Chapter 678: Phantom Under the Deep Sea

Chapter 678: The Ghost Beneath the Deep Sea

The moment those words were spoken, the eyes of the players gathered around lit up instantly.

Good heavens!

This was a triggered quest!

“I’ve been waiting for you to say that, buddy,” Old White said, patting him on the shoulder with a grin. “Go on, what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into?”

“Those people… they’ve gone mad… there’s no reasoning with them… it must be that psychic interference device! Yes… and those blue-skinned monsters!”

The man rambled on, seemingly with no shortage of information, yet the surrounding players were utterly baffled. Even Old White began to wonder if his Common Tongue had gotten rusty.

“Take it easy… slow down, what exactly happened?”

Huang Guangwei swallowed hard, gazing longingly at the roasted meat set over the fire.

“Could… could I have something to eat? I haven’t eaten in three days.”

“Let him eat first.” Seeing his pitiful state, Old White couldn’t bring himself to press further. He glanced at Kill Dagger. “Get him some food.”

A starving man shouldn’t eat meat—digesting protein and fat requires energy first—but since he’d already had a piece of bread, it should be fine.

“Sure thing.”

Kill Dagger nodded, walked over to the folding table by the bar, and brought back the leftover fries and fried fish, along with a slice of freshly roasted meat.

When the food arrived, the man didn’t stand on ceremony. He grabbed a handful of fries and stuffed them into his mouth. His crude eating habits even made the tavern owner, Yiren, scratch her head and mutter in confusion.

“Has this NPC’s sense of taste gone bad?”

Didn’t she know whether those fries were good or not?

After wolfing down the food for a while, the man belched, leaned back against a palm tree with a full belly, and panted. He looked satiated and content, half-closing his eyes—only to start snoring in plain sight.

The players gathered around were dumbfounded.

They had waited so long for this guy to speak, and now, after stuffing himself, he had fallen asleep?!

This wouldn’t do!

Several of them picked up branches from the ground and poked him.

“Damn it!”

“Are you messing with us?”

“You asked us to help, so talk!”

Startled by the commotion and the poking, Huang Guangwei jolted awake. Realizing he had dozed off in front of everyone, he felt embarrassed and scratched the back of his head awkwardly.

“S-sorry… I get sleepy after eating, almost forgot.”

Old White: “…”

Kill Dagger: “…”

Midnight Chicken Slayer: “…”

Could you be any more unreliable?!

Just then, Fang Chang finally arrived. He spotted the man lying under the palm tree at once, then glanced at the submersible on the shore.

Without rushing to question the man, he first called over a few Strength-type players he knew, patted them on the shoulder, and pointed toward the coastline.

“Go drag that thing back and set up a tarp to hide it.”

One player looked at him curiously.

“Drag it onto the shore?”

“Yeah.”

Fang Chang nodded, then cast a glance farther out to sea before walking over to the man under the palm tree.

“Are you from Shelter 70?”

“Y-yes.” Looking at the man crouching before him, Huang Guangwei nodded nervously.

Placing a hand on his shoulder, Fang Chang stared into his eyes and continued.

“Take a deep breath, don’t be nervous… Tell us, what did you just encounter?”

Hearing the man’s words, Huang Guangwei took a deep breath, calmed his nerves, and slowly began to speak.

“A group of blue-skinned creatures… they look human, with gills on their chins. They kept chasing me, firing harpoons and torpedoes at me… and some other weird stuff.”

“They damaged my submersible’s propulsion system, so I had to drift with the current, letting fate take me… and I ended up here.”

“Looks like you got lucky,” Old White, crouching nearby, joked. “Drifting right to us.”

Huang Guangwei gave a weak smile and muttered a quiet “thanks.”

“But speaking of which… blue-skinned creatures? With gills? What the hell are those?” Midnight Chicken Slayer looked utterly confused, thrown off by the mention of monsters firing harpoons and torpedoes.

Fang Chang, sitting nearby, gradually grew serious.

