Chapter 528: Filth Spreads Silently
Chapter 528: Filth is spreading silently
”No! This fruit cannot be eaten!” A
dispute broke out in front of a fruit stall on North Street.
A broad-minded girl, like an old hen protecting her chicks, stopped the other two girls, one big and one small, behind her. In front of her, a boss who looked ferocious was staring at her, as if he wanted to eat her. Seeing
more and more people gathering around to watch the excitement, Shuangxue, who didn’t want to cause trouble for the manager, pulled Yaya’s arm worriedly.
”Yaya, that… we won’t buy it.”
Looking at the tit-for-tat Yaya and the fruit stall owner, Shuangye, who was hiding behind her sister, was full of fear in her eyes and said in a low voice.
”You… don’t quarrel.”
She was just curious about what the green fruit tasted like, so she pestered her sister to buy her one to try, but she didn’t expect to cause such a big commotion.
Thinking of the possibility of causing trouble for her sister, she was so anxious that she almost cried.
”It’s not a question of whether you buy it or not!”
Looking at Shuangxue seriously, Yaya leaned down and touched her sister’s little head, soothing the little girl’s emotions, and said softly.
”…Sister, you are not arguing. There are bad guys who sell bad things in our settlement. Can we allow them to continue to harm others?”
Shuangye blinked.
”Bad guys?”
”Yeah.”
Yaya nodded vigorously, then straightened up, turned around, grabbed a green fruit from the stall and held it high, looked around at the crowd watching, and shouted loudly.
”Everyone, please pay attention, this fruit is poisonous! Don’t eat it casually!” As
soon as the voice fell, there was an uproar around.
”Poisonous?!”
”What’s going on?!”
”Hiss… I think someone bought it and ate it.”
”Isn’t it going to happen?!”
Hearing the whispers around, the owner of the fruit stall suddenly blushed and glared at her and shouted.
”You! Be careful or I’ll sue you for defamation! This is fruit shipped from the south… How can it be poisonous!”
Yaya snorted complacently and proudly puffed out her chest.
”I can tell at a glance whether it’s poisonous or not!”
Teng Teng, who stood aside without saying anything, glanced at this not-so-smart friend, crossed her arms and sighed.
”You’ll have the opposite effect.”
”Hmm?!”
”That makes sense,” looking at Yaya with a head full of question marks, Jiujiu touched her chin with a witty look, rolled her eyes and said, “My brother always drags me to level up whenever he has time, which makes me so annoyed… Is this rebellious psychology?”
Teng Teng supported his forehead.
”…It actually has nothing to do with rebellious psychology.”
Yaya’s talent is only effective for herself. In her world, poisonous things emit green light, but others can’t see it.
What’s more, her talent is not 100% accurate. There have been cases where players ate it but were fine in the end.
Perception is one of the most metaphysical attributes of this game. It is a comprehensive manifestation of all insight abilities, and Yaya’s “Toxic Intuition” talent is the metaphysics of metaphysics.
As soon as Yaya finished speaking, the people watching the excitement looked at each other, and the whispers and discussions quickly spread all around.
”Toxic?!”
”This green thing doesn’t look good…”
”I think the girl is right!”
”She’s wearing a blue coat!”
”And it’s so big!”
”But… even if she’s a resident of the shelter, isn’t it a bit arbitrary to conclude that the thing is poisonous with just one sentence?”
”Indeed, according to their standards brought over from the prosperous era, there are too many poisonous things in the wasteland. I’m afraid even people are poisonous!”
”It’s not easy to transport fruits from Jinchuan Province…”
”We wastelanders are not as fragile as them. We can’t eat this, we can’t eat that. I’m so hungry that I even eat gnawers!”
”Tsk tsk, no matter what, I’ve provoked the most unproblematic person on the Alliance’s territory… I’m afraid this boss is going to be finished.”
The residents of the Alliance naturally stood on their side, and they had no doubt about what Ya Ya said.
However, most of the survivors from other places sympathized with the boss, especially those small traders doing business in the wasteland.
At least in the settlements they had been to, there were not so many rules and regulations.
Seeing that people’s sympathy seemed to be leaning towards him, the fruit stand owner, who was a little afraid of the coat, suddenly stopped being timid.
After staring at the fruit for a while, Jiujiu felt familiar with it, and suddenly a look of realization appeared on his face, “Ah… This fruit seems to be the emerald fruit that the garbage man found in the south, right?”
Although the signal was not connected and no photos were uploaded to the official website, from the description in the post, this is undoubtedly the “emerald fruit”.
So…
This emerald fruit and the “na fruit” claimed by the boss are actually the same thing?
”Well, it does look a bit similar.”
