After the banquet concluded, Chu Guang received quite a few gifts.
Although the vast majority of survivor settlements presented their gifts to him personally, Chu Guang accepted them in the name of the Alliance.
"...This sword belonged to my eldest brother. The late king bestowed it upon him when he turned one month old, and he has kept it at his side for as long as he can remember. He asked me to tell you that the Honey Badger Kingdom is willing to serve as the Alliance's sharp blade; the Alliance's enemies are our enemies."
Handing the treasured sword to Chu Guang, Afni looked at him intently, then presented a shield engraved with the Honey Badger royal crest.
"This shield is a gift from my second brother. He insisted that I convey his exact words to you: the Honey Badger Kingdom wishes to serve as the Alliance's shield, watching over any threats from the west for you. The friendship between us shall be as solid as steel."
Taking the shield from her hands and setting it aside, Chu Guang said in a solemn tone, "Thank you for these gifts. The friendship between the Alliance and the Honey Badger Kingdom will indeed remain as solid as steel. Furthermore, I sincerely hope your two brothers can maintain harmonious relations, manage their internal affairs properly, and not betray the trust your people place in them."
The Honey Badger royal family was genuinely beloved by the local populace.
Otherwise, when the Legion invaded, so many people would not have resisted or followed Yade into exile in the Lion Kingdom to form the Restoration Army.
Chu Guang did not intend to meddle in their internal affairs, provided it did not escalate into bloodshed.
He trusted that both Yade and Samer knew where to draw the line.
"I will keep your teachings in mind and advise them when appropriate."
Afni curtsied slightly.
After a brief pause, she turned and picked up the red silk that had been lying beneath the sword and shield. Only then did Chu Guang realize it was actually a cape, and he could not resist teasing her: "You're the only faction that gave us three distinct gifts. We will cherish this friendship."
"This is my gift," Afni said, blinking as she dipped her head in gratitude. "Thank you for teaching me and for looking after me all this time."
"You're very welcome. The colleagues who work with you all speak very highly of you, so what we've done hardly counts as special care."
Glancing at the gifts piled into a small mountain behind him, an idea stirred in Chu Guang's mind, and he smiled. "I plan to build a museum in Dawn City and display all these gifts inside as a testament to our friendship, for residents from all over to see."
Later, he also intended to build a zoo to house xenogeneic creatures captured by players, including deathclaws and yao guai.
Not only could it serve scientific research purposes, but it would also educate new players and locals who had never traveled far, while showing off the Alliance's formidable military might.
"That's wonderful."
Personally, Afni felt a touch of regret, but upon second thought, a bright, cheerful smile soon returned to her face.
Perhaps this wasn't bad either...
Aside from the gifts from the Honey Badger Kingdom, the Lion Kingdom had sent the Alliance one hundred tall, mighty warhorses. Those certainly couldn't be kept in a museum and would have to wait until the zoo was properly laid out.
Since the Alliance lacked traditional cavalry, Chu Guang selected sixty of them, intending to distribute them among the guard forces of Dawn City, Daybreak City, and Luoye City.
Over poor terrain in the wilderness, horses were faster than bicycles and could project adequate deterrence without scaring people half to death the way a Deathclaw would.
The Golden Lizard Kingdom sent Chu Guang a 1:1 scale gold bust, supposedly melted down from Legion dinars. Although they were a vassal of the Academy, they too were bullish on the market in River Valley Province.
The Camel Hump Kingdom presented the Alliance with a mechanical clock encrusted with blood diamonds, thanking the Alliance for its prompt relief during the military operation in Lost Valley while showing off their wealth and the superb craftsmanship of their artisans.
Compared to the calculating royal courts, the Enterprise's gift was considerably more pragmatic.
On behalf of the Governing Council, Wu Changnian presented Chu Guang with a four-wheeled off-road vehicle nearly three meters tall.
Massive tires propped up the chassis. The vehicle's body was made of lightweight specialty steel, and the windows were specially treated bulletproof glass, purportedly capable of stopping rounds from light Gauss weapons.
"Seeing as you wear power armor all day, I figured you'd prefer a muscle-bound behemoth like this," Wu Changnian said with a laugh outside the auditorium doors, patting the off-roader's hood. "This is a product from a subsidiary of the Changge Group, the V-100 'Tiger' off-road vehicle. You can treat it as a wheeled armored vehicle if you like."
There was one thing he left unsaid:
If he found it useful, ordering more wouldn't be a problem at all. Unlike heavy aircraft, this wasn't on the list of sensitive technologies.
