Chapter 71: Eternal City No. 1 Pasture.
“Xiao Qing, what were you just looking at?”
Xiang Nanli turned his head. From his perspective, all he could see was a dense mountain forest.
The last time he came here, the surrounding trees were still bare. Species capable of surviving in harsh environments truly all possessed their own unique traits.
Dongfang Qingdi answered: “There are Mutants in the forest. Many of them. They should be Crawlers.”
According to his scan, there were a total of 12 within a two-kilometer radius.
Mutants rarely lived in groups.
They possessed bodies akin to deep-sea leviathans, meaning they had to engage in high-intensity hunting to maintain survival.
Living together in one place? Don’t make him laugh. There wouldn’t be nearly enough prey to kill, and they would all starve to death.
In situations of extreme food scarcity, Mutants would even hunt and eat their own kind.
Hearing this, Xiang Nanli couldn’t help but fall deep into thought: “So many? Could it be that because their previous siege on the city failed, they want to come back for revenge? Or did the temperature rise, so they gathered here to mate?”
The physical disparity between different Crawlers was quite large. Under normal circumstances, they were 5 to 15 meters long, but there were also ultra-massive Mutants that could reach 50 meters in length, resembling Godzilla.
Xiang Nanli imagined a giant lizard crushing a small lizard, perhaps even squashing the small lizard to death, and couldn’t stop himself from letting out a wicked laugh.
“I’ll ask Andrew later. Why do I feel like they’re just gathered here living… but is there enough food?”
The cargo truck parked at the entrance of the Eternal City.
The war hadn’t passed long ago, but order had already been restored to the entire city, and it looked well-organized.
The guards on the city wall raised their guns and shouted loudly: “Get out of the car! Who goes there?!”
When facing a large cargo truck, the soldiers were clearly much more vigilant than they would be facing a small car.
The truck’s compartment was massive; it could easily conceal weapons or a large number of soldiers.
Xiang Nanli hopped out of the truck and waved toward the city gate: “It’s me! People from the base are here!”
Only two months had passed. Previously, the survivors in the city had all received food and seeds from Xiang Nanli’s hands, so they couldn’t be more familiar with this voice.
The soldiers quickly grew excited: “My Lord, you have returned.”
The massive metal gates opened.
Xiang Nanli stepped down from the truck. Inside the city, the crowds of people who were working and studying swarmed toward him.
Some were still speaking the local dialect of the Eternal City, but some were already haltingly speaking the Human Alliance language.
Andrew had decreed that natives who could speak the Human Alliance language would be given priority to enter the administrative system of the Eternal City.
He had also established the “Eternal City Literacy School” at the original site of the theater. The composition of the teachers was complex; some were robots, while the rest were former “criminals.”
Everyone could attend classes for free. Andrew would also occasionally teach a class, primarily teaching medicine. In the past, whether these serfs survived an illness depended entirely on how tough their lives were.
Say what you will, he still held a diploma from Donglan University; teaching illiterates was more than easy for him.
Graduates with excellent grades would also be exceptionally promoted to cadres.
The Eternal City’s cadre system was not yet saturated. Perhaps not every cadre had the ideological awareness to study hard and serve society, but a salary of two catties of rice per month was still incredibly enticing.
More importantly, these two catties of rice came from their own labor; it was money earned with dignity, not a charity handout.
With all these conditions stacked together, the serfs’ enthusiasm for literacy was currently unprecedentedly high.
The Eternal City’s finances derived from agricultural exports. Grain on the surface was exceedingly expensive; even through bartering, it was enough for those nobles to live a life of luxurious consumption. Furthermore, they had the Divine Court backing them, so they never had to worry about attacks from nearby settlements.
Now, the city had temporarily suspended foreign trade. The serfs who farmed finally had the opportunity to eat the grain they grew themselves.
“My Lord, how many days will you be staying this time?”
“Did you come from the base?”
An old woman pulled a dirt-covered potato out of her apron and stuffed it into Xiang Nanli’s hand: “This is a potato I grew myself at home!”
This action drew jealous glares from everyone else around!
But very quickly, the others followed suit.
“My Lord, my family’s potatoes taste better.”