Teng Teng was surprised to find this, and then looked at the stall owner and put a 100 silver coin banknote on the fruit stand.
”Hey, give me a basket, and by the way, it’s not too much to ask you to eat two.”
The stall owner was stunned and his expression became nervous.
”I, I eat two? Why should I eat…”
He remembered that the merchant who sold the goods to him said that it was okay to eat one of this thing occasionally, but eating two at a time would definitely cause trouble.
”Oh? You don’t even want to eat the things you sell,” Teng Teng smiled maliciously, “By the way, there is a law in the alliance that, in the absence of inspection conditions, consumers have the right to ask the seller to taste the goods after purchasing them… You are not going to tell me that you are full and can’t even eat a fruit the size of an apple?”
In fact, as the alliance grows bigger, this lax rule is as outdated as selling prisoners of war to other settlements.
The biological research institute under the alliance has established a food safety inspection department, which is responsible for conducting safety inspections on goods sold in the name of food on the market, identifying the toxicity of different parts of a series of alien species including centipedes and monsters, researching more scientific food processing methods, and restricting the sales scope of some products or even ordering them to be removed from the shelves.
A long time ago, the argument of whether something is edible or not was mostly solved by the players themselves “taking the lead”.
”You!”
Seeing that the people around him who originally supported him gradually became suspicious, the boss’s eyes turned around anxiously, and his ferocious face suddenly squeezed into a ball, made a mournful expression, and rolled on the ground.
”You blue jackets… ganged up on me, a foreign merchant! Do you have the nerve? Business here is simply impossible to do!”
”Ah! This guy is too good at confusing right and wrong.” Jiujiu looked away from the subtitles on the VM screen, looked at the rogue boss in surprise, and immediately said, “I’ll go find my brother!”
After saying that, Jiujiu turned around and was about to leave, but before he took two steps, Teng Teng reached out and grabbed him.
”Don’t go to your brother for everything. What problems can that guy solve?”
As he said that, Teng Teng sighed and looked seriously at the boss who was still stubborn.
”I’ll ask you one last time, are you sure you want to continue selling this stuff? I can pay to buy it all, but if we find that it is moderately addictive or seriously harmful to the health of the consumer, according to the current laws of the alliance, you will face more than three years of hard labor, and depending on the severity of the case, you may be sentenced to death.”
Before he even heard the death penalty, as soon as he heard more than three years of hard labor, the boss’s face turned pale and he laughed awkwardly.
”So, so serious? I just sold a few fruits… fruits.”
Working in a mine with the predators…
He didn’t kill anyone or set a fire, and eating a small amount of Naguo is actually good for the body. People who can’t survive can use this thing to relieve pain.
How did it become poisonous?
Teng Teng stared at him who was trying to change the subject and nodded seriously.
”We can’t control other places, but this is our home. We built it brick by brick. Don’t expect us to turn a blind eye to what we see.”
This sentence won the approval of many people.
Especially the increasingly tense expression of the boss, people began to doubt whether he was really that pitiful.
Why didn’t you dare to eat a bite?
Is it difficult to pick up one from your own stall and eat it?
”Well said!”
”I support it!”
”These profiteers… they dare not eat it themselves, but they dare to put it on the shelf!”
”That’s right! Hey, the fruit seller, eat two! We are on your side!”
The boss’s face turned green and red.
At this time, Frost walked over with Eclipse through the crowd.
”I heard that someone here needs help.”
It smiled and glanced at the people present.
”I am a member of the Celebration Autonomous Committee. Please tell me about your conflict. I will conduct the most fair arbitration according to the laws of the alliance. I guarantee that I will not let any bad guy go, nor will I wrongly accuse any good guy.”
”No, no! I don’t need arbitration!” The boss saw her armband and quickly changed his face. He shook his head and said, “I won’t sell these fruits anymore.”
After that, he covered the green fruits with a curtain and planned to take away the stall.
”Ah… is it over?”
Frost’s expression was slightly regretful.
Eclipse, who was standing aside, looked at it expressionlessly.
”I don’t understand, isn’t this a good thing?”
Han Shuang muttered.
”It’s a good thing, yes… but I always feel a little bit pity.”
Looking at the boss who hurriedly packed up the stall, Teng Teng fell into deep thought and said.
”We have to report this news as soon as possible…”
The residents of the shelter did not have the power to enforce the law. She couldn’t smash or confiscate the stall just because Ya Ya thought that thing was poisonous, regardless of other people’s strange eyes.
Ya Ya also nodded seriously.
”Well! This is a big problem!”
Hearing this, Han Shuang’s eyes suddenly lit up and regained their enthusiasm.
”Big problem? Leave it to me! I will help.”
