Chapter 728: Bring Death to the Enemies of the Alliance

Chapter 728: Bring Death to the Enemies of the Alliance

Just as Duke Garava was pondering whether to send some men to the front lines for a share of the spoils, the military train departing from Dawn City had already crossed the border between River Valley and Jinchuan with great fanfare, rumbling across the steel bridge over the surging mountain river.

Beside the rebuilt Dust Town, people working in the fields saw the white smoke in the distance and put down their tools, gazing toward the train.

On the flatcars, they could see cannons gleaming coldly and trucks painted in military green.

As for the other fully enclosed carriages, though their contents were hidden, the aura of killing could be clearly felt from several kilometers away.

Yet no one was panicked by that murderous air.

In the Jinhe City area, the Alliance’s banner was a symbol of order. The rumbling clash of steel brought them more a sense of security than fear or death.

It was those people who had driven away the raiders, slave owners, and mutants here!

They had even helped rebuild their homes!

Every pair of eyes fixed on the train shone with eager hope.

“That train…”

“It’s the Alliance’s military train!”

“The Alliance brothers are back!”

“So many cannons! Are they off to war again?”

“By the Great Horned Deer God! And the revered Great Horned Rat… May they return safely.”

At the gate of Dust Town, hastily arrived Mayor Qin Baitian was trembling with excitement, his hand gripping his cane shaking as he muttered toward the train.

“The Great Horned Deer God and the Great Horned Rat have returned!”

Ever since Dust Town was rebuilt, the three deities enshrined in their ancestral hall had left a note and departed from the town without saying goodbye.

The note said that to save this dying world, they had to go farther to spread their faith.

If they encountered trouble they couldn’t solve, they could go to Dawn City and find those people in blue coats—they were just as warm-hearted.

The note also said:

“…One day we will return. Do not miss us. Walk along the path already lit, and you will be us.”

Until the train disappeared into the distant horizon, Mayor Qin still hadn’t seen the familiar figures appear.

A hint of disappointment flickered in his eyes, but only disappointment—more than that, there was blessing.

Perhaps the time had not yet come…

They would remember the teachings of those three lords and continue walking along the sunlit road.

…

Singularity City.

A rumbling sound came from afar. People working in the fields looked up toward the train station, only to see that the train did not stop at the platform but sped southward without slowing.

Kong Lingkai, working in the fields, raised his head. His face, hollowed by wine and women, was covered in cold sweat, his dry lips slightly blue, looking half-dead.

No one forced him; it was purely the rules of Singularity City.

Living standards were tied to the completion of production tasks. Tasks were delegated layer by layer—district, team, group—and assessed layer by layer.

To live comfortably, one had to work hard. Only the best production teams could use the district’s most advanced tools, and only the best groups could get the most resources from the team. To become a group leader, one had to be the most outstanding individual in the group.

Slacking off was allowed—no whipping like in the old farms—but dragging down other group members or even other groups’ tasks would inevitably lead to the team leader giving you a hard time and feeding you plain boiled greens every meal.

To truly live well, one had to become a group leader, team leader, or even district chief.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t outwork those who had once been serfs. Even his former servant had become a group leader, ordering him around, while he still swung a hoe.

But this ordeal wasn’t without benefit. Even if he couldn’t become a group leader, his body was much better than last year—at least his fatty liver and athlete’s foot were cured.

Occasionally, he thought about leaving the farm. After all, the farm owner named Frost never forbade anyone from leaving; even a team leader had left before.

But the thought of never being able to return, and that the wasteland might not be better than here, filled him with fear. In the end, he gritted his teeth and decided to endure.

Beside him, Ma Hechang felt the same.

He had hoped the Alliance would “appoint people by merit.” As a former town mayor, he had some face and could at least become a team leader in Singularity City. But instead, he had to compete with those mud-footed laborers in work, and he felt utterly cheated.

These people didn’t respect talent as they claimed!

Someone like himself, who had been a high-ranking town official, was surely more of an elite than that Liu Youxiong, who couldn’t even speak clearly and only knew how to hunt!

