Wasteland Development Diary

The morning sun rises.

The aerial raid by the Thunder Beasts has ended.

Ding Ye and two colleagues are clearing the bombed-out No. 2 blast furnace, searching for surviving workers in the ruins, though the possibility is slim.

He lifted a section of iron trough, unearthing two charred and mangled corpses from the rubble.

The absence of human sense of smell and taste has removed many burdens for Ding Ye.

Back when he was a wandering swordsman, Ding Ye would feel intense anger every time he saw innocent humans being killed.

This kind of anger and impulse was an essential quality for a swordsman, what the older generation called "Qi."

Without this Qi to support him, he couldn't be a swordsman.

Now, with a sword as his core and walking in the body of a Tetsujin, Ding Ye clearly felt the difference from the past.

He always thought he was still Ding Ye, just existing in a different form.

But facing human corpses, Ding Ye no longer felt that overwhelming anger, only a detached indifference and coldness as if seeing dead animals.

He asked his other colleagues.

The answers were basically the same.

"We are no longer human, that's the reason."

"Mech-lifeforms don't empathize with or understand humans; they only observe and analyze them. We are not much different from them now."

The veterans were used to it.

Ding Ye was still adapting.

He was still helping civilians and doing his best in defense work, but these actions stemmed from a sense of duty, different from the righteousness, unwillingness, and anger of the past.

Thinking was never Ding Ye's strong suit.

Whether in the past or now, he believed in doing and trying first.

No need to suffer for ignorance.

Ding Ye was busy when he suddenly received an order from his team leader.

"Refugees from Shell City have arrived at the port and are being settled outside the mining area. Be careful; there may be spies lurking among them."

"Also, the first batch of captured enemy soldiers is being held in the prison, which is also in that area."

"Go to the settlement area immediately and guard the prisoners and settle the refugees."

Ding Ye hurried to the mining area in the northwest.

Due to pre-war preparations, a large number of non-toxic giant mushrooms had long been planted here, and mushroom houses of various sizes stood in the mountains and forests.

When building the defenses, Captain Zhao Xiao suggested a staggered and dispersed layout.

The specific implementation was to plant giant mushrooms first, and then, after the giant mushrooms grew to seven or eight meters high, plant new giant mushrooms on the ground covered by their caps.

In this way, the new mushrooms at the bottom could not grow tall and could only maintain a height of 3 to 4 meters because the nutrients were absorbed by the covered giant mushrooms, limiting their growth.

This was detrimental to their growth, but it was very useful in wartime.

The large giant mushrooms became umbrellas, acting as buffer zones during air raids, shielding and covering the lower mushroom houses.

The success of this arrangement was also proven.

Under the aerial strikes of the Apex Coalition Army, the residents of the bottom mushroom houses suffered very little damage, and no one died in the bombings.

The mushroom houses occupied by the Shell City refugees were marked with ropes, two people per house, clear at a glance.

Ding Ye patrolled, observing the refugees moving their belongings into the mushroom houses.

Those who had been relocated were children under ten years old and women.

The refugees looked somewhat frightened and tired, but their emotions were relatively stable.

Soldiers from Steel Forging City brought straw mats, pottery pots, dry grass, and other daily necessities, as well as a flame cup and a small bag of Emerald Soup for each household.

Under the mushroom caps, the women and children used the flame cups as small stoves and began to cook Emerald Soup in pots.

It was snowing outside, but the hot soup and the presence of heating tools relaxed their expressions a lot.

That night.

Ding Ye caught a spy.

It was a child. He left the mushroom house to defecate, which was originally a very ordinary thing. However, while squatting in the wild, the child attracted a red-eyed vulture. The vulture landed and quickly took off.

Ding Ye immediately told a fellow marksman to shoot down the vulture.

After capturing the injured bird, he found a piece of paper tied to the red-eyed vulture's claws.

The paper was written in charcoal, detailing the number of refugees, the distribution of mushroom houses, and the deployment details of the Northern Ocean Legion. Although not precise, the general situation was correct.

This was undoubtedly defection to the enemy.

The child who went to defecate was brought out.

Ding Ye, who captured him, participated in the entire interrogation.

"Name."

"He Gao."

"How did you get in contact with the Apex Coalition?"

"A craftsman in Shell City found me. I can read, and he asked me to help him write and keep records. Before winter, he said that Shell City couldn't be defended and told me to make plans early, to defect to the Apex Coalition. If it succeeded, I would get a large sum of money, and he would help me eliminate my slave status."

Although He Gao was young, he was calm.

"You are a slave?"

"Yes, my dad sold me to a Shell City merchant, who took me to Shell City and made me a male prostitute on a ship. I killed him while he was sleeping with a sharpened piece of shell and threw his body into the Dead Sea. I don't know how that craftsman found out about it."

"How do you contact each other here?"

"I was fed a kind of medicine. They said that our people could find us through the medicine. I didn't expect it to be a vulture."

