The truck rumbled as it stopped by the side of the road.
A black hair middle-aged man, a woman, a black man, and a blonde man.
They jumped down from the truck and moved the obstacles on the road away.
Gu Qing Shan observed indifferently as they were busily working without making any decision.
He noticed that from start to end, only these four people were working on the road, no one else came out from the small town to help them.
That was a bit strange.
From the pictures he saw from the newspaper, this world seemed to have faced a sort of mutated creature threat and was heading towards ruin.
Whenever a truck went into town like this, the people of the town should be wary or should try to check it out. At least, from their desire towards food and information alone, there should be at least a few people who would come to try and see the situation.
But the reality was that no one came out of the town at all.
Gu Qing Shan stuck close to the wall and silently watched as they pushed the obstacles on the road away.
They seemed quite skilled at it as if they had already gotten used to doing this.
After a while, perhaps because he was a bit tired, the black hair middle-aged man who carried a gun on his back breathed heavily and complained: “I don’t want to keep moving these roadblocks around anymore, can someone please find me some more living people please”
The black man spoke seriously: “Don’t even joke about that, old Li, without these roadblocks, we would all be finished”
“We can only hope that God above helps us and let us find some people during later searches. We really are lacking in manpower” the blond man also commented.
They stopped talking and slowly stopped working as well.
At this point, the sun had gone down a bit more so the temperature became slightly lower again.
Sunset was arriving soon.
The three men and one woman gathered under the shade of the truck, each lighting a cigarette and slowly smoking it.
The blond man spoke dejectedly: “Tonight is going to be another busy night, everyone should take a short rest first, otherwise, you might not last”
The man called old Li shook his head: “It’s regretful that we couldn’t find anyone to replace us, really unlucky, we finally managed to find two people, but they were girls”
The only woman there glared at him and angrily spoke: “So what if they were girls? At least they could help us cook and clean”
Old Li smiled bitterly: “I’d rather eat and live a bit worse if those girls can take up the guns and deal with the monsters”
The woman refuted: “Those girls were barely old enough to be high school students, the fact that they could keep calm at all was already good enough, and you want them taking up guns to kill monsters?”
Old li shrugged with a helpless expression.
” I’m hungry, let’s deal with our stomach first”
The black man mediated between them without giving his opinion.
The group arrived at the back of the truck and opened the shielding.
Gu Qing Shan hid in the shadow, squinted his eyes, and carefully observed.
There were all sorts of things inside the truck , including food, household items, clothes, and even a living pig.
The pig was gnawing on some white radish.
The four people carried a small crate down from the truck and swiftly pried it open.
Inside, there were various cans of food neatly lined up as well as a bit of alcohol.
In an apocalypse, this was already quite a considerable bit of food.
“I don’t really like beef” the woman complained.
“We can’t help it, we need three cans each, so you should at least eat two, otherwise you won’t be able to replenish your stamina and there would be a problem at night” old Li told her.
Hearing that, Gu Qing Shan had a different thought.
In an apocalypse setting, canned beef can be considered a luxury item, yet she was complaining about it.
And these people weren’t being stingy with it at all, three cans of food were normally enough for an adult male to feel a bit too full.
Seems like their current state of living could be considered decent.
Fortunately, Gu Qing Shan knew a lot of languages so he managed to tell that they were speaking a sort of less-widely used human language in the 900 million World Layers.
From their earlier conversations, he knew that they were sheltering two young girls who couldn’t fight.
And those two girls were kept quite safe.
Gu Qing Shan’s gaze fell onto the gun on old Li’s back and carefully observed it.
This was an old and primitive sniper rifle.
Gu Qing Shan was originally a Mech expert who was able to create the Seraph, a Mech that was considered to be ahead of its time, almost by himself, so he naturally had extensive knowledge of such basic weapons.
The sniper rifle that old Li carried on his back only had the range to attack enemies within 800-1000 meters, and only enough power to damage a small-sized target. It wouldn’t be much use against armored Mechs or giant monsters.
It can’t even perform a sniping ambush that exceeded the line of sight.
But from how much old Li appeared to treasure this gun, it must have been with him for a considerably long time, or it was his main form of attack.
How weak.
Even when they’re so short on hands, they still decided to shelter a couple of powerless girls.
This partially proved both their living standards and disposition.
Combined with the box of canned beef as well as the still-living pig on the truck.
This doesn’t seem to be too bad of a start.
