The deep crimson light spots looked as if they were coagulated blood, exuding a chilling aura that made one’s heart tremble.
Canned Food muttered to himself, “This thing—could it have been something we unleashed?”
Liu Xuanjin’s voice came through the comms, steady and calm: “Judging by the current pace of the blend between reality and the novel, it’s about time more of the ‘book characters’ start appearing.”
Since human civilization in the wasteland has begun to emerge, the appearance of these ‘book characters’ was inevitable.
The appearance of the deep red light spots acted like a signal, and the scene quickly grew busy.
Wrench and Aqi returned to the control panel, and the sound of machinery whirred back to life as the city stirred once again.
A live projection appeared on the large screen.
A massive, grotesque monster was sprinting across the land, shaking the screen along with it—a clear indication that this footage was likely recorded by those highly camouflaged “Shattered Stone” that Tian Shu Squad had encountered earlier.
The scattered “monitors” in the Anomaly Zone supplemented the city’s missing viewpoints, ensuring their grasp on the surrounding situation remained tight.
The creature had three heads, blending features of various animals.
One was a brightly patterned tiger baring its blood-red maw, saliva dripping relentlessly; another had long, sharp horns gleaming with menace; the last head was flat, flicking out a snake-like tongue intermittently.
It galloped on four hooves, with two pairs of fluffy long arms swinging wildly on its back.
Its destination was clear—it charged straight toward the city.
The moment it stepped within the turret’s firing range, it was blasted squarely, tearing into several pieces on the spot.
Ordinary Mutated Creatures would have met their demise by now, but this beast’s vitality was absurdly resilient.
Those large body segments, despite heavy fire, sprouted new limbs and mutated into even stranger forms.
Four or five heads, seven or eight legs, a body covered in thick scales—part crocodile traits mixed in.
The relentless barrage failed to deter its assault.
It charged forward through the gunfire but was again torn apart after taking just a few steps.
From the remaining giant chunks of its body, “sprouts” grew anew, transforming it into an even stranger shape.
It probably finally realized its solitary weakness and instead burrowed underground, attempting to carve out a new attack route.
Before anyone could worry, a series of explosions sounded, ripping open a large patch of earth.
Sand and dust blanketed the sky as the deep crimson light spots completely vanished from the map.
The sudden flurry of activity left everyone overwhelmed, no room to react, and just as quickly as it began, everything stopped.
Ji Ting and Tian Shu Squad turned their gaze toward Liu Daming.
Liu Daming said, “Just some necessary precautions. Plenty of Mutated Creatures can burrow; we certainly can’t leave such glaring loopholes.”
Shuanzi comforted the slightly tense crowd: “One or two evolved Mutated Creatures can be easily handled with firepower suppression, but if they start to gather in numbers, things get really tricky.”
After all, they had managed to survive this hellish monster siege scenario, so a single evolved Mutated Creature wasn’t enough to shake them.
Of course, not everyone could be so nonchalant.
For those unfamiliar with such situations, the appearance of this creature caused immense pressure and a sharp sense of crisis.
After a brief silence, Baozi selectively forgot what he had just said and spoke enthusiastically: “Where were we? The third experiment plan, right? What are we waiting for? Let’s keep going.”
Canned Food rubbed Ji Ting’s arm: “Ting, how’s the strength? Comfortable? Feeling better? Want some water? Here, I’ll pour some for you…”
Under everyone’s earnest gazes, Ji Ting felt the heavy burden he carried.
It wasn’t just Liu Daming who had given up struggling moments ago—publicly reading his own novel also dealt a heavy blow to Ji Ting.
When he thought about how many people were burning the midnight oil studying his novel, scrutinizing every word and key point, Ji Ting finally let go.
Life was short; a lifetime passed in the blink of an eye.
With this realization, Ji Ting fixed his gaze on the PPT, diving into the third experiment plan.
He reviewed the PPT several times.
Compared to the previous two plans, the third seemed a bit… heartfelt?
Not understanding, he asked, “‘I reach an agreement with the book characters about the ending’—what does that mean exactly?”
Leader Liu pushed up his glasses: “Exactly what you think. Since neither continuing the novel’s ending nor supplementing it verbally worked, we can consider the influence of the author’s and the characters’ wills. If you don’t understand, the detailed steps are listed below…”
Moments later, a city-wide broadcast sounded.
“Attention everyone, here is an emergency announcement: after a series of observations and contacts, we have confirmed the current situation! We have left the wasteland and arrived in a new world without Mutated Creatures!”
The busy cityfolk paused and turned their eyes toward the loudspeakers, murmuring among themselves.
“Has Ah Guang finally gone mad?”
“Like who doesn’t know the latest news? Didn’t we just get a message about teaming up with those outsiders to eliminate Mutated Creatures?”
“No Mutated Creatures? Then what were we just seeing? Hallucinations?”
“Stop replaying that announcement, where’s Ah Guang? Come out and explain.”
Rather than surprising, their reactions reflected the city’s unusual situation.
Those surviving in such harsh wasteland environments were no fools.
Moreover, Liu Daming had originally recruited subordinates based on talent, aiming to expand and strengthen in the wasteland—not just shelter the weak or preserve civilization’s light.
Nobody expected the usual straightforward story to suddenly accelerate into Mutated Creatures running rampant and survivors hanging by a thread.
