Chapter 725: The Contagious Flame

Chapter 725: Contagious Flames

Since becoming an administrator and handling a myriad of petty disputes among survivors, Chu Guang had long stopped taking anyone’s one-sided account at face value.

It wasn’t that he feared someone might harm him.

Rather, it was that anyone speaking human language, consciously or unconsciously, would inevitably inject a bit of their own stance and thoughts.

This depended on that person’s self-awareness, as well as their perception of others and the world.

Thus, when recounting an event, most people, even if they spoke the truth, might not present it with “absolute” objectivity.

If he believed them entirely, he could easily be led by the nose.

Of course, this didn’t mean that a less-than-objective account was a lie; even a genuine liar would find it foolish to tell outright falsehoods.

Once logic became inconsistent, they’d fall into a predicament where they couldn’t defend themselves, and to maintain logical consistency, they’d have to fabricate one flimsy lie after another.

A more sophisticated approach was to pick out the parts of the truth that favored them, embellish them with exaggerated adverbs, and reinterpret the unfavorable parts from a tricky angle.

For instance, if he only listened to Sun Yuechi’s side of the story, he’d think the survivors in the southern seas were living off nothing but the meager supplies from the vault.

If he hadn’t managed a household himself and known the cost of daily necessities, he might have actually believed that guy’s nonsense and taken them for a bunch of naive innocents.

Of course, he didn’t just take the southern seas survivors’ word for it either.

After all, judging by the rhetoric Charas had proclaimed over the broadcast, the residents of Vault 70 would all have to be branded as heinous “colonizers” from the pre-industrial revolution era, standing trial before the new epoch.

He most likely wasn’t lying; otherwise, he wouldn’t have so confidently told those survivors to go ask their own family members. Clearly, some regrettable events had indeed occurred in the southern seas over the past century, and they hadn’t been properly resolved—otherwise, so many people wouldn’t have sided with him.

This was also a lesson the Alliance had learned from its grave-digging experiences. If one or two lunatics appeared in a settlement, it might be their own problem. But when everyone went mad—someone flicked a lighter, another handed over a barrel of oil, and the rest either watched the show or fanned the flames—then the whole settlement was surely afflicted with a grave illness.

From the very beginning, Chu Guang had sensed that Sun Yuechi had either dug a deep pit for him or, at the very least, dumped a hot potato into his hands.

And the facts bore this out: free things were never cheap, and anything hastily shoved into someone’s hands was unlikely to be good.

The seemingly tranquil southern seas were actually brewing storms that could threaten the entire wasteland.

Ordinary sea raiders would just sail a small boat to rob people; if his players didn’t see them, they were lucky, but if they did, they’d crush them with a flick of a finger.

But these guys not only had battleships but also well-established factories and research facilities, even forming a complementary alliance with the Church of the Torch—the former providing technology, the latter resources.

Synthesizing the various intel his players had posted on the forum, Chu Guang could basically conclude that there was only one thing that guy hadn’t hidden from him.

What had been handed to him was indeed a mess.

“…Is that so?”

In the browsing room on B4 of Vault 404.

When Sun Yuechi learned from Chu Guang that the Federation, born without his knowledge, had shattered into three pieces without his knowledge, he couldn’t help but let out a pained groan.

His face was etched with utter dejection, and in an instant, he seemed to have aged considerably.

Compared to the earnestness of his initial plea and the panic at the shocking news, this might have been his truest feeling deep down…

What was meant to come had finally come.

In fact, Chu Guang suspected that this guy might have known from the start that it would turn out this way, yet he had resolutely opted for the worst-case shock therapy.

But whether that was true…

Only he himself knew.

“…You placed your hopes on outsiders. I think that approach is inadvisable.” Chu Guang gave him a meaningful look.

A bit embarrassed, Sun Yuechi tried to defend himself, insisting that he wasn’t the kind of person to trust just anyone, and that he had carefully chosen who to pass the buck to.

“I did my due diligence—including how you handled the Cinderson case back then, and how you managed relations between wastelanders and vault dwellers. There was much we could learn from. I was drawn to your strengths…”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Watching Sun Yuechi scramble to justify himself, Chu Guang shook his head and looked at him seriously.

