That loud voice was like a signal arrow piercing the clouds. Under its command, the bewildered, dumbfounded faces instantly seemed to find a pillar of support, brimming with righteous indignation one after another.
"That's right! How could that be allowed?!"
"Who's going to schedule our shifts?!"
"Exactly!"
Besides those who were red-faced and yelling their lungs out, there were also those weeping with snot and tears. An old man leaning on a walking stick tottered forward before Jieyan and pleaded,
"My lord... you're not from here, so you don't understand. Without the farm owner, we will starve to death."
Jieyan was dumbfounded too.
"Uh, well... did that farm owner actually teach you how to farm?"
He had seen that farm owner before.
The guy had stood on the stairs posturing like an idiot, manipulated like a marionette by Luo Qian.
No matter how Jieyan thought about it, that fellow didn't look like someone capable of such things at all!
Several old men exchanged glances, looking at him obsequiously.
"No one needs to teach us such menial labor."
"But my lord, we only know how to farm..."
"The master takes a cut... but not that much. What's left is enough to feed our families, and working for him covers what we owe. If we're cast out into the wasteland, that's when we're truly finished. You don't know what those mutants call us—they call us two-legged livestock!"
"Exactly! The outside is the wasteland... If the master doesn't manage us, will you take care of us?"
The old man had barely finished speaking when someone nearby, likely a servant from the manor, shouted in agitation:
"We don't need you to look after us! The young lady is still alive... She is the farm's new master!"
Realizing his slip of the tongue, the old man hurriedly changed his tune, shouting to show his loyalty,
"That's right! Give... give the young lady back to us!"
Shouts rose and fell at the gate.
The farm owner's private guards stood watch in the distance in silence, neither siding with the crowd nor coming over to help the Alliance.
This was an order from their superiors.
Regardless of whether last night's nightmare was the handiwork of the Church of the Torch, anyone who had experienced it once never wanted to feel that sensation of being dragged around by the neck again.
That power was unreasonably overwhelming.
When sinking into that indescribable dream, some sort of melody seemed to float through their heads, and then their bodies no longer belonged to them.
Never mind cannibalism.
Even if the Alliance ordered them to eat shit, they would probably have had to crawl on the ground, gulping it down with looks of pure bliss, only retching in disgust after waking up.
After all, wasn't that psychic interference device currently in the hands of those Alliance fellows?
Taking a conspiratorial view, perhaps they had already been brainwashed—they just didn't know it yet because the process wasn't complete.
Some officers indeed thought so.
And for that exact reason, they dared not step forward to vie for the position of farm owner, much less ask how the young lady in the manor was doing.
Whatever the Alliance told them to do, they did—whether carrying out corpses or maintaining order—but they would never do anything beyond that.
Watching the agitated crowd, Jieyan was utterly stunned, his mouth hanging open for a long time without saying a word.
He had wanted to help them.
There was no particular reason.
He didn't view problems from the Administrator's perspective; he just saw that they genuinely looked pitiful, while he himself had no worries about food or clothing, wearing a single piece of equipment worth more than all their rags combined.
To put it another way, did a level-thirty top dog need a reason to show off in a newbie village? Self-actualization was a need in itself.
Yet he really had no idea how to help now.
That Zhao Tiangan was dead.
The survivors here could clearly discuss among themselves how to proceed, and whichever path they ended up taking, all they had to do was take responsibility for their own choices like adults.
Yet they refused. They would rather thrust all responsibility onto an eight-year-old child who was still throwing pouting tantrums at her best friend.
In reality, a kid her age wouldn't have even finished primary school.
Did having someone in charge mean everything would magically get better?
If you offered up both responsibility and authority to some imaginary, all-powerful deity, would free meat pies just fall from the sky?
What kind of idealism was this...
"Wait, this is your settlement..." Jieyan said between tears and laughter. "Have you never thought about... managing it yourselves?"
That grumbled remark was drowned out by the deafening clamor.
