Evolved Organisms Everywhere

Above Qingquan City. A "Dragonfly" transport aircraft circled along the edge of the Fifth Ring Road. Gazing at the boundless yellowish-green fog outside the cabin, Bu Zhuan Ye Fan Man couldn't help clicking his tongue, surprise surfacing in his eyes. The spore clouds gathered over the city center cascaded like a waterfall tumbling from the clouds, resembling a colossal, lushly foliaged tree from a distance. Its towering trunk engulfed the earth, while its sprawling branches encroached upon the sky. Did a weapon capable of destroying such a thing even exist in reality? Even a nuclear warhead... A subtle chill crept up along his gaze. Brother Mantou shook his head, grabbed the walkie-talkie hanging from his shoulder, and shouted: "Are you guys ready?" Accompanied by popping static, Lao Bai's intermittent voice came through the earpiece. "All set." The signal had already begun fluctuating erratically. Brother Mantou's intuition told him that without the protection of anti-electromagnetic interference gear, this was the absolute closest the aircraft could approach. He pulled the control lever at his side. Accompanied by unstable tremors, the locked ramp at the tail lowered slowly, and turbulent currents surged into the cabin. "Ramp is open—" "Good luck to you all!" At the same time, Lao Bai, standing at the ramp door, gestured to the teammates behind him and stepped out into the howling slipstream first. As the perspective pulled away, several black specks detached from the fuselage and hurtled toward the center of Qingquan City. Before long, six parachutes blossomed in the sky above the Third Ring Road. After landing, the group quickly converged on the airdropped supplies, retrieving the ammunition, RPG launcher, and other support equipment packed inside. *** At the same time, elsewhere. Inside the radar station atop the great wall of Boulder City, situated on the edge of the West Third Ring Road, an operator on duty had already spotted the aircraft loitering in the sky. "Unidentified flying object approaching our airspace!" the operator seated before the radar control terminal called out first upon noticing the red blip on the screen. Yet far from tense, he shouted with excitement. The radar station instantly bustled into action. Most of the personnel here felt the exact same way. It had been far too long since an aircraft belonging to another survivor faction had entered their radar warning zone. "Damn it, I bet it's those scavengers from the northern suburbs!" an operator cursed excitedly. "The target isn't responding to our comms!" "Could it be that they don't even have radio equipment to receive a signal?" "Haha, quite possible!" As they spoke, a colleague beside him had already engaged the air defense system, aiming a rapid-fire cannon at the sluggish, silver "big bird." The computer had already calculated a lead circle based on the aircraft's flight parameters. He only had to hit the fire button, and the silver bird would turn into a ball of fire. "Target has entered our firing range!" "Should we shoot it down?" Unlike the excited operators in the station, the station chief in charge was visibly much more cautious. "Wait a little longer." The aircraft did not continue toward Boulder City; soon, it banked around and headed back toward Qingquan City's northern suburbs. The crew member manning the weapon looked slightly disappointed. He had sat on this cold bench for nearly ten years, and the air defense system on the great wall had never once seen action. "This is a provocation against us!" an operator said indignantly. "Whether it's a provocation is up to the City Lord to decide," the station chief cut him off, glancing at his deputy. "Report this incident immediately!" The deputy standing beside him nodded. "Understood!" *** South Third Ring Road, Qingquan City. Having landed safely, the five members of the Ox and Horse Squad successfully rendezvoused near the supply drop crate and retrieved the weapons inside. However, no one looked optimistic. The situation here was far worse than they had imagined. One could even say... it defied their expectations entirely. Dark-red creep smothered almost every building, every elevated highway, and every corner of the streets. Hideous gnawers, along with even more ferocious slime mold mutants, wandered aimlessly across the shattered avenues. What proved even more troublesome was the labyrinthine terrain, which multiplied the danger manifold. Sky-piercing high-rises were interconnected by skybridges and tunnels, turning the area into a literal "steel forest." When parachuting down earlier, Ye Shi had nearly snagged on a pedestrian bridge. Fortunately, luck was on his side; his canopy drifted right between two severed sections of the bridge, allowing him to touch down safely and regroup with his teammates. "Holy crap... So this is the godawful mess Qingquan City's downtown actually looks like." On the fiftieth floor of a kilometer-high skyscraper, Ye Shi, wearing a gas mask, stood beside a shattered wall, holding binoculars to scan toward the crash site. The crashed W-1 Mosquito glider was wedged directly into the exterior wall of the high-rise opposite them, its front half embedded in the concrete. Luo Yu was probably inside. Ye Shi glanced downward. Beneath