careful. The surgical fee to reinstall a prosthetic implant is fifty silver coins. And that's assuming it isn't damaged; repairing a mechanical prosthesis costs extra."
Ye Shi: "Do you think Brother Guang might script a plot-kill to test if there's a bug in the prosthetic reinstallation feature? (funny)"
Lao Bai: "Huh? That's quite a novel angle... Come to think of it, why else would he suddenly let Kuang Feng freeload an arm?"
Kuang Feng: "Holy crap, don't do this to me! (panic)"
Fang Chang: "*Cough*, alright, alright, stop scaring Brother Feng so much that he doesn't dare step outside."
Jieyan: "Hahahahaha!"
...
Floor B2 of the shelter.
Yin Fang sat in the cafeteria eating his meal.
Today's food was fried rice with shredded pork and corn, and it tasted delicious—probably the most flavorful meal he had eaten in the past six months.
The only fly in the ointment was the ring of people surrounding him.
They stared at him curiously like visitors watching a monkey in an ecological park, as if doing so offered them some great benefit.
Recalling that the Administrator had told him to ignore them and that it would blow over in a couple of days, Yin Fang paid them no heed. He simply assumed these unsophisticated natives had heard of the Academy for the first time.
Finishing his meal quickly, he carried his tray to the dish return cart. An automatic dishwasher cleaned off the food scraps and grease before sterilizing it with ultraviolet light.
Having nothing to do, Yin Fang made a detour and headed for the shower stalls in the public area.
The showers here were separated by gender and required a fee to use. Chu Guang provided him with a daily living allowance of ten silver coins, which was plenty for a normal life in the shelter.
However, something soon pushed his patience past the breaking point: those stalkers didn't just want to watch him eat, they actually wanted to watch him shower!
What the hell was there to see?!
Didn't they have their own bodies?
"Enough! If I catch you following me again, I'll memorize every single face and make sure that the next time I pick up a scalpel, I sew that face onto your ass! I swear I can do it!"
This was the line Chu Guang had taught him.
He had claimed it was for self-defense.
If someone kept stalking and harassing him, speaking those words would make them scatter at once. However, he was advised not to use it too often—preferably only once a day—or it would lose its effect.
Yin Fang figured the phrase was probably some foul curse, though it certainly had a lot of syllables. If not for his sharp memory, he might not have managed to memorize it.
Yet what Yin Fang didn't know was that as soon as the players left, they headed straight to the forums to make fun of him.
"This new NPC is awesome! He can sew heads onto asses!"
"Holy crap, what kind of grudge is that?"
"According to my calculations, that dialogue triggers after stalking him for thirty-one minutes and seventy-one seconds."
"So what does it feel like to have your head grow out of your ass?"
"Ummm... want to try it?"
Floor B1 of the shelter.
Now that the player count had reached five hundred, people were constantly coming and going through the main hall. To prevent players from secretly messing with his computer, Chu Guang had moved everything into an empty room next door.
After having a carpenter craft a set of minimalist solid-wood furniture, he transformed the space into his "Administrator's Office."
After all, an NPC needed a little privacy too.
Being stared at by players all the time made Chu Guang feel quite awkward.
"I've had enough! Don't your residents have anything else to do? No matter what I do, they follow right behind me, pointing and staring with zero manners!" Yin Fang vented as he walked into the Administrator's Office, looking completely exasperated.
"Don't get worked up. That's just their way of showing enthusiasm. It'll pass in a couple of days... Want a glass of milk?" Chu Guang tapped the electric kettle at the corner of his desk with his index finger; inside was heated milk.
"Thanks, I'd like one... By the way, do you have capsule coffee? Or freeze-dried coffee? I'm not that picky."
"None," Chu Guang said, pouring a cup of milk into a disposable paper cup and handing it to him. "Conditions here are a bit tough. We're in the early stages of building our enterprise—bear with it."
Taking the cup of hot milk from Chu Guang's hand, Yin Fang cradled it and took a sip, feeling slightly soothed.
To be fair, life here was actually quite decent, far better than the days he had spent on the run.
Once he accepted this premise, he realized moving in wasn't as bad as he had imagined.
It had almost nothing but advantages, except that there were too few people he could actually talk to.
"It's rather hard to believe, honestly. Your shelter's designation is a three-digit number, so you shouldn't be this strapped for funds."
"Does that have anything to do with the designation?" Chu Guang asked offhandedly.
Yin Fang nodded.
"Naturally, to some extent. Generally speaking, single-digit shelters had higher budgets than double-digit shelters, and double-digit shelters had higher budgets than three-digit ones. As for four-digit and five-digit shelters, as well as unnumbered private shelters, their funding was usually pitiful—some didn't even have full life-support recycling, only half-recycling."
As a Rank-D prospector, he knew this all too well.
Priceless treasures were typically salvaged from shelters with two- or three-digit designations, whereas with four- or five-digit shelters, it was already lucky to scavenge a few leftover scraps. Most resources had been consumed by the survivors who lived there decades ago.
Chu Guang, who had been staring at his computer screen, looked up.
"Hearing you put it that way, I'm starting to wonder what exactly happened toward the end of the Era of Prosperity."
Designations reaching five digits, not even counting the unnumbered ones.
Just how many shelters had the Human Alliance built in its final years?
While marveling inwardly, Chu Guang expertly operated his mouse, dropping several nuclear bombs—which he had spent multiple turns stockpiling—right on his neighbor, Old Man Gandhi.
