The message from the Summit of the World came as no surprise. It had been expected all along. However, the fact that it only arrived after the signing of the New Peace Treaty genuinely caught He Fang off guard.
For the other side to be this indifferent, it was either because they truly intended to stay out of the matter altogether, or because they were hiding some unknown trump card. But at the very least, this invitation signified that both sides now had a chance to start getting to know each other.
In the New Peace Treaty, to maintain a peaceful world, the Main City essentially took on the role of an older brother, offering aid to the major cities. Although this did carry the risk of being seen as the one making the biggest sacrifice, the treaty explicitly stated that everything would eventually be returned. This clause alone basically cemented the Main City’s foundational role in the entire post-apocalyptic world.
The future certainly wouldn’t be smooth sailing, but these early benefits would gradually expand the Main City’s influence. With the sheer strength of the Main City’s NPCs, reclaiming all those advantages from the other mobile cities wouldn’t be difficult at all. In the end, all He Fang really wanted was open, flowing transportation.
Now that air travel rights had been granted, the research institute had already begun developing large cargo aircraft. This was practically a direct push toward elevating the Main City to the pinnacle of the world.
And as for the Summit of the World, despite how domineering the name sounded, according to the information gathered from the Library, it was more like a reclusive master, isolated and disconnected from its surroundings.
One had to admit that the idea of turning everything into a frozen tundra was quite good. But unless they possessed the ability to grow crops on permafrost, humanity could not live without the earth.
So now, He Fang was also very curious about what exactly the Summit of the World was like. At the very least, judging from the previous information, the Summit of the World was greatly respected by the masses.
The Summit of the World clearly had no intention of making direct contact with He Fang. Instead, it directly issued an invitation letter addressed to He Fang alone. It was written very clearly in the letter that only He Fang had received the invitation. If he were to attend, he must go alone.
He Fang didn’t quite understand. If it was just the City Lord going, and it was after the peace treaty had already been signed, then if anything happened to He Fang at the Summit of the World, it would easily damage the Summit of the World’s reputation.
But He Fang wasn’t worried at all. The other party requested that no humans be allowed to be brought along. But they never said mechs weren’t allowed. He could bring the Rainbow Squad and also hang the Divine Lord on board. With those two showing up, he believed there definitely wouldn’t be any danger.
The other party definitely knew that the main city had mechs, and under the circumstances where mechs existed, saying something like this was completely unnecessary. The fact that they didn’t ban mechs meant they were tacitly allowing them to be brought in.
What the Summit of the World was thinking, He Fang did not know.
In the message from the Summit of the World, there wasn’t even a specified time, which proved that everything was being left to him to prepare and decide. This was clearly a form of arrogance.
But indeed, the Summit of the World would be an important mission point.
He Fang opened the system map and, sure enough, saw the location information of the Summit of the World, as well as the orange mission icon sitting right at the top of it.
He Fang didn’t go immediately after receiving the invitation. Since the other party didn’t specify a time, then no matter how much he delayed on his end, it wouldn’t be a problem. After all, He Fang wasn’t afraid. Naturally, he wouldn’t be giving face to anyone either.
In order to ensure that the main city continued to hold a dominant position, He Fang decided to temporarily set aside the invitation from the Summit of the World. He wanted to see just how patient the other party could be.
After resolving the current matters, He Fang once again turned his attention to the hospital. The hospital in the game was simply too similar to the one in reality. He still remembered that time in the hospital. When he looked at the entrance of the hospital in “Ruins Without Restart”, which was no different from the real-world hospital, and without the slightest hesitation, he walked right in.
It was still the same familiar hospital. He didn’t feel there was anything strange about it. Or rather, it looked almost too normal. Since it was daytime in “Ruins Without Restart”, He Fang could see everything arranged inside. But as he stood quietly at the entrance, the NPCs seemed as if they couldn’t even be bothered to glance at him. He Fang knew very well. This was nothing more than simulated personalities, after all.
