Chapter 881: Chapter 881: The Town
(Ladies and gentlen, a new month has begun… So start throwing those monthly tickets!)
The boy nad Glick stared blankly at the chanical creature floating between his Big Sister and him, a small autonomous machine with a diater of less than half a ter, flipping around in the air like a playful little pet. It was getting accustod to this unfamiliar world, altering its body structure and energy circulation to adapt to potential working conditions in the local environnt. This amazing adaptability and pseudo-evolution ability could make it the ultimate robot in the eyes of ordinary civilizations, but in the various chanical facilities of the Xyrin Empire, it was rely a pipe-cleaner-like role, equivalent to the value of a wrench.
But it seed that its value was different for that boy.
Glick’s eyes widened as if he had never seen such a magical machine before, which made a bit worried whether the thing Big Sister took out was exactly what this Ruins World didn’t have, possibly scaring away this local we so barely encountered. Just at this mont, the autonomous machine completed its ‘rapid evolution,’ adjusting the angles of its chanical arms, and then emitted a muddled dudu sound, cheerfully executing Big Sister’s command: to approach its new master.
“Ah!”
The boy Glick let out a terrified scream, sitting down in shock at the suddenly lunging autonomous machine, which imdiately halted in mid-air. After circling around its new master twice in confusion, it emitted a sowhat aggrieved dudu sound directed at us.
The small robots manufactured by Gaia are really fun.
Glick awkwardly climbed up from the ground, and the autonomous machine imdiately approached him again, but this ti it smartened up, not lunging at him but stopping at a distance of about one ter, dudu-ing incessantly. The boy was too preoccupied to dust off the dirt on his pants (in fact, I was curious if the pants still needed dusting, as they seed dirtier than the ground here) and instead blankly stared at the shiny new machine in front of him, turning his head to look at us: “A brand new ‘Great Craftsman’? For ? You must be kidding! I heard the elders in town say that the people from the Great City would prank the country children like this, and I would get beaten if I touched it…”
“No, this is yours, as a guide’s reward,” I breathed a sigh of relief; apparently, this thing exists in this Ruins World too, only its value here is probably different from the machine arrays that are ubiquitous in my impression. “Of course, in return, we have so special requirents: don’t ask too many questions, cooperate well with our inquiries, don’t casually tell others about us, can you manage that?”
The boy Glick cautiously sized up my eyes, verifying that there was no cunning smile there, and then, with a sowhat dazed look, glanced at the autonomous machine cautiously flying around him. Finally, he nodded firmly: “Everyone knows the Old Glick Family is the most trustworthy in the whole Condenser Town!”
Here cos that weird town na again, this world filled with ruins and even planets ford from massive spaceship wreckage is so bizarre, not only is its appearance novel to us, even its nas are similarly rare. For now, let’s not talk about the so-called ‘Great City,’ but what’s up with the na ‘Condenser’ for a town?
“Condenser Town is the na we gave it,” Glick led us down another road, this road bypassed the nearly ninety-degree slope ahead covered in sharp tal pieces and led to the main gate of the town below, just a bit farther, “Most temporary settlents don’t have nas, but this settlent has lasted for decades, so the elders in town decided to na the residence. They consulted many data discs and found out that the large tal disc beneath the town is sothing called a condenser, so they nad it ‘Condenser’ Town. I guess there are certainly more Condenser Towns worldwide because many temporary settlents are established on tal platforms similar to the one beneath our town, so tal platforms also being condensers. If those towns endure long enough and have so smart elders, they can also be nad ‘Condenser’ Town…”
Glick obviously tried hard to beco a qualified guide, but maybe he never really did this, or perhaps this world simply doesn’t have tourism. Despite his efforts to use vivid language to narrate the history of his town, the end result was a ss, tangential and illogical. But luckily, we aren’t concerned with the origin of this town; we’re now most curious about what this Ruins-like World is actually like, its origins, its residents, the vicissitudes over seventy-two million years—it’s hard to imagine the native inhabitants here were survivors of the Doomsday War seventy-two million years ago, surviving in the ruins so long after Doomsday and living such a strange wasteland life. If not for the accurate judgnt of the Life Temple, I would’ve never believed the residents survived the Doomsday aftermath for such tens of thousands of years. Our original purpose here was to find the fleet Visca lost and investigate why the Destruction Army invaded this world seventy-two million years ago, but now, these two goals seem less urgent, everyone’s interest is shifting towards this Ruins World itself.
“Interesting idea, probability statistics.”
