Hardcore Lao Wang’s shot was like tossing a torch into a pile of dry firewood—it lit up Buzhou Outpost entirely.
The open-air workbenches, which had been dead quiet, were now jammed tighter than a subway car during peak morning rush hour.
Angle grinders shrieked continuously, welding torches sprayed wild cascades of sparks, and the rhythmic clanging of hammers against metal merged into a fierce industrial symphony.
“We got this, we got this! This is definitely the meta answer for this patch!”
A player named Kindergarten Boss was sweating profusely as he wrestled with a bundle of iron wire.
He bound three gun barrels tightly together, muttering under his breath, “A three-barrel salvo multiplies firepower by three. Now *this* is a true man’s romance!”
Beside him, Breaking Bad was even more extreme.
Wearing a surgical mask swiped from the medical pod, he carefully used a dropper to squeeze green liquid into empty bullet casings—acid extracted from the poison sacs of Zergling corpses.
The nauseating, sour stench wafting from it frightened the surrounding players into scrambling backward.
“Holy crap, bro, are you making ammo or bio-weapons?”
“Don’t panic. Deal true damage, get it?” Breaking Bad didn’t even look up, his eyes gleamed with the unhinged mania of a mad scientist.
The entire base had turned into an underground black-market workshop straight out of a wasteland nightmare.
Li Lei stood in the middle of the plaza, watching this crowd of “arms dealers” who had gone utterly berserk, then looked down at the self-defense pistol in his hand—a glorified squirt gun.
Not only did it have a pathetic five-meter effective range, but its appearance was so shabby it made him want to weep.
He glanced at the redemption list in the System Mall, where the exorbitant price tag for the “Kinetic Rifle” still hovered aloofly.
“These days, poverty really is the primary driver of productivity…” Li Lei sighed, turning decisively toward the scrap recycling point.
Five minutes later.
Carrying two rusty, seamless, extended steel pipes and a trigger assembly ripped off some random machine, he blocked Construction Site Palu, who was buried in welding a gunstock.
“Palu, drop those flashy gimmicks for a second and mod one for me.”
Li Lei slapped the pile of scrap onto the table.
“My standards aren’t high—it just needs to punch through carapace.”
Palu pushed up his goggles and looked at the materials Li Lei had brought.
His eyes lit up like lightbulbs.
“Whoa, Brother Li! The wall thickness on these steel pipes is solid! You came to the right guy. I just had a flash of inspiration—I guarantee I’ll make you a heavy-duty masterpiece with three times the punch of Lao Wang’s piece of junk!”
*BOOM—!!!*
Before Palu could finish his sentence, a thunderous explosion erupted from the shooting range.
Immediately following it was a blood-curdling shriek: “Ah! My hand!!”
Every single player stopped what they were doing.
Hundreds of pairs of eyes turned like searchlights toward the source.
A newbie player named Keyboard Warrior #2 was lying flat on his back.
The crude, homemade shotgun in his hand had split into two.
The barrel peeled outward like a torn aluminum can, belching thick black smoke.
His right hand was a mangled mess of flesh and blood.
His entire palm had been blown apart, and blood dripped steadily along his wrist, staining the sand red.
His face was as pale as a freshly whitewashed wall, his lips quivering, so overwhelmed by pain he could barely make a sound.
[System Warning: Weapon structural integrity failed. Catastrophic malfunction. Caused moderate limb mutilation to user. Recommended: Proceed immediately to medical pod for reconstruction.]
The icy blue pop-up window glowed above his head like a heartless, mocking face.
Dead silence.
An eerie quiet blanketed the entire square, broken only by the whistling of the wind blowing across the wasteland. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
The modding fever that had threatened to blow a hole in the sky just moments ago was instantly doused in a bucket of ice water.
“Holy shit… this game is for real?”
“It even simulates barrel explosions? This physics engine holds a real grudge!”
In the crowd, a player holding a crude submachine gun wrapped in dozens of layers of scotch tape turned green.
He quietly set the gun on the ground and took two steps back, as if it were a landmine that could detonate at any moment.
At a time like this, it took a veteran to hold down the fort.
Hardcore Lao Wang put down his welding torch and strode into the center of the plaza.
He raised his custom-modded rifle, which was still radiating heat, and yelled at the top of his lungs, “See that?! That’s what happens when you don’t study physics!”
“Brothers, mine fired because I used a standard rifle barrel redeemed from the Mall! That’s specialized steel! Its pressure rating is high enough!”
Lao Wang pointed at the unlucky guy rolling in pain on the ground, his expression full of disappointment.
“You grab a random water pipe and expect it to work as a barrel? What, are your hands made of titanium alloy?”
He tapped open his holographic screen and pointed at the dense parameters on display.
“Look closely! Inner barrel diameter, chamber pressure coefficient, spring recoil force… these numbers aren’t just for show! If you want to keep your fingers, calculate everything properly before you start building!”
The atmosphere turned heavy enough to wring out water.