“If I’m not mistaken, they’re probably mutants…”

Hearing this, the players crouching around were stunned, their faces showing surprise.

“Holy crap?!”

“Mutants?!”

“Aren’t those bastards green?”

“Since when did they learn to swim?!”

Seeing the players exchanging bewildered glances, Fang Chang shook his head and continued with a grave expression.

“Mutants refer to humanoid lifeforms created by modifying the original 23 pairs of human chromosomes using incomplete research from the ‘Gestalt Lifeform Project.’ They’re not limited to green skin and strong bodies—there are gray-black mutants in the Great Wasteland.”

He paused, then went on.

“There are several survivor settlements along the coast in the Cloud Province region. Remember the data from the official setting collection? The corporate commando teams mainly target those amphibious mutants that operate along the shoreline… They’re different from ordinary mutants—their skin is blue, and some even have scales and fins.”

Hearing this, Labor Model Voldemort gasped and muttered under his breath.

“Good grief… so the Torch Church has been colluding with those things?!”

P City Paratrooper, who had been silent, suddenly spoke up.

“Is it possible that those blue-skinned mutants were created by the Torch Church?”

Old White shook his head.

“That’s unlikely. The Torch Church only emerged in the last twenty years, but those blue-skinned mutants seem to have been around for a while.”

“I lean toward that view too,” Fang Chang nodded and continued. “After all, we have the example of Jinhe City. The Torch Church and the mutants share natural common interests. I suspect they’ve struck some kind of cooperation deal—maybe the Church regularly supplies those mutants with a batch of slaves for breeding.”

Though his expression was as clinical and euphemistic as possible, the others couldn’t help but clench their fists, recalling the ranch they had seen in that shopping mall in Jinhe City.

“Those bastards…” Midnight Chicken Slayer muttered under his breath, unconsciously tightening his fist beneath the cannon barrel, murderous intent flickering in his eyes.

P City Paratrooper, crouching nearby, also spoke quietly.

“What’s the point of distinguishing them? Those bastards are all our enemies anyway. We never planned to negotiate with them.”

Fang Chang continued calmly.

"The connection is whether they will attack us immediately... It seems the Church has an alliance with the aquatic mutant tribes in the nearby waters. They either haven't realized our situation, or they have but don't take us seriously. That gives us some time to prepare."

Old Bai nodded gravely and said in a low voice.

"It looks like we need to prepare not just fishing nets made of Devil's Silk, but also a beachhead position on the shore."

Fang Chang nodded.

"Not just a beachhead—underwater weapons are essential too... Our assault rifles and bolters are only effective on land. If we can't attack underwater targets, they can maneuver along the coastline and strike us from any direction. That would be trickier than the aquatic mutants."

Old Bai looked at him seriously and said.

"When I log off, I'll ask Mosquito and the others if they can figure out how to make some useful gadgets."

After a brief exchange in Mandarin, Fang Chang turned back to the man who had been staring blankly at their conversation and continued.

"Why were those mutants chasing you?"

"I..." Huang Guangwei's face showed hesitation, as if struggling with whether to speak.

Fang Chang stared into his eyes and pressed on.

"If you don't tell us, we can't help you."

"...Alright, I'll talk."

Realizing he had no better option than to confess, Huang Guangwei wrestled with himself for a moment before finally speaking, recounting the whole story of how he ended up here...

"You probably know that we had some conflicts with the people on those islands over certain matters..."

Fang Chang nodded.

"I've heard that the survivors in the southern seas wanted to introduce the Torch Church's modified Nago strain to solve the rampant, dangerous aquatic mutants in those waters... That's the version I've heard. Is it true?"

Huang Guangwei swallowed and continued.

"Basically, yes... But that's not the whole story. First, we made it very clear to those survivors that the Torch Church's modified Nago strain carried enormous risks—it was an unfinished, dangerous technology in itself..."

