Ever since he became the Administrator and dealt with an endless stream of everyday squabbles among the survivors, Chu Guang had rarely taken anyone's unilateral claims at face value anymore.
It wasn't that he worried someone might harm him.
Rather, so long as a person spoke human words, whether consciously or unconsciously, they would more or less carry a bit of their own stance and mindset.
It depended on how that person perceived themselves, and how they perceived others and the world around them.
Therefore, when explaining an incident, even if most people were telling the truth, it was seldom "absolutely" objective.
If one believed them entirely, it was all too easy to be led by the nose.
Of course, that did not mean less-than-objective accounts were outright lies. After all, even for genuine swindlers, telling a barefaced lie was a very foolish move.
Once their logic failed to hold together, they would find themselves in a corner with no defense; and in order to maintain logical consistency, they would have to weave lie after lie, each riddled with holes.
A far cleverer method was to pick out the parts of the truth favorable to oneself, dressing them up with hyperbolic adverbs, while reinterpreting the unfavorable parts from a tricky, self-serving angle.
For example, if one listened only to Sun Yuechi's side of the story, one might think everything the survivors in the Southern Sea ate and used came entirely from the shelter's meager reserves.
Had Chu Guang not run a settlement himself and known the true cost of everyday necessities, he might have actually bought into that fellow's nonsense and taken them for an innocent, naive bunch.
Naturally, he didn't just buy the Southern Sea survivors' narrative either.
After all, according to the rhetoric Zhalas spouted over the broadcast, every single resident of Shelter 70 was practically an arch-villain—a pre-Industrial Revolution "colonizer" due for judgment in the new era.
Zhalas most likely wasn't lying, or he wouldn't have been so bold as to tell the survivors to go home and ask their own families. Regrettable things had clearly occurred in the Southern Sea over the past century that were never properly resolved; otherwise, so many people would never have rallied to his side.
This was also an insight the Alliance had gained from digging up the past. If a settlement produced one or two madmen, that was probably just their own personal issue. But when everyone went mad—when someone flicked a lighter and someone else immediately handed over a barrel of fuel, while the rest either cheered or fanned the flames—then the entire settlement was gravely ill.
From the very beginning, Chu Guang had sensed that Sun Yuechi was probably digging a massive pit for him, or at the very least dumping a huge burden into his lap.
And as it turned out, free things truly never came cheap, and anything thrust hurriedly into one's hands was almost never anything good.
The seemingly tranquil Southern Sea was in fact brewing a storm capable of threatening the entire wasteland.
Ordinary sea marauders at most drove skiffs to stage raids. If his players didn't spot them, it was the marauders' good luck; if they did, the players could crush them with the flick of a finger.
Yet these fellows not only operated battleships, but also possessed fully equipped factories and research facilities, and had even formed a complementary partnership with the Church of the Torch—the former providing technology, the latter supplying resources.
Synthesizing all the intelligence his players had compiled on the forum, Chu Guang could basically conclude that the fellow had only been honest about one thing:
What had been dumped into his hands was undeniably a complete mess.
"...Is that so?"
Shelter 404, the browsing room on Floor B4.
Upon learning from Chu Guang that the federation born without his knowledge had now shattered into three pieces without his knowledge as well, Sun Yuechi couldn't help letting out a groan of agony.
His face was the very picture of desolation, looking noticeably haggard in an instant.
Compared to the earnestness when he first pleaded for help and the panic when he heard the shocking news of upheaval, perhaps this was his truest feeling deep down...
What was bound to come had finally arrived.
In truth, Chu Guang suspected the man might have known all along it would end like this, yet had still resolutely opted for the worst kind of shock therapy.
Whether that was true or not, only he himself knew.
"...Pinning your hopes on outsiders—I don't think that was a wise approach," Chu Guang said, giving him a meaningful look.
Sun Yuechi's expression faltered, and he tried to defend himself, arguing that he wasn't just willing to hand it over to anyone, and that he had carefully vetted who would take over the mess.
"I looked into you carefully. That included how you handled the Sindisen case back then, and how you handled relations between wastelanders and shelter residents. There was so much we could learn from. It was precisely those bright spots that won me over..."
"That's not what I'm talking about."
Watching Sun Yuechi scramble to excuse himself, Chu Guang shook his head and looked at him intently.
