Stepping out of the shop, Cheng Ye found his contribution points completely wiped out, leaving him seven points in debt.
Letting the fine sunlight filtering through gaps in the clouds dance across his shoulders, he touched the pickup receipt he had just slipped into his pocket. The excitement in his chest took a long time to subside.
In a peril-ridden wasteland, a suitable, handy weapon was the absolute foundation for survival.
Its significance was no less than buying a car or a house in the modern world.
"It took me only two months to afford a transcendent weapon of my own?"
It felt somewhat surreal.
Even if having this weapon meant first borrowing a hundred points from Song Yongfeng and then owing the shop seven points.
Yet compared to the loans modern people took on that easily started at thirty years, Cheng Ye could only sigh inwardly: he truly had arrived in a "great" era!
If he had transmigrated to a radioactive wasteland, or to one where he could not even get a meal and had to fight zombies for scraps, let alone affording a weapon, with the original host’s physical condition it was hard to say whether he would have survived to this day.
"Thank you, Happiness City. At least at this moment... I truly am very happy."
Cheng Ye was an easily contented person.
With his contribution points reduced to zero, any thought of browsing firearms was instantly shelved.
The standard-issue pistol provided to inspectors was perfectly serviceable. Without going on field duty, there was no urgent need for a Bison combat pistol just yet.
Besides, going to the North or South Station would offer chances to contain infection sources. With a bit of luck, two or three days on duty would earn him fresh contribution points and the money to purchase firearms.
Of course, it was better not to have that kind of "good luck."
The more he learned about special infected variants, the more he felt how difficult it was for humanity to survive in the wasteland.
In particular, among the cases Luo Xiaoxue had mentioned last night, there was one where a special infected variant had managed to blend in, accumulating enough contribution points undetected to pass through the Gate of Happiness into the Inner City.
Fortunately, the Inner City's surveillance mechanisms were exceptionally comprehensive. Before that infected variant could amass enough power to trigger a secondary infection, it tripped a testing trap and was forced to reveal itself.
Had it gone unnoticed, Happiness City's current scale would likely have shrunk by at least half.
...
Boarding the bus to the library, Cheng Ye found a seat in the back row and called up the Collector.
The shimmering blue interface was very simple, yet its functions were quite complete.
In the upper right corner of the panel, like a phone's battery meter, the current charging progress was displayed.
[Lv. 1: 32%]
"The night before last, I charged 26 kilowatt-hours at home. Yesterday at the library, I charged another 23. Last night at Brother B's place was a bit less, only 18..."
Cheng Ye calculated mentally, unable to hide his delight.
Accumulating 50% allowed for one search. Even though he had not utilized every single minute yesterday, the charge was building up much faster than he had initially estimated.
At this rate, he might well have another search ready by tomorrow morning.
Turning to the Collector profile page, Cheng Ye was somewhat surprised: when he had been kept awake all night by hunger two nights ago, the data on the page had not budged at all. Yet after a normal night's rest, the page had actually synchronized and updated its data with his sleep.
"Does updating the data require sleep?"
Committing this rule to memory, Cheng Ye looked over the interface.
[Collector: Cheng Ye]
[Current Rank: Lv. 1 Novice (0.7/100, continue gathering more "information degree" to level up)]
[Life Tier: 0]
[Skills: Basic Force Exertion, Beast Instinct, Empty]
[Locked...]
[Evaluation: You have broken free from the bottom of the food chain where civilization natives can hunt you at will, but you remain far below the minimum standard for a Civilization Collector. Focusing on searches for inheritable information can rapidly yield progress and raise your rank.]
...
"Well, at least I'm not a roadside stray that can be kicked to death at will by natives anymore..."
Aside from the evaluation, Cheng Ye noticed that behind the first line for rank, specific advancement requirements were now displayed.
The 0.7 at the front was presumably the information degree gained from the two skills he had acquired, while the number behind it was the requirement to complete his novitiate.
"If one search yields 0.3, reaching a hundred points will take over three hundred searches."
"That would consume nearly sixteen thousand kilowatt-hours of electricity. That's too hard. Even without considering the hydropower station cutting off or raising prices during the dry season, charging fifty kilowatt-hours a day would still take more than half a year."
Calculating carefully, Cheng Ye immediately felt the road ahead was long; advancing was far harder than an apprentice inspector making full officer.
However, he vaguely sensed that the Collector likely had other charging methods and might not rely solely on electric power.
Unfortunately, in his current environment, electricity was the only absorbable energy he could find.
Only after establishing a firm foothold in the Buffer Zone in the future could he look into other energy sources the Collector could absorb.
"To speed up leveling, as the evaluation said, I need to focus on searching for inheritable information..."
"But what kind of information counts as inheritable?"
Cheng Ye pondered quietly.
By the time the automated announcement declared their arrival at Library Station, a vague line of thought had formed in his mind. These ideas, however, would require several more searches to verify whether they held water.
"Mr. Cheng, you're here!"
As Cheng Ye pushed open the door, Gwen looked up from her small bed and greeted him.
"The books you didn't finish yesterday, I gathered them up for you this morning. They're on the second desk."
"Thank you, Miss Gwen."
