Chapter 73: What the heck was he expecting!
According to Gusu City’s calendar, it was currently summer. The temperature still wasn’t high, but precipitation had increased significantly.
Xiang Nanli had just finished harvesting a bag of fungus when a mass of ominous dark clouds drifted over. A few minutes later, thunder rumbled, and bean-sized raindrops pelted the ground.
Down in the valley, the Fungus Cows deflated like wet cotton. Their color shifted from light pink to deep red, making them look like skinned Mutants.
“Fungus Cow” was the collective term Xiang Nanli used for these mycelium lifeforms. In truth, there were not only cows, but also sheep, pigs, deer, and other common forms. There were even a few big, fat rabbits.
The Fungus Cows carelessly flicked their tails, continuing their aimless strolls inside the iron cages. Pale pink water fell onto the grass, seeping into the soil.
Even knowing this fungus wasn’t highly contagious, watching it still left Xiang Nanli terrified. Ecosystems have a way of cycling, after all.
The rain on the pasture grew heavier.
Xiang Nanli instructed with deep concern: “The water source must absolutely be disinfected and boiled. It’s best to disinfect agricultural and domestic water as well; currently, it seems the Black Silk Spore Fungus isn’t difficult to kill.”
The smile on Andrew’s metallic skull didn’t shift in the slightest.
Yet, Dongfang Qingdi sensed the slightly elevated voltage within his body.
An increase in voltage didn’t necessarily mean anger; it could also mean nervousness.
“It’s raining. Let’s head back first so you don’t catch a cold.” Dongfang Qingdi pushed Xiang Nanli into the vehicle, then turned and spoke to Andrew in a low voice, “The residents of the Eternal City have intermixed with Bio-Soldiers for generations and frequently drank diluted Gene Serum from the Divine Court, so they shouldn’t be infected that easily, right?”
Though phrased as a question, Dongfang Qingdi’s tone carried the weight of an imperative command.
Andrew stammered his reply: “Theoretically, yes. But over a long period, no one can guarantee anything. Of course, given the current quantity, the likelihood of infection is low. Probably. Most likely. Maybe.”
There was no laboratory here, so Andrew couldn’t analyze the components of these fungi. However, having raised them for a month, he had a rough judgment in his mind. Currently, the pasture’s ecosystem was balanced. Too few fungi, and they couldn’t feed the Mutants; too many, and they would overflow, increasing the risk of infecting ordinary people.
“His moral concepts are still stuck a thousand years in the past, but there is bound to be a gap between reality and ideals.” Rainwater fell onto Dongfang Qingdi, sliding down from the top of his head along the tips of his hair. The curve of his jaw was smooth and sharp.
Andrew heard his voice drifting down from above: “The Eternal City’s resources are limited, so just handle his requests according to the situation. If someone is truly that unfortunate, the base’s laboratory just so happens to be lacking biological samples.”
Stopping mid-sentence, he suddenly glanced off into the distance.
Another hillside stood about seven or eight hundred meters away from the pasture, positioned at the highest point of the hill.
Amidst the misty rain, aside from the Mutants in the pasture, hardly any other living creatures could be seen. The wild grass sprouting from the dirt looked half-dead, resembling a cutscene straight out of a doomsday video game.
A figure appeared on the hillside, seemingly looking their way.
It was an unfamiliar male face, though his body retained some Mutant characteristics: deep red scales, a tail, sharp claws, and fangs.
And behind him, the terrifying silhouettes of Mutants loomed menacingly.
It was Ezekiel.
Dongfang Qingdi rarely felt hostility toward anyone. Although he hated everyone who breathed equally—and even hated some who didn’t breathe—it was far from hostility.
It was just like how some people hate eating cilantro, and some hate eating potatoes.
At most, this kind of hatred meant avoiding contact; even if they saw it, they wouldn’t want to go step on it.
After all, isn’t hostility a form of focused attention? Did Alpha dislike Luo Yang because Luo Yang was high in starch? No, it was because Luo Yang was a potato mine—you never knew when he was going to explode!
