Watching the nuclear crystal hunters arrive at Qianli City, Cheng Qisheng deactivated the guidance.
She did not lead them directly to the coordinates.
The task she had given the nuclear crystal hunters was to determine whether the city had a safe zone, not to recklessly charge straight in.
When it came to scouting enemy conditions in unfamiliar territory, every Blue Sea warrior had far more experience than she did.
The Creator God calmly waited to reap the results.
Cheng Qisheng began checking the various devices she had traded for from other city lords.
Weather control instrument x1, large-scale water purification systems x3, virus decontamination rooms x2, garbage decomposition plant x1……
These were all first-tier products from the marketplace that could not be upgraded.
Because they couldn’t be advanced, their second-hand prices were relatively low. On top of that, Cheng Qisheng was willing to accept payment in resources, making them even more cost-effective.
For other city lords, once they advanced to higher tiers, there was no need to buy equipment like this anymore—upgraded versions could be further enhanced and were capable of covering all their residents. As a result, these non-upgradable first-tier products became dispensable.
But that wasn’t the case for Cheng Qisheng.
She had a large population, liked exploring the outside world, and her people followed orders and often acted in groups.
These facilities weren’t merely useful now. Even later, once she obtained truly city-wide upgraded versions, the old models could still be taken outside and put to use.
Most importantly—they were cheap!
She was currently saving nuclear crystals to buy an air tower. Until the air problem was solved, every bit she could save mattered.
Cheng Qisheng didn’t just buy things—she sold them as well.
The various supplies she had brought from Dark Star were surprisingly popular among the city lords.
Plus, with Coriander helping promote them everywhere, she managed to close one or two deals almost every day.
But after adding everything up, she discovered one rather absurd fact.
Her best-selling product turned out to be high-end mattresses.
Just as she was thinking about it, a new message came in.
[Zhou Yue Safe City: Hello, I heard you sell high-end mattresses here?]
Another city lord who had never spoken in the group chat before.
Cheng Qisheng was already used to this and quickly replied.
[Blue Sea Safe City: Yes, 25 nuclear crystals each. Support technology, memory foam with automatic rebound, ice-silk fabric that doesn’t feel stuffy, reinforced edges for stability~]
[Zhou Yue Safe City: I want twelve. Can we trade now?]
[Blue Sea Safe City: Yes, we accept nuclear crystal payments and exchanges for various facility resources =v=]
[Blue Sea Safe City: Can I ask why everyone is buying mattresses? I’ve sold quite a lot of them today alone, and every buyer was a Tier-2 city lord.]
[Zhou Yue Safe City: Other people are buying them too? You haven’t sold out already, have you? Sister, how about this—I’ll take five more, seventeen high-end mattresses in total. How about trading them for a small underground mineral exploration detector?]
Cheng Qisheng opened the marketplace and looked up the detector.
It really was a good item.
It could automatically scan for all types of underground minerals across an entire region. Its marketplace price was 1,000 nuclear crystals, which made the trade an excellent deal.
So excellent, in fact, that she felt Zhou Yue was taking a loss.
Would a Tier-2 city lord willingly agree to a losing trade?
[Blue Sea Safe City: May I ask how much usage time it has left, and whether it’s damaged?]
[Zhou Yue Safe City: It’s almost brand new. I bought it with 5 years of usage time, and it still has 4 years and 9 months left.]
[Zhou Yue Safe City: I’m not trying to scam you, so let me make this clear first. This detector is good, really good—but it’s an underground scanning device, understand? I don’t know how the marketplace calculates these things, but anything it detects is at least 200 meters underground. Even if it finds something, I can’t organize people to dig it out. So it’s basically been sitting unused in my hands all this time.]
[Zhou Yue Safe City: I heard you brought a lot of equipment from your original world. I don’t know if you have anything related to mining, but if you do, this thing should be useful to you.]
Cheng Qisheng certainly had mining-related equipment. She asked the system to wait while she carefully checked the marketplace description. After confirming that Blue Sea could make use of it, she accepted the trade.
Only after the deal was secured did Zhou Yue finally explain why everyone had been buying mattresses.
[I finally have a mattress, aaaah!! There aren’t any in the marketplace at all. We all escaped from our original worlds—who would bring a mattress while fleeing for their lives?]
[Every world has dangers. You can ask residents to risk their lives to bring back food, generators, or medical supplies—that’s at least understandable.
But asking them to carry a mattress? Something huge, heavy, that blocks their vision and exists purely for comfort? That’s practically asking your residents to complain and rebel against you.]
Perhaps because she had successfully traded away a useless detector, Zhou Yue was in a good mood and even explained why Tier-1 city lords weren’t buying them.
[Tier-1s don’t buy them because they’re poor and can’t afford luxuries. Tier-2s already have basic safety guarantees and more stable populations, so of course they start wanting to enjoy a normal life.]