"First of all, our methods are not a panacea. There are no universal remedies in this world. Secondly, we knew next to nothing about your situation, and you never clearly explained the full diagnosis... Even though we treaded very carefully to defuse the mines, an unexpected spark still flared up."
He had no doubt that his little players were already top-notch "bomb disposal experts."
That included Brother Fang Chang, his handiest instrument, who was a battle-tested talent through and through, not someone handpicked on a whim.
The underwater freshwater pipeline had been a brilliant move, sharing the same underlying brilliance as the railway in Sunset Province. If everything had gone smoothly, it might really have won over the majority of settlements and split the fragile federation.
After all, that federation hadn't existed for very long to begin with, and each settlement enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. The governors were not even accountable to the federal capital first; they answered primarily to the residents of their own islands, and only secondarily to the president.
Regrettably, the wasteland was not the 21st century of the players' world. The enemy had given them no time to unite the islands, turning the scheme against them by sending their cannon fodder to die near the pipeline. That thrust the issues hidden beneath the sea surface out into the open, completely forcing Torch's allies within the federation to revolt.
Even though Fang Chang had correctly anticipated that Torch would make a move on the day the water was turned on, and had successfully thwarted their plot through meticulous planning, it had been in vain.
The other side knew their role well: they were destroyers of order. If they competed with the Alliance to see who could build order better, they stood no chance at all.
So right off the bat, they flipped the table.
Yet this also showed from another angle that the bishop handling Southern Sea affairs for the Church of the Torch was a completely different sort of player from Luo Qian, who had tried to build a twisted order in Jinhe City.
That fellow might very well be a "living person."
Faced with that piercing accusation, Sun Yuechi was at a loss for words. After a long pause, he slumped dejectedly back into the sofa.
"...You're right. I shouldn't have pinned my hopes on people who didn't understand the situation at all. And I did conceal things about this matter. But to get you to intervene quickly, I had no other choice."
His Adam's apple bobbed, and he continued:
"I truly wasn't completely blind to what was happening with the federation. The seeds of division didn't even start with my generation, but two generations before me. I still remember when my predecessor handed me the administrator clearance, he said maybe a young man would find a way... My god, how the hell was I supposed to have a way? He would've been better off dumping the mess on some other old codger who only had a few years left to live! Can you imagine? When the islanders heard I was only in my thirties, everyone went ballistic. I even suspect the old bastard did it on purpose—he wanted to make me the scapegoat sent to the gallows!"
He took a deep breath, burying his face in his hands.
"I actually thought about whether it would be better if I shouldered it all myself. But I didn't want to die—at least not such a pathetic death. So I picked up that broken watch and patched it up again. The shelter residents praised me, saying moving the patrol fleet from under the navy to the cabinet was a brilliant stroke, gouging out the eyes of jackals and sticking them on dogs, successfully staving off the crisis... But who didn't know it was just prying planks from the deck to patch the hull? Both the dogs and the wolves on that ship despise us!"
Then he looked up at Chu Guang and said bitterly:
"Whether you believe it or not, that ship has reached the end of the line. Even if I had stayed, it wouldn't have helped. Or rather... had there been even a shred of hope left, I never would have walked away. A shelter isn't a wish-granting machine; there's no magic button you can press to make all your problems vanish."
Chu Guang nodded slightly.
"I can understand how you feel, but your residents might not."
Sun Yuechi sighed, looking up at the ceiling with a desolate look.
"I understand that too... Anyway, I'm still young. Taking a few punches won't kill me."
For some reason, Chu Guang suddenly found it hard not to chuckle, though he felt laughing out loud right now would be rather unkind.
That fellow's predecessor had even factored in that his successor would get beaten up, deliberately picking a young heir who could take a beating.
He wondered if his own predecessor had left him a body bursting with combat prowess for the very same reason.
Seeing Chu Guang's facial muscles twitch, Sun Yuechi made a helpless face.
"I know you want to laugh. Go ahead and laugh, but afterward, could you tell me what you plan to do next?"
Chu Guang pondered for a moment, gently setting the teacup in his hand back onto the tray on the coffee table.
"Now that the Church of the Torch has stepped into the local situation, this is no longer just your problem. We originally planned to launch an offensive against southern Jinchuan Province and Haiya Province at the end of the year, but now it seems... we'll have to move it forward."