Standing before the gates, he failed to notice a pair of eyes mingled among the crowd, watching it all coldly.
As if having anticipated this long ago, a faint, mocking smirk hovered on that person's face.
Like watching a clown try to teach a goat how to sing, the smile was dripping with derision...
...
In an annex of Pinecone Wood Farm.
The players sat in a vacant room holding an operations meeting, chattering noisily as they shared intel freshly retrieved from the official website.
The Administrator had given them only one hint—
The large number of "pathogens" at Pinecone Wood Farm was a hazard to the Church of the Torch's plans.
In particular, the Church had likely learned through their informants within the farm that the Alliance was developing an antidote and vaccine.
To obstruct the Alliance's plans and recover the experimental data left behind last night, the Church of the Torch was very likely orchestrating their next offensive against this settlement!
As for intel regarding the settings for the Sanctuary, Harbingers, Apostles, Executioners, and the like, everyone had learned about them from the setting compendium updated on the official website.
According to Fang Chang's deduction, the interrogation of the Executioners and Apostles they captured last night aboard the Heart of Steel must have yielded results.
Still, even Fang Chang hadn't expected his guess to actually hit the mark.
That Sanctuary really was just a program running in virtual space.
And more than that.
This thing was far more formidable than an ordinary virtual space—it was a distributed computing network formed by interconnecting countless brains implanted with bionic chips!
Ye Shi stroked his chin, thought for a moment, and was suddenly struck with realization.
"Holy crap... I get it now."
Kuang Feng glanced at him. "What do you get this time?"
"To put it simply, this thing is like Voldemort's Horcruxes! It can store a part of one's consciousness in other people's brains!"
Hearing this analogy, Luo Yu almost choked on his own spit.
"Pfft... talk about a wild imagination."
"Though put that way, I get it too," Lao Bai rubbed his chin and said. "Meaning there could be hundreds of those Horcrux things hidden in this settlement right now... Holy shit?"
Finally realizing the gravity of the situation, his expression shifted slightly.
Good grief.
That was basically maphack!
Fang Chang's expression was equally grave, and he gave a slow nod.
"In theory, any NPC here could serve as Luo Qian's eyes... Fortunately, though, only when they enter a trance can Luo Qian personally manipulate those pawns' actions. Otherwise, his influence over them amounts to communicating in their heads or twitching their eyelids."
Everyone fell silent.
Even so, this hack was ridiculously overpowered.
"...The current problem is that we don't know where the mobs will spawn. If there's another tunnel hidden in this settlement, we might have to fight a street battle against mutants right here."
Just as Fang Chang was fretting over this, Brother Jieyan's voice suddenly came over the communication channel's open mic:
"Have you guys reached a conclusion yet?"
Fang Chang instinctively replied offhand,
"Still discussing it, not so fast... What's up?"
It was very noisy on the other end of the comms channel, with chaotic clamoring faintly audible.
Jieyan said with an immense headache,
"The survivors in this settlement have blockaded the manor gate... I feel like if we don't do something soon, we might end up clashing with the local survivors first."
Hearing this, Ye Shi was taken aback.
"The gate is blockaded? What's going on?"
He clearly wasn't the only confused one; the others all looked baffled as well.
Knowing it couldn't be explained in a few words, Jieyan didn't bother elaborating and simply streamed a live video of the scene.
Looking at the agitated mob in the footage, the players froze in astonishment.
"...Damn."
"Are these people insane?"
Ye Shi scratched the back of his head in bewilderment.
"I don't get it... What on earth do they want?"
The master was gone...
Wasn't that a good thing?
Fang Chang, however, appeared calm, seemingly having anticipated this situation. Seeing Ye Shi's utter confusion, he explained succinctly:
"It's actually quite simple to understand. Think about it: if you were a serf and the landlord died, what would your first thought be?"
Ye Shi replied immediately,
"Divide up the land, of course!"