[As for why Tier-3s don’t buy them… I know about “Meow Meow”—she sleeps curled up, so she doesn’t need a mattress. As for Blue Leaf, his original world seems to be medieval, so he probably isn’t used to mattresses either.]
As for “Cosmic,” she didn’t even mention him.
Although there were only thirteen people in the group, Cosmic had very successfully managed to make the other twelve dislike him.
Zhou Yue happily lay on her newly purchased mattress while explaining to Cheng Qisheng why everyone was so desperately short on mattresses.
Most safe cities were essentially structured the same way: one city lord, one AI core, and a large number of refugees who had escaped into the city.
Then everyone embarked on the path of survival together.
There might be residents with special abilities, workers, or people who understood technology—but for city lords, building factories simply wasn’t worth it.
The outside world was too dangerous. Safe cities needed more combat power and more healthy, mobile laborers. How could they afford to tie people down on factory assembly lines?!
If they needed something, they could just buy it from the marketplace anyway.
As for items the marketplace didn’t sell—like mattresses—those weren’t necessities. They didn’t affect survival. Having one was nice, but going without one was fine too.
Other safe cities didn’t have nearly as many residents as Blue Sea, which could simply clear out an entire town, build walls around it, and calmly search the town for supplies.
They could only conduct quick raids, grab resources, and retreat immediately, or risk being attacked by zombies from elsewhere.
To conserve manpower and maintain their reputation, city lords couldn’t possibly ask residents to risk their lives hauling mattresses back.
After all, lacking food and water would kill you—but not having a mattress? That didn’t really matter. You could just pile up a few blankets and sleep on those!
Of course, that was the logic—but once Cheng Qisheng started selling mattresses, all those Tier-2 city lords from modern worlds still rushed to buy them.
Because when they were Tier-1, they had no choice but to endure hardship. Now that they had reached Tier-2, they finally felt they had earned the right to enjoy life a little.
Zhou Yue received seventeen mattresses—enough to last her more than a hundred years. In an excellent mood, she gave Cheng Qisheng a reminder.
[If you’re running low on mattresses, you might want to stop selling them for now. When you encounter other Tier-3 city lords in the next world, you might be able to sell them for a higher price. These things are practically hard currency.]
Cheng Qisheng thanked her for the reminder and also included ten latex pillows as a gift for this major customer.
Then she checked her warehouse inventory. The mattresses she had been selling had all been looted from a furniture store in a zombie town—70 in total.
Those seventy mattresses had nearly been wiped out by the Tier-2 city lords. Only three pitiful ones remained.
But then she checked Blue Sea’s internal storage.
Since mattresses weren’t essential survival supplies, Blue Sea hadn’t brought many during the relocation.
In total… about 2 million.
And even if they somehow used them all up, Blue Sea had relocated the entire planet. All its technology and production equipment remained intact. As long as she wanted, the people of Blue Sea could start up a factory and produce mattresses at any time.
But looking at those two million mattresses, Cheng Qisheng decided there probably wasn’t any need to open a factory for the time being.
***
Zhou Yue Safe City—
Zhou Yue’s name was simply Zhou Yue. When disaster struck her original world, she had been in the middle of an exam.
She had just been about to write her name on the test paper when the Safe City suddenly appeared, and she instinctively named it “Zhou Yue Safe City.”
She looked at the latex pillows she had received as a gift and felt pleasantly surprised.
Coriander had been right—Blue Sea was the kind of person who repaid kindness.
Back when Blue Sea was still in the early stages of development, Coriander had given her a ton of wood, and Blue Sea had willingly sold food in return to help him through his difficulties.
Now, Zhou Yue had merely explained a few things, and Blue Sea had already sent her pillows.
Although she couldn’t read the writing on the packaging, one glance was enough to tell that these pillows, just like the mattresses, were high-end goods.
Zhou Yue happily hugged the pillows and rolled around on her comfortable 1.8-meter-wide mattress.
Ahhh, this was what modern life was supposed to be!
In the last world, she had been surviving in the wilderness and had nearly turned into a wild person!
She thanked Blue Sea from the bottom of her heart.
She needed to find a way to get closer to Blue Sea.
This was definitely a big shot. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to trade for her detector—which meant Blue Sea must have underground excavation equipment.
Who wouldn’t want to stay close to a capable, generous big shot who also repaid kindness?
Zhou Yue personally carried the mattress onto the bed frame, spread out the sheets and duvet, turned on the bedside lamp, and looked with satisfaction at her newly arranged 300-square-meter bedroom.
As expected, advancing in tier felt amazing—the room had gotten so much bigger.
It was a pity that she had spent the last world surviving in the wilderness and hadn’t collected many things to decorate it with. The room still looked rather empty.