For some unknown reason, upon seeing Ezekiel, Alpha felt a level of hatred one degree higher than his hatred for cilantro.
This aversion wasn’t even supported by any data.
He didn’t need to think hard to know that Ezekiel hadn’t put on those clothes for him to see.
But… a Mutant?
Keeping him around is only because he’s useful to the base.
The corner of Dongfang Qingdi’s mouth quirked up on one side as he unconsciously adjusted his posture. Based on Ezekiel’s position and the elevation angle of the hillside, a relatively simple calculation determined that this stance would appear more elegant.
So what if it’s formal wear from the Divine Court?
This outfit I’m wearing was bought for me by Xiang Nanli!
Dongfang Qingdi gave a slight nod in Ezekiel’s direction, then turned and ducked into… the three-wheeled senior mobility scooter beside him.
Andrew thoughtfully closed the vehicle door for him.
“Xiao Qing. Why did you stand outside for so long?”
Xiang Nanli draped a towel over Dongfang Qingdi’s head and began rubbing his soaking wet long hair: “You’re completely drenched.”
His tone carried a hint of heartache.
Looking at his deeply concerned eyes, Dongfang Qingdi forced down the urge to let his mouth curl up too obviously: “I just asked Andrew a couple more questions. It’s nothing.”
His voice was very calm.
The three-wheeler once again drove down the rugged dirt path, shaking violently. A massive Xiang Nanli kept swaying right in front of his eyes.
Xiang Nanli wiped the water off his face, his fingers repeatedly rubbing against the side of Dongfang Qingdi’s cheek.
The touch was warm and deeply hydrated, and he could feel the lean bone structure beneath the skin.
Within the cramped confines of the vehicle, Xiang Nanli was extremely close, his gaze focused; it was as if he were looking at an incredibly difficult math problem.
The wind and rain howled outside, but the atmosphere inside the vehicle was excellent, even radiating a faint, steamy warmth.
Alpha subconsciously held his breath and grabbed Xiang Nanli’s hand; the spot that had been touched felt like its circuits were overloading. Alpha remembered that he actually didn’t need to breathe at all.
His body tensed, feeling Xiang Nanli leaning closer and closer.
Finally—
Xiang Nanli rubbed his earlobe and asked with deep worry, “Xiao Qing, can your hair regenerate? The rain on the surface isn’t purified; you’ll go bald if you get rained on too often. And your skin—you won’t need a touch-up paint job later, will you? Our family doesn’t have that much money.”
He touched his face one second and tugged his hair the next. He looked exactly like a veterinarian inspecting livestock.
Alpha: “…”
What the heck was he expecting, ahhh!
…
…
Ezekiel probably wasn’t very happy.
He stood on the hilltop for a long time without going to the cafeteria.
Little Red’s belly was hungry. It lowered its head to rub against his waist, only to get slapped across the face by his tail.
A fleshy lump quickly swelled on the Crawler Little Red’s face. Little Red felt this wasn’t very symmetrical, so it presented its left cheek as well.
Smack!
Hehe.
Little Red retreated. The Crawler lackeys behind it gathered around, letting out a long string of high and low barking noises.
– Little Red, why did you get hit by the boss?
– Little Red, when can we eat? If we don’t eat soon, I want to eat Black Hair. (Note: Black Hair is the Crawler at the very back of the pack. Currently 2.7m long, hatched only two weeks ago.)
Black Hair hurriedly crawled backward, its eight eyes widening in terror.
– What do you guys know? This is proof of strength! Do you dare stick your head behind the boss’s tail? If you took those two hits, your skull would shatter. But me? Only my face swelled.
Little Red lifted its head proudly.
– Oh, I see!
The other Crawlers instantly revealed looks of reverence.
– Once I eat and grow strong, I want to smell the boss’s tail too!
Although Ezekiel heard Little Red’s words, his mood was far too sour to muster the desire to refute them.