"But they were too confident, completely losing their reverence for nature. Honestly, it's our fault too—we used pre-war technology to make their lives too smooth over the past century, so they thought they were the chosen ones. They believed that, just like with the psychic interference devices, they could selectively use only the good parts and be completely unaffected by the bad."

Fang Chang stared at him thoughtfully and asked.

"What do you mean?"

Huang Guangwei: "What do I mean? Do I even need to say it? Haven't you seen it yourselves? Ever since those zealots showed up, Haiya Province has turned into this mess. Back when the Iron Tower organization was still there, everything was fine. Sure, there were raiders and mutants, but at least it wasn't this twisted, inhuman nightmare."

Old Bai couldn't help asking.

"Can't they see it?"

Huang Guangwei shook his head.

"Can't see it? No, of course they can see it—they don't even need to look. How many years has it been since they last traded with the ports of Haiya Province? But they don't care about the risks we warned them about. They have absolute confidence in themselves, and excessive confidence in us... Want to guess what they said when we told them the lunatics up north were heading for self-destruction and dragging others down with them?"

Old Bai: "What did they say?"

"They said, 'How do we know it won't work if we don't try? What if we can perfect that incomplete technology? That way, we could not only change the situation in the southern seas but maybe even save those mindless fools in Haiya Province, and even Baiyue Province...' This isn't just desperate measures—they're a bunch of arrogant idiots."

At this point, Huang Guangwei let out a scornful laugh and wiped the seawater off his face with his arm.

"They talk so lightly... Haven't we tried? I collaborated with Vault 117 for decades until they blew themselves up. Do you think I don't know whether the technical path they proposed has any future?"

"Besides, this isn't even a technical issue anymore. Those lunatics' ultimate goal is to elevate humanity into some new species they've dreamed up—'Celestials'—and turn the surface into a paradise for them. Do you understand what I'm saying? The Nago they designed for this absurd idea was never meant to solve any specific problem on the wasteland from the start."

Old Bai frowned and asked.

"Doesn't the Southern Archipelago Federation know this? With something so obvious, why are they siding with the Torch Church?"

Huang Guangwei shook his head.

"Didn't I tell you? They know everything, but they're overconfident. You can't deny they've achieved some things—like feeding over a hundred thousand survivors on just a dozen square kilometers of land while most wastelanders were starving. Or establishing a relatively civilized system while Bharata Province and Luoxia Province were still stuck in feudal monarchy."

"Given time, they might actually build a utopia on the sea that rivals Ideal City, using the methods they've discovered that suit them best... But that's exactly the fatal problem. They've had it too easy along the way, so for most people on those islands, success feels like an inevitable certainty."

"Without a doubt, the Torch Church is a pack of jackals. They know those guys mean no good, but they think it's fine—they believe they can tame the unruly Nago mycelium like they tamed mutated sharks, eat the sugar coating on the arsenic, and toss the poison away untouched... Just like how they used the psychic interference devices provided by the Torch Church as tools to drive away mutants."

"The president of the Southern Archipelago Federation once negotiated with us. He wanted the residents of Vault 70 and the thousands of experts we trained in Coral City to cooperate fully, open Coral City's research facilities to facilitate the Torch Church's investigation of the Mother Nest on the Heavenly Ark space station, and assist the Torch's apostles—the researchers—in perfecting the Nago."

"Of course we couldn't agree. Those lunatics have come knocking more than once. Besides, we knew what they were like twenty years ago. If we opened our underwater research facilities to them, they'd corrupt a bunch of our people in no time, turn the place into their own lair... Just like what they did in Haiya Province."

After hearing this, the players crouching around stared at him in stunned silence.

One of them couldn't help asking.

"And then you started fighting?"

Hearing this, Huang Guangwei's expression turned awkward. He scratched his stubbly cheek with his index finger.

"It didn't come to blows at first... After all, the fleet was mostly in the hands of those settlements, and we built those settlements ourselves. Why would we attack our own people?"

Fang Chang nodded thoughtfully.

