The town mayor did her best to calm herself down.
Looking at the woman before her, she realized that this was the person in charge of this unknown shelter.
The woman had long black hair, tied into a ponytail with a black stainless-steel clip that looked as though she had picked it up from somewhere at random. The hair at her temples was long, revealing a smooth forehead.
She had a pair of emerald-green eyes and wore an anchor-shaped earring. The white shirt with its lamb-leg sleeves was buttoned meticulously all the way to the top. Delicate lace trimmed the collar at her throat, above which sat a gemstone brooch the same color as her eyes.
She propped her cheek up lazily, looking at everyone present. In front of her was a group of people panting heavily, still shaken from their ordeal.
The firelight reflected in those emerald-green eyes without causing the slightest ripple. Under that gaze, everyone gradually calmed down.
Unlike the typical rough appearance of wastelanders, she looked pale and delicate, almost like a ghost that had just crawled out of somewhere rather than someone who had spent any length of time living in the wasteland.
Even the blue-coated personnel from the shelters, once they left their shelters and began coming into contact with the wasteland, would inevitably bear traces of wind and frost upon them.
But she didn’t.
Either she had never left the shelter since waking up, or…
She had only just awakened.
If it was the latter, then this was going to be an extremely troublesome person.
How long had it been?
How long had the Night Demons even been wandering around here?
—And she had already decided to snatch people from the neighboring survivor settlement!
This woman was either reckless or greedy.
The mayor sensed that things were going to be difficult. If the latter was true, then in some sense, the two of them were the same kind of person.
She knew that people like them would never let go unless they had gotten their share of the benefits they wanted.
Forget it. The contract had already been signed. The mayor hadn’t expected that little girl to be so ruthless. Now that she had the contract, she had rules she could follow.
The wasteland wasn’t a lawless place.
If she tried to forcibly take over Lingfeng Town, many people would assume she was a raider and flee overnight.
But it was different with the endorsement of the previous town mayor. She wouldn’t need to expend a great deal of effort winning the townspeople’s trust, because the people of Lingfeng Town would carry that trust over to her—at least some of them would.
“Let me introduce myself.” The mayor was quite adept at bending with circumstances. “I’m the current mayor of Lingfeng Town, Huacao Ailina. You can call me whatever you like.”
Ling Zhao couldn’t tell which part was the surname, so she chose the one that sounded more like a given name.
“Ailina.”
She narrowed her eyes slightly and smiled gently.
“I’m Ling Zhao. Ling, as in Ling Jue Ding; Zhao, as in Ri Zhao Shan He Chun.”
Ailina stared at her, thinking:
What is she talking about?
It sounded like some kind of poem, and one that had been lost for a very long time at that.
She didn’t dare speculate any further. Wastelanders were lucky enough simply to survive, and most people gave names rather casually. Regardless of anything else, someone with this kind of education really was a person from a shelter, rather than some raider who had seized another’s territory.
Ailina knew she couldn’t avoid this ordeal.
Both the robot and Bei You were staring at her, especially that ungrateful little kitten, Bei You, who still had her finger resting on the trigger.
She coughed twice, signaling for everyone else to look at her. She wiped the dust from her forehead, only to smear even more dirt across it without realizing.
“Everyone, I have something to announce.”
“Earlier, I reached an agreement with this shelter…”
“999 Shelter, Noah Corporation,” Bei You quietly reminded her from the side.
“With the chairman of 999 Shelter, Noah Corporation, I reached an agreement.”
Once Mayor Ailina got the first sentence out, the rest became much smoother.
“Since I need to temporarily leave Lingfeng Town every winter, I will now hand over the winter jurisdiction of Lingfeng Town to 999 Shelter. I have also secured an employment agreement for you all.”
“Chairwoman Ling Zhao will provide you with work throughout the winter and will be responsible for Lingfeng Town’s basic security and basic living needs.” Ailina thought for a moment. “Until I return in spring.”
She had secretly dug a little pit for Ling Zhao—security.
She had never been responsible for that before!
Since she’d already said it, she might as well dump the entire burden onto Ling Zhao. If Ling Zhao couldn’t accomplish it, that would be her problem.
If a large number of people froze to death this winter, hehe…
By spring, these people would be full of complaints.
And when Ailina came back to take over, they would still remember how good she had been.
As she spoke, Ailina’s expression gradually shifted from gloomy to cheerful. She had served as mayor for so many years and had managed to keep Lingfeng Town from becoming nothing more than a signpost in the wasteland. She clearly had some ability.
Her vocabulary was extremely simple when she spoke, repeatedly emphasizing the same few terms. But it was easy to understand, and she explained the terms she had mentioned earlier in just a few sentences.
“Basic security means that this chairwoman will make sure you aren’t dragged away by Night Demons or eaten in your sleep by raiders,” Ailina explained. “Basic living means she won’t let you freeze to death or let too many of you starve. She signed a contract with me. A contract is a piece of paper containing an agreement, and anyone who signs their name has to follow what’s written on it.”
“Is it witchcraft?” someone asked quietly from below.
“You can think of it that way,” Ailina shrugged. “A contract is just a piece of paper, but if you violate what’s written on it, the other side might do anything to you. Then you’ll know whether it’s witchcraft or not.”
On the wasteland, those who still honored contracts were invariably people who intended to operate within the rules.