Little Red had no idea that its OCD would have a profound impact on the pack. So much so that in the future, Ezekiel’s tail would become a famous tourist check-in spot at the base.
Ten minutes later, the Mutants marched grandly into the pasture. They sucked the cows and sheep down to their skeletons, not even sparing the rabbits strolling in the corners.
Dammit. Ezekiel’s sharp fangs pierced a rabbit’s skull.
What the heck was he expecting?
After inspecting the pasture, Xiang Nanli visited the cafeteria that night. He used Andrew’s work point vouchers, resolutely refusing to eat a free meal.
Andrew trailed behind him the entire way, feeling as though he were escorting a top-level leader conducting an inspection.
The food in the cafeteria was bland but, fortunately, nutritionally balanced.
Having something to eat at all was good enough, and Xiang Nanli wasn’t demanding on this point; otherwise, he’d be acting too much like Marie Antoinette asking them to eat cake.
“A high-welfare society may not necessarily be suitable for the survival and continuation of a species; the base is currently still under construction, so an appropriate level of hunger and urgency should be maintained.”
Xiang Nanli had Xiao Zhi record this entry in his memo.
His feelings were always contradictory.
On one hand, he hoped the people right in front of him could have better lives now; on the other hand, he had to consider the distant future.
It was Xiang Nanli’s first time leading a rebellion, too, and there were many things he still needed to learn.
The school was liveliest at night. During the day, most people needed to work. The spring planting season was short, and daylight hours were brief, so there was no time to delay.
Xiang Nanli flipped through the school’s schedule.
After completing basic literacy, students could enroll in different courses. Currently, with limited teaching resources, the school only taught textiles, mechanical repair, medicine, and agriculture/forestry/animal husbandry.
“Actually, the people in the city are constantly exposed to it, so basically everyone knows how to farm and raise cows,” Andrew explained. “But over the past few centuries, the surface’s ecological environment has been constantly changing. As the Eternal City develops, we will definitely need to implement more modernized collective agriculture; we need a group of people to learn the new technologies first and then go to different villages and towns to teach the others.”
From inside the school building, the sound of teachers lecturing drifted out.
Gospel sat in the farthest corner of a classroom. It was a secluded spot, but no one minded that he was a robot. There were even other humanoid robots attending classes.
There were no LED screens or holographic technology; the teachers used blackboards and chalk. The students relied on rote memorization because there was no paper mill yet.
Knowledge here was passed down by word of mouth.
The teacher on the podium wore ankle shackles and spoke slowly. He looked to be in his fifties or sixties, with greying hair.
His name was Laifu; in the Divine Court’s language, it meant “Hope.”
Laifu was originally a noble in the city; his ancestors had been missionaries for the Divine Court. In the past, he felt that merely breathing the same air as the serfs tainted his noble bloodline.
When they were first captured, these people had shouted and clamored, but after witnessing the executions of the City Lord, his wife, and the Divine Court Knights, they instantly quieted down.
The soldiers guarding them delivered food, but only enough to maintain a bare minimum level of survival. This filled their hearts with resentment, making them anticipate a rescue from the Divine Court even more.
But a day, a week, a month passed… and they remained locked in the pitch-black prison cells.
It turned out the most terrifying thing wasn’t starvation but darkness. In there, they couldn’t feel the passage of time, relying only on their hunger to estimate the time outside. But the food deliveries were not punctual.
At first, the soldiers were still in the mood to chat a sentence or two with them, though mostly mocking; later, the soldiers just threw the food down and left, cursing, “Freeloading parasites, cutting into my work points.”
Some said they had been locked up for a month; others said half a year. Some committed suicide in despair, while hoping for the Divine Court’s arrival became their only will to live.
Later, a lowly commoner from among the “serfs” arrived. The teacher remembered her name was Haili. She lit an oil lamp and said the city had opened a school and needed teachers. They could sign up.