But this place was indeed designed exactly the same as in reality. He Fang turned around to the spot where the young nurse had once taken him to get the deliveryman an X-ray. When he looked up, he actually saw the very same X-ray room. There were even people lining up for scans. When the door opened slightly, He Fang took a glance inside. He was absolutely certain that the arrangement inside was completely identical to the real world.
He Fang’s eyes were full of a complicated expression. Just how could something come so close to reality, to this extent?
He Fang tried to look for a wheelchair, but he didn’t see one in the place where it should’ve been. He couldn’t find the slightest trace of a wheelchair. This bit of abnormality, however, was not what He Fang had expected.
He Fang looked up in the main hall and saw the excellence commendation board hanging there. On it were the names and photos of the outstanding medical staff from the entire hospital. What he saw there was completely different from reality—an array of extraordinarily handsome, elegant, beautiful, and accomplished men and women. In the real world, perhaps beautiful women were more common while truly handsome men were rarer. But here on the board, it was a uniform lineup of good-looking individuals, regardless of age. Each person’s eyes shone brightly with spirit and energy.
Although He Fang believed that stereotypes shouldn’t be held onto, no matter what, there should at least be one bald doctor, right? But looking at these photos, every single one had a thick head of hair. Compared to doctors’ ID photos, they looked more like contestants from some talent show. It was hard not to feel conflicted.
And at the very top was Bai Fu’s photo. He Fang stared at it and suddenly thought: good-looking people just always look good, no matter how you take the photo.
“City Lord? What are you doing here?” Bai Fu’s voice suddenly came from behind him.
“How come you’re here? Not busy?” He Fang looked at the man who had appeared beside him with some surprise. Bai Fu, as always, wore a white coat and had a gentle and kind expression. Even the blink of an eye gave off a sense of reliability.
“I just finished my night shift. I got off at midnight and was about to head home to rest. I just happened to see you here, City Lord,” Bai Fu tilted his head slightly, clearly a bit surprised to see He Fang.
“Has the hospital always been like this, even from a long time ago?” He Fang asked. Perhaps it was time to just ask the NPC directly.
A flicker of confusion passed through Bai Fu’s eyes. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, ever since the hospital was built, has the interior always been decorated like this?” He Fang asked straightforwardly.
“The interior?” Bai Fu’s expression showed a bit of doubt. “I’m not too sure about that. My father’s generation and my grandfather’s generation both worked at the hospital. Although I’m the director, I inherited the position, so I’m not certain what this place looked like before.”
He Fang paused for a moment. In his mind, there was suddenly a faint clack-clack sound. And then, just like that, he felt at ease.
Right. This world had already been running for several generations. Its development hadn’t exactly been fast, because he had always placed great emphasis on balance and detail. So if he really thought about it, this hospital’s interior must have undergone multiple renovations by now. Just look at what he’d been thinking. How could he have mistaken it for overlapping with the real world?
After all, the hospital in his real world, according to historical records, wasn’t even thirty years old. It was obviously different from a hospital that had been passed down through several generations.
And now, in “Ruins Without Restart”, the hospitals were even capable of overcoming cancer. Whereas in the real world, cancer was still an enormous challenge.
“What’s wrong? Is there something the matter?” Bai Fu seemed to have thought of something. He looked around and asked, “City Lord, do you think there’s something off about our hospital’s current interior design? If you have a better plan, feel free to suggest it.”
He Fang immediately shook his head. “Isn’t the current interior design already the best? But if there’s ever a need for a renovation, I can have Lu Hu allocate the funds.”
“No need. As of now, there haven’t been any major issues that require changes. It’s quite reasonable as it is.”
Bai Fu’s words made He Fang think. Maybe the hospital’s interior design was meant to facilitate medical care and emergency treatment, so it naturally fit those needs. After all, it was originally modeled directly from the real world. That the interior layout would end up being quite different was perfectly normal.
“It’s nothing really. I just came to see you.” At this point, He Fang finally let out a sigh of relief. He didn’t dare say anything more. He felt that his suspicion and overthinking were starting to seem strange.
After all, how could there possibly be gods in the real world? Or mechs? Let alone time travel. He Fang felt he had been overthinking it.