Just as the words left his mouth, the sliding door of the browsing room hissed open, and a man in formal attire hurried in.
Sun Yuechi looked over. The man looked somewhat familiar; only after staring for a while did he realize that this was Yi Chuan, the Enterprise's representative stationed in Dawn City.
Motioning to X-16 standing nearby to pour a cup of black tea with milk for this guest as well, Chu Guang looked at him with a faint smile.
"You arrived at the perfect time. I was just talking over the situation in the Southern Sea with the former Administrator of Shelter 70. Just as I mentioned in the email I sent you, things over there are probably worse than the Council realizes."
Taking a seat on the sofa, Yi Chuan nodded solemnly, his eyes bright and resolute.
"Thank you for the intelligence. We are already briefed on what's going on there. The Council takes the matters in the Southern Sea with the utmost seriousness. We will never tolerate anyone arming those scaled devils, nor will we allow those madmen to continue their insane plans, much less spread the contamination of Na fruits into the ocean—"
Chu Guang cleared his throat, cutting through his verbose rhetoric.
"Relax. This isn't the Slime Mold Community conference, and there are no reporters here... Let's talk about something practical."
Yi Chuan gave an awkward smile, sheepishly rubbing his nose.
"...How much?"
Chu Guang nearly choked on the milk tea he had just swallowed. After several ragged coughs, he glared at the man.
"You're being too practical..."
Yi Chuan froze, asking self-consciously:
"Didn't you ask for something practical?"
"Be that as it may, I'd still prefer a little more tact," Chu Guang said, turning to Sun Yuechi. "Why don't you brief our friend here on the situation over there as well? Specifically the part about how the Church of the Torch made contact with you, up to the point before you came ashore."
Sun Yuechi looked at the two of them blankly and nodded.
"Alright..."
...
Shelter 70.
After lingering at the entrance for a while, the group had finally stepped into the shelter's interior.
The space behind the door was vast.
Because it was an entrance built for engineering purposes, it did not open into the shelter's main hall, but rather a colossal, cavernous warehouse.
Judging by the dust on the floor, it hadn't been used in quite some time.
This layout bore some resemblance to Shelter 404. Besides its surface access point, the latter also had an entrance connected to the subway line, and even a sealed-off passageway leading to who-knew-where.
All thousand-odd people in the shelter had gathered here—both the "orthodox" bluecoats and the survivors who had evacuated here when disaster struck Coral City.
Hiding nothing about carrying the key, Sisi spoke up candidly as soon as she crossed the threshold.
"I have the password for acting authority. In a moment, I will undergo administrator verification to obtain temporary clearance. Of course, if you don't trust us, or don't trust your Administrator's arrangements, we'll take the key and leave."
The crowd packed into the auxiliary warehouse exchanged glances. No one voiced any objections; a few men wearing exoskeletons even voluntarily cleared a path toward the terminal.
So long as one wasn't overly abrasive, an attractive face certainly made it easier to win goodwill upon first impression, whether with men or women.
Naturally, the residents standing here weren't judging good and evil purely on sentiment; they had thought it through rationally.
Though admitting the truth was disheartening, they weren't so foolish as to remain blind to facts staring them in the face:
The problems here were no longer something they could resolve on their own.
If they could have, they would have done so long ago, rather than letting things drag out until a full-blown crisis erupted.
Nodding to the people making way, Sisi walked through the bustling crowd to the terminal. Closing her eyes, she copied the dynamic password from the official website, then entered it onto the screen.
[Temporary clearance verified... Registering biometric data.]
[Registration complete... Welcome back, Acting Administrator.]
Seeing the pale-blue text pop up on the screen, Sisi lifted her index finger from the surface and turned to Captain Chen Jianhong.
"Could you take me to where the security equipment is stored?"
Uncrossing his arms, Chen Jianhong nodded.
"No problem."
Having been with the Alliance for some time, he felt fairly confident in their professional ethics.
Seeing Captain Chen leading the way deeper into the shelter, Tail and the others followed close behind.
As for Captain Dong Wen of the Glory, his nearly two hundred crew members, and the crew of the Dolphin, they were temporarily settled into vacant living quarters arranged by the residents of Shelter 70.
Based on their preliminary discussions, they intended to establish a new governing authority.
It would encompass not only the abandoned Coral City, but also Shelter 70—something the previous federal authorities had never mentioned in their manifesto.
