After the Contaminated Beasts were driven back, Jernie’s students immediately threw themselves into a flurry of urgent work. After all, the Contaminated Beasts had destroyed quite a few facilities, and many people were injured; all of this needed to be dealt with as soon as possible.
But what the students hadn’t expected was that the warriors who had just helped them hold off and wipe out the Contaminated Beasts also came over, one after another asking if there was anything they could help with.
This shocked the students greatly. They had originally thought it was already amazing enough that the other side had gone all out to help them block the Contaminated Beasts’ assault, and in their eyes, those brave warriors must have taken heavy casualties. Yet these people were actually so enthusiastic, coming over to help even after the battle was over?
Of course, since they were really short-handed, the students were nervous but still asked the warriors for help. They’d already mentally prepared themselves for the other side to open their lion’s mouth and demand a big reward or something, but the moment they voiced their requests, those warriors agreed without a second thought, then happily went off to work.
These people are way too kind, right?!
Faced with these "enthusiastic" outsiders, Jernie’s students were completely dumbfounded. They might be greenhouse flowers, but they were still greenhouse flowers in the apocalypse, so they had at least some understanding of human nature. At first they’d suspected these warriors had ulterior motives, but they never expected them not to show the slightest hint of reluctance over their requests. On the contrary, to them it seemed that as long as someone needed help, that alone was reward enough!
It never occurred to these students that the moment they issued their requests, the players had already received system quest notifications, along with Credit Point and Reputation rewards. For the players, that was more than enough!
As for the students worrying that their tiny little troubles wouldn’t be worth the other side’s time———come on, what player didn’t grow up under the baptism of "deliver A to B," "collect N pieces of C," "eliminate N units of D," and "deliver the letter to E" type quests? Isn’t this just the daily grind? What’s "troublesome" about it?
Laozi could be an Alliance Lord commanding a whole fleet, slaughter Illidan first and then kill the Lich King, a heroic figure who resists the Burning Legion with every major faction at worship-level Reputation—and in the end I still have to deliver letters and pick mushrooms for NPCs, don’t I?
We’re used to it, we’re used to it.
After that, Illya and Little Hei brought the Little Misakas to the platform outside the city, where they set up vending machines along with Enchantment gear and anvils and other items. After all, besides fighting, players also needed to forge and buy supplies...
By the time Kalian arrived at the plaza, what he saw was already a bustling scene.
Although the Contaminated Beasts had been held back, Kalian’s mood right now was anything but good. As the ruler of Jernie, he hadn’t shown up before mainly because he’d been busy compiling information from the rear, but the final reports left him extremely depressed. In this wave of fighting against the Contaminated Beasts, the Martial Artists and security forces in the Academy City had lost seventy to eighty percent of their people, and many of the survivors had completely lost the will to fight—basically crippled.
As for real remaining combat power, there was not even one-tenth left. Under these circumstances, while Jernie could be said to have survived, if another similar disaster struck, it would pretty much be a dead end.
Given the situation, Jernie had only one path left: to form an Alliance with this mysterious faction that had appeared out of nowhere, and even rely on them for defensive support. Otherwise, Jernie was doomed.
After putting in quite a bit of effort, Kalian finally found Little Hei and Illya in the plaza, where they were in charge of maintaining order in the "living area." Although he was rather surprised that Heavenly Dao Palace had actually sent two little girls to handle this sort of thing, Kalian still had to bite the bullet, walk up to them, and tactfully state his purpose.
In short, what Kalian wanted was for the warriors of Heavenly Dao Palace to stay in Jernie for the time being, to maintain order here and fend off outside attacks. Little Hei naturally agreed in one breath, so smoothly that Kalian could hardly believe it.
In fact, Kalian had already prepared himself to be ruthlessly squeezed by Heavenly Dao Palace. He’d even considered that they might use this as a chance to infiltrate Jernie from within. However, in response to his inquiries, Little Hei’s answers were extremely simple.
"Whatever."
"Anything’s fine."
"Sure."
What the heck is this?
Faced with the little girl’s answers, Kalian was completely at a loss for words......What do you mean "whatever, anything’s fine, sure"? As in, you don’t care at all? So if I don’t give you anything and make you work for free, that’s fine too? Is that what you mean? That can’t be it... right......
Thinking of this, Kalian also grew more cautious, smiling as he looked at Little Hei.
"Then, Miss Little Black, forgive my rudeness, but I’d like to ask about the supply situation for your warriors...... You all have come from far away, you must be tired, right? Would you like to rest for a bit?"
