He discreetly put away the communicator into the deepest part of the storage space and covered it with some useless stuff he had. Next, he picked up the two notebooks and began to examine them.
The notebook cover was slightly stained with blood and had the stench of blood that was oxidized after coming in contact with air for a long time.
There were crooked words printed on the cover. Su Mo carefully examined it for a while, and even with his vast knowledge, he could not recognize the characters written on it.
‘Are they children’s doodles?’
The handwriting in the notebook was just as Liu Zhi had described. They were incomprehensible symbols that were incredibly confusing at first glance.
Even Su Mo would have been infuriated if he had risked his life to grab such incomprehensible notes, so he understood how the brothers must have felt.
Fortunately, after some careful observation, Su Mo discovered several critical points.
‘No matter how I look at it, these notes do not seem to be random scribbles. I can tell just by looking at it that they have an obvious pattern!
Su Mo carefully went through the first page until the last and memorized every single one. Then, he began to flip through the pages patiently.
It was just as he had suspected. The whole notebook was more than sixty pages, and the first character appeared eight times throughout the book.
Moreover, every time the symbol was used, the character that came after it was different from the previous several times. This meant the characters had a specific meaning attached to it rather than just being meaningless recycled symbols.
‘System, analyze it for me!’
There were two notebooks with secrets recorded in them. Su Mo had no choice but to summon the system to identify them.
This time, however, the analysis results were not as he had expected. The light flickered briefly and instantly generated a simple result panel.
[??? Research Notes]
[Description: Research notes that records the proud life’s work of Shaman Kade]
[Language: Mixu]
[Evaluation: None]
The two notebooks both had three lines of analysis results. It only gave the notebook owner and the language represented by the symbols in the notebook.
These facts did not have much value to Su Mo apart from proving that these symbols did indeed have meanings attached to them.
‘Mix?
‘I’ll have to pay attention in the future. I might be able to read these notebooks if I were to find a creature that was proficient in this language or find a corresponding dictionary that could help interpret these symbols!’
After thinking to himself, Su Mo placed the notebook into his storage space and sat up to concentrate on the current situation.
He could easily take away the items he had obtained by putting them in the storage space, which made it highly convenient.
However, on the other hand…
He had to carefully think about how to handle the Liu brothers, the prisoners, and the laborers that had chosen to follow him.
.
‘I originally intended to get rid of the Liu brothers to prove my capabilities, but in the current circumstances, it won’t be necessary to use such a method to convince the group of people who had shown willingness to follow after me.
‘Also, rashly killing people in front of them would leave a bad impression, which is not worth the loss.’
After a detailed inquiry record and verification from the laborers in the cave, it was proven that although the 25 prisoners detained in the resource storage room had performed vicious acts in the past and used every means they had to oppress the laborers who were deceived into entering the cave, none of them were real devils.
There were only three people out of the 25 who had taken another person’s life.
Their acts of murder were also carried out when they first arrived in the wasteland and had nothing to do with the cliff territory.
Su Mo was not someone who could not bear all the injustices in the world, and he was not a saint.
He immediately made a decision.
“They can avoid the death penalty but will have to endure the living consequences of their crimes!
“They drained whatever value these people had and will have to use the rest of their lives to pay for the crimes that they committed. That would be the greatest punishment for these sinners!” Su Mo made up his mind and announced the fate of the abusers!
On the other hand, the Liu brothers would serve as the guides to lead the team to the center of the mountains and they were responsible for analyzing the dangers ahead.
Su Mo would fulfill his promise to set them free and give them another chance for freedom if they successfully reached Origin Territory in the center, where the two had left before.
The same rule applied to the remaining 23 scumbags who abused their authority and oppressed the laborers.
Although they would not have to follow them to the center of the Great Mountains, they would still have to pay for the evil deeds that they had committed.
These people would have their hands and legs chained. Three soldiers would remain in the cliff territory to ensure that there would be no more vicious acts and no escapees until the main force returned from Origin Territory.
After Su Mo and the team return from their exploration of the Great Mountains, these prisoners would be brought back together with the other laborers willing to join the basin.
The difference was that the civilians who had not committed any crimes could enjoy the treatment and benefits of the ordinary residents in the basin. They would also not be restricted in any aspects, including trading, education, life necessities, and so on.
