June 12th, 2018, the eighth year of the Doomsday Calendar. Only three days remained until the Summer Harvest began.

Su Mo had found that Zizai Liang Lane’s core business was fully on track and no longer needed any management from him.

And with the materials for the Sun-chaser battle armor still not arrived, there was no work he could push forward either.

Having lost interest in lingering any longer, he took a rare day off. After breakfast, he prepared to head into the city.

He had been in Tian Yuan Territory for almost half a month now.

The last time he went to the city, he had come and gone in a hurry, and had never properly seen what kind of foundation this city, ranked among the top ten in the wasteland, truly possessed.

This time, while looking in the city for someone to custom-make a harvester specially meant for dealing with Xinghuo No. 3, he also had a stretch of free time to stroll around Hope City.

“Xiaojuan, do you want to go into the city?”

“Huh?” Huang Xiaojuan, who was still scrubbing the iron pot, started when she heard him.

“Brother Zong, are you going into the city?”

“Mm. I have some business to take care of there. We’ve been in this territory so long and still haven’t really had a chance to look around properly.”

Having promised the original owner that he would take good care of Huang Xiaojuan, Su Mo did not want to treat that promise as something half-hearted.

Before long, Huang Xiaojuan ran excitedly into the room to pack, and the two of them finished everything before nine o’clock, locked the door, and prepared to leave.

“Hey, Brother Zong, are you two heading into the city?”

Seeing them leave, Wang Qian, who had been lying in the yard sunbathing, stood up and asked, putting on a look of casual curiosity.

“Mm. I’ve been in this territory so long without a proper look around. Today I happen to have some free time.”

“That’s right, you ought to go and see. Hope City is far more magnificent than little Mulberry Field Town,” Wang Qian said with a smile.

Only after he had watched the two figures slowly shrink into the distance and vanish completely from sight did Wang Qian lazily get up again and take a walkie-talkie from his pocket.

“The target is heading for Hope City. Send four people to follow him.”

“Also, if the Inspectorate is following as well, remember not to clash with them. Just keep your distance.”

After saying that, Wang Qian deflated like a punctured balloon and flopped back down.

“Captain, the other side needs our close protection. What are we doing lounging here?”

A teammate with a broom came over, hesitating a little.

“Protect what?” Wang Qian waved a hand helplessly and shifted into a more comfortable posture.

“Su Youzong goes to and from work every day as if he’s flying. You’ve seen him doing parkour through those unfinished buildings before. He’s really something.”

“Besides, the Inspectorate is with us now. What are you afraid of?”

“But what about the murlocs and the Chen Clan?”

“Forget those two. As long as the Inspectorate is here, even if they had a thousand lives or ten thousand, they wouldn’t dare lay a hand on him.”

“And don’t let Su Youzong’s simple-looking face fool you. He’s actually quite shrewd. That includes knowing who we are. He’s probably had that figured out for a long time already.”

“Huh? We’ve been made? No way?”

Too lazy to answer his teammate’s questions, Wang Qian watched Oreo leap down from the wall and stroll away into the depths of the alley. He paused, and a cryptic look flashed across his face.

At first, when he received the assignment from Feng Tianmin, he had been a little puzzled. These people were assets the Northern Military Region had spent years planting and cultivating inside Hope City with great difficulty. Their purpose was to have the ability to strike back at critical moments. Yet this time, for Su Youzong’s safety alone, Feng Tianmin had mobilized everyone, willing even to risk exposure to protect him at all costs.

That unusual behavior made one thing clear at once. In Feng Tianmin’s eyes, Su Youzong’s importance might already outweigh that of the whole of Hope City. What did that mean? Wang Qian had not been able to figure it out at first. But as time went on, throughout Tian Yuan Territory, all five major factions except the Academy of Sciences had, within seven days, begun leaning toward Su Mo’s side. That fact forced him to seriously consider what kind of charm Su Youzong possessed that made the territory pay him such attention.

“Hello, two passengers for District XC, right? Four o’clock.”

They got on the bus.

Under Huang Xiaojuan’s distressed gaze, Su Mo lavishly opened the game panel and transferred the points.

Things were different now. He was no longer that penniless fellow who had only a few hundred points left and had to stretch every coin in half before spending it.

When he asked Zhang Bowen for leave that morning, he had used his status as a shareholder of Zizai Liang Lane to withdraw twenty thousand trade points of dividends in advance.

Even if fifteen thousand of those points would later go toward paying for the harvester,

the remaining five thousand were enough that he no longer needed to worry about these small expenses.

Soon the bus filled up and slowly turned onto the road leading to Hope City, heading straight for District XC.

This time, Su Mo finally had the leisure to observe this strange yet familiar city properly.

According to the history of the territory’s development, in the fourth year of the wasteland, under the influence of the horrific earthquake that swept across the entire New Continent, within Tian Yuan Territory not only had the mountains and rivers undergone earth-shaking changes, with more than ten earthen and rocky mountains appearing, but even the rivers had expanded from just two or three to more than twenty of varying sizes. Correspondingly, the once sizable Hope County had also been reduced to ruins almost overnight.

In order to prepare for similar disasters in the future, and to better adapt to the pace of the wasteland, the Hope City one saw today was not an expansion of the original Hope Village and Hope Town. Instead, in July of the fourth year of the Doomsday Calendar, the territory had relocated and replanned an entirely new city.

Today, Hope City was geographically dispersed, divided into four areas: east, west, south, and north. Within those areas, disaster response levels had been strictly defined, to ensure stronger disaster resistance from the inside out.

The western district, which their bus could now reach, mainly housed basic factories and residential buildings, and sat on the outermost edge of Hope City. Ordinary residents usually lived here. It was the cheapest and the most bustling area.

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