"Ah, no need for that, it should be about time for it to arrive anyway."
Arrive? What’s arriving?
"Hey, look, what is that!?"
Just then, a student suddenly pointed at the sky and screamed, and everyone else turned to look in the direction he indicated. A moment later, gasps of astonishment rippled through the crowd.
"My god, what is that?!"
"Unbelievable!!"
Hearing the exclamations and shouts around him, Kalian also raised his head in confusion and looked up at the sky.
Then his whole body just froze on the spot.
Only to see in the azure sky, from within the thick clouds, a gigantic structure, like a white castle, burst through the clouds. This "castle" was so enormous that from a distance it looked as if it pierced straight into the heavens. And on both sides of the "white castle," two equally colossal golden warships flanked it, giving off the feeling of something straight out of myth and legend.
"Our Heavenly Dao Palace will keep moving forward together with Jernie, so as for safety and logistics, you absolutely don’t need to worry."
This time Little Hei also looked at the slack-jawed Kalian and spoke with a cheeky grin.
Right now Kalian’s brain was already a complete blank.
In fact, it wasn’t just the students of Jernie, even those players, after seeing this scene, were so excited their whole bodies were trembling. The appearance of the three warships of the Azure Fleet was simply too overwhelming. Especially that Apostle Level ship that looked like a castle in the clouds—just watching the scene of it breaking through the cloud layer was more satisfying than a AAA game CG cutscene. Only now did those players finally realize where the hell they had been all this time!
"I... holy shit! This is fucking insane!!"
"Record it, record it! The Azure Fleet is this terrifying!"
"MMP, only now do I realize how brain-dead the Alliance and Horde were back then. You declare war on something like this, you’re basically being treated like mosquitoes and cockroaches!"
"We’re part of the Azure Fleet now too! Hahahaha!!"
"Don’t know if we’ll ever manage to get our hands on one of these warships! If I could pilot a ship like that, that’d be way cooler than any Griffin!"
The players excitedly recorded videos and posted them on the forums, instantly setting off another wave of hype.
As for Kalian, at this moment he had completely calmed down.
He finally understood that he and the other side simply did not exist on the same level.
After this, everything became unbelievably smooth. Kalian, who had finally come to terms with the situation, no longer had any other ideas; all those earlier thoughts had long been tossed to the back of his mind. He finally understood that with the strength of Heavenly Dao Palace, they simply wouldn’t even look twice at a mere Mobile City crawling on the ground. No wonder they had been acting so casual before.
As for whether the other side might seize the chance to meddle in his rule or whatever, now that Kalian thought about it, he just felt like laughing.
Would an elephant care who’s boss in a nest of Old Mouse?
If anything, it’d be the Old Mouse desperate to cling to the elephant as their backer!
Right now Kalian had completely shifted his thinking from "how to stop Heavenly Dao Palace meddling with the Mobile City" to "how to let Jernie build a connection with this mysterious and colossal force." He could also tell that this mysterious faction clearly didn’t seem like a product of this world—especially those Orc and Dragonborn and such, just from their appearance they looked really strange.
But would Kalian care about that now? This world is already destroyed, the remaining humans are barely scraping by—being able to stay alive is already good enough. Who still cares whether the reinforcements are human or Alien?
So from then on he cooperated quite readily with Little Hei and the others’ requests, while secretly making up his mind that he absolutely had to cling to Heavenly Dao Palace’s thigh with all his strength, so that Jernie could keep on existing!
But for Fang Zheng, all this was no big deal.
"Mm... okay, got it. Let those players move freely. You can also treat Jernie as one of your main cities to dig into. As for the others, you can issue some exploration quests and have them go to other Mobile Cities. Ask Kalian for the details. Kalian has done business with me before, and now he’ll definitely have to hand over the blueprints. Then just let those players do their thing."
After getting the report from Little Hei, Fang Zheng also let out a breath. For now, the first step of the players appearing in this world could be considered a success. But this wasn’t the end. Fang Zheng couldn’t rely only on the number of players connected through that Psychic World. Next, he planned to Release the game client in other worlds as well—especially the Game World, the World of Love, and the Type Moon World, all of which were full of population resources. As long as he played it right, pulling in thirty to fifty billion players across several worlds in one wave shouldn’t be a problem.
And this world is a Wasteland, remember. Even that many players probably wouldn’t be enough!
By that time... hehehe...
Thinking of this, Fang Zheng only felt... the future was bright as hell!

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