The representatives dispatched by Enterprise were Yun You and Su Ming. The Legion was represented by Centurion Wali and Pangolin, while the Academy was represented by Jiang Xuezhou, a student of the unseen Grade-B researcher.
As for the Alliance, their representatives were Ye Shi and an NPC from the Scientific Expedition.
The NPC was named Meng Liang, a former resident of Shelter 401. After being rescued from marauders by the Alliance, he joined the Scientific Expedition dedicated to recovering pre-war civilization relics. Under the tutelage of Yin Fang, he studied archaeology, and he currently served as a military surveyor aboard the airship.
The exploration of Shelter 0 was primarily a scientific expedition.
They could not rely entirely on Enterprise for the investigation of the ruins. Even as allies, Enterprise was under no obligation to disclose every scrap of intelligence they gathered to the Alliance.
Chu Guang had been very deliberate in choosing his personnel. Beyond an NPC expert with relevant domain knowledge, he also needed a reliable player who, under the most extreme circumstances, could transmit news from within the shelter to the outside world.
The *Wasteland Online* forum, an information-sharing hub, was his greatest trump card alongside the players' "immortality."
After confirming the passage was secure, the delegation pressed onward, quickly arriving at the shelter's entrance.
The elevator Yi Hai had mentioned was located right at the center of the industrial skyscraper's second basement floor.
It was shaped like a funnel embedded into the floor, with four corridors converging toward the central elevator shaft—resembling a circular theater without seats.
Due to long years of abandonment and the extreme scarcity of moisture typical of the Great Desert's climate, the walls were coated in patches of mold and desiccated vines.
Sweeping his flashlight across every corner of the spacious chamber, Ye Shi muttered, "Did the Pioneer's crew really escape down here?"
Walking beside him, Meng Liang replied nervously, "According to the intelligence, yes..."
This was his very first field mission.
And it happened to be an operation of monumental importance right from the start.
Last night, he had reread the mission log the Administrator sent him several times, practically memorizing every punctuation mark under the known intelligence tab.
"Then why aren't there any signs of combat? I can't even spot a bullet hole on the walls." Ye Shi still looked puzzled.
It was not because he was cautious by nature.
Rather, it was because the Administrator had not assigned this critical task to Lao Bai, who had the highest combat power, but to him, who had the highest Perception attribute.
In particular, the discussions on the forum yesterday gave him an instinctive hunch that this mission might not be as simple as he imagined.
Walking on the other side, Su Ming shrugged and grinned. "Maybe by the time they fled down here, they had already shaken off their pursuers... Didn't the Wilante fail to locate the exact entrance to Shelter 0?"
"That makes sense," Ye Shi nodded thoughtfully, but his brow furrowed again before long. "Hiss... but I still feel like something isn't right."
Where were the people from the Enlightenment Society?
Didn't they know the entrance to Shelter 0?
Since Yi Hai knew those people were trying to prevent Enterprise from reaching Shelter 0, the two sides must have had a falling-out before he went into cryosleep.
Ye Shi wracked his brains, unable to shake the feeling that he was missing an important clue.
It was just a shame Brother Fang Chang wasn't here, and that dope Battlefield Guy probably wouldn't dare talk to him.
"Your reasoning?" Jiang Xuezhou, who had remained silent all along, finally could not help speaking up.
She was not fond of interacting with people from outside the Academy, especially someone whose squad had seemingly clashed with hers before.
Yet this guy had been muttering nonstop, keeping her on edge ever since they entered this building... even though they had not encountered a single mutant hyena so far.
Ye Shi, however, did not overthink it. He did not even pick up on the impatience in her tone, assuming instead that the pretty girl had taken an interest in him. He flashed what he believed to be a mysterious and charming smile.
"Intuition."
*Intuition...*
The corner of Jiang Xuezhou's mouth twitched, her composure nearly cracking.
*What kind of nonsense is that?*
Su Ming, on the other hand, seemed to relate completely. Laughing heartily, he patted Ye Shi on the shoulder.
"Brother, I know that feeling. Sometimes nothing has happened, yet you just feel something is off... My squad leader said I'm about to awaken. I sure hope that's not true; I'm not even married yet. Anyway, stay sharp. I also think this place feels a bit uncanny."
At that moment, Battlefield Guy really wanted to lean over and ask what Ye Shi was sensing. After all, the top Perception-build player across the entire server was no joke.