“I work at the pasture; this is fresh goat’s milk—”
“Make way; I have cured meat sausages here!”
“My Lord, let me give you this basket; I wove it by hand!”
After Dongfang Qingdi finished parking the truck, what he saw was Xiang Nanli holding a woven basket, completely surrounded by the crowd.
The wave of feeding frenzy had already passed, and Xiang Nanli was currently asking them about their present lives.
Xiao Fu smoothly blended into the city’s squad of mechanical dogs. It began pretending to be a normal mechanical dog, patrolling various corners of the city.
Some problems were hidden in the shadows, and Gospel would use its own eyes to observe them.
Some people also noticed Dongfang Qingdi, and just as they were about to step forward to welcome him, they were pierced by his icy glare.
“Not enough people at the pasture? Mm, okay. I’ll stay here for a few days and write a new system to hand the repetitive mechanical labor over to robots.”
“You feel that the field distributed to your neighbor is closer to the water source? The city is currently constructing a water conservancy system; automated irrigation will be implemented in the future. I’ll go inspect it.”
There was even a child who felt the work uniforms distributed in the city weren’t pretty enough.
No matter how trivial the matter, Xiang Nanli had Xiao Zhi record it in a memo.
Currently, he had three separate memos.
One for daily work, one for base construction, and the last one for the development of the Eternal City.
Xiang Nanli didn’t plan on developing the Eternal City into a colony of the base, even though, in the short term, this would yield more profits.
But he was neither a businessman nor a politician. The people of the Eternal City were also people.
Perhaps a higher level of conquest than occupation was assimilation.
Dongfang Qingdi waited quietly for twenty minutes, then stepped forward and yanked Xiang Nanli out of the crowd: “Next time. Someone from the inner city is here.”
Xiang Nanli carried the woven basket on his back, packed to the brim with primary agricultural products. He waved to the crowd repeatedly, feeling like he was participating in some idol meet-and-greet.
These residents had previously followed the Divine Court, believing in a great God.
But God had not taken pity on lowly mortals like them.
Compared to an ethereal, intangible idol, perhaps they preferred someone like Xiang Nanli.
The person from the inner city was Haili; her position was Minister of Internal Affairs. She could manage a little bit of almost everything.
Andrew didn’t like the title of City Lord, preferring others to call him Mayor. But the people around him still habitually addressed him as City Lord.
Changing customs and habits would take a very long time.
As for Xiang Nanli and the Survivor Base, they had also been placed in a position similar to the previous “Divine Court” by the residents of the Eternal City. Having never seen the outside world, it was difficult for them to comprehend any other type of relationship.
Andrew = City Lord. Xiang Nanli = Overlord.
If these serfs were forced to choose their own master, they felt that their current master was slightly better.
Haili bowed slightly: “My Lord, you and your fiancé have returned!”
The dresses she used to wear gave off a medieval native vibe, but now, her outfit leaned toward modernization. Convenient work clothes, jeans, and sneakers. Even her long hair had been cut short to ear length to save time washing it. Long hair that wasn’t properly maintained easily became coarse and infested with lice.
Xiang Nanli froze for a moment, then remembered the lie he had told earlier.
He rubbed his nose and gave a vague response: “Mm.”
The corners of Dongfang Qingdi’s mouth couldn’t help but rise by 2 degrees.
Compared to his usually flat lip line, this already counted as an unprecedented, radiant smile.
Haili drove a small car. These cars were all left behind by the tournament contestants.
The Eternal City didn’t yet have the capability to manufacture cars, so they were considered public property, requiring an application for every use.
Xiang Nanli put the items in the trunk, walked to the driver’s seat, and sat down: “Where’s Andrew?”
“Andrew went to the pasture this morning. I’ve sent a drone to call him back,” Haili replied. “If there’s anything you’d like to know, you can ask me first.”
The car drove past the schoolhouse. This building was newly constructed, as the previous houses had been incinerated by flames. Next to the schoolhouse was the cafeteria.
According to Haili’s introduction, there were a total of 3 cafeterias in the city. Located in the residential district, agricultural district, and administrative district, respectively. The cafeteria in the agricultural district was the largest and offered food all day.