Although the teachers would have to wear shackles restricting their movement, they could earn work points, which could be used to eat at the cafeteria. Once they saved enough work points, they could even “redeem” the others still in prison.
Laifu became the first to sign up. He worried it was some kind of trap, too, but he desperately wanted to get out. Dying outside was better than dying in that cell.
Fortunately, his Human Alliance language skills were good, and he knew a bit of math and biology. Very quickly, Laifu became the school’s first “externally hired” teacher.
He was assigned to the teacher’s dorm—living on the floor of a serf’s home, where the entire family secretly surveilled him and rarely spoke to him.
Oh, they couldn’t be called serfs anymore; they were “citizens.”
Fortunately, the work point vouchers really did provide food. Two work points a day. During the day, Laifu had to labor alongside his supervisor’s family. At night, he went to the school to teach.
Laifu’s students were almost entirely young adults in their teens and twenties, both male and female. Their attitudes were respectful, yet guarded. The respect was due to Andrew’s mandate that teachers must be respected; the guard was due to Laifu’s past identity.
After all, he was a noble lord who had just been overthrown.
The first time Laifu taught a class, his hands trembled, terrified someone would come up and hit him. Actually, that did happen in the classroom next door, but the robots intervened.
When Laifu went to eat at the cafeteria, he would also meet pairs of hateful eyes, thinking that since he didn’t do physical labor, he was exploiting the hard-earned wealth of the people. It got to the point where, even though it was a buffet, Laifu didn’t dare take an extra bite of food.
Laifu didn’t have that much ambition. He genuinely just wanted to leave his room and eat a meal.
He taught his classes extremely earnestly.
The students were sharp, and their attitudes were the first to change.
Gradually, his supervisor’s attitude softened a bit—Laifu was allowed to eat at the table.
Teaching also brought him a sense of accomplishment.
He saw genuine, heartfelt respect and admiration in his students’ eyes.
The joy this brought Laifu seemed no less than what he felt in the past when he was a noble lord and saw the serfs bowing to him.
He had earned new respect through his labor and knowledge.
There were a few times when the school teachers performed hard labor, farming outside the city alongside their supervisors. They had opportunities to escape.
One teacher urged Laifu to flee with him, but he refused. A few days later, that teacher quietly disappeared.
Another time, Laifu heard from the outside that Divine Court Knights were operating nearby. Another teacher got so excited he fled the outer city overnight.
The next day, the school’s mechanics teacher was replaced.
Laifu heard the news that the escapee had been bitten to death by Mutants wandering outside; a Bio-Soldier had brought his body back.
The escaped teacher was not treated as a fugitive but was buried as a “teacher.” The students went to see him off, crying bitterly.
His body was buried in the cemetery. Inside the school, the few surviving noble teachers were incredibly quiet, shedding a fake tear or two.
Laifu felt a lingering fear. He didn’t know whether he was just lucky enough, or just honest enough. And he didn’t want to dig any deeper into it.
Today, the lord of the Survivor Base had arrived, named Xiang Nanli.
Fast-footed municipal officials had delivered the news earlier, saying the base leadership would visit the school tonight. They told the students to perform well, but not to harass Xiang Nanli.
At 8:30 PM, Xiang Nanli, surrounded by Andrew and other municipal officials, passed by the classroom window.
He only stayed for a short while, and they all followed instructions, pretending to focus peacefully on the class.
But as soon as Xiang Nanli left, even though they maintained discipline and didn’t chatter, their excited faces flushed red, clearly bursting with things to say.
Laifu understood their excitement.
Before Xiang Nanli and his Survivor Base liberated the Eternal City, they had nothing.
Now, they had hope and a future.
A pretty good leader—young, idealistic, bold, and proactive. With good eloquence, too.
Seems he knows a bit of technology? Rumor had it that he repaired many of the machines in the city.
And, of course, he was very handsome. But for a base leader, that was the least important thing.
This was Xiang Nanli from Laifu’s perspective.