Yet that guy became a group leader. The AI’s brain must be broken.

If it weren’t for the thought that leaving would waste all the suffering he’d endured, and that the merit of leading the Hope Town residents to surrender would be forgotten, he would have just left and gone to work in Dawn City!

“Speaking of which, where does this railway lead?” Kong Lingkai muttered, watching the train fade into the distance.

Glancing at the direction the train was heading, Ma Hechang said resentfully, “Who knows… They’ve been building that damn thing since last year. At their pace, they could probably reach the border of Jinchuan Province.”

“You mean Fuzhuang?” Kong Lingkai looked at him in surprise.

The border of Jinchuan Province—wasn’t that the Weifu Plain?

He had heard of it.

The Weifu Plain was once Weifu City, but that city had disappeared even more completely than Jinhe City, leaving only endless wilderness and piles of concrete rubble.

There was a settlement called “Fuzhuang,” built on the “Wei River” beside the old Weifu City site, more than a hundred kilometers south of Mafu Town.

It was even larger than Pinecone Farm, rumored to have nearly a hundred thousand people—whether that was true or not.

From last year or the year before, it became the territory of the Torch Church, even earlier than Boss Zhao’s Pinecone Farm in planting Naguo.

Then, for a long time, there was no news from there.

It seemed a fog had risen, and after the wind blew it away, the entire settlement vanished.

He had only heard from traveling merchants and wastelanders passing through Hope Town that the lord of Fuzhuang and his family had converted to the Torch faith, following the bishop’s footsteps, taking their relatives, servants, retainers, and serfs to Haiya Province to build the “Kingdom of Heaven” of the new era.

But everyone knew that the farther south you went, the closer you got to mutant territory.

It was hard to say whether those people were still alive, and if so, how many remained…

“Probably… Aren’t they the sworn enemies of mutants? They’re probably going after those beasts.” Ma Hechang clicked his tongue, ignored the train disappearing into the distance, and buried his head in the fields again.

Go to hell.

Hopefully, both sides of beasts die there.

When the noble and the vile perish together, the true new era can come!

Ma Hechang cursed in his heart, venting his anger on the hoe and the soil under his feet.

He didn’t deny that those people were noble, but nobility didn’t mean likability.

Those were two different things!

In contrast, the Vlandians he had heard about in rumors seemed much more likable.

At the same time, at the manor of Pinecone Wood Farm, Yinyin stood on the rooftop balcony, gazing toward the direction of the train.

Unknowingly, more than half a year had passed.

Since her physical body died and she was replaced with a bionic one, she found she had lost her sensitivity to time. As if in a moment of distraction, the world around her had already passed for a very long time, yet when she came back to herself, she could recall everything that had happened during that time with ease.

This feeling was like sitting in an audience watching a movie with no ending.

Even now that she had stepped out of that "Sanctuary," the whole world still seemed separated from her by a pane of glass. She could see every detail within her field of vision, yet she could never truly draw close to it.

Perhaps that old man named Luo Qian was looking down at this world from just such a perspective...

People no longer seemed like people, but like pawns that could be manipulated to achieve a goal.

A mist seemed to veil her pupils as she watched the direction where the wisp of white smoke vanished, her thin lips moving softly.

"Administrator... that gentleman's man has returned."

"Hmph!"

Standing beside Yinyin, Han Shuang, dressed in a maid's outfit, wore a charming and confident smile on her face, but the words she bit out were far from polite.

"It looks like those scum worse than cockroaches are in for trouble!"

To her, humans were like her children. Those things that devoured people without spitting out bones—in the eyes of this old mother, weren't they just dregs?

It was a pity that her own combat abilities were not outstanding; she could only be useful in systematic operations.

Otherwise, she truly wanted to take matters into her own hands and snap the necks of those corrupted organisms.

Rìshí looked at her expressionlessly, speaking in a voice without any fluctuation.

"We need to gather supplies and send a batch over as quickly as possible. The front lines will need them soon."