Not in the least surprised by Ye Shi's response, Fang Chang smiled.
"You're a youth of the new era from the twenty-first century, so naturally you think that way. But the people here aren't. They never considered the land beneath their feet to be theirs in the first place. So for all kinds of reasons, they'll find a way to prop up a new farm owner so they can keep doing their old work."
Ye Shi stared blankly for a long time, completely failing to wrap his head around why a new farm owner had to be installed just because the old one died.
Would crops not grow in the fields without a farm owner?
"...This is way too absurd."
Looking at the bewildered Ye Shi, Fang Chang smiled and said,
"There's nothing absurd about it. Look at it from another angle: a hundred and fifty years ago, when Singularity City was still in one piece, would you have been willing to go out and clear virgin wasteland?"
Ye Shi wasn't sure why Fang Chang was asking this, but he tried to follow his lead, immersing himself in the game's setting to ponder it.
Clearing wasteland out on the frontier...
If he didn't have a second life, he most likely wouldn't dare.
However, Fang Chang didn't wait for him to arrive at a final answer. A split second before Ye Shi could open his mouth, he continued:
"Most residents of Singularity City lived quite well under the care of the Post-War Reconstruction Committee, but those were the Committee's final years, and material supplies couldn't stay abundant forever. So the authorities promised to reduce regular residents' rations while offering support to pioneers heading outside."
"You're an idealistic young man who decided that rather than starving to death, you'd try your luck outside. So you risked your life venturing into the wasteland wilderness, using a hoe and shovel to dig the first well in ground frozen as hard as steel, till the first field, build the first house, and in the following year trade your surplus food for seeds, fertilizer, and livestock..."
"Up to this point, life was going relatively smoothly. Then a wandering band of wastelander nomads drifted to your doorstep, begging for your shelter."
"Whether because you eyed their labor or out of sympathy, you generously nodded and agreed to let them settle not far from you. After all, you could never till all that fertile soil on your own even if you worked yourself to death, and more people meant greater safety. You knew very well that conditions on the wasteland were getting worse by the day, and no matter how capable you were, you were only one person with two hands, unable to fire three rifles at once."
"Later on, crisis broke out in Singularity City. Mutants replaced old humanity as the new masters, and even more refugees flooded to your doorstep. Though you wanted to help them, you couldn't just give away the supplies you'd stockpiled through blood and sweat. So you devised a compromise: you lent them food, seeds, and farming tools, and in exchange, they had to repay you with the next year's harvest or newly cleared land. That way, both sides benefited."
Ye Shi scratched his head.
"Is there a problem with that?"
Looking at the thoroughly puzzled Ye Shi, Fang Chang smiled.
"There's nothing wrong with that at all. In the early Wasteland Era, the plantation economy was actually relatively progressive. To some extent, it encouraged large settlements to expand outward, whereas during the Committee era, most settlements were unwilling to trouble themselves because they had that omnipotent 'black box' of the Production Department."
"Although some smaller plantations were technologically primitive, they absorbed vast numbers of surplus survivors whom the settlements could no longer hold, and to a degree, they suppressed the rise of marauders."
"If not for those plantations, after the crisis in Singularity City erupted, this place would probably have become a realm of marauders. The ones eating people wouldn't have been just mutants, and things would have been far worse than they are now."
Here, Fang Chang's tone shifted.
"The problem lies in the fact that a century and a half has passed, yet the locals are still managing a society that has effectively grown into a full-fledged settlement using the methods of running a private farm."
"The farm owner carefully guarded what little power he held, expecting mortal intellect to accomplish what even gods couldn't—meticulously arranging every single detail just as his ancestors did. The greatest ambition of his life was probably nothing more than seizing the surrounding settlements. As for developing industry, that was beyond his imagination—or rather, beyond what any nobleman could conceive, unless you had a ravenous aristocracy to feed like Boulder City did."
