Chapter 669: The Fully Loaded Ox-Horse

Chapter 669 The Ox and Horse Loaded to the Brim

"Recently, the airship Ox and Horse departed from Dawn City, safely arriving in the eastern reaches of the Baiyue Strait, where an outpost has been established on the northern shore to explore the Baiyue Province."

"Currently garrisoned by over three hundred residents of Vault 404, the local construction crew has already outlined the camp with a one-meter-wide trench and a three-meter-high earthen wall, erecting watchtowers and machine-gun nests along various sections of the perimeter to ensure the camp's security."

"Furthermore, the search teams formed by the vault residents have expanded their operational area from five kilometers along the shore to ten kilometers, incorporating the ruins of Shilong City adjacent to the coastline into their search perimeter to look for potential vaults or survivor communities."

"In an interview, the residents of Vault 404 stated that they will search for survivors and pre-war relics in the region, radiating outward from the coastal outpost to restore civilization and order to the area."

"If all goes well, this will become the first restoration zone of the Human Revival United Front in Baiyue Province. The Overseer expressed high praise for this achievement and dispatched the Jungle Regiment as well as the Burning Regiment to assist in local restoration and construction efforts."

"Concurrently, by a unanimous vote of the exploration personnel, the outpost has been named French Fries Harbor."

"The Southern Archipelago Federation, situated in the southern waters, sent a congratulatory telegram to our side, extending sincere greetings to the Alliance's Overseer, while the Federation's President, Mongo, earnestly expressed his hope that the Alliance would construct several more ports and settlements in the area."

"The residents of French Fries Harbor declared they would certainly not disappoint their neighbors' expectations!"

"This is Dawn City Television reporting for you!"

Just three days after the Presidential Palace of the Southern Archipelago Federation replied to the telegram from French Fries Harbor, the message returned to Dawn City aboard the inbound airship Ox and Horse.

At this very moment, the waiting hall of the Dawn City Railway Station was bustling with people, and the television hanging in the corner of the lobby was broadcasting the eight o'clock morning news.

A crowd of travelers clutching suitcases gathered before the screen, watching the anchor deliver the day's headlines, their faces shifting into expressions of astonishment.

The Alliance had added yet another settlement!

And it was in the distant Baiyue Province, over two thousand kilometers away!

Though the players had been discussing this on the forums for days, it remained monumental news for the permanent residents of Dawn City.

Particularly those survivors who had just returned from other settlements began to gossip eagerly with the travelers beside them.

"French Fries Harbor?"

"Is that the kind of french fries sold with cola?"

"Incredible... Baiyue Province, if I remember correctly, that place is a tropical jungle!"

"You've been there?"

"No... I only passed by it once on a ship."

"Good grief, someone has actually been that far!"

"Back then, I went to Borneo Province to purchase spices and hides, planning to transport them to the coastal settlements of Yunjian Province. Going by land meant crossing a vast wasteland, so I contacted a merchant ship from Silvermoon Bay and took the sea route... Anyway, any merchant ship traveling east or west would pass through that waterway."

"With such a prime location, it's surprising there wasn't a settlement."

"A settlement? Haha, let alone a settlement, you wouldn't even see a living soul there."

"The entire Baiyue Province is a no-man's-land; the nearest settlements require you to go to the southern sea or Haiya Province. Come to think of it, there used to be a few survivor communities on the Death Coast, but ever since the Church of the Torch arrived in Haiya Province, news of them has grown scarce."

At the mention of the Church of the Torch, the intrigued expressions of several travelers turned into looks of taboo and dread.

Many residents of the Alliance were refugees from Jinchuan Province.

In particular, some traveling merchants who used to conduct business in Jinchuan Province had witnessed firsthand the countless atrocities committed by the Church of the Torch across various parishes.

If ordinary marauders were simply malicious, those fanatics possessed a twisted, almost deranged sense of mission.

Few could truly understand what they were trying to accomplish, and by the time anyone realized, they had already been turned into fertilizer.

Baiyue Province was far too close to the sphere of influence of the Church of the Torch.

If the Church of the Torch decided to strike French Fries Harbor, the Alliance would likely be unable to reinforce the survivors there in time.

However, despite the security anxieties, most merchants remained highly optimistic about the underlying economic value of French Fries Harbor.

Word had it that the industrial zones of Dawn City, Sunrise City, and Boulder City had already made a handsome profit from the orders placed by the Ox and Horse Group.

The tank chassis from Factory 81 had their armor plates stripped and mechanical arms from Boulder Military Industry welded on, transforming them into excavators for digging earthworks.