“I’m glad… that City Lord still thinks of me,” Bai Fu said, though his complexion wasn’t great. After all, he had stayed up all night and was surely exhausted. But in front of He Fang, he still put on a cheerful expression.
“Go home and get some rest,” He Fang said as he turned to leave, sending his NPC back to recover their fatigue level.
He Fang figured he really had been overthinking things. He thought about whether he should just head over to the house he had set for himself within the city.
He Fang had never entered any of the residential buildings in the housing complexes. First, to protect the privacy of the NPCs, and second, because as someone with social anxiety by nature, he didn’t want to interact with the ordinary people living quietly in their homes.
But in the game, the idle model would remain in place. It could even be set to AI-managed mode. He Fang wondered if he should try leaving the model downstairs to wait, then log out of the game capsule and go check whether the model cast a shadow in the real world.
If that didn’t work, maybe he should just quietly knock on his own front door and see who would come out of the room.
Although he knew these thoughts were laughably childish, He Fang, driven by some inexplicable impulse, actually planned to carry out the experiment.
Just as he was about to put his plan into action, someone suddenly contacted him. When he looked, he saw it was Zhu Yan, asking if he was available now.
He Fang immediately snapped to attention. As the most productive NPC, Zhu Yan usually only contacted him when something major was happening. At that moment, He Fang had no mind for any silly experiments. Without a second thought, he rushed straight to the research institute.
However, the moment He Fang saw Zhu Yan, Yuan Zhiran, Guo Miaofeng, and the Chong brothers all gathered together, his heart gave a sudden lurch. He had a bad feeling.
“What happened?” He Fang asked, feeling somewhat anxious. When these people were all together, He Fang couldn’t help but think of those strange holes he had previously discovered.
“We discovered something… and it can’t exactly be called good news,” Zhu Yan said.
He Fang’s heart sank. So there was a problem after all.
At that moment, Guo Miaofeng took the initiative to speak up. “City Lord, we’ve already gone to all the locations you previously marked for us. Every place you indicated had one of those holes. And around each of them, there’s terrain that doesn’t match any weathering patterns caused by natural climate. City Lord, do you know something?”
“No, I don’t know anything,” He Fang replied honestly.
“Following your instructions, I stopped the soldiers and researchers from collecting any samples or conducting any analysis. After bringing all the data back, I handed everything over to Zhu Yan. Then Zhu Yan personally went to check it out,” Guo Miaofeng said as he scratched his head helplessly. “All I could tell was that the terrain around the holes looked very strange. I didn’t get anything more than that until Zhu Yan told us that the most likely reason for this situation is… that hole.”
He Fang was still a little confused. Guo Miaofeng wasn’t exactly the brightest. His ability to summarize and express things was limited. In the end, it was Zhu Yan who stepped forward and began explaining what they had discovered.
“Although we call them ‘holes’, they’re actually not that small. The openings are large enough for a person to pass through,” Zhu Yan said. “After I noticed changes in the situation, I personally went to investigate. Inside each of these holes, there’s a strange, unknown substance continuously drifting out. It’s this substance that’s affecting the surrounding environment.”
Zhu Yan opened his terminal, and a massive image was projected in front of He Fang. Yuan Zhiran, standing nearby, pulled up a chair and put it behind He Fang so he could sit down.
“These holes have caused unusual terrain formations in the surrounding areas. But the fact that they can alter the terrain itself already proves that the range of their influence is extremely large. After taking measurements, we’ve estimated the affected radius. It’s roughly as shown here.”
He Fang looked at the image Zhu Yan presented. It was made up of complete circles, quite different from the small white crosses he had marked on his system map. These were spreading, circular zones, each indicating an area of influence. Across the entire map of the post-apocalyptic world, large, strange holes had been marked one after another, forming a perfect ring encircling the Nightmare Beasts Forest on the outskirts.
He Fang stared at those circles, and an odd feeling crept over him. Somehow, this arrangement looked strangely familiar.
Zhu Yan continued, “We’ve examined the specific environmental changes occurring around these locations. It’s like a spreading kind of toxin. It renders the surrounding soil completely incapable of sustaining life and gradually turns it into sand. No matter what kind of soil layer it is, the effect is the same. Right now, just getting close to those areas, you can already feel the massive impact caused by the thick, sandy soil.”