Gu Qing Shan lightly nodded.
He finally made his decision.
On the outside, the blond man gave each person a can of food, then turned around to take a bottle of alcohol and four glasses from the truck.
“Don’t drink too much, only one glass per person at most” old Li reminded them.
They knocked their glasses together and drank.
At this point, a sound came not too far away from them.
Everyone immediately turned towards the source of the sound.
Only to see a man standing at the burnt door of the building.
“Help me!”
The man leaned on the handles of the door and breathed heavily.
“Don’t move!”
“He’s not a monster”
“Stay where you are!”
“Wait, it’s a living person”
They all shouted and awkwardly pulled out their weapons.
Gu Qing Shan just stood still, feeling a bit speechless.
Their reactions were too unprofessional.
With their standard, against a true hitman like Zhang Ying Hao, they would’ve been killed who knows how many times over.
“Help me”
“What happened? What’s the problem?” the black man loudly questioned.
“Thirsty” Gu Qing Shan replied.
The four of them exchanged glances.
The blond man took out a pair of binocular and carefully observed Gu Qing Shan.
“He’s unhurt, apparently a bit exhausted”
“His eyes haven’t mutated, a normal person”
The blond man reported to his companions as he observed him.
“Give him some water” the black man said.
“But we already drank all the water we brought” old Li refuted.
“Then give him alcohol” the black man suggested.
“No, his body is too dehydrated, we need to give him water” the woman spoke.
“We’re too far, give him some alcohol to first quench his thirst” the black man insisted.
“We can’t, alcohol won ‘t do anything, it could affect his judgement instead” old Li also shook his head.
The blond man joined their discussion: “Why not? In ancient times, people were afraid that water wasn’t clean so they all brewed alcohol to use as regular drinks”
Gu Qing Shan silently listened to their bickering.
The sun was already going down and night would soon arrive.
If it truly was as they said and there would be a lot of danger at night, being stuck here wouldn’t be a good thing.
Do they really have time to waste on something like this?
Gu Qing Shan silently sighed.
“Water, give me water”
After saying that, he fainted.
This time, the four people stopped bickering.
“Carry him, we’ll give him some water back at the base”
Old Li ended their quarrel.
A bumpy ride later.
Someone pried his mouth open and gave him some water.
Gu Qing Shan took a few sips, then slowly opened his eyes.
A 16-17 years old girl was the one feeding him.
“Are you awake? Can you drink water by yourself? “The young girl shyly asked.
“I can”
Gu Qing Shan acted like he struggled a bit to sit up from the sofa, received the bowl of water, and drank everything inside.
He felt a bit better.
“Is there any more water ?”
“Here”
Another girl gave him a plastic bottle of water.
Gu Qing Shan received it, twisted the cap open and drank everything inside.
With enough water, his body could finally recover some strength.
“Thank you a lot, for saving me”
Gu Qing Shan looked at the two girls and smiled.
“You’re welcome, but we were also saved by others” one of the girls told him.
Gu Qing Shan turned to the other direction and asked: “Which means, you were the ones who saved me?”
Within his vision, the four people were cautiously looking at him.
Gu Qing Shan was a lot more casual.
Since he could already guess their personalities from before, as long as he dealt with them carefully, there wouldn’t be any problems.
The blond man openly held a dagger in his hand.
The woman placed her hand close to her chest, apparently also holding a weapon as she stared closely at Gu Qing Shan.
The black man was standing at the front, old Li leaning on the wall on the back with their weapons seemingly relaxing on their thighs.
A decent emergency team.
Gu Qing Shan silently praised.
Seems like aside from how often they bicker, this was still a decently competent team.
At least, judging by a normal person’s perspective.
“Young man, what’s your job?” old Li asked first.
“I’m a scientist” Gu Qing Shan replied.
The group was surprised.
They didn’t expect that to be the answer.
“Where did you come from?” the black man asked.
“From the Southeast highway”
“That place isn’t very peaceful” the blond man scowled.
“That bunch of low lives” the woman muttered in a low voice, apparently a bit upset.
Gu Qing Shan quickly followed up: “That’s right , my vehicle was stolen, I had to walk all the way here and almost died in the process”
“They didn’t kill you?”
“I was in the toilet at the time. When I saw those guys coming from a distance, I buried myself underneath the sand and waited, after a while of searching, they couldn’t handle the heat so they took my vehicle and left”
“So you have some wits about you. You said you were a scientist, what do you research ?”