If he knew that all the recent events that happened to him and the arrangements regarding the school were all orders Xiang Nanli left behind before his previous departure, Laifu’s estimation of this lord would probably be even higher.
Laifu checked the time and put down his chalk: “That will be all for today. Class dismissed.”
The students stood and bowed, watching him walk out of the dilapidated classroom.
Outside the door, a member of his supervisor’s family was waiting for him.
It was the household’s second son. He had previously attended the literacy class and graduated. He hadn’t elected to take a new course yet. He was interested in woodworking, but there was no one to teach him.
He mumbled, “Let’s go, Teacher. I built a cart. Your legs aren’t good, and our house is far. I’ll pull you in the cart.”
“Ah. Alright,” Laifu said, his iron chains clinking as he walked.
“Mom made potato porridge and saved a bowl for you.”
Hehe… he had never eaten potatoes in the past. The nobles of the Eternal City modeled their clothing, food, housing, and transportation after the legendary “noble dignitaries of the Divine Court.” The dignitaries all ate dry rice—one small bowl. With red wine and medium-rare beef. Potatoes were considered poor people’s food.
Recently, Laifu discovered that potato porridge actually tasted pretty good too.
The second son grabbed the cart handles, pulling Laifu homeward: “The wind is strong; use the blanket for now. We only have this one; it’s for everyone’s use, not just for you.”
“Good, good.”
Wrapping himself in the blanket, Laifu sat on the cart and let out a hearty laugh, revealing his two missing front teeth.
Laifu was 87 years old this year. Even among the nobles, his personality had been eccentric.
His family had passed away early, and he had always been somewhat lonely.
He suddenly realized he rarely thought about the Divine Court anymore and didn’t really hope for anyone from the Divine Court to come either…
“Hope” didn’t have to come from the Divine Court; it could be given by everyone around him.
…
…
Xiang Nanli expressed his full approval of Andrew’s work.
After inspecting the school, he set down the schedule: “Andrew, release the news at the school and the cafeteria: the Survivor Base needs builders, and anyone interested can register on the form. Once selected, they can become a member of the base. I will stay in the city for a period of time, until bidirectional communication is established between the base and the Eternal City.”
After a brief pause for thought, Xiang Nanli continued: “There’s no need to overly conceal the base’s situation. Let’s promote it like this: the base is a shelter built by a major historical corporation for its employees after the first Omnic Crisis. The majority of the base’s members are still inside cryo-chambers.
“Currently, only a small number of people believe the outside world is safe and have voluntarily left their cryo-chambers to begin exploring the surface. We possess high-end mechanical devices, advanced technology, and noble ideals. The base has an abundance of food and energy, everyone is equal, the legal system is sound, and the people live and work in peace and contentment… The exact location remains classified for now.”
Yes, maintaining a bit of mystery in the early stages is still necessary. Plus, I’m worried about being attacked by other settlements.
Listening to all this, Andrew couldn’t help but scratch his head: “Wait?? Do we have any of that? The base only has a few people!”
“If we don’t have it, we still have to say we do.” Xiang Nanli patted his shoulder, his eyes radiating powerful confidence: “The humans on the surface all need a ‘utopia’ like this. As long as everyone firmly believes in it, that day will eventually come.”
__
Author’s Note:
The base is a ‘shelter built by a major historical corporation’ for its employees after the first Omnic Crisis = Donghuang Heavy Industry
The majority of the base’s members are still inside cryo-chambers. Currently, ‘only a small number of people’ believe the outside world is safe and have voluntarily left their cryo-chambers to begin exploring the surface = Xiang Nanli
[We possess high-end mechanical devices and advanced technology] = Geothermal power station + Beichen’s crude laboratory + Gospel + Xiang Nanli + Dongfang Qingdi
Possessing noble ideals. [The base has an abundance of food and energy] = In the entire base, only Xiang Nanli needs to eat regular meals.
In summary,
Survivor Base = Utopia ≠ Surface Pyramid Scheme, understand?