After all, back then, they had needed a shared target of hatred to forge their unity.
As it turned out, that shortcut led nowhere; even without anyone giving them a push, they had managed to implode all on their own.
Now, the new authority had to take this fresh lesson to heart and devise a better plan as soon as possible.
Inside the conference room, representatives chosen by both sides stood together, discussing how to draft this new proposal.
Watching everyone exchange opinions, Lin Nuo stroked his chin in deep contemplation for a good while before suddenly raising his hand.
"This new authority... how about calling it the Southern Sea Alliance?"
Everyone who heard this paused.
It wasn't that the idea was exceptionally clever, but rather that while everyone else was pondering the content of the draft, this guy was focusing on the title.
A tall, burly man shook his head, his tone solemn.
"What it's called doesn't matter; what we do is what counts. Right now, the urgent priority is to establish contact with both warring sides. We must win the backing of at least one of them."
His name was Yang Lirong. Formerly an environmental engineer, his political leanings placed him among the conservatives.
Ever since Sun Yuechi fled, the shelter residents had elected him as interim administrator—not merely because he had a loud voice, but because his voice represented the opinions of the majority of residents.
Hearing his statement, many who shared his views nodded in agreement, but others voiced a different perspective.
"True, what we do is critical, but before that, what we need even more is a slogan that can unite everyone," a tall, slender man said, raising a hand with a serious look.
His name was Wang Sihai. He was a crewman of the Dolphin and also one of the Shelter 70 members who had accompanied Captain Chen Jianhong on his "pilgrimage" to Dawn City.
In that place where miracles were born, he had witnessed a completely different model from the Southern Sea—one where shelter residents and wasters lived as equals.
They might not be able to replicate it wholesale, but it at least held valuable reference.
Another middle-aged man standing beside Yang Lirong shook his head.
"I know what you're trying to say, but they grew sick of those kinds of slogans long ago. It'll be tough."
Refusing to give up, Wang Sihai pressed on to argue his point:
"That's why our slogan needs to strip away the label of Shelter 70 as much as possible. For example... how about 'Survivors, unite'?"
The crowd exchanged looks, whispering among themselves in discussion.
Honestly, it wasn't a particularly rousing statement.
It couldn't compare to Zhalas's hard-hitting speech, nor even to the impromptu inaugural address Li Minghui had cobbled together.
Yet it had its own merits: it was concise, clear, and struck right at the core of the issue... Hadn't all their suffering stemmed precisely from a false unity?
Moreover, this borrowed slogan was not entirely without a "popular base" in the Southern Sea.
At the very least, the residents of Ring Island had seen those united people with their own eyes and had deeply experienced the order they brought.
Residents on other islands had also heard more or less of the Alliance's tales, or of those whom they had sheltered along the Baiyue Strait to carve out a new home.
The wind that began in River Valley Province had crossed the sea and reached these shores. A group of brave people had already set a shining example for them:
Survivors could indeed unite!
Now, all they needed was the courage to take that step forward, thoroughly settle the mistakes of the past, and march toward true unity.
Watching the skepticism around them slowly give way to hesitation, and then to a faint, barely perceptible glimmer of hope, Captain Dong Wen of the Glory, broadcast staffer Lin Nuo, and Wang Sihai along with the other representatives of the Dolphin all breathed a sigh of relief.
Though the road ahead was long, that very first step allowed them all to glimpse the dawn breaking at the end of a long night...
...
On the way to the armory.
Rou Rou, with more than a dozen tiny braids in her fur, swallowed hard in excitement, clutching her thick bear paws and muttering eagerly:
"Will there be nukes?!"
She had heard that their friends in the Burning Corps had found tactical nukes the size of bowling balls back in Boulder City!
If only they could find some here too!
Walking beside her, Tail spoke with world-weary gravity:
"Thinking too small, my dear Rou Rou! Looking purely at lore, the Era of Prosperity had plenty of stuff way stronger than nukes... like neutron sweeps or whatever."
"There's no way a shelter would have something like that..." Sesame Paste said, caught between amusement and exasperation.
"That's right, there's no way a shelter has that kind of thing. If you're expecting some super weapon, you're bound to be disappointed."
To accommodate the NPCs who couldn't understand human-player banter, Sisi intentionally spoke this in the game's Human Alliance language.
