Xu Shu buckled his belt and adjusted his collar, then strutted out of the entrance of the Golden Treasure Mountain Mine Office and walked back the way he had co.
The area was exceptionally quiet, with the shops along the street all shuttered.
Following his mory, he took a few turns and entered the main road. Not far off, the sign for Ho Inn was faintly visible.
However, Xu Shu found this place a bit different from what he had imagined.
Based on what he had seen the previous night, he estimated the town’s population to be around fifty thousand. It should have been bustling in the morning.
Yet, the expected scene of vendors yelling and bustling crowds was nowhere to be seen.
Looking around, there were very few pedestrians. He did see a few n hurriedly carrying large and small bags, rushing to squeeze onto a bus that was already full, stirring up dust along the roadside as it departed.
Where was even a hint of last night’s "paradise on the wasteland"?
"It seems like most of the people in town are working drones," Xu Shu mused.
That was normal; the town was made so "prosperous" that the cost of living was even higher than inside the D8B3 safety zone. Without working tirelessly every day to earn money, how could they afford to live?
Moreover, from their attire, it seed they were all heading off to work in the mines.
Golden Treasure Mountain Mine was the "leading enterprise" here, and it was also ntioned that Xinglong Manor was the "leading enterprise" of the neighboring town.
Gang powers provided ’security’, dealing with the occasional monsters that popped into the wasteland, creating a large refuge-type town. anwhile, ordinary people exchanged labor for living resources. It sounded not too bad...
From this perspective, the wasteland in the Penglai District had managed to achieve such scale owing to this model.
In this model, the rail transport provided by the safety zone facilitated material transportation, but that was secondary. What was really important was having a force of Transcendents responsible for defending the town.
Without them, it would be impossible to deal with the creatures that sporadically infiltrated the borders, and the idea of a human settlent would be inconceivable.
Why didn’t the D8B3 region share this prosperity? The reason?
It was because there were almost no Transcendents stationed in the refuges on the wasteland, and if there were, it was only occasionally one.
Relying on the Patrol Team to patrol the wasteland was not a solution; to put it bluntly, even with their 1 11 combination, they were only just managing to protect themselves. A slightly more powerful monster would have them delivering themselves like lambs to the slaughter.
You must have a group of Transcendents like the ones here, vigilant every mont of the day, to ensure the primary security issue.
Just look at Golden Treasure Mountain. Just one office had nearly a hundred well-trained bouncers who appeared to be forr mbers of the Patrol Team.
Plus, there were three Second-order Transcendents and over ten First Order Transcendents stationed there permanently without ever leaving.
Such scale was necessary to take responsibility for the basic security of a small town of several tens of thousands of people on the wasteland.
If monsters sporadically breached the defenses, causing the deaths of dozens or hundreds of ordinary people, creating widespread panic and making everyone wish they could hide underground every day, then the foundation of so-called settlents would cease to exist.
However, maintaining such a large group of Transcendents and bouncers was indeed not cheap.
This isn’t sothing you could afford just by dealing with a few small animals sneaking in from the wasteland, nor could it be sustained just by the output of ordinary people’s labor. There had to be sufficient resources to match, otherwise, these protectors wouldn’t be willing to stay here.
Considering Xinglong Manor and Golden Treasure Mountain, the two gangs, had fierce conflicts over the ownership of Cloud Platform Mine.
Xu Shu couldn’t help but speculate that the products from these mine areas must be quite valuable, probably more profitable than ordinary pioneering work, to retain these gang mbers.
Could it be a gold mine?
For Xu Shu, mines were a cultural blind spot; he only knew they required refining and filtering before further producing gold.
As for how many people it took to run a gold mine daily or how much it could produce, he had no idea.
But he imagined it must be a mine with not a small output.
However, this had nothing to do with him any longer.
Initially, Xu Shu had thought about following the leads to find the Xinglong Manor people and make them pay for their actions.
After all, dragging him into a dream without notice and attempting to fra him was clearly a provocation.
There was no feud between them. What did it an to fra him directly?
But now, after having given Xiao Guang from the Snake Woman camp a harsh interrogation and learning the full story, Xu Shu also abandoned that idea.
According to the Snake Woman, the sneak attack on the Golden Treasure Mountain Office, and the assassination of Qiangwei, the Third Chief of Golden Treasure Mountain, was orchestrated by the Second Master of Xinglong Manor, "Yan Xiong".
Xiao Guang, along with Silver Snake Xiao Liang above her, were both Yan Xiong’s ’Snake Servants’.
In this, Silver Snake and Yan Xiong targeted Qiangwei.
And Xiao Guang took the opportunity to settle her personal grudge.
Originally, she had faced calamity; at that ti, she was just a small snake monster skulking around the wasteland. Life was worry-free and stuttering; managing to stealthily eat a large living human every week already counted as trendous bliss.
However, several years ago, their entire nest was wiped out by a Hunter and taken to the black market.
A young girl, a peripheral mber of Xinglong Manor, bought them.
The Xinglong Manor gang possessed secret techniques, notably rare "Snake Cultivation". It allowed them to curse snake monsters and make them their "companion species". It was said to significantly enhance their combat abilities, gaining so fa in the vicinity.
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