When Singularity City was first rebuilt last year, the Administrator had revealed this year's plan to them.

Although this war had come half a year earlier than expected, they were not unprepared.

In fact, ever since the end of the Qingquan City wave at the beginning of the year, when the Southern Construction Corps marched into Jinchuan Province for battle preparations, this settlement had already been getting ready for the war that was destined to come.

This included building materials for fortifications, supplies needed by frontline soldiers, isolation zones for accommodating Nashu patients, and so on.

They had to not only eliminate the Torch but also eradicate the plague that the Torch had left on that land, and completely destroy that "Heaven" soaked in mountains of corpses and seas of bones.

"Mm!" Han Shuang nodded firmly, a bright smile on her face. "I've already received the Administrator's list. There's plenty of supplies in the warehouse—send it all over to them!"

Rìshí was taken aback: "No need to send everything... the people here still need to eat."

Han Shuang snapped her fingers, her smile unchanged.

"That's what I meant! Rìshí, you need to be more flexible, not so rigid!"

Rìshí: "..."

...

A journey of fifteen hundred kilometers by rail, the military train departing from Dawn City crossed plains and forests, winding left and right until it finally reached the border of Jinhe Province.

In the distance, layers of mountains had already appeared.

Beyond those mountains, turning right led to the death-filled Sea Cliffs, while turning left led to the vibrant Baiyue Jungle. Through vast stretches of jungle and mountainous terrain, one could even reach the picturesque Fries Port, seeing those thighs swaying with the breath of life—oh no, the seas.

How envious of the brothers in the Burning Corps...

Holding a sausage bought from Mafu Town in his hand, Liabilities Big Eye looked out the window and couldn't help but yawn, pondering how long this idle time had been.

"How much longer do we have?"

"Almost there," said Construction Youth and Brick, glancing at the map and then out the window, rubbing his chin. "Once we cross the Wei River, it's Ten Peaks Mountain, eighty li of Bone Road, and beyond that is the Torch Church's lair."

He had heard that those eighty li of mountain road were originally not called Bone Road, but Snow Peak Road.

It was only later, when a group of man-eating mutants went there and set up camp on the mountain, that survivors began calling the snow-covered peaks Blood Peaks and the crushed snow on the mountain road Bleached Bones.

In short, there were many mutant nests hidden on Ten Peaks Mountain, and following the Torch Church's usual practice, they had probably colluded with those mutants, using technology from the Prosperity Era to arm them.

For example, helping them with childbirth and breeding, or making prosthetics and biological power armor that mutants could use.

No matter how much they despised the enemy strategically, tactically they had to give these guys enough respect.

Otherwise, they could easily suffer a great loss.

Liabilities Big Eye sighed.

"My kids are howling with hunger; if we don't feed them soon, they'll rebel."

Sitting in the next seat, Midnight Umbrella Without Knife leaned over and chuckled.

"Aren't they your wives?"

Liabilities Big Eye rolled his eyes and made a shooing motion with the sausage stick.

"Scram, scram."

After passing Mafu Town, heading south was a stretch of uninhabited wilderness.

It was only at the deepest part of the wilderness that the members of the Death Corps finally saw a trace of human habitation.

That was the encampment of the Southern Construction Corps, and also the true southern terminus of the entire railway.

The composition of this unit was quite complex, including volunteer survivors, members of the "Iron Tower" organization, and criminals undergoing labor reform.

At the beginning of the year, the Alliance launched a crackdown on the slums outside Boulder City, sending troops to thoroughly purge the gang elements hiding there. Those captured were sent to the mines of Qingshi County for training and labor reform, then organized into penal battalions and sent to the front lines of the wave resistance.

During the battle against the wave, their brave performance earned recognition from the Boulder City Militia.

After the wave ended, the Administrator incorporated the survivors into the Southern Construction Corps and, along with other criminals still undergoing labor reform, sent them to Jinchuan Province to build roads and bridges, preparing for the upcoming "Heaven War."