Yet to her surprise, Chen Jianhong, walking in front, undercut her with a laugh.
"...Well, you can't say that for sure. For instance, that 'back door' you saw earlier was actually never connected to the shelter's security system. Mr. Sun Yuechi told me that."
Sisi paused, looking at him in surprise.
"Which means..."
Hesitating a moment over whether to reveal it, Chen Jianhong ultimately sighed, sharing a truth that someone was bound to uncover sooner or later.
"During the Three-Year War, that door was very likely opened secretly once, and probably not long after the Tianting crashed... After all, with such a massive commotion outside, it's only natural to check if the bicycle parked by the door is still there."
Pausing, he added in a lower voice:
"Of course, that's just a metaphor. Shelter 70 is under the sea, after all, so whatever was parked outside was probably a submersible or something."
He remembered historical records mentioning that Shelter 70 had originally deployed a large amount of construction equipment and building materials near the entrance, but due to the crash of the Tianting, all of that equipment was lost.
If the door had truly been kept locked tight, how could the people who emerged a century ago have known how those things went missing?
It was possible that wasters had scavenged them as junk. The survivors outside weren't primitive natives, but tough bastards who operated suction dredgers to build artificial islands. Before the shelter doors opened, those people had also been slowly developing—just slowly and abnormally.
Sisi swallowed.
"They brought things back at the time?"
"Exactly. Out of concern for the future—say, in case the 'enemy' ended up winning—the first Administrator of Shelter 70 very likely took advantage of the post-tsunami calm, before the wartime government could conduct search operations on the Tianting space station, to salvage some fallen debris from nearby and bring it into the shelter through that backup back door."
Pausing, Chen Jianhong continued with a conflicted expression:
"For example, the battleship docked at North Island—its main guns were actually stripped from an aerospace frigate, then brought into the shelter through the back door."
Tail's eyes sparkled.
"Whoa! There really are super-powerful weapons!"
Rou Rou, ever eager for excitement, looked at the captain with equal thrill.
Not knowing how to handle their overly enthusiastic gazes, Chen Jianhong scratched his head and gave a small cough:
"There are weapons, certainly, but they're not nearly as exaggerated as you and the people outside imagine... Just some wreckage stripped from starships, plus some powered armor from the aerospace forces. During the first century, we repaired a portion of it. After opening the doors, our focus shifted back to construction outside the shelter."
Realizing her prediction had missed the mark, Sisi awkwardly changed the subject:
"By the way, how did you know words were carved next to that back door? Did Sun Yuechi tell you that too?"
Chen Jianhong shook his head.
"No... Mr. Sun actually never went there. To be precise, ever since the main gate opened, no one had probably used that door. You can guess why—it wasn't exactly something to be proud of. As for why there were words carved there, that was my guess."
Sisi was puzzled at first, but soon it clicked.
The words had been carved near the back door, not at the shelter's main gate connected to the security system...
In other words, the identities of the very first people who entered this shelter were highly suspect.
Eyes wide with astonishment, Sisi stared at him.
"You mean..."
Chen Jianhong looked aside, his expression complicated, and shared his speculation:
"There are two possibilities. One, they were on the manifest, but because the main entrance was mobbed by a crowd of desperate 'troubles' fighting for survival, they slipped in through the back door, leaving their remorse on the wall.
"The other possibility leans toward conspiracy: they might never have been on the list at all, but were contractors or insiders who knew about this shelter. They found a way to pose as construction workers or snuck inside through other means to alter the shelter protocols, supplanting the people who were supposed to enter..."
At this point, Chen Jianhong paused, then added a third possibility that he himself hardly believed:
"Of course, I can't entirely rule out a third scenario: they were on the manifest, entered legitimately through the front gate, and merely stepped out the back door later, thought of the compatriots who died outside, and left their regret there... like stepping out onto a balcony for a cigarette."
The truth was like Schrödinger's cat; unless someone opened the box, perhaps no one would ever know what truly happened.
It was hard to say whether the first Administrator had recorded this memory in the log.
And it was equally hard to say whether keeping the truth buried or unearthing it all at once was the better path.
Looking at the flabbergasted Sisi, a complex expression rose on Chen Jianhong's face.
"I won't ask about your business, but do you really think... everyone who got into the shelters two hundred years ago was a good person? You must have seen what happened outside shelter gates back then."
