Chapter 376: Disaster Has Come! The Beginning of a Shocking Conspiracy!
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
War was cruel, but it was also the fastest way to boost technological production.
The Deep Sea World during the Fertile Soil Era was an example. The God of the Ocean’s protection had enabled the maritime industry to advance for over a thousand years, but the development of the technology chain was still extremely slow.
The inhabitants here were content with their life. Despite a drastic gap between the rich and the poor, it did not affect the general peace of their environment since there was an information blockade.
Since the God of the Ocean Wind controlled the seas here with his magical powers, it was rare to see terrifying winds and monstrous waves like those on Earth that often swallowed people up.
It included the pirating profession, which was supposed to develop by leaps and bounds in the Deep Sea World. Given the abnormal number of wanted bounties, this meant they could not make any significantly large inroads.
Of course, from this very moment on, as Su Mo turned and watched White Sand Island slowly becoming a white dot and vanishing into the distance, he knew…
The pirating profession’s despondent downward curve was about to experience a massive upturn!
“Captain, our ship has been heavily disguised. Not even the genuine Guardians of the Ocean will realize there’s something amiss as long as they don’t come into contact with us.
“We’re exactly like actual members of the Guardians of the Ocean!”
The murlocs wore well-fitted Guardians of the Ocean uniforms, and each of them wielded a precious sword as tall as a human. They looked majestic, bearing no resemblance to the small and sorry short slaves they had been just two days ago.
Additionally, the ships they boarded were no longer the small sailboats used to transport slaves. These were now fully-licensed official ships with the words “Law Enforcement” on them.
These official ships were almost on par with a small sailboat in terms of size and speed.
However, when the day finally came, White Sand Island would usher in an upgrade to the ships that would transform them into official ships that could travel fully three times faster!
“Fish One, send the orders down. Take the lines of dialogue that I’ve written for you and study them well. Let’s not expose ourselves in front of the enemy.
“Remember our present identity. We are an official law enforcement team from the Guardians of the Ocean!”
Su Mo gestured with the three-pointed two-edged sword. When he saw Fish One nod and dash happily toward the rear of the deck, he sat down in satisfaction.
Every day, over a thousand points were deposited into his account, and he would also get a large, swift ship built with quality materials, as well as the supplies it carried.
After choosing to upgrade White Sand Island into a Lawless Land, the title upgrade competition did not change for anyone else, but for Su Mo, the difficulty had significantly decreased.
Moreover, after an investigation into the hidden profits behind this, a unique, crazy idea began churning in Su Mo’s mind.
He would take his time to develop here and figure out the meaning behind the origin of the great battle back in the day.
In this world, where the God of the Ocean was in a deep slumber and could not distinguish between good and evil, Su Mo wanted to try and embroil everyone in his scheme.
In other words, he wanted to overthrow the God of the Ocean’s regime!
Su Mo wanted to see if any change would occur in the Fertile Soil Era—which was fated to be destroyed—if he were to release it from the shackles of theocracy.
When this idea took shape in his mind, even Su Mo was shocked.
However, Su Mo was also startled to find that this plan had great potential after he observed the abundance of produce in this world, and calculated the degree of loyalty his slaves possessed.
If he had not been asleep, the God of the Ocean would surely have taken action and meted out punishment to Su Mo for repeatedly taking advantage of loopholes to constantly spawn monsters.
However, with the God of the Ocean currently absent, all Su Mo needed was a blitzkrieg strategy and a brief moment where everyone had not yet had time to react—then he could complete his original capital accumulation.
The entirety of White Sand Island would well be within the rules to immediately become a giant entity that no one could ignore!
As for the merchant ships transporting food at present?
They would not be needed!
White Sand Island would receive punctual deliveries of supplies from the Guardians of the Ocean every day. There would be no need to worry about a shortage in supplies as long as the number of slaves was kept below three thousand.
In other words, the only thing White Sand Island lacked now were people and large numbers of slaves!
Once the number of slaves increased, Su Mo would show all the citizens of the Deep Sea World what a real industrial revolution looked like!
Therefore, in the earlier battles against external opponents, Su Mo immediately targeted slave ships.
“I want to increase White Sand Island’s population to over 2000 in three days!”
Su Mo gripped his three-pointed two-edged sword after setting that goal. The corners of his mouth tugged up in an inscrutable smirk as he watched the boat that entered his field of vision, flying a flag that displayed a human head.
…
“Quick, Chen Shen, come and check. One day has already gone by. Take a look and see if our Shelter Leader’s status has changed yet. Why can’t I find Leader Su’s name!”
“That’s right. So many people have come out already, but they all say they haven’t seen Leader Su!”