“To be honest, the current trading system is quite inconvenient.” Haili couldn’t help but speak up. “Although the economy has started to develop, there is no unified currency within the city. We are still bartering, and wages are paid in the form of physical goods. The cafeteria has undergone several reforms. At first, everyone could eat for free, but the consumption was staggering. And it caused a lot of waste. If you don’t waste, but someone else does, you can’t help but join in the wasting.
“We’ve now changed it to a work-point system. Every day, people go to the robots to clock in, complete their tasks, and receive a work-point voucher. One work point can be exchanged for one meal. People are also using these vouchers to exchange goods. The work-point vouchers use steel stamps and color ink, all of which are imported items.”
Haili continued, “But this isn’t a long-term solution either. The work-point vouchers are usable now because the city’s scale is small, and no one has forged them yet. This isn’t a highly difficult technology. If an enemy forges the work-point vouchers, allowing a massive amount of counterfeit vouchers to flood the Eternal City, the city will fall into chaos on its own without them even needing to attack… Of course, that’s a matter for far in the future.”
In the past, there were no market trades in the Eternal City because the vast majority of serfs simply had no surplus resources to trade. The nobles enjoyed their power and had no need to pay money.
Xiang Nanli listened earnestly and praised: “It seems you’ve studied very hard these past two months.”
Haili lowered her head, somewhat embarrassed: “Andrew gave me a tablet computer. He said it wasn’t connected to the internet, but a lot of information was loaded onto it. My Lord, I never imagined that there was such a vast world outside the Eternal City.”
Despite her shyness, her eyes sparkled brightly.
The vehicle was parked at the original City Lord’s mansion. It had now been converted into the City Hall. Excluding the patrol guards, there were only 50 staff members managing the nearly 40,000 population of the Eternal City with the assistance of robots.
Haili brought him to Andrew’s office. It was a complete mess, with a single bed right next to the desk. There was also a private charging station.
Andrew originally only needed one or two hours of sleep a day. But due to overworking recently, his sleep time had increased to 3 hours to prevent brain death from overuse. This bed had been brought in by the City Hall staff to save Andrew from the trouble of returning to his dorm to sleep.
Going to his dorm to find him was too troublesome; it was better to have him in the office where he could just be shaken awake.
Haili brought them to the office and quickly left to handle new administrative duties.
Xiang Nanli listened for a moment. It was the head of the cafeteria and the principal of the school coming to report their work together.
One said the roof of the school had blown away in the wind and needed people to fix it; the other was talking about the cafeteria’s budget for the week, saying spring plowing was very hard work and wanted to apply to slaughter two cows to give everyone an extra meal.
Xiang Nanli eavesdropped for a while and said sincerely: “Xiao Qing, I’m so happy.”
“Why?”
Xiang Nanli smiled cheerfully: “It seems that even if we outsiders leave, the Eternal City will continue to develop very well.”
Dongfang Qingdi ruthlessly punctured his fantasy: “That’s because the Eternal City only has forty thousand people right now. Forty thousand this year, fifty thousand next year. Then one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand… Whether through internal war or external expansion, ultimately, the excess population will sharply decline through various means until it matches the available resources.”
He paused slightly and added: “But I think, up to this point, you’ve done quite well.”
Andrew pushed the door open and entered at this moment: “Xiang Nanli! Dongfang Qingdi!”
Standing in the doorway, he used a towel to wipe the mud off his body.
Andrew’s metallic body had accumulated many dents and scratches, all scars left behind from unexpected situations encountered during his field inspections.
He rushed forward, threw himself onto Xiang Nanli’s legs with a thud, and cried out, “I don’t want to go to work anymore! When can I go back to Gusu?”
Xiang Nanli hauled the spineless Andrew up: “I’ll take you away this time. But we probably can’t return to Gusu. Recently, an infectious disease broke out in Gusu City. It’s a parasitic fungus called the Black Silk Spore Fungus. The early manifestation of infection is a skin disease, followed by mycelia growing inside the body, turning it into a petri dish for the fungus. The host is already dead at this stage, but the active fungus will still control the host’s body and wander around. Because of this, Gusu City has suspended all inbound and outbound transportation.”