“First, our methods aren’t a panacea; there’s no such thing as a universal solution in this world. Second, we knew nothing about your situation, and you didn’t fully disclose your ailment… Even though we were careful to clear the mines, an unexpected spark still flared up.”

He had no doubt that his little players were excellent “bomb disposal experts.”

Including Brother Fang, whom he relied on most—a talent proven through practice, not someone he had appointed.

The submarine freshwater pipeline was a good move, akin to the railway to the Luoxia Province. If all went smoothly, it might have rallied most settlements and split the unstable Federation.

After all, the Federation hadn’t been around long; each settlement had a high degree of autonomy. The governor wasn’t answerable to the federal capital but first to the island’s residents, and only then to the president.

But unfortunately, the wasteland wasn’t the 21st century of the players’ world. The other side didn’t give him time to unite the islands. Instead, they countered by sending cannon fodder to die near the pipeline, dragging the hidden problems into the open and forcing the Torch’s allies within the Federation to rebel outright.

Even if Fang had predicted that the Torch would cause trouble on the day the pipeline was activated, and had thwarted their plan through careful deployment, it was all for naught.

The other side knew their role well: they were destroyers of order. If they competed with the Alliance in building order, they stood no chance.

So they simply flipped the table.

But this also showed, from another angle, that the bishop of the Church of the Torch handling affairs in the southern seas was a completely different player from Luo Qian, who had tried to establish a twisted order in Jinhe City.

That guy might even be a “living person.”

Faced with that pointed accusation, Sun Yuechi was momentarily speechless. After a long pause, he slumped dejectedly into the sofa behind him.

“…You’re right. I shouldn’t have placed my hopes on you, who knew nothing of the situation. And I did hold back on this matter. But to get you involved quickly, I had no choice.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he continued.

“I wasn’t entirely ignorant of the Federation’s affairs. The seeds of division didn’t appear in my generation, but in my predecessor’s predecessor. I still remember my predecessor handing me the authority and saying, maybe a young person would find a way… My God, how the hell was I supposed to find a way? He might as well have dumped the problem on another old man who wouldn’t live much longer! Can you imagine? When the islanders heard I was only in my thirties, they all went crazy. I even suspect that old bastard did it on purpose—he wanted me to be the scapegoat on the gallows!”

He took a deep breath and buried his nose in his palms.

“I did think about shouldering it all myself. But I didn’t want to die—at least not so pathetically. So I picked up that broken clock and fixed it a bit. The vault dwellers praised me, saying moving the patrol from the fleet to the cabinet was a clever move—plucking out the jackal’s eyes and setting them in the dog’s head, delaying the crisis… But who didn’t know? That was just ripping planks from the deck to patch the hull! Both the dogs and the wolves on the ship hated us!”

He then looked at Chu Guang, his face bitter.

“Believe it or not, that ship had reached its end. Even if I stayed, it wouldn’t have helped. Or rather… if there had been even a glimmer of hope, I wouldn’t have left. The vault isn’t a wish-granting machine; there’s no button to press that solves everything.”

Chu Guang nodded slightly.

“I understand how you feel. But your residents probably won’t.”

Sun Yuechi sighed, staring at the ceiling with a forlorn expression.

“I understand too… Anyway, I’m still young. A couple of punches won’t kill me.”

For some reason, Chu Guang found it hard not to laugh, but he felt it would be unkind to do so now.

This guy’s predecessor had even considered that his successor might get beaten up, deliberately choosing a young, tough one to inherit.

He wondered if his own predecessor had left him a combat-ready body for the same reason.

Seeing the twitching muscles on Chu Guang’s face, Sun Yuechi made a helpless expression.

“I know you want to laugh. Go ahead. But after that, can you tell me what you plan to do next?”

Chu Guang pondered for a moment, then gently placed the teacup he was holding back on the tray on the coffee table.

“Since the Church of the Torch has already intervened in the local situation, this is no longer just your problem. We had planned to launch an offensive against southern Jinchuan Province and Haiya Province by the end of the year, but now… it seems we’ll have to move it up.”

Just as he finished speaking, the sliding door of the browsing room hissed open, and a man in a suit walked in hurriedly.

