To the south of Ling Lake Wetland Park, an aircraft spewing pale blue exhaust arcs soared into the airspace above the abandoned northern suburbs.
Having noticed the activity in the sky well in advance, Vice Captain Liu Ding of the guard corps, clad in an exoskeleton, led five fully armed players to meet it from the park's south gate.
Aside from those five, more than ten other players led by another guard lay in ambush in the forest not far from the south gate.
If anything went wrong, both groups would coordinate, pouring down fire simultaneously from both near and far. With that many guns, suppressing a grounded aircraft would be more than easy.
However, the newcomers did not seem intent on picking a fight.
Once the plane touched down and came to a steady halt, three people hopped off.
Two wore exoskeletons and cradled X-2 Drone assault rifles. They appeared to be armed escorts or bodyguards.
The man standing between them carried no weapons. Wearing only a washed-out, faded brown leather jacket, he raised his hands to signal that he meant no harm, walking toward the guards and players with a smile.
"Don't be nervous. I'm just a courier delivering a message. I'd like to meet your lord... or does he go by another title?"
"You may address him as the Administrator."
Holding a "Scythe" assault rifle in his arms, Liu Ding narrowed his eyes slightly. As he stared at the man, he kept a watchful eye on the two bodyguards at his sides with his peripheral vision.
"State your business."
"Like I said, I'm here to deliver a message... By the way, that's a nice-looking gun. Where'd you buy it?"
Seeing the exoskeleton-clad fellow's face darken, the man who called himself a courier finally dropped his frivolous smirk. He cleared his throat and spoke.
"All right, jokes aside, my employer wants to purchase an item from you... It's about knee-high, a chest—a black one—that was previously kept in the Vault 117 Administrator's Office. If you agree, my employer is willing to pay fifty thousand chips—"
Before he could finish his sentence, an amplified voice boomed from a distance over a loudspeaker.
"Before I change my mind, you'd better crawl right back where you came from."
Clad in power armor, Chu Guang walked out of the south gate of Ling Lake Wetland Park with a Gauss rifle slung over his shoulder.
Seeing his deep blue armor, the courier showed no surprise or nervousness. The two bodyguards beside him, however, instantly tensed, bracing as if facing a mortal threat.
A Gauss rifle!
With that weapon's penetration power, hitting the right spot would be enough to bring down their aircraft!
To say nothing of the suit of power armor on him—ordinary bullets and fragmentation weapons striking that chestplate would feel like nothing more than a scratch.
"Fifty thousand chips is quite a lot... Fine, I'll leave. Boys, pull back; this trip was a bust."
The self-proclaimed courier originally seemed inclined to make one last attempt, but sensing the dangerous aura radiating from Chu Guang, he immediately abandoned the notion.
Chu Guang did not stop him.
His instincts told him the plane was likely rented by this man—or rather, by the boss behind him. Shooting it down would stir up too much trouble.
Boulder City, out on the edge of the Third Ring, did not yet take him seriously. Perhaps to them, a survivor faction of merely hundreds or a thousand people was just small-time squabbling. With no real industry or commerce, they were like a rotten stone by the roadside, fundamentally no different from the Bloodhand Clan that previously lurked near the northern suburbs elevated highway.
Since his neighbor showed no interest in him, Chu Guang had no desire to court trouble by actively provoking them.
Shelter 404 occupied an awkward position, wedged near the outbound elevated highway in Qingquan City's northern suburbs, leaving little room for expansion.
Troubles from the north were already enough to deal with; provoking those in the south would only drag him into a two-front war.
Returning to the aircraft with his bodyguards, the man stood by the cabin hatch and raised his voice, his tone seventy percent earnest and thirty percent mocking.
"Honorable King of the Northern Suburbs, my master—an insignificant arms broker—asked me to give you a word of advice."
Chu Guang looked at him. "Speak."
The man smiled and went on. "You possess great strength. Word has it you even intervened in the dispute between the Legion and Enterprise. An extraordinary hero like you ought to be arm-wrestling big shots like the Castellan of Boulder City. Making an enemy of you is simply beyond our line of work.
"My master says that if you intend to keep that chest, we can only drop this commission... I'm confident no mercenary dumb enough to bother you for a few hundred or a thousand chips exists anyway; that would just be asking for trouble."