Holding Shuang Ye’s little hand, Shuang Xue hesitated for a moment and looked at Ya Ya.
”Is it so serious?”
”Of course!” Ya Ya nodded seriously and said seriously, “The alliance is no longer the small settlement it used to be. Someone sold this thing here, which means that this thing has been circulated here.”
Teng Teng also nodded in agreement and said casually.
”I agree.”
”When you see a cockroach in the house, it means that there are actually countless cockroaches crawling in places you can’t see.”
…
Just as Teng Teng guessed, when she, Ya Ya and Jiu Jiu arrived at the nearest guard post, the guards were busy with this matter.
Some residents of the shelter said that this “Nago” is the same thing as the “Emerald Fruit” they found in the south, and it has a strong potential for harm, but they have no way to prove it.
The toxicity of “Nago” does not appear immediately, and the sweet taste like honey is somewhat deceptive. The eater may even become “stronger” for a period of time. It
is precisely for this reason that the alliance has been running an effective regular error correction mechanism, and a malfunction occurred at this moment when the cognition could not be unified. Fortunately,
the problem was discovered in time.
In addition to the regular error correction mechanism, the alliance also has another special mechanism – that is, the player mechanism.
The residents of Shelter No. 404 will always respond to the mobilization of the shelter, whether it is a sudden war or daily order maintenance.
Xiao Qi immediately conveyed the manager’s instructions to the guard station and the celebration autonomous committee, removing “Naguo” from the shelves of the alliance market, recalling the goods that have been sold to customers, and registering the customers who have eaten them. The
alliance’s biological research institute will observe their subsequent symptoms and recycle their metabolites.
According to the clues reported by the garbage collector 99 on the official website, people and animals who have eaten Naguo will not get sick immediately, but will lose resistance to the disease, and the feces produced over a period of time will pollute the soil, resulting in no food being grown in the field. It
is not yet certain whether this effect can be eliminated by technical means, but the two points of “decreased immunity” and “feces polluting the soil” are enough to attract attention.
The drones flying over the alliance have started working, and the players scattered in the crowd have received tasks one after another.
This kind of food with hidden dangers
must disappear from the alliance market!
”… Naguo.”
Looking at the text updated on the VM, Fang Chang touched his chin with interest, and seemed to be thinking about something in his heart.
Dolly, who had a camera hanging around her neck, came over curiously to take a look.
”What are you looking at?”
”This is our… uh, work log,” Fang Chang briefly introduced it in a way that she could understand, and then put away the VM. “A batch of harmful fruits appeared in the market, named Naguo, and it seems that the merchants brought them from the south. My lovely reporter, do you have any clues?”
”Naguo?” Dolly was stunned for a moment, and shook her head in confusion, “This is the first time I’ve heard of it…”
Fang Chang smiled faintly.
”Really? It seems that the trade hub of the southern plains of the Valley Province has been transferred from the West Third Ring Road of Qingquan City to the northern suburbs. From this perspective, it may not be a bad thing.”
Although it also means more challenges.
”Is that fruit… dangerous?” Dolly said with a worried look on her face.
”Well,” Fang Chang nodded, glanced at the bustling crowd in the distance, and said concisely, “I hope this thing will not spread to Luoxia Province in the west along our trade route. We have finally solved the food crisis.”
Perhaps…
the alliance should take the initiative to do something.
…
At the same time, in the banquet hall of the alliance.
Chu Guang, who had just announced the start of the celebration in the Triumphal Square, immediately met with representatives from all parties, including corporate representatives, in the banquet hall.
The victory of the alliance is not only about the future of the alliance, but also about the future of the entire area east of the Great Desert, at least ten or even twenty years.
Therefore, regardless of whether they participated directly or indirectly in the expedition to Luoxia Province, most of the survivor settlements that had trade relations with the alliance took the opportunity of the celebration to send representatives to the alliance and brought blessings from afar.
Chu Guang knew most of these representatives.
For example, Minister Wu Changnian from the enterprise, Prince Winter from the Lion Kingdom, and Princess Avni of the Honey Badger Kingdom who stayed in the alliance and never left.
In addition to those acquaintances, there were also people from the survivor settlements that had not yet established diplomatic relations with the alliance. It was the first time that Chu Guang saw people from there.
For example, the place called Garbage City, a little southeast of the Red River Alliance, usually had no official intersection, but this time it also sent a member of parliament.
Another example is the Yuema Province to the east of the River Valley Province, where a survivor settlement called Dam City has a population of several hundred thousand. The mayor of the city simply sent his own son over.
The young man’s name is Zhou Xianlin. His name sounds very cultured and he looks very literary, which is rare in the wasteland. As soon as he met Chu Guang, he grabbed Chu Guang’s hand and spoke excitedly.