Goblin Tech had affixed two pontoons next to the bomb racks of the W-2 attack planes, creating seaplanes capable of taking off from the ocean surface.

These goods were selling exceptionally well at French Fries Harbor.

Aside from such large-scale equipment, there were also entrenching shovels for digging, fishing nets for harvesting the sea, and oxygen tanks for diving.

Furthermore, the benefits were not limited to these short-term gains.

If the Alliance could open a maritime trade route between the eastern and western coasts of the continent, the resulting economic value would be beyond measure!

Currently, the route from Dawn City to French Fries Harbor relied solely on a single airship flight operated by the Ox and Horse Group; however, the capacity and efficiency of an airship route could hardly be considered high, and it would inevitably be replaced by other modes of transport in the future.

Several sharp-witted merchants were already turning the matter over in their minds, pondering how to establish new trade routes through Horsey Province to the east or Sunset Province to the west.

For instance—

Integrating Oasis No. 4 into the Alliance's railway network.

Should that happen, goods produced in the Dawn City industrial zone could be loaded onto ships at the port of Silvermoon Bay and transported along the western coast of Baiyue Province to the Alliance port in the Baiyue Strait.

The freight costs for railways and shipping were far lower than those of airships, and the capacity they could offer was incomparably larger.

...

While the travelers in the waiting hall engaged in spirited debate, the airship inflation station on the outskirts of Dawn City was equally a scene of vibrant activity.

A similar situation had occurred a few days prior.

At that time, the place had been packed to the brim with players buying tickets for the new map; now, days later, it was crowded once more, filled with the cries of street vendors.

"Come take a look! Seafood from the Baiyue Strait! Cold-chain airfreight! Guaranteed fresh!" Not far from the airship unloading point, a player dressed as a fisherman sat on a small stool, calling out his wares next to a long row of Styrofoam boxes packed with ice and seafood.

The pungent, fishy odor caused many passersby to circumvent the area, yet a good number of enthusiasts who favored the taste gathered around anyway.

The airship Ox and Horse had brought back to Dawn City not only the friendly greetings of the southern sea survivors, but also the bounties of the ocean and rare, exotic beasts from the shores.

Most of the live captured specimens had been sent to the Dawn City Zoo or Vault 79, which specialized in studying wasteland species, while those that were not captured alive, or had perished along the way, naturally became a treat for the food lovers of Dawn City.

Squeezing through to a stall with her older sister, Shuangxue, the young Shuangye squatted down inquisitively, extending a forefinger to poke a frozen-stiff starfish.

"Boss! What is this?"

Seeing a customer approach, the player enthusiastically began his pitch.

"A starfish! Reeled in by my buddy, Stop Babbling!"

Hearing that peculiarly pronounced name, Shuangye recalled the uncle who always fished by the shores of Lake Ling, occasionally sharing his catch with the residents living nearby, so she looked around but failed to spot him.

"Then where is Uncle Stop Babbling? Why isn't he here?"

Gazing into those large eyes full of curiosity, the fish-selling player gave a subtle, slightly awkward cough.

"Uh, that guy went back to stay in the vault, probably won't be out until tomorrow, so he asked me to help sell these first."

Shuangxue gently tugged her little sister's sleeve, murmuring a quiet reprimand.

"Shuangye, don't go prying into the affairs of the vault residents, it causes trouble for them."

"I was just curious..."

Shuangye pouted and turned her head, though she was sensible enough not to press further, shifting her attention back to the starfish, which was as large as a washbasin.

"Can you really eat this?"

"Of course you can! We always have the intelligence-build players test-eat them first, and we only bring them out for sale when we're sure there's no issue!"

As he spoke, the player picked up a starfish frozen as hard as a stone, drew a knife, and gestured over it a couple of times.

"Right here—once it thaws, just slice it open with a knife, and inside it's all yellow roe. Dip it in soy sauce, and it's damn delicious! Or you can stew it!"

"Sister..."

Meeting her younger sister's eyes full of longing, Frost Snow made a helpless expression and pulled out her wallet from her pocket.

"Well... give me one, then."

"Coming right up! I'll wrap it up for you!"

The player deftly picked one from the foam box, weighed it, packed it, and handed it to the NPC sister before him.

"That'll be 26 silver!"

Twenty-six silver wasn't cheap, but for the residents of Dawn City, who faced little survival pressure, buying one to try was no big deal.

Since the start of the year, jobs paying under 1,000 silver a month had vanished from Dawn City, let alone for her, working at the Merchant Guild with decent income.