Gathering her wits, Sisi shook her head and answered succinctly:
"I never thought that. And honestly, I don't consider myself a good person either."
"Ha, come on, you folks look pretty good to us," Chen Jianhong chuckled, rubbing his stubbled chin, only to fall silent a moment later.
It really wasn't anything to laugh about.
It was an objective fact that the Era of Prosperity had achieved broad equality; it was also a fact that existential crises unleashed the repressed savagery in human nature.
The Human Alliance had needed brave, capable, devoted people to journey into the distant future and rebuild a new home on soil where civilization might have vanished.
For that, they needed to select genuine good people.
Yet the paradox lay here: when a system of rules was designed to screen for "good people" in a populace, the ones it was most likely to filter out weren't necessarily "good people," but ruthless survivors.
The idea that only true elites could enter shelters had never existed.
The brutal truth was very likely that they only became the so-called elites because they survived inside a shelter...
After learning about other shelters, Chen Jianhong had sensed it somewhat: shelter residents were not genuinely "naive."
After all, human beings were complex and varied creatures, capable of changing their minds three times a day. Using a word like "naive" to describe an entire collective was itself the pinnacle of naive arrogance.
Those people—his forebears—were likely nothing more than the victors of that trial two centuries ago.
There were many ways to win: some complied with the rules, others broke them, and some cheated through backdoor paths.
At the same time, being an "elite" was no passport to survival. The outside world had run for two hundred years, going through countless different test papers.
And that was precisely why, once they emerged, they "didn't always" outperform the wasters, unconsciously binding authority to bloodline instead.
"Many among us got it wrong. A shelter is not a nation, nor a political entity. It's a specialized disaster relief agency akin to police or firefighters, except its unique nature endowed it with an overly transcendent status and perks... like the right to survive, which was in desperate shortage back then. To the point where those children believed their parents were one-in-a-million elites, and that they themselves were elites too, thinking that as long as they mimicked how their elders spoke, ordinary people would revere them. In truth, not only is that unfitting now, even back in those days, nobody talked like that."
Sisi glanced at him with mild surprise.
"I'm surprised you've thought about this so deeply."
Mainly because when she first met him, he hadn't seemed like this kind of person at all; if anything, he had looked more like a potential supporter of the Enlightenment Society.
Could a single trip to Dawn City really have had such a big impact?
Meeting her surprised gaze, Chen Jianhong felt slightly bashful. Scratching the back of his head, he laughed:
"Truth be told, it's somewhat embarrassing... I was actually inspired by a waster."
"Who?"
"Boer."
Sisi blanked for a moment, then remembered what that was, bursting into a snort of laughter.
Tail's eyes shone as she chimed in:
"Oh! Written by Sberg, right?"
Delighted to find someone who appreciated it, Chen Jianhong's eyes lit up, and he beamed:
"Haha, you've read it too!"
Tail scratched her head sheepishly and muttered softly:
"Uh, actually no. Our Rou Rou was still drifting out at sea back then."
People had actually cross-posted excerpts on the forum, but in-game books always felt more immersive read inside the game.
Just like Skyrim: even if someone compiled the in-game books into text files, reading them in real life just didn't have the same flavor.
"It just struck me that we haven't been back in a long time," Sesame Paste said, a wistful look appearing on her face at the mention of "home."
Although the ramen shops of Dawn City had opened branches all the way to Golden Gallon Port, they hadn't visited the ramen parlor on North Street in ages.
Chen Jianhong paused, not quite understanding this nostalgia. After all, taking an airship from Port French Fries back to Dawn City only took two days.
Then again, he soon recalled that the route had only been operating for two months; perhaps they simply hadn't had any free time.
"That... really is a shame."
...
Walking down the shelter's long corridor, the group took a massive cargo elevator down into a warehouse deep within the shelter.
According to the rules laid down by the first Administrator, only those holding administrator clearance could enter.
This was an immense space, spanning the area of four football fields.
Looking down from the catwalk at the top of the warehouse, neatly aligned mechanical structures were lined up in the center of the open floor.
A portion consisted of repaired gear—for instance, "Dragoon" powered armors. In the corner of the warehouse, there were a whopping hundred units stacked up!
That was even more than the inventory the Alliance had found in Boulder City's armory!