Lin Xue suddenly glanced at Glick, speaking in a mild tone, “Tell us about this place, in the Great City, you can’t see such dirty and ssy places, I’m quite curious about here.”
“Of course, people from the Great City indeed sotis show curiosity about various collection stations and workplaces because you usually don’t do this… Oh, I don’t an anything else,” Glick walked briskly ahead, as the lights in front gradually approached, his tone beca relaxed too, “This is a tal station, and it’s a level two recycling station, as you see, everywhere are pieces of waste tal cut into small chunks, they are all from discarded machines. Everyone knows the world’s resources co from the ground under our feet, but not all resources are directly usable, and discarded items also need to be reused to avoid waste. This tal station collects and sorts various resources, a large ship weekly dumps tals and resources to be dismantled here collected from other places, adults sort them during working days, sending usable items to large or small factories—mostly to small factories, since here most items are smaller components, large factories won’t accept them. It’s different at a level one recycling station, they process larger items, having bigger tal mountains. A piece of an item on such a mountain is larger than the small piles around us, so level one recycling stations can even dig up directly usable resources near residence zones…”
Glick rambled on about what he knew, but this information was sowhat unclear to us. I couldn’t directly question him more, so I only tried my best to reconstruct a societal structure struggling in the Ruins World based on his description.
rcury Lamp idly lay on my shoulder, gazing at the desolate heaps of junk surrounding us, instinctively shrinking her body, hugging my head even tighter. Feeling her petite figure wiggle back and forth on my shoulder, I gently patted her leg: “What’s wrong?”
“Stupid human, I don’t like it here,”
rcury Lamp whispered, “I… despise the atmosphere here.”
“Want to return to the spaceship?” I roughly guessed the reason for rcury Lamp’s bad mood, this might remind her of so unpleasant things, though she’s already overco them, sudden exposure still might unsettle her a bit, “Be good, listen.”
“Don’t treat like a child,” rcury Lamp discontentedly knocked on my head but still firmly shook her head, “That’d be even more boring, the ship’s full of rigid soldiers and that scientist putting duplicates everywhere, staying with you I can at least spar with Lilina…”
I: “…”
Always feel the children’s education problem at ho is becoming a severe issue before my eyes again.
After walking a while, we reached the main gate of the town Glick referred to as ‘Condenser’ Town. Although called a main gate, it was actually just a triangular fra supported by three tilted alloy skeletons, welded onto walls surrounding the residential area about a ter high and serving as its sole entrance. The material of those walls seed like the soft tal lining of corridors within spaceships, with barely visible traces of nearly obliterated Imperial texts on them, and perhaps the triangular door derived from a discarded gun mount, towering at five or six ters high, appearing disproportionately large compared to the walls.
Unexpectedly, the triangular door even had an auto gate control system, over a dozen roughly arranged high-energy beams blocking the way ahead. Observing closely, I found they ca from two tall columns at the door, with many paired beam generators crudely tied around them with unknown tal wires, their power lines exposed just like that extending from the low wall to inside the town.
A little over a ter high wall, with entirely exposed access energy, and the precarious seams visible everywhere on the wall, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of brainless intruders could be blocked by such a security system. Honestly, with this level of security, even my high school classmates who used to sneak out of school to play gas with could crack it. They should have just placed a head of discipline at the gate instead of installing such high-tech raster walls…
Glick was already accustod to the crude facilities here. He just gave us a gesture to wait a mont, then fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out a small crystal card. The card looked quite rough, seemingly not sothing in the Empire’s style. He swiped the little gadget over the beam emitter in front of the gate, and the intercepting beam disappeared.
“Welco to Condenser Town. People from the Great City are rare guests here. The last ti we welcod soone from the Great City was three years ago.” Glick waved his skinny arms cheerfully, clearly delighted to be back ho.
With a sense of curiosity, we followed him, although the ramshackle and chaotic surroundings were not particularly pleasant. However, the freshness of this bizarre world already helped dilute any negative impact. Looking around, I found that this was indeed a settlent built on a large tal plane. The “ground” underfoot was a single piece of alloy, weathered and barely showing its forr shine. Everywhere there were interface pipes or cable connectors erging from the tal ground. These interfaces had been repurposed; tied with ropes, they beca fixtures to reinforce the roofs of the ubiquitous tin shacks.
Earlier, when we were up on the highground, we could already see the haphazard tin shacks in the settlent from afar, and they seed quite rundown. But now, upon closer inspection, they looked even worse than my first impression.