Sun Yuechi looked over and found the man familiar. After staring for a while, he suddenly recognized him as Yi Chuan, the representative of the Enterprise stationed in Dawnlight City.

Motioning to X-16, who stood nearby, to pour a cup of milk tea for this guest as well, Chu Guang looked at him with a faint smile.

"You've come at just the right time. I was just discussing the situation in the southern seas with the former overseer of Vault 70. As I said in the email I sent you, things there are probably even worse than what the Council knows."

Sitting down on the sofa, Yi Chuan nodded solemnly, his eyes bright and piercing.

"Thank you for the intelligence you've provided. We already understand the situation there. The Council takes the matter of the southern seas very seriously. We will never allow anyone to arm those scaled demons, nor will we permit those madmen to continue their insane plans, or even spread the contamination of Nago into the ocean—"

Chu Guang coughed lightly, cutting off his lengthy speech.

"Relax. This isn't a meeting of the Conclave; there are no reporters here... Let's talk about something more practical."

Yi Chuan gave an awkward smile and rubbed his nose sheepishly.

"...How much?"

Chu Guang nearly choked on the milk tea he had just drunk. He coughed several times before stopping, glaring at the man.

"You're being way too practical..."

Yi Chuan blinked, a guilty look on his face.

"Wasn't that what you asked?"

"That's true, but I was hoping for a bit more subtlety," Chu Guang said, turning to Sun Yuechi. "Why don't you tell our friend here about the situation over there? Start with how the Torch Church contacted you, and stop before you came ashore."

Sun Yuechi looked at the two of them blankly, then nodded.

"Alright..."

...

Vault 70.

After a brief delay at the entrance, the group finally made their way inside the vault.

The space beyond the door was spacious.

Since this was an engineering entrance, it didn't connect to the vault's main hall but to a vast, empty warehouse.

Judging by the dust on the floor, it hadn't been used in a while.

The layout was somewhat similar to Vault 404, which, besides its surface entrance, also had a connection to the subway line, and even a sealed passage leading to an unknown destination.

Nearly a thousand people from the vault had gathered here—both the "orthodox" blue-clad residents and the survivors who had retreated here after the Coral City incident.

Without hiding the fact that she held the key, Si Si immediately confessed after crossing the threshold.

"I have the password for temporary authority. I'll go through the overseer verification to get temporary access. Of course, if you don't trust us, or don't trust your overseer's arrangements, we'll take the key and leave."

The crowd packed into the spare warehouse exchanged glances. No one objected. A few individuals in exoskeletons even voluntarily cleared a path to the terminal.

In the absence of excessive arrogance, a pretty face indeed tends to leave a favorable first impression—true for both men and women.

Of course, the residents standing here weren't judging good from evil purely by emotion; they had thought it through rationally.

Though it was disheartening to admit, they weren't foolish enough to ignore the obvious truth—

The problems here were no longer something they could solve on their own.

If they could, they would have solved them long ago, instead of dragging things out until the crisis fully erupted.

Nodding to those who had made way, Si Si walked through the bustling crowd to the terminal. Closing her eyes, she copied the answer from the official source, then entered the dynamic password on the screen.

[Temporary authority recognized successfully... Registering biometric information.]

[Registration complete... Welcome back, Acting Overseer.]

Watching the pale blue text appear on the screen, Si Si withdrew her index finger and looked at Captain Chen Jianhong.

"Can you take me to where the security equipment is stored?"

Chen Jianhong uncrossed his arms and nodded.

"No problem."

Having been with the Alliance for some time, he trusted their professionalism.

As Captain Chen led the way deeper into the vault, Tail and the others followed behind.

As for the captain of the Glory, Dong Wen, his nearly two hundred crew members, and the crew of the Dolphin, they were temporarily housed in the vacant living quarters arranged by Vault 70's residents.

Based on preliminary discussions, they planned to establish a new authority.

This would include not only the abandoned Coral City but also Vault 70—something the previous Federal authority had not mentioned in its declarations.

After all, back then, they needed a common enemy to unite against.

As it turned out, that shortcut didn't work. Even without anyone pushing them, they managed to collapse on their own.

Now, the new authority had to learn from this immediate lesson and come up with a better plan as soon as possible.

Inside the meeting room, representatives from both sides stood together, discussing how to draft this new proposal.