Yet with a centurion watching right beside him, he could only keep his thoughts to himself.
Glancing at Wali's confident grin, Battlefield Guy figured he might as well try digging for some intel, so he lowered his voice and asked, "Sir, do we have a plan?"
Wali answered bluntly, "No."
"...No?" Battlefield Guy stared blankly, thinking he had misheard.
Wali burst into laughter, his face full of disdain. "Relying on a shelter to solve all our problems is something only the weak would believe in. Our Marshal has never pinned his hopes on such illusory rumors."
Battlefield Guy said wryly, "Then why did we come here..."
"Even though Lord Cohen doesn't believe something capable of ending the wasteland could be stored inside, it is still a ruin left behind by the Prosperity Era... Heaven knows what might be kept in there. What if it's a weapon?" Wali shot a glance at the representatives from Enterprise and the Academy, then said indifferently, "In short, if Enterprise and the Academy are interested, we cannot leave it unattended."
Battlefield Guy was speechless.
Looking at it from the Wilante perspective, that actually made a lot of sense.
So much so that he had no idea how to refute it.
The party soon reached the elevator.
Yun You reached out and touched the elevator doors, turning her gaze toward the two Alliance representatives. "Which of you has the access card?"
"I do."
Meng Liang answered immediately. Stepping forward, he drew the card given to him by the Administrator and tapped it against the card reader's casing.
A pale blue light surfaced in front of the door, sweeping across everyone present. A slight tremor vibrated through the floor, and the heavy doors slowly slid open to both sides.
The elevator cabin was genuinely not large.
So small, in fact, that it was startling to think the entrance to Shelter 0 could be this cramped.
Or did another entrance exist elsewhere?
"Unbelievable..." Ye Shi muttered under his breath. "It's been two centuries, and these facilities are still running."
And running without any maintenance at that.
"It was actually an unactivated access card," Yun You said, frowning as she watched the scanning light retract.
"What do you mean?" Meng Liang asked nervously.
"It means... once activated, our credentials were written into the security system and bound to that card's code. We can use this elevator whether we have the card or not. But for anyone else, unless we overwrite the security system here or provide them with another unactivated card, they won't be able to enter... at least not with this card."
Pausing for a moment, she continued, "This effectively prevents unauthorized personnel from slipping into the shelter... However, this type of system is typically only found in unfinished shelters. Unless specifically requested by a shelter administrator, it rarely appears in an established shelter that already had an administrator assigned."
Ye Shi muttered, "So you mean we can't just take the card back up to call down reinforcements?"
Yun You glanced at him, not understanding the slang of this younger generation.
Meng Liang, standing nearby, was stunned by another detail in her words. Looking at her in astonishment, he asked, "Are you saying... this shelter was never completed?"
Yun You shrugged. "Who knows? I didn't build this shelter. I just happened to work in a relevant department back then and heard some rumors."
Without waiting for Meng Liang to digest the massive implications of that statement, she cast a glance at the elevator doors and stepped straight inside without another word.
Seeing this, Su Ming immediately followed suit.
Stowing away the now-useless access card, Meng Liang looked at Ye Shi and said nervously, "Let's go too."
"Yeah, let's go."
Ye Shi nodded. Taking one last look at the spacious chamber behind them, he stepped past the open elevator doors.
The moment he crossed the threshold, a familiar stale, rancid odor invaded his nostrils, putting him instantly on guard.
The foreboding sensation lingering in his chest seemed to grow stronger and stronger...
...
Back at the camp.
Although construction of the planned perimeter wall and barracks was complete, the five engineering vehicles parked in the center of the camp were still chugging and roaring incessantly.
Aside from the players dispatched near the industrial skyscraper for their mission, the other players were not idling either. They had fanned out into the surrounding area to scavenge scrap metal, using the blueprints stored in the engineering vehicles to remelt and machine the scrap into various parts.
Due to surging demand, long lines had even formed in front of the engineering vehicles.
Several low-level players gathered nearby holding bundles of scrap metal, waiting eagerly, terrified that the machines' feed hoppers might run empty.
An Enterprise employee happened to walk past. Seeing the crowd around the engineering vehicles, he stepped closer, took a look, and asked curiously, "Hasn't the camp already been built? What are you guys making now?"