Chu Guang looked at the behemoth with great appreciation, then turned to Wu Changnian and asked, "Can this thing fly?"
According to Fang Chang and Mole, vehicles in Ideal City could fly through the sky.
He was quite interested in that technology.
Wu Changnian cleared his throat softly.
"You don't have maglev roadbeds here... so we didn't install the maglev module. Even if you did, I wouldn't recommend flying in this thing anyway. A steel-frame vehicle is still a bit heavy."
Yet for that very reason, one could climb inside even while wearing power armor.
It could even seat four of them.
Gazing at the off-roader, Chu Guang suddenly remarked with a sigh, "I just told someone I was planning to set up a museum to put all the gifts from every delegation inside."
"We're pragmatists. If a product goes unused, that's a tragedy for it. You can display a car key for now, and once the vehicle gets old and worn, put the whole thing in. I think that would be far more meaningful, and a much better testament to our friendship," Wu Changnian said, shaking Chu Guang's hand with a chuckle. "Cooperating with you this time has been a pleasure. I hope it continues, and that we can work hand in hand to explore a brighter future."
Chu Guang gripped his hand firmly in return and smiled.
"Certainly!"
Later, he planned to assign the vehicle to the Guards Corps.
If it proved effective, he would consider importing a few more from the Changge Group to assign to departments and corps that needed them. Of course, if the Daybreak City industrial zone's reverse-engineering of the Academy's "Reindeer" tracked vehicle went smoothly, this foreign exchange expenditure could be saved.
Large-scale warfare had ended, so development schedules for heavy equipment like tanks and artillery could slow down slightly. According to Chu Guang's plans for the Alliance Army Command, the next phase of equipment research and development would focus on miniaturization and special operations.
In other words, fleshing out the minor details that had previously been simplified or skipped altogether.
In short, it was not just the Alliance's allies and partners—even Boulder City, Junk City, the Red River Alliance, and even Dam City, which Chu Guang was hearing of for the first time, sent generous gifts to the Alliance.
Yet what brought Chu Guang the greatest joy wasn't the gifts from other survivor settlements, but rather a "major gift" brought back by Xiao Yu upon her return from Camp 101...
***
"Xiao Yu and Pai have a special gift for Brother Chu too... though it isn't anything precious."
In the reading room on Floor B4 of Shelter 404.
Xiao Yu's cheeks were flushed pink as she spoke shyly with an embarrassed smile.
Meanwhile, Pai, standing beside her, had already impatiently thrust forward a thumb-sized hard drive, her lips curling into a proud grin.
"What you wanted is finished! Go ahead and use it with complete confidence! Oh, and you can check it out with the holographic computer I gave you. Just tell me if anything needs improvement!"
That look of hers—she might as well have written "hurry up and praise me" across her face.
"Splendid!" Smiling broadly, Chu Guang took the drive from her, readily granting her wish. "Thank you. You two have been a tremendous help."
Hearing this, a happy smile blossomed across Xiao Yu's face, but she soon seemed to realize something. Turning to Pai in surprise, she asked softly, "Wait... didn't you say we were giving Brother Chu a surprise? How did it become something Brother Chu asked us to do?"
The proud smirk froze on Pai's face. Shifting her gaze evasively, she muttered under her breath in embarrassment, "I just felt you'd be more motivated that way..."
It even made her learn faster.
Xiao Yu raised her eyebrows as she glared at her, looking genuinely cross.
"You lied to me!"
During that whole time at Camp 101, she had treated Pai as her best friend, yet Pai had deceived her for so long!
"Waaah... it's my fault, I'm sorry! I won't do it again!"
Unable to bear her best friend's deadpan, stern glare, Pai shot a pleading look at Chu Guang, hoping he would help her out.
Yet Chu Guang's attention was currently captured entirely by the azure light projected from the holographic computer pen, his index finger swiping across the interface with great interest.
Long before the war began, he had requested Camp 101's help to develop a set of bond credit contracts and a supporting trading system suited to the Alliance's current economic rules.
At the time, this system was prepared for issuing war bonds, aimed at "allocating social resources more efficiently toward the Alliance's war machine."
However, because Boulder City lent him a massive sum, and the Enterprise provided both loans and subsidies, he had delayed rolling out this harvesting tool.
If he could achieve his goals by inconveniencing outsiders, Chu Guang would never put his own people at a disadvantage. Only by uniting his own people could he unite even more outsiders.