Although the villagers of Hope Village in the faraway basin were waiting on the mountain, they were not idle either during the first round of gaining titles. All of them had managed to raise their titles to Level 1 by taking turns to go to sea in two lifeboats and the small boats that they had crafted themselves.
After achieving Level 1, however, it would be difficult for the Hope Village inhabitants to elevate further as the village was located in the shallow areas of the sea.
Currently, as Chen Shen gazed at the panicking Pei Shao and Qi Qin, all he could do was stand up and grab their shoulders so that he could force them to sit down again on their stools.
“Come, come, have some tea! Don’t panic!
“Ah! Brother Pei, you should rest. I’ve already told you that Leader Su must have entered after getting a Level 4 title. His icon on my friends’ list indicates that he’s busy. Don’t worry, didn’t you hear what the people who have already withdrawn said? You can withdraw from the challenge anytime you want to!
“Think about it. If there were any danger, Leader Su would escape once he faced a challenge he couldn’t defeat!”
Time seemed to pass very slowly for the 300 thousand people inside the trial ruins.
As of now, according to the timeline in the trial ruins, a full fifty days had passed.
However, by external world time, it had only been a day, and it was only just past seven o’clock in the evening on Day 2 of Month 3.
To the refugees who had not gone into the ruins, the New World had already surfaced through the water, and it was just another normal day of them evacuating.
“I’m just worried that something has happened. Don’t fuss at me; if you don’t believe me, go take a look outside. See if there’s anyone in the village who isn’t worried!”
Qi Qin picked up his already cold cup of tea and downed it in one gulp. He did not seem to have tasted any of it.
His brows had furrowed together so tightly that little creases had formed in the space between. Anyone who looked at him would know that he was worried.
“Exactly, I have no idea when the trial live broadcast stream will start. Look at what everyone who came out said. Pirates are everywhere, and the trial world is in utter chaos. Also… yes, that pirate leader, General Xing Daorong. He’s going everywhere with his people, burning, pillaging, and looting. The situation inside is so dangerous!”
As the intelligence team leader, Pei Shao had now shifted his information-gathering focus to increasing the overall information on the group ruins.
People had been quitting sporadically throughout the day, starting from the initial zero stars, and now, they were leaving one batch after the other.
The World Channel and Disaster Resistance Channel started becoming livelier.
Apart from the officials, those who managed to obtain Level 4 titles were people who had some modicum of intelligence.
These people were not really disappointed that they had failed to be promoted to a Level 5 title. Instead, they took advantage of their individual identities to gain popularity.
When one pulled up the Disaster Resistance Channel live streams, one would see Garfield Bieber, the person who had taught everyone how to get a Level 1 title, hosting a live stream that talked about the situation in the ruins.
Since it was something that everyone was paying attention to now, he had changed the title of his live broadcast room to–
[The Internet’s first-person perspective commentary on the battle of the bigshots in the group ruins and tactics to upgrade your title]
This title alone and the fact that he had already gained popularity from his tutorials in the past meant that his live broadcast stream had reached a shocking audience number of…
25 billion!
Although it was the middle of the night, and dawn was only just approaching, there were already 25 billion people in his live broadcast stream waiting for a first-person account on news of the group ruins and—even more importantly—tactics on upgrading their titles.
“XX, welcome to the live broadcast stream. Bigshot XXX, welcome to the live stream. The tutorial will start now.
“I will begin teaching everyone how to gain a Level 4 title, as well as hacks on how to complete the several thousand progress bars in a few days, once the audience count hits 30 billion!
“Ah, I noticed that a lot of you are very interested in how the situation in the group ruins is shaping up. How about this—someone in my shelter was just eliminated. Let us welcome Han Bi to come and give a first-person account about his experience.”
The level of the live stream box would rise each time the audience count increased by 10 billion.
When Garfield noticed his live broadcast stream’s audience count drop by 1 billion because he was keeping them in suspense, he hurriedly shouted and beckoned for the person behind him to come out.
Garfield’s timely damage control stopped his popularity from dropping. Moreover, the audience’s interest was piqued when they saw Han Bi walking out with an annoyed expression on his face.
“If all of you want to listen to me wax poetic and tell you some made-up stories, then there’s nothing worth your attention here. The other live broadcast streams in the World Channel are full of all that.
“However, if you’re genuinely interested in learning more about the wasteland’s group ruins, please be patient as you continue listening!”
The brooding expression on Han Bi’s face showed just how gloomy he was feeling. The audience became even more interested in what he had to say after he finished his disclaimers.