him lay a bottomless abyss; the dense spore clouds resembled the waters of a venom pool, severely limiting visible range. Due to the spore clouds massing in the city center, visibility was under two hundred meters. In reality, with countless piles of construction debris and reinforced concrete obstructing sightlines, practical visibility was less than half that. This was way more intense than the Tide. "None of you explored here before?" Jieyan asked nervously. Kuang Feng shook his head. "Haven't heard of anyone coming here." Fang Chang chimed in, "There weren't any quests here, and you can't save your progress. Coming out this far would've been pointless anyway." Without high-value equipment, you couldn't get far; with high-value equipment, you had to weigh the risks. The game didn't restrict how players chose to play, but it made clear that everyone was an adult responsible for their own choices. Actually, earlier on, they had tried venturing deeper inside the Third Ring Road from Boulder City. However, the mutants they encountered along the way grew steadily more formidable, wasting tons of ammo for zero profit, so they eventually gave up. Scrutinizing the route ahead, Ye Shi's expression grew heavier, and he lowered his voice. "...There are quite a few evolved organisms here!" At the words "evolved organisms," everyone's expression hardened at once. "Decay Knights?" Lao Bai asked grimly. Ye Shi shook his head without a word, instead pointing toward a concrete overpass outside that connected to another high-rise. Resting there were the remains of dozens upon dozens of cargo drones—nearly a hundred at a rough count—scattered alongside packages and takeout containers from two centuries ago. The dark-red hulls looked deceptively like rust, but through binoculars, one could tell that what coated the drones wasn't rust at all. It was an appalling layer of creep! "Those things... I can sense that they're alive," Ye Shi paused, then said in a low voice. "And they're not going to be easy to deal with!" Kuang Feng frowned. "Should we bypass them?" "The ground level isn't any better. Did you forget what we saw on the way up?" Lao Bai unslung the RPG launcher from his back, loaded a high-explosive rocket, and gestured to Jieyan, who was carrying the heavy machine gun. "We can only take our chances." Bypassing them was out of the question. Stealth was ridiculously hard in this game. Under the cover of spore clouds, mutant slime mold seemed to have target-acquisition antennas sprouting from its head. Get just a little too close, and they would come charging at you howling. The optimal strategy was to pick a relatively secure path, lure the monsters in that sector out to eliminate them, and then proceed. Seeing Lao Bai pull out the RPG, the other squad members moved smoothly to their combat positions with practiced coordination, flicking off their weapons' safeties. "Ready here." "All good on my side." "+1." "..." Their teamwork was seamless. After all, this was far from their first rodeo; they had already been forged across countless battlefields. Seeing his teammates in position one after another, Lao Bai was the first to pull the trigger. Backblast flared! A high-explosive rocket blasted straight into the cluster of drones! Flames and thick smoke detonated instantly. Swaths of drones were hurled outward by the shockwave and shrapnel, plummeting downward. Not far off, Jieyan, who had set up his machine gun, opened fire without delay, unleashing ferocious firepower across the area ahead. Volleys of 10mm rounds wove an orange-yellow rain of fire in the air, ruthlessly mowing down the drone swarm as it was disturbed and lifted into flight. "Holy shit... these things can actually fly?" Fang Chang, firing his rifle, looked on with astonishment. After two centuries, unless they were nuclear-powered, no chemical battery could have lasted this long! Clearly, the mutant slime mold had replaced the drones' batteries as a new power source, driving the rotors in some bizarre manner and even mutating portions of creep into the rotors themselves. However— In the face of overwhelming firepower, none of that mattered. Emerging through billows of thick smoke, large clusters of drones were shredded by bullets. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Yet right then, a sudden change occurred! The drones blown off the ledge by the explosive rocket hadn't all smashed into the ground; some surviving little things wobbled and flew back up. At the same time, more and more drones drifted out from the elevated highway and even from the opposite skyscraper, beginning to flank them from both sides. Dug in behind cover, the Ox and Horse Squad was instantly plunged into a bitter struggle. "Holy shit! There are way too fucking many of them?!" Emptying an entire drum, Jieyan cursed and promptly swapped magazines. Just then, Kuang Feng, firing away with his finger pressed to the trigger, suddenly spoke up: "Could there be a possibility?" Fang Chang asked, "What are you getting at?" "The mutant slime mold's mimicry doesn't just copy individual drones; it mimics the entire drone swarm..." Pausing, Kuang Feng continued, "Put simply, what's attacking us isn't a single delivery package, but the entire smart locker hub." Ye Shi was horrified. "Holy