At this point, the man abruptly changed his tune.
"However, the client who hired us to recover that chest is not so easily dealt with. Even a figure like the Castellan has to weigh the consequences of offending him. If that man is willing to spend fifty thousand chips to buy the black box in your hands, I'm certain its value in his eyes far exceeds that sum.
"A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? Whatever the amount, he definitely won't let the matter rest. Perhaps when this winter passes, he will come for it himself. If I were you, I certainly wouldn't want to keep such a hot potato in my hands. But I am just a nobody, after all; perhaps you have other plans?
"If you decide to change your mind, you can find us at the Pirate Bay Tavern in Boulder City. You are a formidable warrior worthy of respect. If the opportunity arises, my master would like to buy you a drink.
"By the way, his name is White Shark... though you surely know that already."
The VTOL craft slowly gained altitude and set off southward back toward Boulder City.
Watching the aircraft recede into the distance, Chu Guang let out a dry chuckle.
Fifty thousand chips?
Heh.
Back when he scavenged trash for five months under Old Leech's exploitation, he had barely scraped together a few dozen.
Yin Fang was currently researching how to use that machine to produce implantable cybernetics, and his little players were eagerly waiting to grow stronger through them.
Want to take it from him?
Pay with your lives!
Still, right to the end, the self-proclaimed courier never stated who the client wanting the black box actually was.
Right then, a thought struck Chu Guang.
*Could it be... the Torch?*
Those survivors who had taken so many black boxes from Vault 117!
It seemed they had done quite well for themselves over the years. Relying on the high-tech goods churned out by those black boxes, they had risen to become the wastelanders' so-called big shots.
Even so, Chu Guang felt not the slightest trace of panic. At most, those black boxes produced bionic organs and cybernetic implants; they weren't weapons of mass destruction.
If they really came knocking on his door, so much the better.
It would save him the trouble of tracking them down.
Watching the plane vanish over the horizon, Liu Ding lowered his rifle, walked up beside Chu Guang, and said solemnly, "My Lord, their aircraft is far too brazen. We lack effective anti-air capabilities; leaving things like this is very dangerous."
"I know."
The lack of anti-aircraft weaponry was indeed a problem.
Back when Boulder City's people went to negotiate with the *Pioneer*, their plane had obediently landed several kilometers away. Yet when it came to his doorstep, they flew right up to the gate.
Chu Guang pondered for a moment, then tapped the side of his power armor's helmet with his right hand.
An orange interface window projected onto the tactical visor of his helmet.
The power armor came equipped with an internal vital signs monitor functionally similar to the VM, making data synchronization trivial. Any program that could run on a VM could naturally run here as well.
Tapping several times in thin air with his index finger, Chu Guang quickly drafted a quest and posted it in the "Weapon Crafting" subcategory of the public channel.
The players who picked up quests here were among the most criminally inclined veterans on the server.
Watch closely, Liu Ding! This is how you use players!
[Quest: Aerial Threat]
[Description: The vice captain of the outpost's guard corps seems to be troubled by something. Go have a chat with him.]
[Vice Captain Liu Ding of the Guard Corps: The enemy's aircraft come and go above our heads as they please. We need an anti-aircraft weapon capable of shooting them down when necessary! Or at the very least, driving them away before they drop any bombs!]
[Reward: 500 silver coins, 500 contribution points.]
Done!
With that handled, Chu Guang turned to Liu Ding and said, "In a couple of days, people will come looking for you with all sorts of bizarre contraptions. Pick whichever is cheap and effective, then just check the box on the VM's quest interface."
Liu Ding blinked in confusion.
Though he did not quite understand, he still nodded. "Understood... My Lord."
...
At the same time, at the outpost.
Seeing that the Administrator of Shelter 404 had been gone for quite a while without returning, the restless Heya stepped out of the reception room.
When she reached the entrance of the sanatorium's main building, players passing by spotted her in her blue coat, their faces instantly lighting up as though discovering a new continent.
"White hair!!"
"Holy crap! You can customize hair color in this game?!"
"Why didn't anyone tell me!"
"Hey, miss! What's your in-game name?"
Heya looked bewildered, completely unable to understand what these shelter residents were saying.
As more and more players gathered around, someone soon noticed that despite wearing a blue coat, she wasn't a player.