Cheng Ye nodded and produced a ten-denomination Happiness Coin from his pocket, offering it forward.
Of the twenty coins he had handed over yesterday, he hadn't taken the remaining ten upon leaving; topping up this ten-coin piece now would serve as his deposit.
To his surprise, Gwen shook her head. "No need. The deposit is only meant to screen patrons. Your care for books and reverence for knowledge no longer need a deposit to prove."
"Oh?"
Cheng Ye gave a soft chuckle, but he did not pull the coin back. "Then please use this ten-coin piece to get me some nutrient paste. That way, I won't lose reading time going out to buy lunch."
"Alright. Come lunchtime, I'll heat it up and bring it over to you."
Though he had only spent a single day here, Cheng Ye felt this library was more familiar than his own home.
Passing the bookshelves, he was slightly startled upon reaching the reading area.
No wonder Gwen had set his unfinished books on the second desk; someone was already seated at the first.
It looked like a woman, but her attire was somewhat bizarre.
A large black kerchief was wrapped around her head, and her face was masked tightly. Her lower wear consisted of scavenger gear rarely seen in the Buffer Zone lately: worn animal hide clothing paired with flat-soled sneakers.
Cheng Ye glanced over and noticed the book she was browsing, as well as the few volumes stacked beside her desk, were precisely the ones Gwen had introduced yesterday detailing special infected variants.
"Another bounty hunter looking to strike it rich?"
Cheng Ye looked away after a brief flicker of surprise. Unobtrusively sliding his pendant into the power socket, he sat at the second desk and began flipping through pages rapidly.
Soon, the rustling sound of turning paper filled the space.
The woman frowned and glanced over. Confirming that Cheng Ye was not making noise intentionally to draw her attention, but was instead utterly engrossed in reading, she could only shake her head helplessly.
*A Hundred Ways to Deal with Infected Variants*
*Slaying Infected Variants: Master These Eight Points and You're Set!*
*Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Migratory, Reproductive... A Comprehensive Breakdown of Infected Origins*
*A Real Man's Must-Read: Lessons to Save You Ten Years of Wasteland Pitfalls*
...
To a thousand readers, there were a thousand Hamlets.
People of different dispositions naturally adopted vastly different approaches when dealing with infected variants.
Some excelled at waiting patiently for the prey to fall into their trap, while others favored taking the initiative to attack.
Some believed in "never going into melee if ranged can solve it," while others insisted that "melee is more efficient, avoiding the loss of adaptability caused by relying on ranged combat."
Everyone held their own views, and these concepts were fully reflected in the survival guides they had authored.
Cheng Ye turned none of them away, voraciously absorbing the core information conveyed in each book.
When it came to diversity of viewpoints, how could the wasteland compare to the modern era?
What had modern people experienced?
Open a short-video app, and within minutes it pushed a hundred different ways to play around policies, pulling every trick imaginable to evade censorship.
Discussing shonen anime, even *Boruto*'s reputation could flip back and forth repeatedly, shifting from "non-combustible material" to "the audience has lost their Will of Fire."
Consequently, certain black-and-white, polarized arguments in the books struck Cheng Ye as having a rather endearing stubbornness.
Why pit ranged against melee so rigidly? Waiting for prey and striking proactively were not mutually exclusive.
Different scenarios naturally required different solutions. What he had to do was screen for the optimal answer among all possible approaches.
Without realizing it, the sky gradually darkened.
By the time Cheng Ye finished the final volume from the first bookshelf, the wall clock had just struck eight.
Outside the window, a fine drizzle began to fall once more.
The woman at table one had left at some point, and Gwen had wiped the tabletop clean, leaving it gleaming with a cool, spotless sheen.
"It's raining again."
Cheng Ye rose, his gaze distant, and returned all the books he had read back to the shelves in order.
Hiding away in this peaceful little library for two days had settled his restless heart.
Yet this, after all, was the wasteland.
According to the records in certain books, the scale of infection tides was categorized from smallest to largest into six tiers: Swarm, Tide, Plague, Calamity, Ruin, and Extinction.
Since the dawn of the New Era, an Extinction-tier infection tide had never appeared; it remained a purely theoretical definition.
Yet Ruin-tier infection tides had occurred four times. Each one swept up millions of infected, with earthbound transcendent spirits from the Old Era intermingling among them.
Once, a sanctuary city several times larger than Happiness City happened to lie along the path of a Ruin-tier infection tide and attempted to withstand it head-on.
The outcome was foreseeable: the sanctuary city deployed every means at its disposal, yet still failed to halt the tide's advance.
In less than half a day, the city fell, its people perished, and millions were contaminated into new infected variants, nearly triggering the birth of an Extinction-tier disaster.
Fortunately, right as it bordered on reaching the Extinction tier, the transcendents within suddenly hit their maximum distance limit and began to turn back.
Only then did humanity seize a breathing room, gradually splitting the massive infection tide into several smaller surges and diverting them in different directions, barely bringing the disaster's spread under control.
"With Happiness City's current strength, leave alone withstanding an Extinction tier, facing even a Ruin tier would be like a mantis trying to stop a chariot."
"Before a true disaster strikes, I must amass enough strength."
"At the very least, enough to escape!"
...
Chapter 20