"True."

Putting himself in their shoes, the idea of Vault 404 suddenly going to war with Dawn City sounded absurd.

That settlement was built with their blood and sweat. They'd rather die for it again than destroy it.

What set this game apart from others was that every player-built settlement—every brick and tile—was constructed by the players themselves.

Not only were they unwilling to destroy it, but to prevent new players from causing trouble, they actively participated in legislation and rule-making, took on mentor missions like "Passing the Torch," and gave new players enough care to help them integrate into the Alliance's society.

"Right?" Seeing the man before him lost in thought, Huang Guangwei paused and continued. "At first, we planned to teach them a lesson. We issued a notice about power facility maintenance and shut down the ocean current generators..."

At this point, Old Bai suddenly spoke up.

"I heard... you cut off Coral City's power and oxygen supply, nearly killing those 30,000 survivors—"

"Rubbish! How could we do something like that? Many of Coral City's residents are our students, colleagues, even family!"

Huang Guangwei's eyes widened as if struck a nerve, and he retorted vehemently.

"It was them! That so-called Federal Authority! While our experts were withdrawing from the ocean current power station, they barbarically blew it up! Then, out of revenge, they cut off Coral City's power supply! We sent rescue submarines, but they dropped mines on us. In the end, we only saved a few hundred people!"

Seeing the man clenching his fists, Old Bai tried to calm him down.

"Don't get worked up. The residents of Coral City are all fine. I heard the Federal Authority relocated them to various islands."

Huang Guangwei stared at him in shock, then slowly steadied his breathing.

"Really? So they still have some humanity... You've already made contact with them?"

Old Bai nodded.

"Yes, and because of that contact, I feel there might be some misunderstandings between you. Why not sit down and talk?"

Huang Guangwei curled his lip.

"Nothing to talk about. The Federal Authority wants Vault 70 to function as a research institution under federal leadership. I have no problem with that—we never wanted special status. But at this critical moment, we can't agree. If we give an inch, they'll immediately hand over the fruits of over a century of our work to those lunatics up north."

Fudi Laomo looked at him in confusion and asked.

"Didn't you sneak out of that vault to talk to them?"

Huang Guangwei denied it flatly, as if it were obvious.

"Of course not. I was actually heading to the Great Rift."

“The Great Rift?” Old Bai stared at him blankly. “What are you going there for?”

“To find our administrator, of course! That bastard Sun Yuechi! Without him, we can’t even use the full functions of the shelter—we’re getting completely crushed by those idiots in the Federation. If he were here, things wouldn’t have come to this; at least we could use the equipment in the security stockpile!”

As he said this, Huang Guangwei gritted his teeth in hatred and clenched his fists.

He looked as if he wanted to punch that guy... if he were standing right in front of him.

The few players exchanged glances, utterly baffled by his words.

They had never heard the unfamiliar name Sun Yuechi before, but that wasn’t the point—the point was—

“Why is your administrator... in the Great Rift?”

“I’d like to know what he was thinking too,” Huang Guangwei grumbled. “At a critical moment like this, that guy is still talking nonsense... saying that place is the last ember left by the Post-War Reconstruction Committee, that we should have united under its banner, and that it’s not too late to go there now... that they’ll take care of things. If those people were really that warm-hearted, Haiya Province wouldn’t be in such a mess!”

Fang Chang stroked his chin, pondered for a moment, and asked.

“It’s over 3,000 kilometers from here to the Great Rift... and that’s just the straight-line distance. How do you plan to get there?”

Huang Guangwei continued.

“I originally planned to land on the eastern coast of Haiya Province—a desolate place where I could avoid the Torch Church’s eyes. If I could circle around to Yuma Province east of Hegu Province, I figured there’d be a way to get there... I’d bet that bastard took that very route.”

Midnight Chicken looked at him doubtfully and asked.

“Then why did you end up here?”