But with just a mattress and a pillow, she was already very satisfied. She could slowly add more things later.
Zhou Yue decided to take a nap. As she lay in bed, she was still thinking that Blue Sea must have brought a tremendous amount of supplies and equipment from their original world.
Their bedroom must be incredibly luxurious.
***
Meanwhile, Cheng Qisheng’s home was plunged into darkness.
The power had gone out.
Then she realized—she hadn’t paid the electricity bill.
There was no other reason.
She was simply out of money.
Only then did Cheng Qisheng suddenly realize: right, it was time to make some money.
She was very good at making money.
When she first entered university, she had been full of ambition, determined to earn enough to buy a home of her own.
In her first year, she wrote course design projects for classmates, worked part-time making milk tea, and tutored students.
In her second year, she helped various businesses build official websites and independently developed small programs.
By her third year, the “connections” she had accumulated earlier, combined with her increasingly mature technical skills, allowed her to take on high-paying commercial projects, working herself to exhaustion every day.
In her fourth year of university, Cheng Qisheng finally bought a small one-bedroom apartment and received an offer from a major company, with an expected starting annual salary of 300,000.
If she worked another two years, earning 500,000 a year wouldn’t be a problem—and there was even room for more.
And then she was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
She had considered selling the apartment and devoting everything to treatment, but after careful thought, she gave up on the idea.
First, she had always longed to own a home of her own. Second, if she sold it, then given her condition—eventually becoming unable to care for herself, perhaps even struggling to speak—what landlord would be willing to rent to her?
While she could still move around, Cheng Qisheng worked frantically to earn money. She arranged caregivers, cleaning staff, scheduled treatment plans, and even set up a supervision system.
In the end, she paid all the expenses related to her home three years in advance.
When she was first diagnosed, she had asked around and learned that she might only have two or three years left to live.
Standing on her small balcony at the time, gazing at the distant lights, she had thought: alright, then three years.
—She would prepare everything for those three years. Whether she lived or died after that would depend on whether she could find a way out on Dark Star.
Three years passed.
And she really had found a way out.
In the dark room, Cheng Qisheng smiled faintly as she slowly stood up and walked toward the small balcony that had been specially partitioned off.
After her body became immobile a year ago, she had asked the cleaning lady to lock the balcony door so there would be no need to clean it and dust wouldn’t drift inside.
On this night without electricity, she suddenly wanted to do what she had done three years ago—to stand on that balcony and look out at the twinkling lights.
She pushed the door open—
Bright as daylight.
Cheng Qisheng: “?”
She looked at what should have been a narrow balcony, barely wide enough for two people to pass each other, and found that it was now at least 150 square meters and brilliantly lit.
“Wait—where is this electricity coming from?”
“Aether, explain what’s going on with this room.”
The jellyfish quickly drifted over and circled the space once.
“This is the city lord’s bedroom within the City Lord’s Mansion.”
“The base area of the city lord’s bedroom is 150 square meters. At Tier 2, it expands to 300 square meters. The room you are seeing has expanded accordingly.”
Cheng Qisheng: “……”
So what you’re saying is… the expanded portion of the city lord’s bedroom actually extended into her real-world bedroom?
Her 50-square-meter apartment now had an extra 150-square-meter balcony??
Aether didn’t understand why the city lord seemed so emotionally unsettled.
“City Lord, do you have any other questions?”
“Yes. Do I need to pay the electricity bill?”
“Of course not. The electricity consumed by the City Lord’s Mansion is supplied uniformly by the Blue Sea Power Plant.”
Cheng Qisheng took a deep breath. “Good. That’s fine.”
“City Lord, do you need anything else?”
Cheng Qisheng could barely suppress the corners of her mouth from rising.
“No. I’ll just sit here and look at the lights.”
She already had a 150-square-meter balcony—why would she need to look at someone else’s twinkling city lights?
She could sit here all day staring at this space, with no shared-area fees and no electricity bills.
Three years ago, she had prepared for everything in despair—including her own death.
Three years later, she sat beside a talking jellyfish AI, looking up at bright, sparkling lights that cost her absolutely nothing.
“Aether… will the future keep getting better and better?”
“Of course, City Lord. Under your wise leadership, Blue Sea Safe City will surely implement your policies and directives, centering around your designated…”
“Stop with the flattery you just learned.”
“Understood, City Lord. Then… what should Aether say instead?”
Cheng Qisheng patted its head.
“When I ask you things like, ‘Will it be like this in the future?’ you should say, ‘Yes, City Lord.’”
Aether looked up at her.
“Yes, City Lord.”
It looked at her, clearly having already been given the standard answer. Yet within its newly awakened, rudimentary intelligence core, something faintly warm stirred, and on its own, without any instruction, it added a sentence that rose naturally to the surface:
“The future will surely become better and better, just as you wish.”