Seeing an NPC strike up a conversation, I'm the Darkest, who was carrying a large bundle of steel bars, grinned and said in broken Human Alliance language, "The original well is too small. Since there's an underground aquifer below, we plan to drill a deeper well."
Carrying a burlap sack nearby, Construction Site Boy and Bricks chimed in, "That's right! This time we lengthened the threaded pipes from the blueprint!"
The Enterprise employee was stunned, not quite processing it. Meanwhile, several other players began chattering in a language he could not understand.
"Speaking of which, the underground aquifer here is pretty abundant."
"Of course it is, why else would we set up camp here?"
"Say, what's the point of just drilling a well? I suggest setting up a greenhouse to grow some vegetables."
"Hey, that's a great idea!"
"!!! I brought seeds!"
The players talked over one another, adding several more blueprints to the production queue and sharply increasing the required materials.
This included polyethylene for building the greenhouses, aluminum alloy for the vegetable hydroponic troughs and water pipes, and more...
With greenhouses arranged, sources of carbohydrates and vitamins were secured, but animal protein and fat could not be neglected either.
A balanced diet was essential to maintaining combat effectiveness.
Raising cattle or sheep was unrealistic since there was hardly any pasture here.
Still, solutions always outnumbered problems.
Before long, I'm the Darkest recalled that the brothers in the Burning Corps had previously caught some fat white grubs from a mutant tribe.
Eating those directly was unappetizing—aside from Elaina, probably nobody could stomach them—but processing them into nutrient paste shouldn't be an issue.
In any case, they weren't the ones staying here; it would only torture the clueless newbies coming to open up the wasteland later...
As for the NPCs.
Aside from their Administrator, none of them seemed particularly picky about food.
Not far away, several Wilante officers watched the bustling Alliance personnel and could not help murmuring among themselves.
"What are these guys fiddling with?"
"No idea..."
"Isn't this just a temporary camp? Why are they putting up so many sheds?"
"Are they actually planning to stay..."
At the thought, the Wilante officers immediately grew wary.
The Alliance was extending its reach right behind their client state's backyard.
That was not a good omen...
In truth, the Enterprise employees and Wilante officers were not the only ones bewildered; even the players themselves did not entirely know what they were doing.
The fun of a sandbox game lay in experiencing the process; no one cared too much about the ultimate purpose or outcome.
The Administrator had told them that the Alliance intended to preserve this site as an outpost in the Great Desert. They could DIY the buildings as they pleased, and before the five engineering vehicles were recalled, the machines would accommodate their creativity to turn ideas into reality as much as possible.
Consequently, the interested players had eagerly lined up clutching piles of building materials.
There were not many quests on the new map. Since they had nothing else to do anyway, many players took up camp expansion tasks. Although the rewards were not high, it was quite fun.
Chu Guang had not dictated how the outpost must look, leaving it entirely to their imagination.
As it turned out, these little players performed even better than he anticipated. From drinking water to stable food sources, and onward to hygiene and security, they had considered everything thoroughly on his behalf.
They had even meticulously planned the layout of every facility... These were not conceived out of thin air; to a large extent, they referenced real-world overseas military bases or construction site layouts. Factoring in being cut off from supply lines, the planned camp possessed a degree of self-sufficiency.
Watching the bustling players, Chu Guang nodded in satisfaction.
"Not bad!"
If this had been outsourced to an Enterprise construction team, it would have cost several million Cr at the very least, and even his own construction team would have required a budget of several million silver coins.
Yet handed over to these players, it was accomplished without even touching one hundred thousand silver coins. Labor was virtually free, materials could be scavenged on-site, and the designs were copied and debated off the internet.
Then again, once the outpost was built, it was for their use anyway, so it could hardly be called profiting off them.
Pulling his gaze away from the players, Chu Guang walked to a corner of the camp toward the room housing the rescued survivors.
After treatment in the twelve medpods, most of the survivors' wounds had healed.
Prosthetic limbs with only basic functionality were not expensive; otherwise, even scavengers would not have been able to afford them.
As it happened, the arms seized from the Wilante earlier included some simple cybernetic prosthetics, so Chu Guang had the Enterprise doctors fit them on the survivors.
Incidentally, because there were Enterprise reporters aboard the airship, Wu Changnian, eager to put on a show of goodwill, offered to cover a portion of the relief costs for the survivors.