Ye Shi asked in confusion,
"But there are plenty of officers here too... like Luo Feihui, who tried to use our strength to climb to power earlier. Doesn't he count as a noble?"
Fang Chang shook his head.
"Like Yang He, who already fled this farm, he merely borrowed a portion of the authority delegated by the farm owner. At bottom, he's just an influential servant."
Pausing briefly, he continued:
"However, this isn't just the farm owner's fault alone. You'll notice that the local survivors take great care never to shoulder an ounce of extra responsibility."
"Clinging to the mentality that less trouble is better than more, they resign themselves to whatever happens. They can't wait to bury their heads in the dirt so the taller folk will take the hit, yet they stick their rears high into the air just so they can scramble for a bench the moment dawn breaks."
"The mutants constantly speak of two-legged livestock, baring their fangs to devour them. The Church regards them as even less than human, slaughtering tens of thousands on a whim. And you, kid, might look down on them in your heart of hearts too, only feeling sympathy from the standpoint of a modern person... But who treats them least like human beings? It's not the Church or the mutants—it's themselves!"
"Haven't you noticed? This is a two-way street. No one even had to put a noose around their necks, because there was never any need. The situation here is completely different from Boulder City. So don't expect a few words to make them remember they're human. This four-wheel drive doesn't even have an accelerator. Teach them literacy first, then hand them a copy of *How Boulder City Was Tempered* to read. At least being able to chant a slogan or two would be a start."
Luo Yu chimed in,
"Isn't it called *Awakened Boer*?"
Fang Chang coughed.
"I forgot..."
How awkward.
His girlfriend was the editor of that book, after all.
Looking blankly at Fang Chang, Ye Shi's Adam's apple bobbed. He wanted to say something, but swallowed his words.
He thought of Little Lamb.
In that final moment, that little girl hadn't even thought about surviving herself; she had even been willing to let the young lady eat her.
And she had never once considered whether her self-sacrifice would truly be good for Yin Yin.
Cannibalism...
Even if one didn't go mad, it would leave a psychological shadow that lasted a lifetime.
Even someone like Elaina, who dared to shove anything into her mouth and shouted that it didn't matter because it was just a game, hadn't dared to taste what human flesh was like.
Let alone the flesh of a best friend...
In the end, from start to finish, she had never considered herself a human being, even if she was sharp and clever far beyond her years.
For a brief instant, Ye Shi suddenly felt that while the Church of the Torch's methods were extreme, they were not entirely without cause.
How had these people gone mad from Na fruit?
They hadn't been normal in the first place.
Yet the absurdity lay in the fact that this farm was considered one of the more normal settlements on this wasteland; places far more insane than this were as plentiful as the hairs on an ox.
"...No wonder the Enlightenment Society wanted to destroy the world."
Watching Ye Shi muttering there, Lao Bai clapped him on the shoulder.
"Alright, stop listening to Fang Chang's nonsense. If that guy had lived back in the Era of Prosperity, he'd probably be a shareholder in the Enlightenment Society. Listening to his ramblings will only lead you into a ditch."
Fang Chang retorted disgruntledly,
"Now you're slandering me. No matter what, I'd never do anything that extreme."
"Hard to say. Who knows what you smart-alecks are cooking up every day?" Lao Bai chuckled, then patted Ye Shi on the shoulder. "Go talk to that Yin Yin and get her to cooperate with us."
"Huh?" Ye Shi froze, blurting out, "What can a little brat like her do?"
Luo Yu gave him a mischievous wink.
"If she doesn't know, teach her. Don't you prefer them younger?"
Hearing this, Ye Shi jumped up like a rabbit whose tail had been stepped on, glaring at the smirking Luo Yu.
"Piss off! I... dammit, I like them a little older than me!"
Kuang Feng stroked his chin.
"I see. No wonder..."
Ye Shi flushed red with agitation.
"The hell do you mean, 'no wonder'?!"
The room was filled with cheerful laughter, dispersing the solemnity of a moment before.
