Chapter 42: Batteries

Chapter42: Batteries

Guided by Xu Lie, Chen Jian brought his team to participate in the celebration in accordance with local customs; of course, the purpose was not to revel, but to deepen their understanding of Han Shui City and the state of human society in this post-apocalyptic era through this large-scale event.

Having seen many celebrations, objectively speaking, this one taking place in a human settlement of the post-apocalyptic era was not much different from the others he had witnessed.

Cheering crowds, lit lamps, unprecedentedly prosperous trade, and various forms of entertainment.

If there is any difference, it mainly lies in the content.

Here there are no balloon-popping or ring-toss games; instead, there is a wild boar penned in an open area, and for two catties of rice or a bullet you can enter the pen and show off your skills.

The person who catches the pig is not rewarded with the pig itself, but with double the admission fee refunded by the boss.

After watching for a few minutes, Chen Jian discovered that the payout rate of this game was still quite high.

On average, out of two or three people, one could pin the pig down within the allotted time and walk away with the prize.

The boss wouldn't lose money, nor would he make much; evidently even the difficulty had been carefully tuned.

Xu Lie beside him, eager to try, turned to Chen Jian and asked:

“Chosen Ones, don’t you want to give it a try?”

“The boars here have been domesticated; they are not true wild boars, and with your strength you could handle them with ease.”

“Never mind.”

Chen Jian waved his hand and said:

“Just looking is fine—I’m actually curious where this activity originated from.”

“The north.”

Xu Lie replied:

“In the northern snow plains there is a city called Liaodong, whose people subsist mainly on boar and deer meat.”

“They hold a similar round-up hunt every year, specifically to hunt boars.”

“Whoever accumulates the most boar hides is called the First Baturu, earning not only various rewards but also the right to become the city lord.”

“The boss here came from Liaodong; he was in Jinling four years ago, arrived at Han Shui two years ago, and brought their game with him.”

Good grief, even the First Baturu.

Put together with the term “boar hide,” it carries a somewhat in-your-face connotation.

However, from another angle one can see that the social ecology of this land has indeed regressed to a fairly primitive level, with fishing and hunting as the primary means of obtaining food, their importance having greatly increased.

Consequently, the “game” itself is imbued with a barbaric, martial spirit.

So what, then, is the cause of this regression?

From Chen Jian’s current interactions with everyone else, no one can explain this problem clearly.

They only recall that roughly two hundred or three hundred years ago, a great catastrophe nearly obliterated civilization and almost wiped out humanity.

No one remembers the cause of the destruction, nor does anyone know how the survivors began to reproduce again and re-establish a relatively primitive civilization.

If one wishes to learn the truth,

perhaps one must go to the true Han Shui urban district, to the official institutions, and seek out textual clues.

Chen Jian was mulling over the focus of his subsequent reconnaissance of Han Shui’s urban area when Xu Lie, seeing his lack of interest, spoke up:

“Actually I already knew you wouldn’t be interested in such a celebration, but that’s not the point.”

“The point is that whenever such a festive event occurs, many new goods appear on the market.”

“Including the followers of the Machine God Sect, they will bring out their treasured items and try to sell them for a good price.”

“So, do you want to go have a look?”

“Of course.”

Chen Jian nodded immediately.

Having seen enough, it was time to get down to business.

Thus, a group of eight each held a cup of sweet rice wine in a bamboo tube, pushed through the crowd, and plunged into the market’s depths. Unlike the market Chen Jian had seen during the day, this night market was far more chaotic, with an even greater variety of goods.

Overhead, the carbide lamps cast a dim, cold light that flickered unevenly over the goods on the ground, making them hard to discern.

The group examined the items one by one and indeed found quite a few interesting things.

Glowing LED strips, old hand-crank generators, loose black powder, kerosene lighters and their accompanying kerosene

etc.

This stuff probably isn’t kerosene, is it?

Watching the vendor ignite a small amount of kerosene for demonstration, Chen Jian suddenly understood what the Machine God Sect was recycling plastic bottles for.

Good grief, you haven’t even got a petroleum industry, yet you’ve worked out hydrocracking?

Also, polyethylene plastic takes a long time to degrade anyway, hydrocracking isn’t that difficult, and the recovery rate can exceed 60%, making it a fine method for wasteland refining.

But that this could be sold as a product, Chen Jian truly hadn’t anticipated.

It’s possible that the Machine God Sect’s research in this area has reached a relatively mature stage.

“Buy some.”

Chen Jian signaled Xu Lie to negotiate the price; in the end they bought it, less than 50 ml of kerosene costing 10 grams of gold, a price that was shockingly high.

Fortunately.

Chen Jian let out a sigh of relief.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want technology to advance; it was mainly that the Machine God Sect people were truly abstract, and placing this technology in their hands made him genuinely afraid they’d come up with some sort of four-not-like monstrosity.

As he went along, Chen Jian found nothing particularly worth acquiring.

The vast majority of things that seemed miraculous and valuable to the natives appeared to the four‑person squad as mere children’s toys, with no practical use.

He had prepared to return empty‑handed, but as he was nearly finished touring the market and reached the last few stalls, Chen Jian’s eyes suddenly lit up.

He saw something good.

A sleeve‑arrow launcher, plus a few missiles that looked decent.

“We’ll take this.”

Chen Jian spoke decisively; Xu Lie added no extra words and went straight to haggling aggressively.

The vendor’s identity was clearly not ordinary; he even knew Xu Lie’s name and knew that he was the one who led the squad that took over the nearby Blood Skull’s lair.

In the end, the vendor struck a fairly favorable deal with Xu Lie, and after the transaction he continued:

“Actually I still have some other good things here, though you might not need them.”

“Hey, what about your friends? Do they need any?”

Xu Lie turned to look at Chen Jian, Chen Jian nodded, and responded:

“We can have a look.”

The vendor beamed, lifted the canvas behind him, and revealed the items that had been covered.

In the instant he beheld that heap, Lei Jie's gaze shifted.

He drew a step nearer to Chen Jian, his voice dropping to a whisper as he said:

"Batteries!"

"Air lithium batteries!"

(End of chapter)