With no good games to play lately, he could only download *Savage 6* again to study it.
Of course, it was mainly to gather material.
Hearing Chu Guang's comment, a helpless look surfaced on Yin Fang's face.
"That's what we've been investigating all along. The war seemed to break out all of a sudden, without any warning."
Chu Guang: "Are there no survivors left from that era?"
Yin Fang: "There are, and quite a few. At the Academy, there are even old popsicles who have been in cryostasis from that era until now. But they can't clearly explain what happened either; they just keep asking us when they can go home... We speculate that certain information was subjected to strict control, or perhaps the Human Alliance itself never expected war to actually erupt. Otherwise, the number of shelters would likely have been even higher."
Chu Guang gave him a puzzled look. "That sounds contradictory. Even with information control, didn't anyone find nearly ten thousand shelters suspicious?"
Yin Fang gave an exasperated shrug.
"You have to understand the historical context. After entering the Era of Prosperity, the planet hadn't seen war for a very long time. The crises we envisioned included sunspot activity exceeding expectations, the impact of lunar development on tidal effects, ecological crises caused by excessive urban expansion, or even third-kind encounters with extraterrestrial civilizations... But the one thing no one imagined was that one day in the future, we would repeat the foolish mistakes we had abandoned long ago."
Pausing, he continued.
"On top of that, there's a limit to how much information the human brain can process daily. When you live in an age of information explosion, there are hundreds of millions of things competing for attention that seem far more worthwhile. It felt like..."
"Living inside an information cocoon?"
"Exactly, that's the feeling. You understand it quite well," Yin Fang said, glancing at Chu Guang in surprise. "Speaking of which, I've always wanted to ask... which category does your shelter fall into? Cryosleep? Or community-based?"
Chu Guang's gaze drifted slightly as he gave an ambiguous reply.
"Probably neither, I'd say. It's better if you don't dig too deep into that question."
Seeing that Chu Guang had no intention of discussing the topic, Yin Fang shrugged helplessly.
"Fine... Go on with your work then. I'm going back to my room to rest."
Turning his attention back to 'gathering material,' Chu Guang gave a perfunctory reply.
"Go on. Close the door behind you."
Yin Fang drew out his tone, imitating the manner of the others around here.
"As you command—"
"Respected Lord Administrator."
...
The next morning.
Changjiu Farm.
Early in the morning, Old Luka arrived at the refugee camp and found Jiu Li, the person in charge.
"We need thirty able-bodied young men who can work. We'll pay them a daily wage of two silver coins, along with three meals a day."
Although the refugee camp provided food, that thin porridge was only enough to keep people from starving, hardly offering a proper meal.
Yesterday, the people from the farm had hired a butcher from among them. Rumor had it that he was not only housed in a heated room, but was also given meat with every meal.
Such a heavenly life was something they would gladly take on even without pay, let alone with two silver coins on top.
Without a second thought, Jiu Li readily agreed.
However, out of responsibility toward those who placed their trust in him, he asked an extra question.
"No problem. May I ask what specific work it entails? Are there any particular requirements?"
Old Luka replied:
"No special requirements, as long as they have strength and can handle heavy labor. Our Lord plans to build a cement plant to the south to produce cement for constructing buildings and roads. In addition, we need hands to clear obstacles along the route from Changjiu Farm to Wetland Park and transport recyclable materials to designated locations for processing. I'll arrange their specific duties; you don't need to worry about that."
Hearing that it wasn't dangerous work, Jiu Li breathed a sigh of relief.
"Give me ten minutes. I'll gather the men you need."
Old Luka nodded.
"Alright. Once everyone is assembled, just bring them to the east gate. I'll wait for you there."
Having received the assignment, Jiu Li didn't dally. He promptly summoned his younger brother, Jiu Xun, instructing him to pick thirty strong young men from the camp and lead them to the east gate to assemble.
When Jiu Xun arrived at the east gate with the group, about twenty people were already gathered there.
Seeing those men, many of the refugees, including Jiu Xun, wore expressions of anger and dread.
"They're Legion men."
"Seriously...?"
"No mistake about it. Look at their noses... The Legion's men have a bump on the bridge of their noses. These guys are at least decurions."
"Those bastards!"
As for the Legion prisoners of war, they found the hostility and fear from the refugees completely baffling, every one of them wearing a bewildered look.
They were certain this was the first time they had ever laid eyes on these people.
Why did it feel like there was blood vengeance between them?
Noticing the unrest among the refugees, Wrench stepped forward and raised his voice.
"On our territory, anyone who works earns respect, whether they're freemen or prisoners of war. Whatever grudges you held before, you must obey our rules here. Anyone who breaks our laws will receive no leniency, no matter who they are."
The refugees fell silent.
They could already tell that these twenty-odd Legion decurions were prisoners taken by that Lord Administrator.
To capture more than twenty Legion decurions... at the very least, they must have wiped out two whole centuries, or perhaps even an entire cohort.
Moreover, such an annihilation had to have been an overwhelming victory—one that thoroughly shattered the enemy's will to fight, forcing them to drop their weapons and surrender.
If the battle had been evenly matched, the Legion's men would never have yielded so easily.
The survivor faction here was probably even more powerful than they had imagined!
Standing at the front of the labor group, Jiu Xun felt only immense relief that no conflict had broken out between the two sides that night.
Even the Legion had lost to these people.
He couldn't even begin to imagine having the slightest chance of winning—or any reason they could have won...
Chapter 173