Sitting to the side, Fang Chang gave a cough, looking at Ye Shi, who was still eager to argue, and said:
"Jokes aside, I think Lao Bai has a point. If we don't help that little girl, the people here will probably herd her onto the stage and force her to be the farm owner."
In fact, that was exactly what those officers were thinking.
Apart from Luo Feihui, who was already dead, the others were far more inclined to support the young girl as the master here rather than claiming the position themselves.
That way, they would indirectly control the farm without worrying about botching things and bringing disaster upon themselves, nor would they need to fight to the death over a thankless seat.
After all, the situation was still murky. The war between the Church of the Torch and the Alliance had only just begun; anything could happen.
Ye Shi grumbled,
"You're worrying over nothing. Inheriting such a massive family estate, she might be laughing in secret for all we know."
Fang Chang glanced at him.
"And then screw everything up and be slaughtered as a scapegoat by that mob?"
Ye Shi couldn't help saying,
"Then what do you expect a kid to do? Besides, didn't you say yourself that those people are beyond saving?"
Fang Chang shook his head.
"I never said they're beyond saving. It's the Torch that thinks they're beyond saving. What I meant is that 'awakening' doesn't fall from the heavens. It isn't any single person's responsibility, but every single person bears an inescapable responsibility."
"The same goes for that child. She could certainly accept the power and responsibility handed to her on a silver platter by those slaves with a clear conscience, but the price is becoming a puppet of those servants. After all, being a farm owner isn't an easy task, and she never possessed her father's methods to begin with, did she?"
"Of course, she has another option now: return the authority and responsibility her father stripped from everyone in this settlement back to them, exchanging a voluntary exit for a dignified conclusion. That way, she can still hold on to some of her wealth."
Lao Bai frowned, hesitating.
"Isn't that a bit too heavy for her? Alisa was nearly an adult, at least... but she's only eight years old."
Fang Chang shrugged.
"This is already the easiest path. She only needs to nod and play along with a few polite platitudes to secure a relatively dignified outcome. If she refuses our help, what she'll have to face next will be the truly heavy part."
Ye Shi looked at him, confused.
"What do you mean?"
"This is a holy war launched against the faith of the Torch, so the battlefield naturally won't be confined to what the naked eye can see... It only occurred to me just now, but the Sanctuary isn't as invulnerable as we thought. It can hide inside anyone's head, but it can't hide inside *everyone's* head—and those people are the vast majority on this land. If you were the Administrator, what would you do?"
Fang Chang didn't answer his confusion directly, posing this counter-question instead.
Ye Shi racked his brains for a long time. Just as he was about to say he didn't know, an epiphany struck him. Remembering the Na fruit, he blurted out almost instinctively:
"Just deprive the Torch of the soil to survive..."
Na fruit wouldn't directly kill anyone.
Yet it made the soil no longer suitable for the survival of old humanity.
This was the foundation of all the Church of the Torch's plans, just like the 'Neutron Sweep' was to the Enlightenment Society.
Likewise, the reason the Church of the Torch and their plans could be implemented here was precisely because the soil allowing that filth to live and proliferate existed here.
Then all they had to do was make this place no longer suitable for them to survive.
The Alliance allowed surrounding survivors to decide their own destinies, but the prerequisite was that whatever nonsense they got up to on their own turf didn't harm others.
Now, however, this was clearly no longer just an internal matter for the locals.
The fact that the Alliance's Heart of Steel had already arrived here was the most direct proof.
Looking at Ye Shi, who had caught on, Fang Chang gave an approving nod.
"Exactly. As long as we unite the majority on this land, the Torch and its Na fruit will lose the soil to survive. And to achieve that, the Administrator will almost certainly distribute the land originally belonging to the farm owners to those serfs, establishing a new order in this region."
"After last night's disaster, every settlement across this land must face a single-choice question—"
"The Church, or the Alliance."
This war had already begun.
Chapter 590