Chu Guang did not stand on ceremony, casually quoting him one hundred thousand Cr. Hearing how cheap it was, Wu Changnian signed off without blinking.
Afterward, Chu Guang had his logistics officer tally the expenses, only to discover that the combined value of those mechanical prosthetics might not have even reached one hundred thousand chips...
Chu Guang felt quite embarrassed. He had his principles, and he had never intended to make money off those poor souls, let alone care about a mere hundred thousand Cr.
However, it was hardly appropriate to tell Enterprise they had overpaid. Since Director Wu had already made his grand gesture, Chu Guang could only tell his logistics officer to take the secret to the grave.
The door to the barracks swung open.
Seeing the light spill through the doorway and hearing footsteps entering alongside it, the women lying across the hospital beds instinctively shrank back.
Once they saw it was not the mutants, they finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Lying in the ward were survivors who had just undergone prosthetic surgery, roughly twenty people in total.
Though reluctant to stir up unpleasant memories, Chu Guang still asked in as gentle a tone as possible in order to gather intel on that Torch emblem.
"Where are you all from?"
The women in the room looked at one another, none speaking.
A heavy silence hung in the air.
Just as Chu Guang was hesitating over whether to fetch a more approachable female player to communicate with them, a woman in her early twenties suddenly raised a trembling hand, speaking in a hoarse voice.
"My name is Rama... I come from Poluo Province."
"Poluo Province?"
The birthplace of the two-headed ox?
Supposedly, it was southwest of the Camel Hump Kingdom.
That was truly a long way away...
Chu Guang continued in a gentle tone, "Would you mind telling me how you ended up here?"
At this point, a thought struck him, and he paused before adding, "Of course, if you don't wish to recall that unpleasant memory, we won't force you."
Rama shook her head.
"It's all right... I'm very grateful that you rescued us from that living hell."
Pausing briefly, she continued, "I was born in a small village. One day, a band of merchants arrived, saying they wanted to buy two-headed oxen to transport northeast to Silver Moon Bay. They spent lavishly and offered a very generous price. Everyone in the village was polite to them, and the village chief even brought out good wine to entertain them... I had a little to drink back then. When I woke up, I was inside a cage."
Chu Guang fell silent for a moment.
"Slavers?"
"...Most likely." Terror filled Rama's eyes, but she bravely carried on. "Those people even claimed... my family sold me to them. But I don't believe them. They must have drugged everyone."
Chu Guang sympathized with her plight, but that was not his primary concern.
Frowning, he continued to ask, "...Did those slavers trade with mutants?"
To Chu Guang's surprise, Rama shook her head, the fear in her eyes flaring even more intensely.
"They... sold us to another group of people. It was that group who took me across the desert and brought me here."
Chu Guang clenched his fists and asked in a low voice, "Who were they?"
"I don't know..."
The girl cradled her head, her fingers trembling slightly as they dug into her hair, as if merely recalling what happened terrified her beyond measure.
Chu Guang phrased the question differently, asking patiently, "Did those people have... any distinguishing features? For example, their appearance, their clothing, or any uniform accessories they carried..."
Her unfocused pupils suddenly sharpened. As if remembering something, Rama released her head and jerked her chin up.
"Those people... they all seemed to wear blue coats."
*Blue coats?*
*Are you serious...*
Hearing this shocking clue, astonishment flickered across Chu Guang's face.
From what he had observed around Qingquan City, the naive little lambs who emerged from shelters were lucky enough not to have their kidneys harvested, let alone harm others.
The main reason he was so good to Xiao Yu and her family was largely because they had never tried to harm him... which was already rare on the wasteland.
Yet Rama was not the only one; quite a few survivors in the ward silently nodded, indicating they had suffered similar or identical experiences.
Chu Guang's expression gradually darkened. Drawing a small notebook from his pocket, he jotted down the clue Rama had provided.
After returning to the surface, most shelter residents were innocent and naive. Often, out of civilized pride, kindness, weakness, guilt over having abandoned their brethren in the past, or an air of superiority, they were slaughtered like fat sheep by wastelanders far weaker than them.
Shelter 401 was a prime example.
That shelter had been thoroughly wiped out by marauders in a classic case, with all its members reduced to forced laborers rolling medicine pills, nearly losing the black box in their hands.
Of course, a few shelters had evolved into powerful regional factions. For instance, some of Enterprise's ancestors were residents of Vault 6.