Thus, every “resident” in this city held an important role, the reason the city endured this hellish monster siege.
The scattered “monitors” around the city, along with weapon updates and maintenance, couldn’t manage themselves automatically.
The Base’s Golden Finger originally had weapon and equipment update functions, even directly upgrading production lines automatically—if there were enough resources, nothing was impossible.
But when Liu Daming abandoned the Golden Finger for this impregnable fortress, all original Golden Finger functions became void, leaving only the previously unlocked production lines.
These lines allowed the city to be self-sufficient and prevented them from running out of supplies during the siege.
They bore the crucial task of maintaining city operations, so latest news was promptly shared to ensure smooth work, leaving no room for conspiracy theories or rumors.
And don’t expect them to be easily fooled.
Therefore, after repeating the broadcast several times amid the crowd’s protests, it switched to Ah Guang’s explanation.
“Stop calling me, this is the boss’s decision. If you have questions, go ask the boss yourselves…”
Liu Daming’s voice came over the speakers.
He briefly and bluntly introduced the third experiment plan, concluding, “In short, just assume the novel’s ending is that we traveled back, and the place we traveled back to has no Mutated Creatures…”
While Liu Daming spoke casually over the broadcast, Ji Ting stood behind him, eyes fixed on the magnified surveillance screen.
Monitors spread throughout the city displayed countless scenes before Ji Ting’s eyes.
Some were blatantly slacking off; others chatted casually while adjusting production lines; yet others feverishly tossed various supplies into a massive pool…
This heavily shielded city revealed its true nature before them.
The enormous factory scale was staggering, the number of production lines so vast they covered the entire overhead monitoring screen, vanishing beyond sight, with endless supplies transported to various areas.
The energy conversion pool area had no visible conventional equipment.
The most eye-catching was the golden-yellow pool, constantly churning like a sea of fire capable of melting everything.
In fact, that was exactly its function.
Fully armed personnel stood in corners, operating instruments, compressing garbage blocks from conveyor belts into piles and dumping them in.
These compressed blocks were processed products—wasteland trash, mostly abandoned vehicles and steel mixed with some daily necessities—pressed into uniformly sized blocks after multiple procedures, then poured into the energy conversion pool.
Occasionally, mangled monster limbs were also tossed in.
After hearing this, the crowd claimed it was pure self-deception.
“Didn’t you say the novel and reality were merging? Besides, this isn’t even the boss’s original world.”
“No Mutated Creatures here? Boss, we just took down an evolved Mutated Creature, isn’t that nonsense?”
“This sounds way too unreliable…”
But despite their complaints, since Liu Daming said so, they were prepared to follow through.
“However, boss, I have a question. How do we know when it’s successful? I can’t just say I believe we’ve traveled to a world without Mutated Creatures, right?”
A good question.
Everyone turned to look at Leader Liu.
Leader Liu pushed up his glasses: “Experiments are about trying multiple possibilities. But he reminded me—‘cognition’ is too abstract; it’s more reliable to say it out loud.”
He rapidly typed on the keyboard, adding a line to the PPT.
Moments later, phrases like “Wow, we’ve actually traveled to a world without Mutated Creatures!” echoed all around the city.
To be honest, Ji Ting suspected this experiment wasn’t about “changing the course of the novel and reality fusion,” but rather a “shame game,” aka “if you care about your dignity, you lose.”
Yet Leader Liu remained deadly serious, showing no awareness of how unreasonable his demand was.
He checked each monitor window, making sure everyone repeated the phrase, finally settling his gaze on Ji Ting and Liu Daming.
Canned Food cleared his throat, suppressing a smile, reminding them, “Only you two left—what are you waiting for? Repeat it already.”
Ji Ting glanced at the barely contained grin on his face.
“If you want to laugh, then laugh. Don’t hold back.”
“It’s not even that funny… hahahaha.”
Canned Food rolled on the sofa, laughing out loud.
“But somehow, it really is hilarious,” he chuckled.
“Leader Liu, do you have a fourth experiment plan? I think we should prepare it…”
A friendly reminder came through the comms from the information data team: “Canned Food, for the sake of our comrades’ mental health, we suggest you calm down.”
Liu Xuanjin also spoke softly through the comms: “Director Wang seems to have added an ideological and political class to your cultural lessons just now…”
Canned Food stopped laughing, looking somewhat sad.
Ji Ting didn’t feel any comfort at his pitiful state, as these voices reminded him of a harsh truth—though it seemed only Tian Shu Squad and Leader Liu were present, thousands were listening in on the entire experiment via comms.
There might even be recordings, endlessly replayed, dissecting every line…
Ji Ting gave up struggling: “Wow, we’ve actually traveled to a world without Mutated Creatures.”
Liu Daming expressionless repeated, “Wow, we’ve actually traveled to a world without Mutated Creatures.”
The two repeating the phrase deadpan was oddly amusing.
Canned Food’s lips twitched again, but given everything that had happened, he held back.
After their words fell, the room was quiet—no sudden changes, no unexpected developments.
Li Yishu broke the silence: “Looks like we can move on to the fourth experiment plan.”
Leader Liu pressed the PPT button: “Since the first three plans failed, starting from the fourth plan, things might get a bit more radical…”
Before he finished, two voices almost simultaneously sounded.
One from Shuanzi, the other from the information data team over comms.
“Something’s wrong, there’s a big one showing up.”