“Black Silk Spore Fungus…?” Andrew froze for a moment, then transmitted a few photos via data, “Is it this thing?”
Xiang Nanli opened his electronic lens to view them and couldn’t hide his shock.
The photos were taken by Andrew. His metallic face took up one-third of the photo. Behind him, rows of crude metal fences were stuck into the ground like a corral, with words carved next to it: “Eternal City No. 1 Pasture.”
Behind him, massive, mutated creatures were wandering about.
These creatures appeared similar to “cows” and “deer,” but their physiques were much larger than normal livestock, standing about two to three meters tall.
Deep pink fleshy strands hung heavily from their white bones. However, very little pink fungal matter covered their heads.
Xiang Nanli had seen Fungus Humans many times, and he could confirm with a single glance that these animals were infected by the “Black Silk Spore Fungus”!
The next photo was a close-up of a fungal deer.
The mycelia looked like nematodes, drilling out from the nostrils of the deer’s skull and clinging to the grim white bones. Some were even wrapped around their antlers, dangling down like ribbons.
Flipping through these photos, Xiang Nanli was full of surprise: “What is going on here?”
“Uh,” Andrew couldn’t help but feel guilty. He confessed, “Actually, about half a month after you left, Ezekiel sought me out… But there was no signal, right? I couldn’t contact you. So, I took matters into my own hands.”
Ezekiel had appeared inside the Eternal City over a month ago.
Andrew had no idea how he got in. He had just finished his shift and was planning to catch some sleep on his bed, but the moment he lay down (his bed was by the window, originally an indoor bay window), he locked eyes through the glass with Ezekiel, who was still in the form of a small lizard.
Andrew screamed and tried to run, electrical currents sparking wildly from his fright. He even called for the robot soldiers.
Ezekiel smashed the glass, climbed inside, and snapped: “Shut up!”
Andrew hid in the corner, clutching his charging station and shivering violently.
For a split second, Andrew thought Ezekiel had recognized him and come for revenge.
As it turned out, Ezekiel merely opened his mouth and spat out a wad of pink, rotting meat: “Find a few juvenile cows, drive them to the back mountain, and don’t let ordinary people come near them. Cut this up and feed it to the cows.”
So, even up until now, it was only Andrew and the robots who went to the pasture. They had to disinfect themselves going and coming back.
Ezekiel threatened: “If you don’t do it, I’ll eat you.”
Speaking up to here, Andrew clenched his fists and said angrily: “I told him right then and there, no! The cows are the public property of the city; if you want to eat, eat me!”
Xiang Nanli: “…And the cows?”
Andrew rubbed his hands together: “And then Ezekiel was moved by my spirit of rather dying than submitting. He said dead cows were fine too. At that time, a few cows in the city had just died of illness; they caught a plague because the disinfection wasn’t up to standard, so they couldn’t be eaten. So I secretly transported them to the back of the hill.”
“…” Hey! So you still embezzled public property, didn’t you!
Sneaking around, Andrew planted what Ezekiel had spat out onto the dead cows.
As a result, fungal blooms grew on these cows, and they came back to life. They could run, jump, and eat grass, they just didn’t look very elegant. They also lost their reproductive capabilities.
Later on, Ezekiel replenished the pasture with some deer and bears. All were relatively large, low-level Mutants, leaving them for the mycelia to parasitize.
Now, a total of 50 fungal infected entities were raised in Pasture No. 1.
Andrew wiped away his non-existent tears: “You don’t know how despicable Ezekiel is! Every few days, he leads a pack of Mutants to the pasture to eat the cows we raise. And those Mutants are huge; they suck them dry in a single bite. Fortunately, the fungus reproduces relatively fast, growing a massive batch in just two or three days. And they can survive just by drinking water.”
The fungus in the Gusu City laboratory sneezed again: Who’s talking shit about me?
“I watch those Mutants grow bigger and bigger! Some are nearly 20 meters long now. And I can’t beat them, so I’ve had to endure the humiliation and bear the heavy burden until today. If I didn’t raise these fungal cows, the Mutants would have come to eat people instead. Xiang Nanli, you have to stand up for me!”