As the mindless hype ebbed, the harsh slap of reality hit hard.
After all, even if it was just a game, losing a hand actually hurt like hell.
The silence lasted for less than three minutes.
“Um… Lao Wang’s right.”
The geology expert named Dragon Seeker pushed up his non-existent glasses and stepped forward.
“But look at it from another angle: as long as our calculations are precise and we operate right on the threshold of explosion, we can exploit the system for maximum power without paying extra.”
He walked over to the holographic screen and deftly pulled up the redemption list, looking as though he were delivering an academic presentation.
“Inner diameter, powder load, locking mechanism strength… these are all quantifiable variables. Since this is a hyper-realistic world, we can totally build a standardized database.”
His words were like a depth charge dropped into a stagnant pool.
“Right! There are so many of us here, packed with grads from top universities—are we really afraid of a few rusty pipes?”
“I’m a mechanical engineer in real life. Leave the barrel stress calculations to me!”
“I majored in chemical engineering! I’ll take care of the gunpowder ratios—guaranteed high power without blowing up the barrel!”
“Where are the civil engineering bros? Get a few guys who know structural design, let’s craft a universal stock module!”
The wind shifted immediately.
If this had been a gathering of reckless bandits a moment ago, it had now transformed into a rigorous university laboratory.
The players quickly divided into groups by academic background.
Palu led a team of civil engineering guys to test material durability, hammering and tapping away.
Breaking Bad led a few chemistry majors, squatting in a corner researching how to maximize bullet damage.
Hardcore Lao Wang was elected chief engineer, tasked with reviewing every single modding blueprint.
Unless Lao Wang gave the nod, no one was allowed to conduct live-fire tests.
Two hours later.
A row of targets had been set up again at the shooting range, ranging from hard basalt rocks to discarded metal plates.
Li Lei stood atop a makeshift podium constructed from oil drums, holding the armor-piercing rifle that Palu had just fine-tuned.
The weapon’s body was rough and its welds were gnarly, but it exuded an intimidating sense of raw power.
He took a deep breath and announced loudly, “Everyone! The First Mount Buzhou Wasteland Arms Exhibition officially begins! Show off your toys!”
This guy carried an insanely wild heavy door-breaker gun—featuring a thickened barrel, a dual-spring firing mechanism, and, most outrageously, an alloy pickaxe blade welded beneath the muzzle to serve as a bayonet.
The thing was a full 1.5 meters long.
Calling it a gun was less accurate than calling it a firearm-spear.
“Let ‘er rip!”
Palu pulled the trigger.
A deafening bang rang out.
The rock target fifty meters away exploded, a hole the size of a washbasin blasted straight through it.
Shrapnel flew in all directions, the cold gleam of the bayonet blade looking extra vicious in the sunlight.
“Holy shit, awesome!!!”
Cheers and whistles erupted from the crowd.
The weapons brought up after that only grew more unhinged.
Kindergarten Boss unveiled his manual rotary machine gun—while it couldn’t fire continuously on electric power, he had added a hand crank.
The faster he cranked, the faster it fired; its suppressive fire was terrifying to behold.
Breaking Bad produced his bio-corrosive rounds—the bullet heads had been altered into hollow-point Dum-dums filled with concentrated acid.
A single shot hitting a metal plate immediately produced sizzling white smoke, etching out a massive hole.
The most absurd case was a ruthless player named Mechanical Ascension.
He had actually dismantled the power system from a scrapped pneumatic pick and welded it onto a heavy iron rod, creating a power warhammer.
Although it couldn’t make ranged attacks, he demonstrated its power on the spot by slamming it directly into the ground.
*THUD!*
The ground trembled, several deep cracks splintering across the soil.
This simple, brutal violence ignited the testosterone of every male present.
When the final weapon finished its demonstration, the setting sun dyed the wasteland a blood-red color.
Li Lei surveyed the crowd below the platform.
These players, who three days ago were suffering social death because they didn’t even have pants to wear, were now covered in piecemeal armor crafted from alien carapaces.
In their hands, they clutched strangely shaped yet lethal weapons.
In their eyes, there was no longer any confusion, only a green, wolfish glint.
It was a hunger for battle, an absolute mania for causing chaos.
Li Lei raised his fierce armor-piercing rifle, pointing the muzzle straight toward the sky.
“Brothers!”
His voice was magnified through the loudspeaker, echoing across the desolate wasteland.
“Starting today, Buzhou Outpost is no longer a miner camp at the mercy of others!”
“And we will no longer view ourselves as defenseless refugees!”
Li Lei paused, a wild grin curling at the corner of his lips as he roared, “Since the dev team isn’t acting human, we’ll become gods ourselves!”
“We’re going to use the tools in our hands to tell every monster on this planet—”
“The Fourth Cataclysm has arrived!”
“RAAAAH—!!!”
A hundred players roared in unison.
The soundwave burst out like a tsunami, causing the metal walls of the base to hum and vibrate.