“I didn’t want to either,” Huang Guangwei said with a wry smile. “I deliberately avoided the main shipping lanes, planning to sneak to the eastern coast of Haiya Province, when suddenly those blue-skinned guys chased me relentlessly... I don’t know what they were lying in wait for, but we ran straight into each other, and then I drifted all the way here, where you picked me up.”

As he said this, he looked earnestly at Fang Chang, Old Bai, and the others.

“You’re shelter residents too, right... Can you take me to your place? I think I’ve heard about you—you’re in the south of Hegu Province?”

He glanced at the airship above and continued in a sincere tone.

“Please, I have nowhere else to go...”

Old Bai looked at Fang Chang, unable to bear it, and said.

“Why don’t you take him back?”

Fang Chang thought for a moment and replied in Mandarin.

“Hmm, I’m wondering if it’s possible to broker a sit-down between him and the South Islands Federation authorities.”

Hearing this, Old Bai was taken aback and said with a wry smile.

“Aren’t you overthinking it... Not to mention whether the forces we have deployed in this region are capable of facilitating peace talks, how can you be sure there aren’t Torch Church insiders within the Federation authorities?”

Fang Chang sighed and said.

“That’s what I’m most hesitant about.”

Right now, both sides are pointing fingers, each claiming the other is responsible for the explosion at the ocean current power station.

As for the actual situation, no one has direct evidence to prove it.

Of course, he was more inclined to think that the Torch Church might have been meddling, framing Shelter 70 to provoke a war between the South Islands Federation and the shelters.

Yet there was also another possibility: the explosion at the ocean current power station was exactly what the South Islands Federation had hoped for.

Energy was the rope in Shelter 70’s hands, a form of intangible deterrence.

Now that deterrence had been used up.

Like a nuclear weapon thrown from a launch pad, it had lost its deterrent significance.

The survivors on the southern islands discovered that they could still live without the ocean current power station. They could import coal from Silver Moon Bay to restart obsolete thermal generators, or use solar and wind power paired with storage stations.

There were plenty of solutions.

Though energy costs had risen, the islands were highly united under the rule of the South Islands Federation.

In comparison, the price they paid didn’t seem as steep as imagined.

Fang Chang pondered for a long time, then sighed and said.

“Let’s leave it to the administrator to decide.”

Old Bai nodded.

“I think so too... leave the professional work to the professionals.”

Fang Chang looked at Huang Guangwei and continued.

“We can take you to our place. It’s about a two-day voyage to reach Clear Springs City.”

Hearing this promise, Huang Guangwei’s face showed relief, and he said with tears of joy.

“Thank you... thank you so much!”

Fang Chang smiled and said.

“You’re welcome, but there’s one thing we’ll need your help with.”

Huang Guangwei nodded happily and said.

“Name it! If it’s something I can do, I’ll give it my all!”

Fang Chang continued.

“Regarding your encounter with the mutants on the eastern coast of Haiya Province, I’d like you to record a video with a detailed explanation and provide us with the coordinates of the attack.”

After hearing this simple request, Huang Guangwei agreed without hesitation.

“No problem! I’m ready anytime. If you need it, I can record the video right now! As for the coordinates, they’re on my submersible—feel free to use them!”

“Let’s hold off on the video for now. I need to report the situation to our administrator. First, go to our place and change clothes so you don’t catch a cold.”

Fang Chang smiled amiably, then looked at the submersible already dragged ashore and continued.

“And about your submersible—could we borrow it? We’d like to try repairing its propulsion system.”

Huang Guangwei waved his hand dismissively and said generously.

“Take it. If you can take me to Clear Springs City, I’ll give it to you.”

He hadn’t planned on keeping it anyway. If he had successfully landed in Haiya Province, he might have just abandoned it on the shore.

Now that someone had agreed to take him to Hegu Province, he had no use for it.

Since these people were interested, they could have it!

Seeing the guy wave his hand so generously, Fang Chang’s face broke into a cheerful smile.

“Then we won’t stand on ceremony!”