While Shelter 101 had not grown into a formidable regional power, under Dr. Method's guidance, it still exerted a limited influence over the surviving wastelanders.
Shelter 79 could hardly be called innocent lambs—those folks had entirely brought about their own demise—yet aside from the deranged "Mr. Yong," the others had not inflicted much harm on surface survivors.
As for the Enlightenment Society...
They were likely the other extreme among the "blue coats."
Chu Guang had no idea what they had endured in the past.
To the point that they had completely cast aside civilized pride and restraint, going so far as to trade with mutants and slavers.
Regardless of the reasons, they had crossed the line.
With someone breaking the ice, the other survivors soon confessed their origins one after another, detailing how they were sold into the hands of these mutants.
Most hailed from Sunset Province, particularly the war-torn Falcon Kingdom and Honey Badger Kingdom, but some also came from Jinchuan or the River Valley. Although those places had not erupted into full-scale war, their chaos was no less severe than the combat zones of Sunset Province.
Chu Guang tallied each account.
His kindness did not run so rampant that he would seek vengeance for people he had known for only a few days, but the Enlightenment Society—composed of shelter residents—instilled in him a deep sense of unease.
Even setting morality aside.
Purely out of consideration for the Alliance's interests, he could not leave those figures lurking in the shadows unchecked.
At the very least, he needed to uncover what their motives were, where their home base lay, and how many kilometers separated them from the Alliance...
"...I am sorry for what you went through. You may have encountered some rather unfriendly shelter residents, but I believe not all shelter residents are like that."
Pausing, Chu Guang continued, "We will provide you with some assistance."
Clutching the edge of her blanket tightly with her right hand, Rama nodded and said sincerely, "Thank you..."
"You're welcome. Get some good rest... I've asked everything I needed to ask. Try to forget the unpleasant past."
Chu Guang glanced at the notebook in his hand, closed it, and slipped it into his pocket.
Yet just as he was about to return to the airship, a thought suddenly crossed his mind, and he turned around, heading toward Yi Hai's quarters.
A sudden realization was nagging at him.
If he did not clear it up,
he would be too troubled to sleep...
...
Beneath the industrial skyscraper.
Depth unknown.
When the elevator doors parted, a massive, gear-shaped metal gate immediately entered the sight of the investigation team.
Embossed in the center of the giant metal gear was an angular rhombus. Hollowed out in the middle of that rhombus was, without question, the digital rendering of the numeral "0."
The passage leading into the shelter sat right beside that giant gate. Someone had clearly arrived here before them and opened it.
The crew of the Pioneer was right ahead!
Yet what caused a faint unease in Su Ming's heart was why, when they had already reached this point, no one had come out to greet them...
"...Shelter 0 really exists." Shaken by an entirely different revelation, Yun You took an involuntary step forward.
Su Ming also stepped forward immediately, sticking close by her side.
After staring at the gear-shaped gate for a while, Ye Shi rubbed his chin and muttered in the Human Alliance language, "Strange..."
"What's strange now?" Jiang Xuezhou glared at the exceptionally chatty man. He had talked far too much the entire way down.
Ye Shi said sheepishly, "I just feel... that zero looks a bit crooked. Is this really Shelter 0?"
Jiang Xuezhou stared at the symbol for a moment. "Shelter 0 was an unnumbered shelter to begin with; this is just how its symbol looks... It largely matches the intelligence the Academy gathered previously."
"All right... Maybe I'm overthinking it."
Ye Shi shrugged, turned his gaze toward the deep corridor, and followed behind the Enterprise representatives as they walked forward.
"Let's move too."
Wali slapped Pangolin on the shoulder and strode forward in pursuit.
Battlefield Guy noticed intense excitement and curiosity burning in those eyes.
Though Wali claimed not to care what Shelter 0 held, his body was remarkably honest...
The party crossed the corridor and soon arrived inside the shelter.
Yet to everyone's astonishment, the layout here was nowhere near as complex as they had imagined—in fact, it was crude to the point of being sloppy.
This place didn't look like a shelter at all.
It looked more like a laboratory.
Of course, what shocked everyone even more was not that.
It was the dark red fungal patches creeping along the corners of the walls and door cracks, along with the ominous grayish-green particles drifting through the air...
Slime mold!
There was slime mold here too?!
Chapter 505