crap! Don't jinx it!" "It's not really a jinx. As long as we find the 'drone hive' controlling these little guys, we should be able to break their coordination..." Seeing Jieyan's machine gun resume fire, Kuang Feng retrieved an IED-rigged drone from his backpack, preparing to fly it toward the opposite building. He powered on his VM and donned his neural interface device. Yet right then, Kuang Feng's expression abruptly froze. Noticing the change in his expression, Ye Shi hurriedly asked, "What's wrong?" Holding his headset, Kuang Feng knitted his brows, glanced at the VM screen in front of him, and said gravely, "Can't connect..." Damn it. There was supposed to be a sliver of signal left! "%¥#@!" Ye Shi spewed a string of curses, popping out the empty magazine from his rifle. No one else could be counted on now. To survive, they had to put everything into shooting down every drone in front of them! Just then, a drone breached the bullet screen, darted through a breach in the skyscraper's side wall, and lunged straight at Ye Shi. Alarm bells blared in his head! By reflex, Ye Shi let go of the magazine in his hand and drew the Decurion pistol from his holster. Yet— Even though he had anticipated the danger, his hand was half a beat too slow. The drone, crusted in dark-red creep, slammed straight in. Tendrils lashing from under its chassis shot forward like lightning, whipping viciously toward his face. Ye Shi only caught a flicker of a black silhouette before his consciousness plunged into bottomless darkness. A pale blue pop-up appeared: [Connection Severed] *** At the same time, in another world. Inside a male dorm room at Jiangcheng University, a startling shriek abruptly rang out. "Fuck!" Hearing the outburst from the bunk above, the boys gaming below and trying to clutch a chicken dinner were completely stunned, their hands freezing mid-recoil control. What was that? The dorm room went dead silent. Sun Qian turned to look at the bunk behind him. Just as he was about to ask what happened, Brother A-Wei's voice floated down: "Sarry... had a bit of a mishap." Sitting on the bed, Ye Wei stared at the helmet in his hands, his chest heaving slowly. His three roommates exchanged glances. Although they didn't know what had happened, as long as he was fine, that was all that mattered. "Ah... no biggie, don't worry about it." "We don't care, but take care of yourself, man..." "Right? Screaming that loud while playing an R18 game, how can the bros not worry about you?" Ye Wei: "..." Goddammit! These bastards! Ye Wei rolled his eyes and tossed the helmet onto his pillow. He got up, climbed down the ladder, and went to the balcony to splash water on his face. Leaning against the railing, he pulled out his phone and checked their small chat group. "Anyone alive?" he sent. No one replied for quite a while. At that, Ye Wei breathed a sigh of relief. Looks like everyone else was fine; only he had managed to feed. However, the thought of being locked out of his account for the next three days plunged him into depression. Good grief. Withdrawal was already kicking in! Just as Ye Wei was about to close the chat and check the official website to see what new memes the clowns had cooked up, a message popped up in the group. A-Guang: "Yeah. What happened?" Seeing this account suddenly rise from the dead, Ye Shi was shocked. Holy crap? The Dog Planner! "Brother Guang?!" "You're still alive??" Suddenly realizing how that sounded, Ye Wei hurriedly recalled the message and typed back at lightspeed: "Uh, I meant you actually remembered your account password." A-Guang: "..." Ye Wei felt a little embarrassed and sent a doge emoji to lighten the mood. Yet the broad-minded Brother Guang didn't hold petty grudges, quickly shifting the topic himself. A-Guang: "How's the situation on your end? Made contact with the enemy?" Isn't that obvious? Still, since it was a rare chance to chat with the damn planner, Ye Wei answered truthfully. "Yeah, we ran into mutants shortly after landing. The situation inside the Third Ring Road is way worse than expected. Ground, sky, underground... the tangled transit network is like a maze. Paper maps and compasses are totally useless; in the end, we still had to rely on VMs and faint signals for bearings. "Then there are the mutants... It's not just gnawers, Crawlers, and Tyrants; there are tons of ancient machines roaming this area." A-Guang: "Ancient machines?" Ye Wei continued typing: "Evolved organisms! Like the ones that appeared in the Tide expansion—power armor, tanks, mobile robots, and so on wrapped in slime mold... Basically all sorts of bizarre freaks. "Oh, and drones! We ran into a massive swarm on the way to the crash site, packed thick like locusts!" A-Guang: "Could you explain the situation with those evolved organisms in more detail?" After a few seconds, he added: "I mainly want to get a sense of how the new map looks from a player's perspective." Though finding it a bit strange, Ye Wei didn't overthink it. Tapping away on his screen, he recounted everything they encountered inside the Third Ring Road in full detail. A moment later, A-Guang replied: "Got it. I have the general picture." Having laid all that groundwork, Ye Wei immediately followed up: "Brother Guang, isn't the difficulty inside the Third Ring Road a bit overtuned? Our gear can't keep up. Pushing in with just light weapons is brutal. "Strongly recommend putting power armor in the weapons shop!" There were too many high-tier mobs! This level design was simply unreasonable! However— A-Guang didn't seem inclined to take his advice. "There's nothing I can do about the difficulty. Game content is partly self-generated by the server and partly added dynamically by players; we're only responsible for maintaining server operations and handling rule violations... My condolences. "I have some things to take care of here, logging off first. Catch you later." 