However, these prisoners would be moved into the territorial laborers’ camp and serve sentences according to the degree of their crimes.
Before the end of the sentence, they would not receive any salary compensation for their work and would have to complete their assigned tasks to get basic daily necessities.
At the same time, everyone must live under the same leadership and accommodations.
It would be the same as prison reform in a civilized age but not as strict.
These people would have their ordinary residential rights restored after their sentence and observation period, and once they received the release order personally signed by Su Mo.
‘In the future, there will be an increase in population with the expansion of the territory.
‘It is important that I pay more attention to the rewards and punishments in the territory to fundamentally cut off the possibility of people trying to break the law. This is the main purpose of having laws!’
Su Mo had already tentatively made a preliminary plan for the personnel in charge of the job.
After all, this was something that he could take the time to think about during the long journey.
He could also continue to discuss suitable candidates with Su Deben, Chen Shen, and the others after he returned to the territory. There was no urgency on the matter.
Meanwhile, the mysterious people in Origin Territory posed the biggest threat on their current trip.
‘These people…
‘The game isn’t doing something about them and letting them continue to use their wealth accumulated from their previous participation to unfairly attack the current participants.
‘They were forty to fifty times lacking in people. Even if the enemies that tried to excavate the ruins were a bunch of weaklings, they shouldn’t have lost so badly.’
However, on one side were the remnants of Blazeland that had developed in the wasteland for more than ten years and had accumulated many resources and technological development.
On the other side were the humans of Earth that had been fundamentally on a beginner’s stage as the game was progressing very fast, but only five months had passed.
The two of them collided as if an adult was overpowering a child. The latter was deprived of the power to fight back against the former.
Su Mo quickly came to a conclusion.
‘According to Marshal Wang’s information, after these people invaded Origin Territory, they did not unnecessarily slaughter the masses but instead threatened the lord with the lives of his wife and daughter to conquer the entire camp.
‘This indirectly proved that they are not murderous people, and they had their own thoughts and reasons.’
As long as humans had a need, there was a weak point.
The same was true for these mysterious people who had been resurrected from the ruins. They would inevitably show their weakness as long as they had something they were trying to achieve.
‘Right now, we can only take things one step at a time. Even I would have to retreat to grow stronger if they were too strong to handle.
‘Only when I hold power enough that could equal theirs can I discuss and agree with them!’
Su Mo carefully planned out his future actions.
Soon, he could clear his thoughts and focus on the things happening in reality.
In the distance, he saw a soldier in charge of preparing their simple dinners and serving the food on the table.
“Shelter leader, this meal…should we allow them to join…”
Seeing that Su Mo had recollected himself from his thoughts, Feng Tianmin who was standing beside him motioned with his lips to the laborers sitting in the corner staring at the food.
The laborers were poorly fed during their lives on the cliff.
In the past, not just the laborers but even the Liu brothers’ meals were made up of grass roots and tree bark.
They had just recently released some stock, including some rice bran brought from the outside to the people for nourishment to survive the disaster.
“Let them eat together. We’ll be leaving tomorrow anyway. We’re fully capable of feeding these twenty-five people.
“It’ll be a small reward to them for supporting us!”
Su Mo glanced at them and smiled warmly as he stood up.
He was never stingy towards his own people.
Feng Tianmin left quickly after receiving the order.
A few moments later, a loud burst of cheers came from the laborers. Su Mo chuckled happily and continued to enjoy his bowl of noodles.
Food was the best weapon to win the hearts of people in the wasteland.
Frozen dumplings, black bean sauce noodles, and fried chicken legs were prepared.
The food really could get even those laborers on the other side of the cave to surrender instantly!
Su Mo was confident that with this meal, even if the team’s return journey was delayed for more than ten days to even half a month, these people would stay here and wait for an eternity for them to return!
“After we’ve finished our meal, make arrangements for night watch and sleep. We will be on our way first thing in the morning.”
They completely devoured everything that was prepared.
After eating two large bowls of noodles and another bowl of noodle soup, Su Mo comfortably laid on a small bed that was fairly clean.
Moments later…
The whole room gradually fell silent and filled with a drowsy atmosphere as snores began to echo throughout.
…