Around us were such houses: connected with worn and twisted tal sheets into crooked shantytowns. The most makeshift shanties were tied directly with tal wire and rivets, with cracks wide enough for people outside to see in. The slightly better shanties showed signs of welding, wherein it wasn’t easy to weld together tal sheets dismantled from Imperial Warships. Maybe they used focus tubes from scrapped laser guns, because I don’t recall Xyrin Technicians using welding torches in ship repairs. It is also possible that they found a working autonomous machine originally for spaceship repair pipelines (known here as “Great Craftsman” according to Glick). These machines could learn any kind of work, including turning themselves into a welding torch.
In view, the best houses were a few neat large tal boxes that I recognized after a while. They were originally living quarters for soldiers on large spaceships, but had been stripped from the ship sections, leaving only pitted shells.
Our arrival as strangers seed to have caught the attention of the town’s residents. So adults and children, dressed as shabbily and dirtily as Glick, peeked out from the nearby tin houses or alley corners, watching us from afar. Their expressions were tense with eyes full of wariness. After seeing Glick standing beside us and waving to the surroundings, so people muttered sothing and retreated back into their hos. More of them daringly ca out but still refused to get too close. They watched us, comparable to villagers witnessing a fully ard tank suddenly arriving in a quiet mountain village, remaining curious and cautious toward us outsiders but not daring to approach and ask questions.
Sandora, of course, was quite impatient with such a crowd-gawking situation. She looked around, let out a soft snort, and suddenly everyone’s faces turned blank before returning to their hos.
Glick, however, didn’t seem to notice the change in the atmosphere. He began enthusiastically introducing the town’s most important place to us, the round plaza in the town center. Apparently, the brief encounter already made him realize that these seemingly rough people were actually quite easygoing. Accompanied by the seemingly precious “Great Craftsman” as a gift, even this thirteen-year-old boy let down his guard, pointing to a space not far ahead and telling us that it was the best and most worthwhile place in Condenser Town: the round plaza.
It was essentially just a circular vacant lot, quite clean and smaller than a basketball court. Four lamp posts stood around, their crystals emitting bright light. Everything seed very modest, but in this dirty and impoverished place, such a clean and brightly lit plaza was apparently a remarkable community activity center.
“Look, this is our plaza. Every week on rest day, adults sing praises here and kids can play around the plaza and get two pieces of sugar cake.” Glick excitedly grabbed my arm (apparently he recognized that I was the leader and the easiest to talk to in this group) and led toward the center of the plaza. “Today is rest day, but there’s still so ti before the gathering starts. Adults are preparing. I’ll also bring my sister out today. I can still get six sugar cakes, and then I won’t be considered a kid, but not yet an adult. At fourteen, I’m supposed to start working half as much as an adult and no longer receive kid food rations, but that’s nothing for the son of old Glick. I could support myself two years ago!”
“You have a sister?”
I asked casually, then my gaze fell to the ground.
At the center of this so-called round plaza was a circular area raised about ten centiters above the ground. On this one-ter-wide circular platform, there was a distinct symbol, particularly eye-catching.
A blood-red triangular emblem.
Visca’s cat-like blood-red vertical pupils glead with a faint light as her pupils montarily contracted into two narrow slits. She crouched down, gently stroking the blood-red triangular emblem on the ground. After a long ti, she took out a piece of chalk and drew a checkerboard pattern on it…
“The ground here is really clean. Who wants to play Go with ?”
The cat-eyed Loli joyfully invited everyone, leaving us speechless: “…”
Alright then, it seed those scenes I saw earlier were all my illusions. That girl didn’t have any impression of her legion’s emblem back in the day!
Before I could react, Visca was already pulled aside by Pandora for so tutoring, while Sandora nudged my arm: “These are remnants of Visca’s subordinates from those days.”
“Perhaps before we figure out the condition of this space, we should find out who Visca was fighting back in the day,” I whispered in reply. “Have the Mother Ship send down so invisible probes and conduct a comprehensive search of the ancient remnants in this space… By the way, Sandora, would you recognize a legion emblem if it belonged to another emperor’s army?”
“If the Imperial database were still present, it wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, it’s uncertain now,” Sandora regretfully shook her head. “The Imperial Dominions are so vast, and I never really cared about other emperors’ affairs back then, never recorded their legion emblems. I suspect Pandora’s case might be even worse; she probably didn’t even rember the emperor’s na in the neighboring Sky Zone…”
Once again, I was left speechless: “…”
You wonder under what bizarre circumstances these two war maniacs survived back in the day! (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welco to visit Qidian [qidian] to vote for recomndations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)
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