After a full half year of preparation, this construction corps of nearly four thousand people had not only completed the railway crossing the wilderness but also built a large military base capable of accommodating 100,000 people on the north bank of the Wei River, digging extensive trenches, machine gun bunkers, and other defensive fortifications on the positions.

The enemy to the south naturally would not sit idly by while the Alliance dug trenches and built roads here. Every now and then, they would gather mutant troops to cross the Wei River and launch a surprise attack on the Southern Construction Corps' positions.

Even as recently as two months ago, a thousand-strong mutant force had attacked!

Those green-skinned creatures wielding clubs and rifles looked like a rabble, but when it came to actual fighting, their skills were no joke.

Even the weakest mutant had physical strength far surpassing that of an average survivor.

Even if their hearts were pierced, they could continue fighting driven by their killing instinct, and they could even rely on their powerful regenerative abilities to heal fatal wounds.

To completely kill them, one had to smash their heads to pieces, smear their brains on the ground, or use a 19mm explosive gun to blow apart the left side of their chest, so that the rotten flesh there had no time to regrow before the blood ran dry.

It was obviously impossible for a construction corps of fewer than four thousand to defeat mutants, even with sturdy fortifications and powerful fixed weapons; it would inevitably be a bloody and difficult battle.

Fortunately, the Alliance, which had placed them in the wilderness, had not truly abandoned them.

When the attack occurred, nearly all of the three hundred-plus players active in the area received the mission and rushed over.

With a fighting style even more fearless than the mutants, those three hundred players ultimately paid the price of near total annihilation, cooperating with allied forces to rout the mutants who had crossed the Wei River.

It was that battle that truly hurt the mutant tribes on the mountain, and for two consecutive months, there were no large-scale attacks, only harassment by small groups.

Clearly, those mutants were not truly unafraid of death; when they encountered someone tougher than themselves, they too would hesitate and fear, even shrink back.

But—

Another possibility could not be ruled out.

They were not afraid; they simply realized that this hard bone was not so easy to chew, so they were secretly gathering strength, planning to make a big move at the critical moment...

Just as the peaks of Ten Peaks Mountain came into view for the players, the military train trailing white smoke also entered the sight of the greenskins on the mountain.

A pair of bell-like eyes instantly filled with bloodlust and ferocity. With a piercing howl, green heads emerged from caves and crevices.

A mutant giant, over three meters tall, strode briskly to the front of the mob.

His face was hideous and savage, a tattered flag hanging from his back, a shotgun like a club in his hand, and steel as tough as armor hanging from his muscular shoulders.

Especially his legs—from the knees down, his entire calves and feet had been transformed into mechanical beast paws, with protruding blade-like claws as sharp as daggers.

His name was Gray, a thousand-man commander of the Stone Horn Tribe. On Ten Peaks Mountain, anyone with a name was either a cunning fox or a top-tier ruthless character.

"Train! Alliance!" Gray let out an excited roar, raising his shotgun above his head.

"It's loaded with big, tough stuff! Torch says smash it! Burn it, kill it, loot it all!"

Hearing the powerful roar, the bare-chested mob burst into excited shouts.

"Roar—!"

War cries rose and fell on the mountain peak like beating war drums, quickly rallying a scattered force of about a thousand.

Besides the robust greenskins, there were also small, hunched creatures barely reaching the knees of normal mutants, swarming alongside the big guys.

They were mutants too, their DNA nearly identical to the greenskins.

But their stooped, tiny bodies were almost deformed, making it hard to associate them with mutants at all.

Since mutant reproduction wasn't fast enough, the Torch Church used biotechnology to redesign the gene expression sequence of some mutants, sacrificing their lifespan to develop these hunchbacked "new things."

Unlike pure mutants, these small creatures bred and grew rapidly, usually maturing in five or six months, and often producing three or four offspring per litter.

Though they lacked the terrifying regenerative abilities and physical strength of mutants, aged quickly, and had bloody births, they could quickly form effective combat forces through natural reproduction.