Not only that, there were personal weapons such as Gauss rifles and energy weapons, all repaired and arranged neatly on warehouse racks...
Even more astonishing was what lay in the center of the warehouse: metal rails—or rather, gun barrels—as long as two high-speed rail cars!
Beyond any doubt!
This was undeniably an electromagnetic railgun used on aerospace frigates!
And there were four entire railguns in stock!
As for the other bizarre contraptions—likely reactors or anti-gravity units salvaged from starships—they were equally astounding.
At the thought that the Rou Rou could fly in the sky one day, Tail clenched her fists in sheer excitement, her eyes virtually turning into the shape of silver coins.
"Giao! Sisi! We're rich!"
Seeing this, Sisi couldn't help facepalming and whispered a reminder:
"Tail, snap out of it. This isn't our reward; they're quest items."
Rou Rou was so stunned her jaw practically rested on the railing, robbed of all speech. Sesame Paste looked equally shocked, though not quite as dramatic as Rou Rou and Tail.
Glancing at the stunned group, Chen Jianhong couldn't help curling the corners of his mouth, speaking with a touch of pride:
"A century ago, while we were still sealed in the shelter, we modified the ammunition for these four guns so they could be fired within an atmosphere. Anti-ship combat aside, with this thing, you could launch a five-hundred-kilogram mass projectile straight into low-Earth orbit!"
Five hundred kilograms?!
Hearing that, Rou Rou couldn't help letting out a cry of disbelief.
"Holy crap, a half-ton payload?! Doesn't that mean... you could use this thing to launch satellites?!"
Of course, whether satellites could even operate in outer space was another matter entirely.
Rumor had it astronomical amounts of debris were floating up there, leaving even the big shots of Ideal City helpless.
Sisi broke into a sweat.
"Launching satellites probably wouldn't work. Electronic components that can withstand 32 megajoules of muzzle kinetic energy... don't exist in reality, at least."
Generally speaking, that was about the limit of muzzle kinetic energy that gun-launched missiles could endure.
And for this railgun, the muzzle kinetic energy was clearly not measured in plain megajoules.
After all, the Alliance's self-developed and produced Model 60 railgun already boasted a muzzle kinetic energy of 60 megajoules—roughly three times that of conventional naval guns in the real world.
This monster probably started at thirty times that, with no telling what the ceiling was.
Still, considering that the semiconductor materials used on the wasteland differed from the real world, she didn't state it with absolute certainty.
Looking at the awestruck compatriots from Shelter 404, Chen Jianhong smiled and continued introducing his shelter's trump cards:
"When we first treated the Legion as our hypothetical adversary, we actually considered using terminal-deceleration missiles against airships equipped with deflector shields. But later, considering they might equip airships with point-defense systems against low-speed targets, we thought of mounting these railguns onto a warship of sufficient tonnage.
"Even without phase cannons to help break shields, relying purely on the kinetic energy of the shells is enough to overload them. According to theoretical calculations, three rounds are enough to bring down a standard Legion airship!
"As for whether they have other trump cards, we have no idea... At the very least, it's enough to let them know we're not to be trifled with."
Sisi couldn't help marveling:
"This is already an absurdly overpowered force... If Zhalas had gotten his hands on this gear, he might really have stood a chance at conquering these seas with you."
Just as he said, their enemies weren't entirely without a chance. Both sides had been biding their time, waiting for an opening.
"Dominate the seas? Hahaha!"
Chen Jianhong merely grinned, casting his gaze toward the salvage stripped from the frigate, his eyes narrowing slightly.
"...Then his ambition is far too puny.
"Following your Administrator back into the sea of stars—wouldn't that scenery be far more splendid than some tiny puddle?"
To be honest.
Whether it was Mengge before or Zhalas now, those people thought on far too small a scale, to the point where even their dreams were timid and constrained.
A federation centered on the survivors of the Southern Sea?
The borders of the Human Alliance extended five light-years away!
In comparison, that gentleman's words truly sounded far better, and the grand promises he painted were much more appetizing... Whether wasters focused on the present or bluecoats dreaming of returning to the Era of Prosperity, everyone could find a flavor to their liking with him.
They wouldn't return to the Era of Prosperity.
Instead, starting now, they would build an even greater era!
No wonder that fellow Sun Yuechi lingered in Dawn City and refused to come back...
Chapter 724