Ding Ye watched coldly.

The interrogators had a doctor examine He Gao and found traces of medicine in his body.

"How many informants like you are there?"

"I don't know. I only know the craftsman. He stayed in Shell City. He asked me to go to the city before, but I didn't go."

The interrogation led to another person, a child who lived with him named Beta.

He Gao and Beta were interrogated separately.

Ding Ye was more interested in Beta.

Because this child was normal, he had panic and unease, as well as confusion and not knowing what to do. In comparison, He Gao seemed to be prepared.

"I don't know... what's wrong with him?"

Beta seemed a little confused: "He Gao and I have known each other for two years. He usually does errands in the city like me, and he's a scavenger outside, but he can read, so it's easier for him to find work than me."

The interrogator said, "Are you a member of the Black Night Church?"

"No."

"Then what is this idol?"

The interrogator pointed to a gray statue on the table. It was an upright lizard with a broad ridge on its back.

"I found it on the shore. It was blown in by a typhoon. It's a monster idol."

Beta explained, "...I wanted to learn from He Gao and use it as a family heirloom."

Ding Ye's heart suddenly moved: "He Gao's family heirloom is a soft hammer?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"I don't know... it should be on him."

But when He Gao was arrested, he was not carrying such a thing, nor was it found in the two children's mushroom house.

Ding Ye immediately led a team to the location where He Gao defecated, searching everywhere, and finally found the buried soft hammer under a tree.

His steel fingers gently tore open the rubber skin, and many strange dry seeds slipped out, hiding a copper button in these seeds.

Ding Ye took the button for inspection and finally confirmed that it was a special signal transceiver.

This was the device used for communication between the spies.

At the same time, the doctors' examination of He Gao also yielded shocking news.

"His bone age is not nine years old, but fourteen years old. He has indeed been taking drugs for a long time. Those drugs are growth inhibitors, suppressing development and growth. He has been taking drugs for at least 4 years."

That is to say, He Gao's name and even his experience are basically false.

When Ding Ye saw He Gao again, he was already dead.

It was only after the autopsy that he knew that He Gao had already taken poison when he was arrested, and the remaining time was just delaying and waiting for the drug to take effect.

It was unknown how many enemy death warriors like this there were.

Ding Ye looked at the refugees in the settlement area. Every one of those women and children seemed suspicious.

Captain Zhao Xiao exchanged opinions with Steel Forging Duke.

The final solution was to transfer this group of refugees and prisoners again to the Sand Port area.

The Wasteland Development Company and Sand Sea Duke both had special technologies that could identify the spies among these refugees. Transferring the refugees to the rear could also avoid consuming the front line's food and material reserves.

Ding Ye was ordered again to escort this group of people.

On the ship to Sand Port, the child named Beta found him and asked, "Brother Ding, how do you tell if someone is a spy? Who should we believe, and who shouldn't we believe?"

Ding Ye looked at the distant land: "A lot of the time, people's troubles come from thinking too much and doing too little."

"What you need to do are two things: one is to survive, and the other is to find a way to live a better life."

The conversation stopped there.

Ding Ye walked to another cabin next door. This is where the prisoners were held.

Shell City and Steel Forging City had suffered terrible bombings. The enemy had secretly landed a vanguard team from the Dead Sea, which was completely blocked and annihilated by the Northern Ocean Legion, and three survivors were captured.

One of the troublemakers was more difficult.

Ding Ye opened the cabin door and heard someone inside saying things like "maintain confidence," "wait for rescue," "behind enemy lines operations," "victory will surely belong to us."

Needless to say.

It was that guy again.

Ding Ye looked inside. The person in the center of the three was a handsome young man, about sixteen or seventeen years old.

He waved his hands with passion, encouraging his two comrades.

"Liu Zhaoshan."

"Here."

The young man stood up immediately.

"Shut up."

"Yes."

"Sit down."

Liu Zhaoshan sat down quietly.

Ding Ye didn't know whether taking this person to the Sand Port area was a good thing or a bad thing. He even suspected that these people had deliberately surrendered to be captured, just to sneak into the rear.

If He Gao and the others were the hidden lines, they were the obvious lines.

But there was no time to think about it anymore.

The Wasteland Development Company would handle them.

Liu Zhaoshan suddenly raised his hand.

"Speak."

"May I ask if we are going to be transferred to the Sand Port area... to the Wasteland Development Company?"

The ship was leaving the port of Steel Forging City.

The direction was easy to confirm.

Ding Ye said, "What do you want to say?"

"I want to apply to meet the chairman of the Wasteland Development Company! I have important things to discuss with that chairman!"

Ding Ye was amused.

"If you have enough reasons and something to offer, you will have a chance to see Mr. Zhou."

"Yes."

Seeing the other party's ambitious look, Ding Ye remembered that he was just as high-spirited when he went to Emerald City.