'Self-generated game content'? Sure, pal. What kind of Ubisoft nonsense is this? Looking at the two messages on the screen, Ye Wei wore a helpless expression. Whether he believed it or not, A-Guang had no intention of elaborating further; having asked what he wanted to know, he ruthlessly logged off. Now he was the only one left in the chat. There was no point in lingering. Feeling empty and lonely, Ye Wei sighed, closed the chat window, opened his browser, and logged onto the forum. At this hour, the forum was bustling like crazy. Posts in the casual chit-chat board were scrolling at a dizzying pace; with almost every refresh, the front page had a whole new batch of threads. Just then, Ye Wei was surprised to find that A-Guang, behind his back, had stealthily posted an announcement! Curious, he clicked in to take a look, and froze on the spot. [Map Information Update: Qingquan City Downtown] [Map Overview: The downtown area of Qingquan City has completely fallen to the erosion of slime mold. Substantial equipment left behind from the Era of Prosperity has been assimilated by the fruiting bodies of mutant slime mold, forming evolved organisms with unique structures...] [Recommended Exploration Level: LV. 25+] [Map Tip 1: Salvaging the remains of evolved organisms can be redeemed for hefty rewards with the Scientific Expedition!] [...] The recommended level and tip were reasonable enough. It was just that "Map Overview" section... Why did it look so damn familiar?? *** Wasteland World. Dawn City industrial zone, railway platform near the Bucky Aluminum Plant. Workers were busily operating crane equipment, loading disassembled parts of heavy machinery onto flatcars of a freight train. The New Alliance's industrial zone was relocating northward. This effort would proceed concurrently with the construction of Liming City. When the time came, Dawn City's industrial zone would transition into a light industry base primarily producing consumer goods. Meanwhile, heavy industry—including steel, weapons, and heavy equipment manufacturing—would shift northward to Liming City. Having listened to Xiao Yu's explanation, Pai asked curiously, "Why are you guys moving north?" Xiao Yu said helplessly, "Because we're too close to our neighbors here." Pai pressed for details, "Are your relations with them not good?" With her index finger against her chin, Xiao Yu thought it over carefully before replying: "Mmm... I can't really say if it's good or bad. In Big Brother Chu's words, being so close to each other is dangerous for both sides." Of course, there were also factors like being closer to raw material sources in the north, larger populations, and so forth, but explaining all that in detail was too complicated, and Xiao Yu only half-understood it herself, so she simply left it out. "Alright then." Provisionally accepting this explanation, Pai set the trivial matter aside for the moment and continued foraging near the stockpile area. Watching her movements, Xiao Yu couldn't help asking curiously, "What are you looking for?" "Some raw materials!" "Raw materials?" "Nothing much, don't worry about it! It won't harm you guys anyway!" Looking at the confident Pai, Xiao Yu tilted her head in confusion. Though still very curious, she decided not to pry further. "Okay... Can I help you?" "Really? That's awesome!" Pai's eyes lit up, and she excitedly gestured the size of a cup with her hands. "First, I need a bottle of crude oil. Any type is fine... about this much will do!" To teach that rude jerk an unforgettable lesson, this was an essential ingredient! "Cr-crude oil?" Xiao Yu blinked, asking softly, "Would bio-crude do?" Pai stroked her chin and pondered for a moment. "Bio-crude, huh... a bit troublesome, but it'll do! "Anyway, let's get a bottle first and see!" *** Elsewhere. South of Dawn City, at the sanatorium in Ling Lake Wetland Park. Having just learned about the downtown situation from Ye Shi, Chu Guang was about to resume fleshing out his unfinished reform plan and the update notes for Beta 0.3. Yet just as he was staring at a newly created folder on his screen, wondering what title would fit best, an unexpected call came through. Seeing that the incoming comm request came from the "New Alliance Boulder City Office," Chu Guang paused his work and pressed the answer button. Soon, Shu Yu's voice came from the other end. "Five minutes ago, someone from the Boulder City City Hall came by my office." Someone from City Hall? A flicker of surprise showed in Chu Guang's eyes. "What did they say?" Shu Yu continued: "Regarding trade and security matters... "The director of City Hall wishes to speak with you directly over the line."