”Your speech… was simply great! I… I’m sorry, I don’t know how to express my excitement! With such an excellent manager like you, it’s no wonder that you can accomplish such an amazing miracle in a year! We plan to learn from your experience. When we go back, I will change our settlement to the Dam Alliance!”
”Thank you, there are many excellent people in the alliance. The reason why a miracle is a miracle is that it cannot be accomplished by one person.”
Looking at the enthusiasm flashing in the young man’s eyes, Chu Guang was happy, but he couldn’t help but feel a little worried. He held his hand and said seriously.
”…I’m glad you gave such a high affirmation to our achievements, but I still hope you won’t blindly copy them. Although we are all in the same wasteland, the problems we face are actually different.”
Zhou Xianlin nodded vigorously and said excitedly.
”Understood! I will definitely keep it in mind! Our top priority is to eliminate the remnants of the Bone Chewing Tribe… Those predators are running around everywhere, which is really abominable!”
Looking at the young man with a rosy face, Chu Guang always felt that he was a bit like Summer, but not as smart as Summer.
It seems that he has gained a little fan in an unexpected place.
However, considering that there are still many people waiting for him, Chu Guang did not spend too much time talking to the young man. He just patted him on the shoulder and went to meet the next representative.
He hoped that the young man really realized the importance of uniting the survivors, not just simply worshipping the strong.
Take the enterprise for example. In terms of scale alone, the enterprise is much stronger than the alliance, and the trump cards inherited from the Post-War Reconstruction Committee are so many that he can’t imagine.
However, let alone in the wasteland, even in reality, if the ideal city’s system is used mechanically, it will definitely cause the normal social order to collapse.
Because that is a coincidence that is “one in a million”.
If all the residents of Shelter No. 6 and the Zhiyuan Colonial Ship had not unanimously cast the same vote under that special situation, the ideal city would not exist.
Even if there was only one vote against it, even if they finally obeyed the majority, their ideals would definitely be stranded on the ground…
After finally dealing with the representatives of all parties, Chu Guang was about to take a break. As soon as he sat down on the chair, he heard Xiao Qi’s voice.
”Master! Your little player found a batch of suspected poisonous fruits at the celebration, which are suspected to be the same as the emerald fruit reported by the player ‘Garbage Picker Level 99’.”
Hearing the crisp voice in his ear, Chu Guang frowned slightly.
Xiao Qi had previously reported to him what his little players had found in the south.
Although he did not participate in the discussion on the forum, he had been paying attention to the subsequent developments of both the “Na Guo” and the mutant tribe called “Qi”.
But compared to other things, this matter has a lower priority, even lower than the Alliance’s “Big Aircraft Plan” and the nuclear fuel in Jinchuan Province.
Compared with the mutant tribe seven or eight hundred kilometers away and a crop that suddenly appeared, the Alliance has too many things that Chu Guang needs to worry about personally.
In terms of economy, he needs to ensure the orderly growth of the debt scale, while suppressing the inflation brought about by the expansion of economic scale. In terms of industry, he needs to guide a large amount of excess military production capacity to civilian use, and listen to the opinions of representatives from various industries to eliminate the waste and loss of resources during the economic transformation period.
In terms of government affairs, he needs to further clarify the powers and responsibilities of various departments and positions. Things that could be “fast, good and economical” before must now be done according to the rules. Not only that, he also has to carefully add some elements that are more suitable for the Wasteland Era to the “AI Municipal Concept” born in the Prosperous Era, so as to reduce the debuffs of reduced administrative efficiency and acclimatization.
As for the military, culture, and diplomacy, let alone… there are still a lot of things to do. And after doing these things, he has to use the same rules in the language of the game to prepare a version of “Wasteland OL” for the players.
The Alliance is entering an unprecedented golden period of development. Hundreds of people decide to stay here and join their cause almost every day.
Whether it is the Alliance’s own citizens or the surrounding survivor settlements, the confidence in the Alliance is unprecedentedly high.
Even those who hate and fear the Alliance from the bottom of their hearts have to admit that the Alliance has accomplished an almost impossible miracle and will not disappear for at least a while.
As the manager of the alliance, Chu Guang knew what his most important task was at the moment.
However, what he could not ignore was that the “Naguo” had quietly spread from the south to under his nose. Some kind of unclean filth was spreading silently…
After thinking for a moment, Chu Guang immediately gave an order to Xiao Qi.
”Send a sample to Heya and tell her to put aside the things at hand for the time being. I want to see the test results of that thing as soon as possible!” An
enthusiastic answer came from his ears soon.
”Received!”
(End of this chapter)