Players active in southern Jinchuan Province called them goblins, distinguishing them from the "classic skin" greenskins. The *Wasteland OL* operators adopted this term and updated it in the lore.

In truth, even outsiders—let alone the mutants themselves—refused to acknowledge these weaklings as mutants, often calling them "short things" or "ugly things."

With underdeveloped brains, they were often dumber than mutants, their habits more beastly, like dogs kept by mutants.

But their small size made them better at navigating mountains, and their slender fingers could handle errands or even pull cannon ropes, perhaps more useful than the carefully designed clone cannon fodder of the Vland people.

The mutants on Ten Peaks Mountain allowed these short things to stay in their lairs only because they could help with chores and had little meat on their bones.

As the greenskins swarmed down the mountain, they didn't notice a gray, fat rat crouching behind a rock, watching them, a VM strapped like a belt around his belly.

Days earlier, before the Death Corps brothers had set out, he had already been tailing them.

"Hey hey, this is Overwhelming, the mutants on Ten Peaks Mountain are coming down. They spotted you from afar—they're probably heading your way!"

"Haha, then they've picked the wrong opponents!" A hearty reply came through the comms, the voice of the Death Corps commander, Edge Slacker.

From the tone, the guy seemed raring to go.

Mourning for the descending mutants for half a second, Overwhelming continued.

"Trash Brother is already waiting at the foot of the mountain, ready to meet up with you anytime... He says he wants to show you something, but it seems you don't really need him."

Edge Slacker laughed back.

"How could that be? He's welcome! But tell Trash Brother to hold off and stand a bit farther away."

Overwhelming paused. "Why?"

Edge Slacker chuckled. "We got two big guns from the Vlands, and the Administrator let us use them directly! Their caliber is even bigger than the ones on the *Steel Heart*. My brothers haven't seen much, they're all clamoring to fire a shot. Let's test them on those unlucky bastards coming down."

"Damn, the 902mm cannon?!" Overwhelming clicked his tongue in surprise. "You brought it for the first battle?"

"What else? Wait for it to lay eggs?"

"Haha, alright, I'll tell Trash Brother to hold off..."

Ending the call, Overwhelming scraped his sharp claws across the VM screen, trying to contact Trash 99, but got no response after several calls.

"Strange."

Scratching his head, he muttered, peering down the mountain but seeing no sign of the guy.

Where the hell did that dog go?

Just as he was wondering where Trash Brother had gone, a large lizard was lying in a reed marsh on the south bank of the Wei River.

Its amber eyes were locked on the greenskins crossing the river, its thick nostrils blowing faint, barely noticeable ripples on the water.

The wrist computer—that annoying thing—had been tossed aside on the bank.

Though the Wei River was a hundred meters wide, it wasn't deep. The deepest point in the center was only three or four meters, and the reedy banks were just one or two meters deep, with a gentle current. So crossing without a bridge wasn't hard.

The greenskins, two or three meters tall, could simply lift their weapons and wade across. Only the small goblins looked anxious, needing to paddle rafts or be carried by the big ones.

As the greenskins neared the opposite bank, just as Trash 99 was about to sneak up and catch them off guard, a deafening roar erupted in the distance.

It sounded like a thunderclap on flat ground.

Though it came from kilometers away, it shook the calm river surface.

Trash 99 froze, staring blankly in the direction of the sound, just like the mutants standing in the river.

"...What the hell?" he muttered, a sense of dread creeping silently into his heart.

At the same time, the military train had braked mid-route, the smoke from the 902mm cannon drifting lazily to the side.

Riding his Death Claw, Edge Slacker leaped out of the carriage first, brandishing his 20mm "cavalry rifle," and roared at his assembled brothers.

"Brothers—"

"Follow me!"

"Bring glory back to Dawn City! Bring death to our enemies!"

A thunderous roar of morale erupted around the train.

Both the players riding Death Claws and the Death Claws beneath them roared as the cannon fire sounded.

"For the Alliance!"

"Long live the Administrator!"

"Crush them!"

"Oooh!"