Ailina knew it was best not to offend these last remaining law-abiding people. They followed rules because doing so was convenient for themselves and others, not because they lacked the ability to trample those rules.
She didn’t know about the others, but Ling Zhao clearly had that ability.
A single one of those machines could flatten the entire Lingfeng Town. Ailina had no idea how many other machines like that she possessed.
She was someone who had seen the world, too. Even at Shelter 199, things like this were rare. This was the first time she’d ever seen an active machine.
“That’s all. I’m getting ready to leave.”
Although the sky had yet to brighten and there was still some time before sunrise, Ailina had no intention of staying any longer. She wanted to leave this place as quickly as possible.
As for arranging accommodations for these people, she believed the woman who had dared to bring them here would take care of it herself.
Ailina left immediately.
Ling Zhao watched her back disappear into the distance. The others followed her gaze and didn’t dare urge her to say anything.
On the surface, Ling Zhao appeared calm and unruffled.
In reality, she had been enduring System Cistern’s incessant nagging for quite some time.
【You’re far too bold.】It was the first time Cistern had displayed such obvious astonishment. 【Do you realize you’ve already left the shelter’s protected area?!】
Half-paralyzed, disabled, nighttime, surrounded by Night Demons!
Any one of those factors should have been enough to make her stay obediently at home, yet she’d actually driven her wheelchair straight into the center of the battlefield!
That recycling machine’s upgrade…
Although it had simply assembled a bunch of garbage together, it had assembled it brilliantly.
Her wheelchair could travel at high speed across most types of terrain. On flat ground, it could reach speeds of up to 150 kilometers per hour. It also had customizable deployable armor and…
Two machine guns.
She didn’t know why throwing one machine gun into the machine had resulted in two being welded onto the wheelchair. Later, she figured it might have been because of the other steel modules she’d thrown in.
But the two guns did make the wheelchair more balanced.
The wheelchair could even be equipped with Cistern’s intelligent module, allowing it to conduct fully automated combat.
【If I come out openly, people will only see me sitting in a wheelchair. If I try to hide this fact, then the fact that I’m in a wheelchair will become my greatest weakness and vulnerability.】
The more something was hidden, the more curious people became.
Ling Zhao had no intention of becoming the crippled chairwoman everyone whispered about.
She would rather drive her high-speed, rotary machine-gun wheelchair and become the War God Chairwoman who fought from a wheelchair.
After all, the latter was much more interesting, wasn’t it?
Now, after fighting and scrambling to secure it, she had finally solved one of her biggest problems.
—She had people.
Apart from the lack of food and energy, Ling Zhao had always known what her biggest obstacle to development was.
Population.
She had absolutely no population.
Regardless of whether they had already signed formal employee contracts, she at least needed some people.
She herself was incapable of doing any labor, while Sentry Type I wasn’t designed for production. No matter what projects she unlocked later, she would need people to handle the most basic tasks.
She could operate one recycling machine herself. Although she had no experience, that wasn’t a problem.
But what about ten? A hundred?
Previously, she had been afraid to accept too many people because she didn’t have enough food. Now, she had exchanged a total of 0.2 points’ worth of water-card subsidy with a passing merchant for five hundred jin of food.
She hadn’t asked for more because the merchant hadn’t been carrying any more. Ling Zhao had only paid half of the agreed amount. The water corresponding to the remaining 0.1 points was still being withheld, and she had demanded that the merchant deliver at least another thousand jin of food before winter.
Anything would do—black wheat, soybeans, red rice, dried mushrooms…
Anything except dried rat, leech burgers, and cockroach meat patties.
After asking around earlier, Ling Zhao had discovered that the thirty points of water-card subsidy were equivalent to thirty tons of water, with each point representing one ton.
As long as she could get this water circulating as a basic trading resource, she would be able to support herself through the most difficult early stage.
Originally, she had planned to go out herself and find settlements where she could sell the water in batches. She hadn’t expected to encounter a traveling merchant who happened to be looking for business opportunities in the wasteland. The two of them had hit it off immediately.
Now, it was time to use this batch of water for another purpose.
“Go get some rest.” She spoke to the people before her. “Come with me.”
She turned and entered the shelter’s outpost bunker. Inside was a clean table covered with clear, pristine water.
“One cup each.”
Ling Zhao had roughly counted their numbers beforehand, and there were enough cups for everyone. She picked up a cup first and held it up for everyone to see.
“Drink.”
The survivors looked at one another, finding the same astonishment reflected in each other’s eyes.
They had never seen such clear, clean water. Inside the plastic cups, it almost refracted a dreamy glow.
Was this… Level-One uncontaminated water?
Even inside the fortress of Shelter 199, this kind of water was probably a premium offering reserved for the highest-ranking people.
Could they really drink it?!
Ling Zhao offered no explanation.
The others looked at her. In the end, with Bei You taking the lead, followed by Lin Xiao, Tang Yuan, and the others, they gradually raised their cups.
Was this a gift?
—No.
This was a transaction.
She raised her cup with a smile and drank it down first.
“I’m trading with you for all the exhaustion and weariness you’ve accumulated on your journey.”
【55, 58, 60, 71…】
【Ding! 100 transactions completed successfully.】
【Second business project unlocked. Please select a project.】
Author’s Note:
Ling Zhao: I figured nobody wanted these people anyway…
I can also create an image of Ling Zhao welcoming the exhausted survivors into the shelter.