Chapter 724.3: The Flame That Spreads

Moreover, the borrowed slogan wasn't entirely without support in the Southern Seas. At the very least, the people of Ring Island had seen what united survivors could accomplish. They had personally experienced the order those people brought.

Residents on other islands had also heard stories of the New Alliance. Or at least, of those resettled in the Baiyue Strait.

The wind that began in River Valley Province had already crossed the ocean and reached these shores. Brave people had already demonstrated the way forward.

Survivors could unite.

Now all that remained was to take that final step for them to fully settle the mistakes of the past, and move toward genuine unity.

As the expressions around them gradually shifted from skepticism to hesitation and finally to faint hope, Dongwen, Lin Nuo, Wang Sihai, and the other representatives from the Dolphin all let out quiet sighs of relief.

The road ahead remained long, but at least the very first step had been taken. For the first time, everyone could see a faint glimmer of dawn at the end of the long night.

...

On the way to the armory, with more than a dozen little braids hanging from her fur, Roshan swallowed excitedly and clenched her thick bear paws together. "Will there be nukes?!"

She had heard that the Burning Corps had found tactical nuclear warheads the size of bowling balls in Boulder Town! It would be amazing if they could find some here too!

Walking beside her, Tail spoke in the tone of a worldly veteran as she clasped her hands behind her back like a wise grandfather. "Your vision is too limited, my little Roro! Looking purely at the setting, the Prosperity Era had things far scarier than nukes, like neutron extermination weapons and stuff."

"Nonsense! There definitely wouldn't be something like that in a shelter..." Sesame Paste said with a helpless laugh.

"That's right, there wouldn't be anything like that in a shelter. If you're expecting some super-powerful weapons, you'll probably be disappointed." To accommodate the NPCs who couldn't understand their language, Sisi deliberately spoke in the Federation language.

However, to her surprise, Chen Jianhong immediately undermined her statement with a grin. "... Well, I wouldn't say that. For example, that back door you just saw was actually never connected to the shelter's security system. Mr. Sun Yuechi told me that himself."

Sisi froze and stared at him. "You mean..."

Chen Jianhong hesitated for a moment, but in the end, he sighed and revealed the secret that would inevitably be discovered sooner or later. "During the Three Year War, that door was very likely opened at least once in secret. Probably shortly after the Heavenly Court crashed. After all, when such a huge commotion happens outside, it's only natural to check whether the bicycle parked outside your house is still there."

After a pause, he added quietly, "Of course, that's just a metaphor. Shelter 70 is underwater. What was parked outside was probably a submersible or something similar."

He remembered seeing records stating that Shelter 70 had originally deployed large amounts of construction equipment and building materials near the entrance. However, after the crash of the Heavenly Court, those assets had vanished.

If the door had truly remained sealed the entire time, then how had the people who first emerged from the shelter a century ago known those things had gone missing?

Of course, it was also possible that wastelanders had scavenged them. The survivors outside were not true primitives. They were ruthless pioneers who built artificial islands using sand-dredging vessels.

Even before the shelter opened, they had been developing on their own. Their development had simply been slower and more distorted.

Sisi gulped as her eyes widened in shock. "So they brought something back?"

"That's right. Out of concern for the future, for example, if the enemy ended up winning, the first administrator of Shelter 70 likely recovered certain objects that fell from the sky after the tsunami subsided but before the wartime government began searching the Heavenly Court station. He definitely brought them back into the shelter through that emergency entrance."

After a pause, Chen Jianhong continued with a complicated expression, "For example, the battleship stationed at North Island, the main gun mounted on it was actually removed from a starship and transported into the shelter through that back entrance."

Tail's eyes sparkled. "WOWIE! So there really are awesome weapons!"

Roshan, who never minded stirring up trouble, also stared at the captain in excitement.

Unsure how to respond to their excessive enthusiasm, Chen Jianhong scratched his head and coughed awkwardly. "There definitely are some things. But they are not as exaggerated as you and the people outside imagine. It's mostly wreckage stripped from starships and some exoframes from the Air and Space Force."

"During the first century, we repaired part of it. After the shelter opened, our focus shifted back to construction outside."

Realizing her prediction had been completely wrong, Sisi awkwardly changed the subject. "By the way, how did you know there were words carved beside the back entrance? Did Sun Yuechi tell you that too?"

Chen Jianhong shook his head. "Not that. Actually, Mr. Sun has never been there. To be precise, after the shelter's main entrance opened, nobody seems to have used that door again."

"You can probably guess why. It's not exactly something people are proud of. As for why there were words carved there... that was my own guess."

At first, Sisi looked puzzled, then realization suddenly struck her.

The words had been carved beside the back entrance, not beside the shelter's official entrance connected to the security system.

That meant that the identities of the people who first entered the shelter might be questionable.

Her eyes widened slightly and she mumbled, "You mean..."

Chen Jianhong looked away thoughtfully and voiced his theory. "There are two possibilities. The first is that they were on the authorized list, but because a crowd of desperate people had gathered outside the main entrance, they entered through the back door instead. During that time, they left their regrets written on the wall."

"The second possibility is a bit more conspiratorial. Maybe they weren't on the list at all. Perhaps they were construction personnel or insiders who knew about the shelter. They might have acquired construction credentials or used some other method to infiltrate the facility and alter the shelter protocols, replacing the people who were originally supposed to enter."

After saying that, he paused and added a third possibility that he didn't entirely believe himself.

"Of course, there's also a third possibility. They were on the list and entered openly through the front entrance. But while using the back door later, they thought about the compatriots who had died outside and left those words behind."

The truth was like Schrodinger's cat. Unless someone opened the box, nobody would ever know what had actually happened.

It was hard to say whether the first administrator had recorded those memories in the logs. And it was equally hard to say whether leaving the truth buried or digging everything up would be better.

Looking at the stunned Sisi, Chen Jianhong wore a complicated expression as he spoke again. "I won't pry into your shelter's history. But do you really think all the people who entered shelters 200 years ago were good people? You've seen what things were like outside shelter entrances, haven't you?"

Sisi shook her head. "I've never thought that. And honestly, I don't think I qualify as a good person either."

"Haha, come on." Chen Jianhong laughed and stroked his stubbled chin. "From our perspective, you're already pretty decent."

But after a moment, he fell silent. It really wasn't a funny topic.

The Prosperity Era achieving widespread equality was an objective fact. The survival crisis bringing out humanity's suppressed beastly instincts was also an objective fact.

The Federation needed brave, capable, faithful people to travel into the distant future and rebuild civilization on a world where it might already have vanished. To achieve that, they needed to select genuinely good people.

The contradiction was that whenever a system was designed specifically to select good people, it often ended up selecting something else entirely. It might select the truly ruthless. The idea that only true elites could enter shelters had never really existed. The cruel truth was more likely that they became elites precisely because they survived inside shelters.

After learning about other shelters, Chen Jianhong had gradually realized something. Shelter residents were not truly innocent. Human beings were far too complicated. A person could change their mind three times in a single day. Using a word like innocent to describe an entire group was itself the most naive form of arrogance.

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