The reason he was bringing this tool out again now was partly to let more Alliance residents share the dividends of economic development, and partly to further fleece his neighbors.
The Alliance would issue two sets of bonds.
One would be internal bonds redeemed in local currency, designed to absorb the excess liquidity generated by large-scale infrastructure investments while simultaneously using interest payments to distribute a portion of the wealth generated by infrastructure from the direct beneficiaries to the general survivors who couldn't participate directly.
The other would be external bonds redeemed in foreign currencies, using the raised foreign capital to purchase goods in those foreign markets, thereby curbing inflation in the Alliance's domestic market and exporting its excess liquidity.
It was like two kegs of beer.
And as the person "distributing the brew," Chu Guang could, to a certain degree, decide which keg received the real, authentic beer and which keg ended up with the froth.
Although such financial instruments had existed in the history of the Human Alliance, current conditions were vastly different from the past, so blindly copying old models obviously wouldn't work.
Xiao Yu had served as the president of the Alliance Bank for a time.
Even though her daily duties had merely been cashiering silver coins, she dealt every day with grassroots individuals across all walks of life, including the players.
Coupled with her keen sense for numbers and natural mathematical talent, she had the most intuitive grasp of the Alliance's economic mechanisms; she simply lacked the corresponding theoretical knowledge.
Chu Guang's purpose in sending her to study at Camp 101 had not only been to make up for her lack of specialized knowledge, but also to have her combine the Alliance's realities with the work of Camp 101's researchers to execute this task more effectively.
Later on, presumably considering the project's technical threshold too low, Professor Aiwen handed the assignment over to his student, Pai.
On one hand, Pai possessed remarkable proficiency in programming, electronics, and mechanics; on the other hand, she and Xiao Yu got along very well.
And the efficiency of their collaboration lived up to Aiwen's expectations, yielding truly impressive results.
"...Not bad! There's hardly anything that needs changing. I'll leave the maintenance and updates of the trading system to Xiao Qi. Thank you both for your hard work!"
With a light flick of his index finger, Chu Guang dismissed the holographic display and glanced across at the two girls sitting on the sofa opposite him. Seeing Xiao Yu glaring intently at Pai in a silent huff, he couldn't help pausing.
"What's the matter with you two?"
"Umm... it's my fault," Pai admitted guiltily, glancing at Chu Guang. "I told Xiao Yu earlier that we'd give it to you as a gift when you returned from the front lines, without telling her you were the one who asked me to do it."
Hearing her explanation, Xiao Yu's brow knitted even tighter.
"Is the issue not that you lied to me for half a year?!"
"Waaah..." Seeing her apology backfire, Pai shrank back, curling into an even smaller ball.
Seeing Pai cower like that, Chu Guang couldn't help stifling a chuckle. Although he knew it was bad form to gloat, in all his time on the wasteland, this was probably the first time he had ever mediated such an innocent spat.
Of course, this wasn't a minor issue to be brushed off lightly.
Xiao Yu's personality was very much like her second brother Yu Hu's: to put it nicely, she was pure and earnest; to put it less charitably, she was stubborn and rigid, sometimes digging her heels in like a mule that refused to budge.
With a temperament like that, she trusted others easily, but once deceived, she felt deeply hurt—even if it was merely a white lie.
"Pai."
"Huh?" Hearing Chu Guang call her name, the flustered Pai cautiously looked up at him.
"You're a very smart girl. Though you aren't a shelter resident, your talent is on par with anyone here—perhaps even greater. Otherwise, Dr. Method wouldn't have called you a genius or gifted you that precious chip. In my view, your talents would command respect in any settlement across the wasteland."
Watching Pai's expression shift from apprehension to an involuntary, flattered smirk, Chu Guang took a deep breath and continued patiently, "However, I don't believe what you did was right."
"Why..." Her smile drooped, and Pai muttered in an aggrieved tone, "I just... saw how desperately she wanted to become capable and amazing, so I wanted to help her. Didn't you want her to be able to help you as soon as possible?"
Chu Guang looked at her earnestly.
"I believe you value Xiao Yu, that you care about your friendship with her, and that you wanted to bring out her potential. But we cannot completely disregard the means just because the end is good and the intention was pure... In truth, rather than fabricating a false story, you could have communicated with her openly, couldn't you? If you truly consider her a friend, rather than a follower or an accessory."
Geniuses naturally have the right to be proud, but left unchecked, pride can easily curdle into arrogance. The predicaments most shelters ran into didn't stem from inadequate preparation, but from the arrogant belief that as long as the less intelligent folk obeyed them blindly, everything would turn out fine.