“Weapons”
“Guns?”
“No, a bit more advanced than that” Gu Qing Shan replied.
“Fighter jets? Tanks? Canons” the black man tried asking further.
Gu Qing Shan smiled.
So in his perception, those things were already considered advanced.
I can now confirm that the level of technology in this world is not too far from what I had thought.
They’ve only just begun to study hot weapons for at most 300 years, and their Mechs were still at the opening stages of research.
Mechs…
Gu Qing Shan couldn’t help but feel nostalgic.
…
In the ancient era , personal combat units like Mechs were never really considered by true military experts.
A single ballistic missile could deal with a lot of problems.
And the cost for a single Mech suit could cost up to several thousand ballistic missiles.
Any other weapon was able to do a Mech’s job at a fraction of the price.
Because of this, no one bothered to spend several hundred times the effort to research and create Mech suits.
This was the situation for a very long time.
Only after science had advanced to a high enough degree that the Mech suits were able to show up again in the public’s eyes with the role of “superheroes”.
As science and technology continued to develop, the problem of the production cost for Mechs was slowly resolved and artificial intelligence became good enough to be used commercially.
A Mech suit could learn everything by itself and complete various jobs in the place of people, thus humanity entered an era of comfort.
As Mechs started to replace people’s jobs, another seed of inner conflict was buried among the people, since the rate of technological advancement for each country was different, the types of Mechs that could be created also differed.
And soon, war broke out.
Countless Mechs conducted intense wars of attrition in place of people.
At some point, the situation changed.
People began to notice that when a large number of Mechs are deployed onto the battlefield, at certain points in time, some independent and rare situations would occur.
One of the most notable ones was that the Mechs would perform mutual communication.
They formed a type of mechanical language that humans don’t understand, study and copy them among one another and headed towards what was essentially mechanical evolution.
Humans couldn’t understand what they were communicating with each other.
But the Mechs could completely understand humans and war.
At the same time, they were connected to the world wide web and were constantly studying, observing every scientific breakthrough and shift in humanity’s social structures.
Everyone felt true terror brought about by their own technological growth.
The wars immediately ended.
From that point onwards, the central autonomous AI of each Mech was erased and made sure that the movement and actions of every Mech must be under the control and orders of a rider or central commanding officer.
This was the famous first Principle of Mobile Mechs: People must take control over every action of machines.
…
“Do you know about Mechs?”
Gu Qing Shan awoke from his nostalgia and asked.
“You’re telling us that you’re a Mech scientist?” old Li asked.
“I am” Gu Qing Shan nodded.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have those things here” old Li spoke regretfully.
“Which means, we can’t confirm your identity. We can’t trust you” the woman said.
The blond man also spoke: “If you belong to one of those damned gangs who was sent to infiltrate us…”
The atmosphere became heavy.
Gu Qing Shan smiled and replied: “Proving my identity is easy. I know a little bit about everything as long as it’s a machine, so you can test me on those”
“What can you make?” old Li asked.
“What do you need?” Gu Qing Shan rolled his sleeves up.
As long as there are enough material and time, I can make any powerful antique hot weapons.
This is exactly my expertise!
His openness and confidence made everyone sigh in relief.
The people of those gangs didn’t know much about machines or technology, before this apocalypse, they were nothing but thugs.
Everyone exchanged looks.
“Can you really make anything as long as it’s related to machinery?” the black man asked.
“Maybe not everything, but I’m quite the mechanical expert, so I should be able to make the majority of things” Gu Qing Shan humbly replied.
Antique machines are quite simple, but I have to consider the fact that there might be things I haven’t seen, and since this was the Earth World, there might be a lot of things I don’t know the use of that I need to slowly study.
“Can you fix things as well?” the woman asked.
Fix?
Fixing was considerably easier than making something from scratch since the majority of the components are already there and assembled. All he needed to do was identify the problem and deal with it.
Whether it was the truck or their guns, or perhaps even “fixing” their vehicles to make an excavator that dealt with the roadblocks was nothing but child’s play for Gu Qing Shan.
Gu Qing Shan nodded: “Of course I also know how to fix things”
Everyone exchanged glances again with clear expressions of fortune on their faces.
The atmosphere of the room became even better.
“Thank god, we finally got someone who could look into this, our toilet has been broken for a while” the black man said
dejectedly. Gu Qing Shan froze.