After a long silence, stroking his chin, Lin Nuo suddenly raised his hand.

"How about calling this new authority... the Southern Seas Alliance?"

Everyone who heard this was taken aback.

It wasn't that the idea was particularly original; rather, everyone had been focused on the content of the draft, while this guy was already thinking about the title.

A tall, sturdy man shook his head, his expression serious.

"What it's called isn't important. What it does is more important. The urgent task now is to get in touch with both warring sides. We need to secure at least one party's support."

His name was Yang Lirong, formerly an environmental engineer, a conservative in political views.

Since Sun Yuechi's departure, the vault's residents had elected him as interim overseer, not just because of his loud voice, but because his voice represented the majority's opinion.

Many who shared his views nodded in agreement, but others raised different opinions.

"Indeed, what we do matters, but before that, we need a slogan that can unite everyone," a tall, thin man raised his hand and said earnestly.

His name was Wang Sihai, a crew member of the Dolphin and also a member of Vault 70 who had accompanied Captain Chen Jianhong on a "pilgrimage" to Dawn City.

In that place of miracles, he had seen a different model from the southern seas—a model where vault residents and wastelanders coexisted as equals.

They might not be able to replicate it exactly, but at least it served as a reference.

Another middle-aged man standing next to Yang Lirong shook his head.

"I know what you're trying to say, but they've grown tired of that kind of slogan. It's unlikely to work."

Not giving up, Wang Sihai pressed on.

"That's why we need to remove the Vault 70 label from the slogan. For example... how about 'Survivors, unite!'?"

The crowd exchanged glances, murmuring among themselves.

To be honest, it wasn't a particularly compelling rallying cry.

It couldn't compare to Charas's electrifying speeches, or even to Li Minghui's impromptu inaugural address.

But it had its advantages: it was simple, direct, and hit the nail on the head. After all, wasn't their suffering caused by a false unity?

Moreover, this borrowed slogan wasn't entirely without a "mass base" in the southern seas.

At the very least, the residents of Ring Island had seen those who united and had deeply felt the order they brought.

People on other islands had also heard stories about the Alliance, or about those they had taken in to build new homes in the Ba Yue Strait.

The wind blowing from the River Valley Province had already crossed the ocean to reach this place, and a group of brave people had already set a fine example for them—

The survivors had a way to unite!

Now they only needed to take that brave step forward, thoroughly liquidate the mistakes of the past, and march toward true solidarity.

Watching the crowd around them shift from skepticism to hesitation, and finally to a faint, barely perceptible trace of anticipation, Captain Dong Wen of the Glory, Lin Nuo from the broadcast station, and Wang Sihai along with the other representatives of the Dolphin all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Though the road ahead was still long, at least this first step they had just taken allowed everyone to glimpse a sliver of dawn, signaling that the long night was drawing to a close...

...

En route to the armory.

Rou Rou, her hair done up in a dozen small braids, swallowed excitedly, clutching her thick bear-like paws as she muttered to herself in anticipation.

"Will there be nukes!"

She had heard that their friends in the Burning Legion had picked up a tactical nuke the size of a bowling ball in Boulder City!

It would be amazing if they could find one here too!

Walking beside her, Weiba spoke in a tone heavy with worldly experience.

"Your vision is too narrow, my dear Rou Rou! Judging by the lore and setting alone, there are plenty of things from the Prosperity Era far more terrifying than nuclear bombs... like Neutron Purge weapons and the like."

"There's no way that kind of stuff would be in a vault..." Zhizhimahu said, caught between laughter and tears.

"Exactly, there's no way that kind of stuff is in the vault, so if you're hoping for some ultra-powerful weapon in there, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."

To accommodate the non-player characters who could not understand human language, Sisi deliberately used the Federation Language from the game when she spoke.

Yet, to her surprise, Chen Jianhong, who was walking ahead, smiled and undercut her statement.

"...Well, one shouldn't be so absolute. For instance, the 'back door' you saw earlier was actually never connected to the vault's security system, as Mr. Sun Yuechi once told me."

Sisi froze for a moment, looking at him in astonishment.

"Which means..."

He hesitated briefly over whether to speak, but in the end, Chen Jianhong sighed and revealed the matter that someone was bound to discover sooner or later.