He Fang’s heart skipped a beat. “Could this desertification be something the mobile cities did on purpose to stop the expansion of the Nightmare Beast Forest? Like the scorched cities and the broken cliffs from before?”
“That’s definitely a possibility. We suspected that at first, too,” Yuan Zhiran chimed in. “But when I consulted Shi Canghai, he told me that no such measures were ever taken. So we still haven’t been able to determine what these holes really are.”
He narrowed his eyes slightly. “We wanted to investigate what’s actually going on with these holes, so we had Chong Xiao go down into one of them to take a look.”
He Fang’s eyes widened in shock. “How could you let someone go down there for such a dangerous task so casually?”
However, Chong Ying immediately stepped in to calm He Fang’s concern. “Don’t worry, City Lord. If my brother senses danger, he’ll come right out. After all, he still has someone he’s been waiting to see. He’ll definitely make sure to protect his own life. He went in and came back out without a scratch.”
He Fang glanced at Chong Xiao. Although there were no visible signs of injury on his face, He Fang had a way to confirm. He opened Chong Xiao’s status panel. There was nothing wrong. No HP loss and no abnormalities. Chong Xiao was in perfect health. Only then did He Fang breathe a sigh of relief.
Zhu Yan, still watching He Fang closely, continued, “Because there’s a limit to how far Chong Xiao could go in, I modified the data of one of the Rainbow Squad members to help with the investigation.”
“Rainbow Squad? Is it Xiao Cheng?” He Fang remembered that the only Rainbow Squad member whose true form had yet to be fully uncovered was Rainbow Squad–Xiao Cheng. Seeing Zhu Yan nod, he immediately asked, “Did you guys figure out Xiao Cheng’s true form?”
“Yes,” Zhu Yan replied. “I have to say, the reason we were never able to summon Xiao Cheng before was actually quite simple. We only figured it out after noticing something unusual about Xiao Zi. The issue lay in our approach.” Zhu Yan’s eyes half narrowed slightly. As a perfectly designed research institute NPC, his thought process was exceptionally thorough. “We had been fixated on ground-level attacks all along, never once considering the underground. So we had Chong Ying develop a weapon specifically for subterranean combat. That finally allowed us to summon Xiao Cheng. Just as I suspected, Xiao Cheng is a mech designed for underground assault.”
Zhu Yan brought up the terminal and displayed the true form of Rainbow Squad – Xiao Cheng. With just one glance, He Fang understood. It was a pangolin-type mecha. A massive mechanical pangolin radiated a brilliant orange glow from beneath its plated body. Its entire metallic form was tightly interlocked and impossibly smooth, perfectly mimicking the form of a real pangolin. And pangolins, by nature, were masters of digging. He Fang saw that Xiao Cheng’s claws were sharp, blade-like tips glinting with a metallic sheen, utterly cold and lethal.
“So that’s what it was…” He Fang gazed at Xiao Cheng, suddenly feeling that the Rainbow Squad truly embodied power in all its forms, utterly unmatched.
“Xiao Cheng kept digging downward to investigate. After several attempts, we discovered that aside from the surface-level pattern of these holes, there was another underlying pattern,” Zhu Yan said as he reset the flat map display to a proper spherical model of Earth. Countless streams of data were then simulated, flowing into the inner layers of the Earth. One by one, the data for each rift was recorded and projected onto the globe.
But as the final formation took shape, He Fang’s eyes slowly widened. He stared at the image before him in disbelief.
Though the holes hadn’t managed to fully reach the deepest layer, they were already enough to connect, piercing through and linking together with startling ease.
“Although they don’t reach the core, the current layout is more than enough to show the structure they were intended to form,” Zhu Yan said, half-closing his eyes as he gazed at the display on the terminal. A faint smile curved at the corner of his lips, his expression filled with admiration. “I have to say, even I can’t help but respect the bold thinking of whoever designed this.”
He Fang unconsciously swallowed hard.