If Pai were a bit more mature, he would share more practical wisdom on Dr. Method's behalf.
For instance, selectively withholding part of the truth is always more tactful than outright lying; even when lying becomes inevitable, one must weave in promises that can actually be fulfilled.
Yet such lessons were still premature for her.
"I didn't! I... I never treated Xiao Yu as an accessory!"
Finally understanding where she had gone wrong, Pai looked at Xiao Yu, bowed her head, and said earnestly, "I was wrong. I'm sorry... I shouldn't have kept it from you."
This time, Xiao Yu's knitted brows finally relaxed a little.
Though stubborn, she wasn't the vindictive type who refused to let things go.
She could tell Pai hadn't deceived her out of malice.
In fact, she felt a bit of regret for losing her temper so fiercely just now. At least Pai had been trying to help her; perhaps she should have expressed her displeasure more gently.
Chu Guang looked at Xiao Yu and said softly, "Can you forgive her? She gave a sincere apology."
"All right, but... no lying to me next time," Xiao Yu murmured, taking the graceful exit Chu Guang provided and pulling her piercing gaze away from Pai.
"Mm-hmm, I promise!" Pai immediately raised her hand and nodded vigorously.
Meeting her friend's earnest eyes, Xiao Yu's cheeks flushed slightly, and she gave a small nod.
"Then... I forgive you."
Watching the two make up, Chu Guang couldn't help smiling.
Sitting atop the desk, Xiao Qi stifled a giggle behind her hand and whispered teasingly into his earpiece, "As expected of Master—you really know how to smooth things over!"
Chu Guang chuckled and indulged in a quiet bit of bravado in Mandarin: "Don't laugh, but before I graduated, I actually wanted to become a teacher."
Although he hadn't majored in education, he was good at science and math and had worked as a part-time tutor. Both students and parents liked him quite a bit; one girl had even vowed she would test into his university—though unfortunately, Jiangcheng University's cutoff score was too high that year and she didn't make the cut.
Before graduating, he had toyed with the idea of getting a teaching certificate to become a math or physics teacher.
Xiao Qi paused for a moment and looked at him in surprise.
"Huh...? But didn't you say you worked in sales before, Master?"
"I did," Chu Guang said with a faint smile. "So you see, what a person wants to do and what they actually end up doing are two entirely different things. Humans are contradictory creatures like that—hard to grasp with algorithmic logic."
Xiao Qi tilted her head.
"I don't think it's that hard to understand."
"Is that so? Maybe you know me best, then."
Replying offhandedly, Chu Guang inspected the hard drive in his palm, a smile slowly creeping onto his lips.
The final building block was in place.
Now, let's see how they handle it.
Xiao Qi blinked, studying Chu Guang intently.
Although she didn't know what her master was planning, intuition told her that a lot of people were about to suffer terribly...
***
On the first day of the celebration, aside from the thoroughfare from North Street to Triumphal Square, the liveliest place in Dawn City was likely the guard's Resident Registration Office.
On the second day of the celebration, the Alliance Guard's Resident Registration Office submitted a report to Chu Guang through the administrative system.
By the end of business hours, the Resident Registration Office had registered a total of 2,711 new residents.
This was quite likely the highest peak in recent times!
Among them, 1,201 applied for residency under the refugee criteria.
Most of them possessed neither money nor special skills; some were drawn by the Alliance's prosperity, others enchanted by its culture, and still others had simply made an impulsive decision to end their wandering lives, making this place their final stop on the wasteland.
Under the Alliance's established practice, those settling under refugee status would first receive the designation of "supervised person," enjoying limited civil rights while being accommodated at the Refugee Home. The Refugee Home provided them with free dormitories and food, requiring them to participate in labor and attend scheduled classes, with their status transitioning to regular resident within a maximum of six months.
For them, the Refugee Home was more akin to a school.
The remaining 1,510 were primarily residents from Boulder City. Some were engineers, others ordinary workers; due to work, they had already lived in the Alliance for quite a long time, possessing savings and occupational skills, but had simply kept putting off the paperwork.
What spurred them to finally make up their minds and complete the procedures was largely Chu Guang's speech in Triumphal Square.
There was no helping it.
The benefits he offered were simply overwhelming.
On the wasteland, merely surviving was hard enough, and people rarely dared to ask for much. They didn't care whether the Legion, the Enterprise, or the Academy was in the right; whoever kept their bellies full and bodies warm was someone they'd gladly revere as a god or savior.