"During the Three Years' War, it is highly likely that door was secretly opened once, and it must have been shortly after the descent of the Heavenly Palace... After all, with such a massive disturbance happening outside, it's only reasonable to peek out and check if the bicycle parked at the door was still there."

Pausing, he added in a low murmur.

"Of course, that's just a metaphor. Vault 70 is at the bottom of the sea, after all, so whatever was parked outside was probably a submersible or something similar."

He recalled that documented records mentioned Vault 70 had originally deployed a large amount of construction equipment and building materials near the entrance, but due to the crash of the Heavenly Palace, that equipment was lost.

If the door had truly been sealed so tightly, how did those who emerged a century ago know exactly how those things were lost?

It was entirely possible they were salvaged as scrap by the wastelanders; the survivors outside were not true primitives, but hardened souls who had driven sand-blowing vessels to build artificial islands one by one. Before the vault dwellers came out, those people had also been slowly developing, albeit in a slow and misshapen manner.

Sisi swallowed.

"They brought some things back with them at that time?"

"Yes, out of concern for the future—such as the possibility that the 'enemy' might ultimately win—the first-generation overseer of Vault 70 likely salvaged some objects that fell from the sky near here after the tsunami subsided, before the wartime government could initiate a search for the Heavenly Palace space station, and brought them back into the vault through that auxiliary back door."

Pausing again, Chen Jianhong continued with a complex expression.

"Take the battleship docked at North Island, for instance; its naval guns were actually dismantled from an aerospace corvette and then transported into the vault through the back door."

Weiba's eyes sparkled as she spoke.

"Oh! So there really are those kinds of awesome weapons!"

Rou Rou, who similarly loved a spectacle and feared no chaos, also looked at the captain with an excited gaze.

Not knowing how to respond to this overly expectant gaze, Chen Jianhong scratched his head, coughed, and spoke.

"There are some, certainly, but it's not as exaggerated as you and the people outside imagine... just some wreckage dismantled from starships, and some power armor from the aerospace forces. We repaired a portion of them during the first century, and after opening the doors, the focus of our work shifted back to construction outside the vault."

Realizing her prediction had actually failed, Sisi awkwardly changed the subject.

"By the way, how did you know there were characters engraved next to that back door just now? Did Sun Yuechi tell you that too?"

Chen Jianhong shook his head.

"No... Mr. Sun had actually never been there. To be precise, ever since the main doors of the vault were opened, no one should have used that door again. As for the reason, you can probably guess; it wasn't exactly a glorious chapter. As for why there are characters engraved, that was my guess."

Sisi was somewhat confused at first, but soon snapped to realization.

Those characters were engraved at the entrance of the back door, rather than the main vault door connected to the security system...

In other words, the identities of those who first entered this vault were highly questionable.

With her eyes wide in astonishment, Sisi looked at him.

"You mean..."

Chen Jianhong looked to the side with a complex expression and voiced his conjecture.

"There are two possibilities. They were people on the list, but because the main entrance was blocked by a crowd of 'troublesome' souls seeking survival, they took the back door, and then wrote their regrets upon the wall."

"The other possibility, leaning a bit toward a conspiracy theory, is that they might not have been on the list at all, but were instead the construction party or insiders who knew about this vault. They found a way to obtain constructor identities, or sneaked into the vault by other means to modify the sanctuary protocol, replacing the people who were supposed to enter the vault..."

At this point, Chen Jianhong paused for a moment, then added a third possibility that he himself did not quite believe.

"Of course, a third scenario cannot be entirely ruled out. They were on the list and indeed entered the vault rightfully through the main doors, but while using the back door, they thought of their compatriots who died outside, and so left their regrets there... much like stepping onto a balcony to smoke a cigarette."

The truth was like Schrödinger's cat; if no one lifted the box, perhaps no one would ever know exactly what had transpired.

It was hard to say whether the first overseer would leave this memory in the logs.

It was also hard to say whether it would be better to keep the truth buried or to dig it all up at once.

Looking at the dumbfounded Sisi, a complex expression surfaced on Chen Jianhong's face.