Counting out 26 silver coins from her wallet and handing them to the stall owner, Frost Snow watched Frost Night hug the starfish joyfully and cheer—she couldn't help but smile, reaching out to ruffle the little one's head.

"No playing with food, okay? Put it away, and I'll make you a stew when we get home."

"Mm!" Frost Night nodded excitedly, clutching the starfish tighter with both hands. "I'll take good care of Mr. Starfish before he becomes soup!"

The two were about to browse other stalls for any novel trinkets, but they hadn't taken two steps when a shout came from the fish-cleaning stall nearby.

"Boss, how come there's a sock in this fish's belly?"

The player holding a shoe looked equally puzzled, scratched the back of his head, tossed it into a nearby trash bin, and muttered a casual excuse.

"Uh... maybe another fish was wearing it?"

The customers buying seafood were instantly stunned.

"Fish in the Baiyue Strait wear socks?"

Before the player could respond, an old man carrying a plastic bag chuckled and answered ahead of him.

"Some do. At the stall I passed earlier, I saw a pair of pants cut out of a fish's belly."

The crowd around the stall murmured in amazement, exclaiming in disbelief.

Frost Night, holding the starfish, had eyes sparkling with curiosity and wonder.

"Fish in the sea... are amazing!"

Frost Snow, with a subtle expression, gently tugged her sister's arm and led her away from the seafood stalls.

"Let's go look somewhere else."

Just a moment ago, she'd thought 26 silver was a bit pricey.

Now, suddenly, it didn't seem so expensive anymore...

Set up on the open ground near the airship refueling station were not just seafood, but all sorts of bizarre underwater salvages, along with useless junk picked from the ruins of Shilong City.

Though in the Baiyue Province, traces of civilization had been completely erased, some unusual items had survived for various reasons.

These objects, like fossils, recorded events from the early years of the Wasteland Era on that land. They held not only research value but also, through the baptism of time, unusual collectible significance.

The Alliance's scientific expedition and Camp 101 had first pick of a portion, while the rest, left behind, was brought to market by players to sell at stalls.

Ordinary wastelanders had little interest in these inedible, unusable trinkets—after all, such junk was everywhere in the wasteland, sold by the kilogram at scrapyards.

But for the extraordinary wastelanders, this trash in common eyes was something else entirely.

Take, for instance, the surveyors and researchers who came to Clearspring City under the cooperative research agreement between the Academy and the Alliance.

In the eyes of these archaeology experts, even trash couldn't be lumped together—junk from different regions had its own distinctions.

Especially those underwater salvages.

Considering the Heaven's Ark space station had crashed in the southern sea area, there was a chance these items included its wreckage!

If they could analyze some aerospace material with lost data from it, they could at least churn out a paper!

Not just the knowledgeable experts; even half-informed collectors were fascinated by those salvages.

As a result, the stalls selling salvages were even livelier than the seafood ones, packed with picky customers and onlookers.

Whenever an unremarkable piece of junk sold for an outrageous price, it drew incredulous gasps from the crowd.

The scene was exactly like an antique market!

At a corner of the market.

A tall, thin man stood before an inconspicuous stall, picking through a pile of junk scattered on the counter.

Perhaps because of the blue coat marking his identity, or the rimless glasses on his nose that made him look like a cultured man who knew everything—maybe even employed by the scientific expedition—a crowd of bargain hunters followed behind him.

The man didn't seem to mind the entourage, as if it were nothing, and continued searching the stall on his own.

Just then, he frowned, picked up a horseshoe-shaped plastic board from the stall, fiddled with it with interest for a moment, then looked at the stall owner.

"Where did you find this?"

Speaking fluent Common Tongue, the player chuckled slyly.

"Just off the coast near the harbor—where exactly, I can't recall. Why not buy it and have someone check it out? What if it's a treasure fallen from that Heaven's Ark space station? It looks like a welding ring from a spacecraft to me, so I fished it out."

Hearing it might be a treasure from the Heaven's Ark, the collectors trailing behind the man stared wide-eyed.

Especially the researcher in the blue coat, who rubbed his chin indecisively, didn't doubt its authenticity, and directly asked the price.

"Interesting... how much?"

The player said cheerfully.

"With your distinguished appearance, you're clearly an educated man! I'll charge you just 1,000 silver."

Hearing the price, the researcher hesitated visibly, but eventually gritted his teeth, paid up, and bought the seemingly useless piece of junk in front of everyone.

The other players watching this scene had green glints in their eyes.

Holy crap!

A piece of junk sold for 1,000 silver!

These NPCs were way too easy to fleece!

What astonished them even more came next.

