A curious sll of cooked food was drifting up from the fourth floor. The new second aunt was cooking — she'd barely slept, spending the night caring for Li Yue like an anxious housekeeper, then imdiately pivoting to cleaning rooms and clearing garbage.
Penny, playing Zhao Xuanxuan, had kept pace with her — both of them moving up and down between floors, cleaning with a thoroughness that would sha professional staff.
Leon and Thomas had been up before dawn. One hauling water, one firing clay pots, spinning like tops.
When George ca downstairs, Zhao Xuanxuan rushed forward with a clean rag — actually kneeling to wipe his face. The look she gave him from that angle had so kind of ulterior purpose built into it.
Acting skills: improved.
George watched this and made a firm internal resolution: whatever else happened, he would never drop to a mid-mission entry position in soone else's run. The character roles available to mid-joiners were simply incompatible with personal dignity.
But to keep commanding from the top position, he had to keep winning.
If he failed and Night Owl missed out on whatever position she was aiming for, he'd certainly be sidelined — no flagship projects, no lead roles, which ant joining other people's missions as a secondary player and adjusting his behavior accordingly. That was just how things worked when you were caught in a larger machine.
George recognized sothing clearly in that mont: he was genuinely bound to Night Owl now. Rise together, fall together. If things went badly here, he'd be feeling it too.
'So the goal is straightforward. At minimum, hold sixth place on the Pioneering Scoreboard. And no matter what, ensure the Pioneering Mission succeeds. Even if that ans pushing hard for three years — those three years determine everything that cos after. Hm? Ready to go again? Peppa — we're old acquaintances. You don't have to perform at like this.'
George stood up and gave Zhao Xuanxuan a look that said: I know you. We can be competitors without this particular theatre between us.
They'd both been rookies once, working through the sa mission together. He wasn't that petty.
"Li Wei — did I do sothing wrong? Please, don't send away. I'll do whatever you need." Zhao Xuanxuan's voice wobbled into sothing approaching tears.
So you're going to escalate it even further, are you? Incredible.
"I'm not sending you anywhere. But you work. The future isn't handed to anyone — you earn it." George let the words carry double aning. It was a reminder to himself as much as anyone else.
The All-Heavens Lord Alliance presented as a humane organization. In practice, the machinery underneath that face was considerably less so.
"Little Wei, breakfast is ready. The ingredients are limited, so don't expect much — but from now on, the daily managent of this household, I'll handle it. Don't let it take your attention."
The new second aunt delivered this in the most self-effacing tone imaginable. And the lower she placed herself, the more alarming it was to George. He looked at her once, said nothing. Nothing he could say would matter. The only real counterplay was to build up the camp and build up his own strength as fast as possible.
He sat down at the table. There was a table now — he'd gone the entire previous month without one. In one night, this group had produced a smooth wooden table from raw logs, finished with blade-work so clean and even it caught the light like a mirror. Equivalent in quality to what George himself could have managed.
Which ant the person who'd done it had also unlocked the Perception attribute.
Not Leon. Not Thomas. The new second aunt had unlocked Perception.
The breakfast was three dishes and a soup from minimal available ingredients.
George sat down. Zhao Xuanxuan moved instantly to stand in attendance beside him.
"Call my cousin and Thomas up. Everyone eats together. Don't waste ti on this kind of hierarchy going forward."
He said it calmly. The new Liang Yuzhi and Zhao Xuanxuan's flattery was precisely the kind of thing designed to soften soone's judgnt — make them enjoy being waited on, start thinking of themselves as lords, and in that small comfortable slide, lose the edge. He wasn't interested.
Leon and Thomas ca up promptly, also performing appropriately servile postures. They were playing their roles too.
"After breakfast — open a gap in the first floor to serve as the entrance from now on. Priority task is clearing the ruins of this town systematically. Every structure, no exceptions. Sort usable materials by category. Leon, Thomas, Xuanxuan — that's yours. If the handcart isn't enough, check the third floor — there are vehicle components there, might be enough to assemble another one."
"Specific workflow, you decide."
"Second aunt — take little Yue nearby to dig wild greens, but don't range far. Wait until she's recovered, then move to heavier work. For day-to-day decisions, don't route them through . Make the calls yourselves. I look at results."
One al. One quick briefing. No pushback from anyone.
George ran the table completely. There was a particular pleasure in this that even being Head of Household hadn't fully delivered — but it also required real managent competence. Without delegating well, without tracking the right details, you'd just end up with people who agreed with everything and told you nothing useful.