"I won't ask about your affairs, but do you really think... everyone who could enter the vaults two hundred years ago was a good person? You must have seen what the situation looks like at the vault entrances."

Coming to her senses, Sisi shook her head and said succinctly.

"I never thought so, and besides, I don't think I qualify as a good person either."

"Ha, come on, from our perspective, you guys are already quite decent," Chen Jianhong laughed, rubbing his stubbly chin, though he fell silent again a moment later.

This was not actually a laughing matter.

It was an objective fact that the Prosperity Era had achieved a broad sense of equality, and it was also a fact that a crisis of survival would unleash the repressed beastly nature within humanity.

The Federation needed a group of brave, capable, and faithful people to go into the distant future and rebuild a new home upon a soil where civilization might have already vanished.

For this purpose, they needed to select some truly good people.

The paradox, however, lay in the fact that when a set of rules was designed to filter for the "good people" among a crowd, what it was most likely to filter out might not necessarily be "good people," but rather the truly ruthless ones.

There had never been a saying that only the true elites could enter the vaults.

The truly cruel reality was very likely that it was precisely because they lived inside the vaults that they became the so-called elites...

After learning about the affairs of other vaults, Chen Jianhong had also sensed to some extent that the vault residents were not truly "naive."

After all, humans are complex and diverse creatures, capable of changing their minds three times a day; using a word like naive to describe a collective was itself the most naive form of arrogance.

Those fellows... that is, his father's generation, were very likely merely the winners of that trial two hundred years ago.

The ways to win were manifold; some relied on conforming to the rules, while others relied on breaking the rules, or finding alternative paths to cheat.

Meanwhile, "elite" is hardly a passport to survival—the world outside has been running for two hundred years, swapping out countless sets of exams long ago.

It is precisely for this reason that, once they emerge, they "don't always" outcompete those wastelanders, and so they unconsciously bind authority to bloodline.

"Many of us got it wrong: the Vault is not a nation, nor a political entity. It's a special disaster relief agency, like the police or firefighters—only its uniqueness granted it an overly transcendent status and benefits... such as the extremely scarce right to survival in that era. This led those children to believe their fathers were elites among millions, and that they themselves were elites too, thinking that by mimicking their speech, they'd earn the adoration of common folk. Actually, it's not just inappropriate now—even back then, people didn't talk like that."

Sisi glanced at him with slight surprise.

"It's quite unexpected that you've thought this far."

Mainly because when she first met this guy, he didn't seem like that at all—rather, he seemed more like a potential supporter of the Enlightenment Society.

Could a trip to Dawn City have such a big impact?

Meeting those surprised eyes, Chen Jianhong felt a bit embarrassed, reached up to scratch the back of his head, and laughed heartily.

"To be honest, I'm ashamed... I was inspired by a wastelander."

"Who?"

"Bohr."

Sisi paused for a moment, then recalled what that was, and couldn't help but burst out laughing.

Tail's eyes sparkled as she chimed in.

"Oh! It's by Spberg, right?"

Unexpectedly finding a kindred spirit here, Chen Jianhong's eyes lit up, and he said with a smile.

"Haha, so you've read it too!"

Tail scratched her head sheepishly and muttered softly.

"Uh, actually no—our Meatball was still drifting at sea back then."

Some people had reposted it on the forums, but books from the game world really feel more authentic when read inside the game.

Take *Skyrim*, for instance—even if someone compiles the in-game books into text, moving them to reality just loses the flavor.

"Suddenly reminds me, we haven't been back in ages." At the mention of "home," Sesame Paste's face also showed a hint of nostalgia.

Though Dawn City's ramen shops had opened all the way to Golden Cashew Port, they hadn't visited the ramen joint on North Street in a long time.

Chen Jianhong was taken aback, not quite understanding this nostalgia—after all, from Fries Port to Dawn City by airship was only a two-day trip.

But soon he remembered that flight route had only been open for two months; maybe they just hadn't had the leisure yet.

"Well... that's a real shame."

...

Through the Vault's corridors.

The group entered the depths of the Vault via a massive freight elevator, into the warehouse.

According to the rules written by the first Overseer, only those with Overseer clearance could enter here.

It was a vast space, the size of four football fields.

Standing on the gangway at the top of the warehouse and looking down, rows of neatly shaped mechanical structures were arrayed in the center of the open area.