At this point, as Garfield motioned to him, he stopped keeping the audience in suspense and said matter-of-factly:
“At present, players are given eight career choices in the ruins. They are as follows.
“The military, which also has the lowest level of difficulty.
“This is a career that everyone can choose once they start playing. You’ll be able to join without any problems as long as you follow what the progress bar tells you to do.
“Merchants, seafarers, and scholars have a slightly higher difficulty level, but you’ll be able to join if you’re willing to use your brains a little.
“These three careers form the second tier, and they’re branded as two-star careers because it’s slightly more difficult to gain points.
“However, you’ll also gain more rewards.
“Politicians and slave owners are three-star careers that are quite difficult but offer plentiful rewards.
“The four-star career is the restricted lord. The difficulty level is pretty crazy, but you also get really great rewards.
“Currently, Xing Daorong, the craziest person in the group ruins, has chosen the five-star career, which is to be a liberal lord.
“These eight careers form the basis of what the trial participants can pick. Oh, right. I have no clue how things are with the foreign races, but it’s probably not that different from us.
“The Deep Sea World was very peaceful during the first ten days of the trial. Since it’s just a trial, and people can quit any time they want, everyone was just carrying out their tasks peacefully. There weren’t many conflicts.
“However, the world environment started changing ten days later.”
Han Bi gritted his teeth as he smacked the wooden plank beside him. He seemed furious at the fact that he had been eliminated!
“Yes, it’s because of Xing Daorong, this General you’ve seen who already has over eight million points!
“He’s the one who suddenly unleashed several million slaves and disrupted the peace. They’re the fiercest pirates on the seas, and they’re like bone-scraping, marrow-sucking locusts.
“What’s even more outrageous is that the ships they sail are the navy’s most advanced military ships.
“God knows where they got their military ships from, but Xing Daorong’s ships had already begun their second round of upgrades before I was eliminated. Moreover, he already has control over 20 million slaves and has formed a conquest fleet of 25 military ships.”
The expression on Han Bi’s face faltered slightly when he mentioned the military ships.
Everyone watching could tell from the look on his face that he had no idea how someone could assemble such a large fleet in so few days.
“They have repeating firearms, a well-established complete ammunition supply chain, and explosive packs.
“Moreover, his slaves are like Crazy Ivans. They’ll launch suicide attacks at your ships and sink them at once the minute you’re face-to-face with them. There’s no opportunity for you to engage in combat at all.
“Not surprisingly, when this time rolls around tomorrow, it’ll be the 90th day in the group ruins, and Xing Daorong will have overtaken the world!”
Whoosh!
The comments screen had been going wild just minutes ago, but when Han Bi finished his last sentence, it seemed to have frozen everyone’s brain briefly because the comment speed decreased significantly enough it was noticeable to the eye.
Subsequently, Garfield grinned broadly when he saw the audience numbers in the live broadcast surge up and increase from 27 billion to 30 billion.
He had already begun frenziedly planning how to use the air-drop treasure chests to their maximum potential.
Would getting a Level 5 title present a huge problem?
After all, he was staying put, not going to fight at sea. Moreover, this title would not bestow any benefits on land, so it would not be useful at all.
However, while he was still chuckling inwardly, the audience numbers in the live broadcast stream suddenly decreased sharply. Almost half of the audience left, and the numbers dropped down to 14 billion.
Furthermore, in just ten seconds, the stream’s popularity looked like it was going on a roller coaster ride as it struggled to maintain an audience of even one billion.
Had something happened in the wasteland?
The thought had just flashed through Garfield’s mind when a bolt of lightning flashed between heaven and earth.
Right after that, a thundering boom like a god doling out punishment seemed to explode right beside his ears, causing his scalp to prickle instantly.
This was exactly like the previous precursor to the world being destroyed, and Garfield could no longer keep calm. He hurriedly stopped the live stream before opening the wooden door and dashing outside.
However, what happened next would forever remain ingrained in his mind.
Outside was a mountain!
A tall mountain formed from black seawater!
Even the Mulanje Mountains seemed to be struggling to resist this “sea mountain”.
At the same time, a bright red warning light began flashing on the game panel as well!
The prompt announced that the tsunami disaster—which should have happened 70 days later—would be happening earlier for whatever reason, and its power would increase by…
25%!
“This… This is…”
When Garfield sensed alarm bells ringing in his mind, urging him to escape, he was so frantic that he took one step backward before dropping to the ground and sitting asprawl.
However, for some unknown reason, at this split second of life and death, he was not thinking of ways to escape.
Instead, he was thinking of the manual he had gotten three days earlier after looting a foreign race ship.
That manual contained instructions on how to gain a title, and how to upgrade it through trickery!