He thought through the tooling situation, which was one such detail. Last month, the five of them — George, Li Guilin, Li Jiao, Liang Yuzhi, Li Yue — had each used their own personal tools. That was standard.
Li Guilin and Li Jiao had left behind two One-Star iron shovels, two One-Star pickaxes, and one One-Star maul — all of which beca family property at the mont of their deaths.
Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue had packed everything belonging to them before the settlent. Which ant this month, with six people in the building, there were only those five shared tools.
So last night, George had imdiately donated his own One-Star iron shovel, One-Star axe, One-Star hoe, One-Star pickaxe, and a One-Star small iron pot to the family pool.
Leon, Thomas, Zhao Xuanxuan, the new Liang Yuzhi, and the new Li Yue were all constrained by their script identities and couldn't donate directly — but they could trade.
For example, on the way downstairs, Leon quietly traded George a One-Star steel saw, a vehicle repair kit, a box of rivets, and expansion bolts.
George imdiately donated them all to the family pool.
【You have donated tools and materials not native to this world. You have received 20 Contribution. Cumulative donations now total 18 units. You are approaching the donation red line. Exercise caution.】
George read that and exhaled. No overage, that was fine. Any excess would create complications.
These tools could theoretically be scavenged from within the world — but the ti saved by having them imdiately was real production advantage. He was already significantly behind.
He still couldn't figure out how Zhao Kewu had pulled 78 Pioneering Points in the first month.
Thomas took the vehicle repair kit and left — assembling the second handcart. Another debt of gratitude owed to the previous second aunt for the hub assembly stockpile.
Leon and Zhao Xuanxuan grabbed shovels, pickaxes, and the maul, and began clearing ruins.
Most of the building ruins in the town had only partially collapsed — foundations and basents largely intact. Solid-timber-only construction was unusual here.
George loaded his handcart and joined them. Stupid the crow perford a very fast and decisive jump onto the cart and stayed there, claiming territory.
George didn't bother displacing it. It consistently failed to behave like a Three-Star hunting pet — no patrols, no self-directed hunting, just stealing dried rat day after day. He'd made a specific deal with this pet. It had absorbed the Blood Crow and its bonus — so why wasn't the Perception 1 characteristic showing in his stats? Sothing in the upgrade chain felt off.
Probably a trap sohow.
"Start here. Building debris goes outside the town periter. tal items heap near the parking lot. Wooden waste stacks east of the main building — that's future firewood. The foundations of this town are solid. The existing hardened road surface is a significant resource."
George addressed Leon and Zhao Xuanxuan. If they were building a real Pioneering Territory, the scale could not be small. The entire town footprint needed to be cleared and reclaid.
He wasn't rushing to cultivate more farmland for now — he didn't have enough seeds to fill it anyway. He also hadn't anticipated how severely Leon and Thomas's arrival backstories would be constrained.
He had reasonable hope that the ruins would yield more useful salvage. Every structure in this town appeared to have a basent. Last month, between the Four-Star Rat King's presence and the constant internal chaos, none of them — not Li Guilin, Li Jiao, Liang Yuzhi, or Li Yue — had managed to open a single basent.
The sealed basent beneath the Scavenger Camp building itself, George intended to open personally. And deliberately tid for month-end.
This was strategic: if sothing valuable ca out, the advantage it created would be impossible to ignore — and ignoring it was exactly what kept certain people from making desperate moves. Last month, moving the wheat field fortification forward even slightly might have changed how everything went.
Interests drove behavior. And people driven to a corner would do anything.
He had learned that.
The entire morning, George, Leon, and Zhao Xuanxuan worked without pause. They cleared three ruin sites, opened three basents. Returns were modest: badly rusted tools, a severely damaged diesel generator, various plastic goods.
These basents had all seen water flooding at so point — finding anything good was difficult.
In the afternoon, Thomas joined with the second handcart assembled. Productivity jumped imdiately.
Four basents opened in the afternoon. And in one of them, preserved in better condition than anything else they'd found, was a well-maintained entrenching shovel — quality: Two-Star.
【Na: Enchanted Sapper Shovel】
【Quality: Two-Star】
【Description: A well-preserved tool/weapon that has undergone partial atomic-structure changes due to magical radiation exposure.】
【Damage 30. Engineering work efficiency 30%.】
【Note: Non-auctionable. This is a significant material discovered during completion of a Monthly Main Task and has been incorporated into family fixed assets. It will increase the family's total Contribution earning ceiling to so extent and accumulate Pioneering Points. In certain special missions, it may be individually purchased.】
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