Some were already repaired equipment—like "Dragoon" power armor, piled in a corner, a hundred units in all!

Even more than the stockpile the Alliance had previously discovered in the Boulder City armory!

Not only that, but individual soldier gear like Gauss rifles and energy weapons were also repaired and placed on warehouse shelves...

Even more astonishing was what lay in the center of the warehouse: metal rails—or rather, cannon barrels—each as long as two train carriages.

Undoubtedly!

This was clearly the electromagnetic cannon used on space frigates!

And the stock here amounted to a full four cannons!

As for other oddities—likely starship reactors or anti-gravity devices—they were equally stunning.

The thought that Meatball could one day fly in the sky made Tail clench her fists in excitement, her eyes turning into coin shapes.

"Giao! Si! We're rich!"

Seeing this, Sisi couldn't help but facepalm and quietly reminded her.

"Tail, wake up—this isn't our reward; it's a quest item."

Meatball's jaw nearly dropped onto the railing, momentarily speechless. Sesame Paste also looked astonished, though not as exaggeratedly as Meatball and Tail.

Glancing at the stunned group, Chen Jianhong couldn't help but curl his lips, a hint of pride in his voice.

"A century ago, while we were still in the Vault, we improved the shells for these four cannons, making this electromagnetic cannon usable within the atmosphere. Forget anti-ship—with this thing, you could even launch a five-hundred-kilogram mass into low Earth orbit!"

Five hundred kilograms?!

Hearing that, Meatball couldn't help but exclaim.

"Good grief, half a ton of payload?! Then you could... use this to launch satellites?!"

Of course, whether satellites could operate in outer space was another matter.

Rumor had it that astronomical levels of junk were floating up there, and even the big shots in Utopia City were stumped.

Sisi broke into a sweat.

"Launching satellites probably isn't possible—electronic components that can withstand a muzzle energy of 32 megajoules... at least, they don't exist in reality."

Generally, the muzzle energy a bore-launched missile could withstand was about that much.

And for this cannon, the muzzle energy clearly wasn't measured in megajoules.

After all, the Alliance's self-developed Model 60 electromagnetic cannon already had a muzzle energy of 60 megajoules, about three times that of conventional naval guns in the real world.

This thing probably started at thirty times that, with no telling the upper limit.

But considering that the semiconductor materials used in the wasteland were different from reality, she didn't speak too definitively.

Looking at the awestruck compatriots from Vault 404, Chen Jianhong smiled and continued introducing his Vault's specialty.

"When we first took the Legion as our hypothetical enemy, we considered using terminal-deceleration missiles to counter airships equipped with deflector shields. But later, we thought they might install point-defense systems on their airships to deal with slow targets, so we came up with the idea of mounting this electromagnetic cannon on a ship with enough tonnage."

"Even without a phase cannon to assist in breaking the shield, the kinetic energy of the shell alone could overload the shield. According to theoretical calculations, three shells would be enough to down a standard Legion airship!"

"As for whether they have other trump cards, we don't know... At least we can make sure they know we're not to be trifled with."

Sisi couldn't help but sigh.

"This is already an extraordinary level of power... If Charas got his hands on this equipment, he might actually have a chance to dominate these seas with you."

As he said, their enemies weren't entirely without opportunities; both sides were biding their time, waiting for the right moment.

"Dominate the seas? Hahaha!"

Chen Jianhong grinned, his gaze fixed on the wreckage stripped from the frigates, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"...Then his ambition is far too petty."

"To follow your Overseer back onto the starry sea—wouldn't that view be far more splendid than a little pond?"

To be honest.

Whether it was Mongo before or Charas now, those guys' horizons were too narrow, so much so that even their dreams were so constrained.

A federation dominated by survivors of the southern seas?

The frontier of the Human Union is five light-years away!

In comparison, indeed that gentleman's words were pleasant to hear, and the pie he drew was also tasty... Whether it was the wastelanders focused on the present, or the Blue Coats dreaming of returning to the prosperous era, they could all find their preferred flavor at his place.

They do not go to the prosperous era.

But they will start from now to create a greater era!

No wonder that guy Sun Yuechi stays in Dawn City and refuses to come back...