If that thoroughly flabbergasted expression was feigned, her acting skills would have to be god-tier!
"She doesn't seem to understand what we're saying or any of our memes."
"She looks kind of ditzy... Is she a new NPC?"
"But she's wearing a blue coat..."
"What's so weird about that? Players aren't the only ones who get blue coats. Weren't there a few in the prep room of Vault 117? It's just that we've never run into people from other shelters before."
This comment drew nods of agreement from quite a few players.
Indeed, the game never said blue coats were exclusive to players; players were simply roleplaying shelter residents.
Just then, a player who had been running quests in Vault 117 earlier squeezed into the crowd.
"I know! She's the NPC Yaya and Tengteng brought back! From that hidden room in Vault 117!"
Hearing this, the surrounding crowd erupted into gasps of astonishment.
"Holy shit?! The hidden room has already been found?!"
"And by Boss Ya, no less!"
"Dammit, that's not fair! Tail practically scraped the paint off the walls and couldn't find it!"
"Pardon my ignorance, but is it because mushrooms were growing in that room?"
"You guys shouldn't underestimate Boss Ya. She's the server's very first player to get killed by a mob and trigger a penalty quest, *manual doge*."
"I don't care about the hidden room; I just want to know where I can go pick up a silver-haired NPC like her!"
"Plus one!"
Surrounded by this mob of overly enthusiastic shelter residents, Heya's bewilderment morphed into utter confusion, and then into fear. She had no idea what to do.
Just then, a suit of power armor strode over from the direction of the south gate, a booming voice projecting through its loudspeaker.
"Scatter, all of you. Don't frighten our guest.
"Allow me to introduce her. This is our shelter's new Doctor of Bioengineering, and she will officially begin her duties tomorrow... Miss Heya, please follow me."
Heya nodded hurriedly and took cover behind Chu Guang.
After handing out yellow-card warnings to a few overexcited players, Chu Guang led her onto the elevator and pressed the down button.
Watching the elevator doors slide shut, Heya finally breathed a sigh of relief and said with lingering dread, "Are they all residents of Shelter 404?"
Unlatching his visor, Chu Guang rolled his neck and answered casually, "My 'players' can be a bit overenthusiastic; please don't take offense... By the way, 'wanjia' means resident, specifically referring to shelter residents."
"Why couldn't I understand a single word they said? Don't you speak the Human Alliance language?"
It had been the same back in the emergency shelter room.
Heya had not understood a single word spoken by the two women who woke her from the hibernation pod.
However, Chu Guang had no intention of delving into that topic with her.
"The Human Alliance collapsed over two hundred years ago. Is it so strange that other languages evolved? But I speak both, so there's no need to worry."
Heya silently repeated the peculiar pronunciation of "wanjia" several times, committing the word to memory.
Leaving the power armor in the prep room, Chu Guang led her through the two blast doors of the buffer chamber and headed straight down to Floor B2, where Sector B still had an entire hundred empty rooms.
Finding an unoccupied room at random, he assigned access permissions to her VM and turned to her.
"This will be your new home from now on. The facility's user manual and the *Shelter Resident Handbook* will be sent to your VM shortly. Starting tomorrow, you will serve as our bioengineering specialist, and I will assign tasks for you."
Heya glanced inside the room, noticing only a single bed and a desk. The space was even smaller than the confinement cells in Vault 117.
"Your rooms... are so cramped. Have you always lived in places like this?"
This was hardly the first time Chu Guang had heard someone complain about his shelter being poor, so he didn't take it to heart at all.
"Yes, but our inner lives are very rich. Those players... well, they go elsewhere to do their activities while sleeping.
"During the early stages of building our enterprise, conditions are rather tough, but things will improve in the future. I hope you can bear with it."
*Building an enterprise? What's that?*
Though she had only slept for twenty years, Heya felt as though a lifetime had passed.
Could the cultural gap between different shelters truly be this vast?
Why were all these terms and concepts so utterly foreign to her...?
After settling Heya in, Chu Guang returned to the central plaza on Floor B2.
Just as he was about to check out the newly unlocked Floor B3 to see what the first-generation manager had left behind for him, he noticed Boss Xia waiting by the elevator doors, cradling Xiao Qi in her arms.
Spotting Chu Guang, Xiao Qi called out from afar, "Master!"