No one had ever been like that man, willing to stand in the shoes of ordinary survivors like them and consider things from their perspective.
And consider so thoroughly at that.
In particular, Chu Guang had mentioned that in the future, many Alliance benefits would be tied to residency status, and only Alliance residents could personally own real estate. Since they had already decided to settle here, getting their paperwork done sooner rather than later was the obvious choice.
What surprised Chu Guang the most—astonished him, even—was that a few residents from Ideal City had actually applied for residency!
What attracted them certainly couldn't be the Alliance's social welfare; no matter how good welfare was here, it couldn't hold a candle to Ideal City—in fact, it was miles away.
However, the Resident Registration Office did not issue them resident permits.
Though the barrier to gaining Alliance residency was low, it didn't mean there were no barriers at all.
Under current regulations, anyone could apply, but approval required working for over six months at a company or institution with relevant qualifications, or six months at an officially operated non-profit organization.
The investment immigration scheme was even stricter, with specific requirements regarding employee count, business scale, industry type, and operational history; it wasn't as fast as starting a company, obtaining qualifications, and hiring people, or simply being taken in as a refugee.
As first-time visitors to the Alliance, they clearly did not satisfy those conditions.
Yet two young men among them refused to give up.
According to the report from the head of the Resident Registration Office, after being rejected, they grew even more enthusiastic, declaring their intent to apply for teaching jobs at the Refugee Home to teach the wastelanders literacy and arithmetic, using real action to prove they weren't messing around.
Honestly, both the head of the registration office who reported it and Chu Guang who heard it felt the two lads were just fooling around, likely to grow tired of wasteland life in a couple of days.
Yet one couldn't rule out the one-in-a-thousand chance that they had genuinely been moved by the tale of the Pioneer, inspired by the speech in Triumphal Square and the Alliance's social ideals, and truly wanted to do something to help the people here.
Regardless, it was a fine start.
The celebration holiday lasted three days in total, though that was only for ordinary residents.
Chu Guang spent virtually the entirety of the second day buried under hectic affairs and mountains of reports, for which Boss Xia gave him an earful of complaints.
Chu Guang didn't mind.
A little exhaustion now was so that life could be easier later.
Some things were like roads in *Cities: Skylines*; if you didn't plan them properly from the start, they would only become an ever greater nightmare down the line.
On the third day of the celebration.
Chu Guang convened a working conference with senior department officials, focusing on reviewing the industrial transition plan submitted by the Ministry of Industry along with budget proposals for a series of policies.
The core thread running through the entire meeting was shifting a portion of heavy industry and military manufacturing capacity toward light industry.
In particular, the sectors that the Alliance had outsourced to Boulder City because there was no time to develop them during the war now had to be built up gradually.
Ideally, they could pluck the ripe fruit right out of their neighbor's yard.
Back during an earlier closed-door meeting, Chu Guang had already hinted to the finance department that the Alliance's upcoming economic policies would challenge the chip's status as the dominant currency.
Therefore, all assets held by the Alliance denominated in chips, whether fixed or non-fixed, had to be treated as potential non-performing assets and systematically liquidated.
Otherwise, his scheme to fleece them would turn into the Fist of Seven Damages—punching the other guy half to death while leaving himself clinging to his last breath.
That would be harming others without benefiting oneself.
The meeting ran all the way from morning to afternoon, and Chu Guang even paid out of his own pocket to order lunch for all attendees.
Perhaps because the boxed lunches he ordered were so appetizing, the ministers and deputy ministers around the conference table poured tremendous enthusiasm into their work, finally producing a reasonably solid implementation plan before dusk.
Starting tomorrow, the Alliance would fully implement a new work system, offering subsidies to factories that actively cooperated.
Though finance served as the lubricant of industry, Chu Guang knew very well that to hollow out their neighbor's coffers, lubricant alone wouldn't cut it.
He not only had to ensure that survivors who chose the Alliance could at least live in the corn towers, but also guarantee enough industries to absorb the steady influx of population.
Fleecing others was merely one means to accelerate growth.
In the end, self-reliance was the true remedy for all problems.
After the meeting adjourned.
Just as Chu Guang was pondering whether to catch the tail end of the celebration with a stroll down the streets to unwind and admire the fruits of his and the players' shared labor, good news suddenly arrived from Lister.
Over the call, his voice carried an unmistakable trace of pride.
"Respected Administrator, that matter you entrusted to me has been taken care of!"
Chapter 529