Not long after the researcher in the blue coat walked away, the wealthy NPCs, as if possessed, rushed the stall in a frenzy.

Could junk that fell with the Heaven's Ark space station really be junk?

Who cared if it was useful—buy it first. They weren't short on cash anyway, and it'd make a nice knickknack at home to brag about.

In the blink of an eye, the salvages on the stall were snapped up, and the stall owner, counting his money, couldn't stop grinning.

This haul wasn't just about plane tickets.

He'd made enough for a hundred tickets!

"You guys... that's just a scam, isn't it?"

Looking at the stall now cleaned out in the distance, Jiang Xuezhou slanted her eyes and couldn't help but mutter to Ye Shi beside her.

“No matter how you look at it, that thing was just a toilet seat!”

Who uses plastic as a welding ring!

You don’t even need a professional eye for this—do these people have absolutely no common sense at all?

“Ahem, how can you call that cheating? At most it’s a bit of cleverness... Besides, it wasn’t our arrangement. Don’t keep saying ‘you people.’ Even among shelter residents, there are decent folks and indecent ones.”

He never expected to see such an outdated trick in the 23rd century. Yoshi felt a bit embarrassed, especially since an outsider had witnessed it, so he cleared his throat and explained.

Not far from the two of them, at a corner of the market, he saw the “researcher” who had earlier paid a hefty sum for that toilet seat quickly strip off the blue coat that marked him as a shelter resident and return it to its true owner.

Although he didn’t know that player, he could guess with his little finger that this guy was definitely in cahoots with the stall owner!

Jiang Xuezhou shot Yoshi a glare and continued walking, but after circling all the stalls, she found nothing worth buying.

Logically, that shouldn’t be the case.

With so much junk salvaged from the seabed, surely there must be at least one thing worth studying in depth?

She wasn’t hoping to dig up some treasure that would impress her mentor; she’d be satisfied with a paper that met the standards of a D-level researcher.

Yet after this entire round, she had found nothing, and Jiang Xuezhou couldn’t help but mutter a complaint.

“Not a single one.”

Yoshi looked at her strangely.

“Not a single one?”

“I mean... something truly worth researching—why haven’t I seen any?” Jiang Xuezhou couldn’t help but complain. “How did you manage to avoid all valuable research projects? That’s incredible luck!”

Hearing her quiet complaint, Yoshi suddenly understood what she was grumbling about, and he let out a hearty laugh.

“Ha, that’s perfectly normal. Anything truly worth researching was already picked over by our scientific expedition team. You’re just wasting your time looking for that.”

Speaking of which, wasn’t Yin Fang also a D-level when he left the Academy?

And that was a long time ago.

So that guy should be her senior fellow apprentice.

Jiang Xuezhou stopped in her tracks, staring blankly at Yoshi for a long while, her cheeks gradually turning from pale to flushed, then to a liver-colored purple.

“...Why didn’t you tell me earlier!”

Watching Jiang Xuezhou, who had finally squeezed out a sentence through gritted teeth, Yoshi stared at her with a strange expression for a moment.

“You didn’t ask... I thought you came here to buy souvenirs.”

Jiang Xuezhou shot him a furious glare, but after thinking for a while, she couldn’t find a reason to blame him. So she could only stamp her foot in anger, turn around, and walk away.

Continuing to browse would just be a waste of time.

Besides, there were too many tricks here; she didn’t want to stay a moment longer.

At the same time, Yin Fang, who was tinkering in the lab with the junk he’d just picked up from the Niuma airship, suddenly sneezed without any warning.

“Achoo!”

“...Who’s cursing me.”

Rubbing his stuffy nose, Yin Fang muttered, then immediately put aside that trivial matter and turned his gleaming eyes back to the fragment lying on the instrument.

It was a piece of wreckage only the size of a palm.

Its surface shimmered with a bright metallic luster, as if it had been carefully polished with some buffing tool.

And surprisingly, no one had polished this fragment; it had looked like this when the Niuma players found it on the seabed.

For now, Yin Fang couldn’t determine exactly what technology was used in this material; he could only tell from elemental spectral analysis that it was likely some kind of metal-ceramic composite used in spacecraft.

This material not only had extreme heat resistance and hardness, but also astonishing toughness comparable to steel and resistance to mechanical impact.

If he could dig deeper into this material, based on his experience, he could at least recover a C-level materials science technology!

The treasures brought back by the Niuma airship from the southern sea were not limited to this one; there was a whole warehouse full of interesting samples waiting for him to study.

Yin Fang’s eyes were filled with fervor, and he kept muttering to himself.

“This time I’ve really struck gold!”