Chu Guang glanced at Xia Yan and Xiao Qi in her arms, asking with a strange expression, "Why did you carry Xiao Qi down here?"
"It asked me to carry it down... By the way, who was that white-haired woman?" Setting Xiao Qi on the floor, Xia Yan stole a peek behind Chu Guang, only to find the woman was no longer there.
Chu Guang answered offhandedly, "A resident of Vault 117. She was the only one left there, so my players brought her back."
"Oh." Xia Yan nodded half-comprehendingly, then hesitated before whispering, "Still... is it really all right to just let her move in? What if she turns out to be dangerous?"
Chu Guang smiled. "Don't worry. Xiao Qi will keep an eye on her twenty-four hours a day. If she makes any unusual moves, I'll know immediately."
In a rather helpless tone, Xiao Qi chimed in, "While that's true, Xiao Qi still wouldn't recommend that Master bring people of unknown origins inside. Especially that fellow with the mechanical right arm—I always feel like the way he looks at me is super creepy."
*That happened?!*
"Precisely because we can't be fully at ease, we need to keep them right under our noses... When you say the guy with the mechanical arm, do you mean Yin Fang? I'll tell him to watch himself."
Pausing, Chu Guang continued, "Let's set that aside for now. I still have some business to attend to. Since you're already here, come along."
Xia Yan blinked. "Come along? Where to...?"
A faint smile touched the corner of Chu Guang's mouth.
"To take a look at our Floor B3."
With that, he stepped into the elevator and swiped his index finger across the touchscreen. Soon, words appeared on the display: [Floor B3 Access Unlocked].
Standing beside Chu Guang's leg, Xiao Qi let out an excited chirp. "Whoa, Master, you got the access permissions for Floor B3?"
Chu Guang nodded. "Yeah, just got them."
The elevator doors closed, and the cab sank slightly.
When the doors slid open again, fresh, dry air rushed out to greet them, just like when Chu Guang had first stepped onto Floor B2.
"It almost feels like this place was just cleaned..." Xia Yan glanced around and followed Chu Guang's lead, stepping out of the elevator.
The layout here was practically stamped from the same mold as Floor B2. From the four pie-slice sectors arranged in a ring and the central elevator tower in the plaza, to the six hundred total rooms, as well as the communal dining hall and sanitation facilities located in Sector A.
Even the corridor sandwiched between Sector A and Sector B was completely identical!
Fixing his gaze on that corridor, Chu Guang felt a stir in his heart and looked over at the floor plan diagram printed next to the elevator.
From the layout, he could see that beyond that passageway lay a rectangular space, along with four partitioned rectangular areas of varying sizes.
This appeared to be a "functional zone."
"Power room, cultivation zone, medical laboratory, warehouse... and a buffer chamber? Wait, why is there another buffer chamber behind the warehouse?" A hint of surprise surfaced on Chu Guang's face.
A buffer chamber was a specialized structure used to equalize air pressure between the interior and exterior of a shelter. It contained two blast doors and a hallway equipped with air shower capabilities, able to strip away dust and most harmful substances from clothing, and even spray acid disinfectant when necessary.
Such facilities were typically located at a shelter's entrance. Why was one appearing on Floor B3?
Beside Chu Guang, Xiao Qi tilted its camera upward, its voice equally puzzled.
"Could it be... Shelter 404 has more than one entrance?"
Rubbing his chin in contemplation for a moment, Chu Guang gave a slight nod.
"I wouldn't rule out the possibility."
Xia Yan looked at him, slightly nervous. "Should we go check it out?"
"Of course. What else did I come down here for?"
However, before doing that, Chu Guang had one more task to finish.
Pulling up the VM strapped to his arm, he opened the documents he had drafted in advance.
[Alpha 0.9 Version Update Announcement]
<Alpha 0.9 Version Developer Log>
A quick one-two click to send!
Upload complete!
Having done that, Chu Guang turned to Xiao Qi.
"Xiao Qi, sync this to the official website for me."
The signal light on its head flashed faintly as Xiao Qi replied with full vigor, "Right away, Master!"
Two people and one robot strode deeper into Floor B3.
And almost at that exact same moment, in another world, the official website of *Wasteland OL* instantly erupted into a frenzy with the release of the update announcement!
Chapter 189