Chapter 245 - 207: Knoer Meteorite

Chapter 245: Chapter 207: Knoer Meteorite

Settlements.

In a post-apocalyptic society, they are the organizational units where humans band together to survive.

A settlement is typically established near a water source or in a location rich with supplies, like a military base from the previous civilization.

Yejiang Base was one such place.

It used to be a military base, later converted into a survival base, housing over a thousand people.

Its leader was a thirty-year-old man named Xu Xuan.

He possessed a powerful Freezing Superpower, capable of instantly freezing even Level 2 Mutated Beasts. It also allowed him to keep large quantities of food fresh. His contributions to building such a large settlement in this apocalypse were indispensable.

’Ah Lan and the others have been gone for so long and still haven’t returned. They must have run into serious trouble. The mutated rat swarm attacked our warehouse and farmland, so now food is severely scarce. A lot of people were injured, and they might get infected. Our stored medicine is almost gone, too...’

In the room, Xu Xuan smoked a cigarette, his face etched with melancholy.

Before the apocalypse, he was just a supermarket cashier. Managing so many people was not easy for him.

He had been through a lot, from life-and-death crises to several betrayals. He was even stabbed twice by a woman because of his lecherousness. If it weren’t for a few of his buddies helping him out, he would have been long gone.

"Should we send someone to look for them?" a subordinate suggested.

"A pack of wild dogs has taken over the city district. Every last one of them... even I might not make it back in one piece if I go. Forget it," Xu Xuan said, taking a drag from his cigarette.

Although the loss of his good brother pained him, it wasn’t the first time he had to say goodbye.

In this apocalypse, he was already used to it.

"Brother Xu, should we break out the canned food for the emergency?" someone asked.

"If we eat it now, what will we do later?"

"If we don’t eat, there won’t be a later. Those are our people. We have to protect them, or there will be no one left to work."

"You’re not just thinking about those women of yours, are you? They barely do any work all day, but they insist on eating the best food..."

"Alright, fine, you’re going to argue about this too. I’m going out for some air. Call me when you’ve reached a decision..."

Amid the argument, someone pushed the door open, then suddenly froze.

"Boss... Boss..."

The man suddenly turned back and shouted excitedly at Xu Xuan, his lips trembling uncontrollably.

"What is it? What’s with all the fuss!" Xu Xuan asked with a frown.

"Aliens..."

"Aliens?"

Xu Xuan stood up, pushed him aside, and looked outside.

In that instant, his expression also turned vacant.

The cigarette in his hand burned down to his fingers, but he still couldn’t snap out of it.

’How can a ship that big fly in the sky?’

’What kind of technology is this?’

’And it looks like it’s heading for our settlement?’

’Could it be some black-ops tech someone cobbled together in this apocalypse?’

In their own settlement, they had managed to put together a few special compressed-air guns and some simple mechanical devices. But to create something this massive, something that could ignore the flying Exotic Beasts in the sky—what level of skill did that require?

...

The Ship of Hope landed in an open area within the settlement.

Then, Zhang Ji disembarked with his people.

Lan Zhigao was among them.

Everyone except Zhang Ji and Tran wore protective suits.

The atmosphere here had been severely damaged. The external temperature was very high, upwards of seventy degrees. A normal person couldn’t withstand long-term exposure.

Only superhumans and mutated flora and fauna could survive in this environment.

Xu Xuan watched the group walk toward them, his expression extremely cautious.

It wasn’t until Lan Zhigao took off his protective suit, revealing his face, that a look of joyful surprise appeared on Xu Xuan’s face.

"Boss!!"

"Ah Lan, I was just thinking about you, and here you are, back alive! You old dog, you’ve got a tough hide!!"

Xu Xuan and Lan Zhigao embraced excitedly.

"What’s going on?" Xu Xuan asked Lan Zhigao.

"It’s like this..."

Lan Zhigao briefly explained the origins of Zhang Ji and his group.

The expressions on the faces of Xu Xuan and the others were priceless.

The good news: they weren’t aliens.

The bad news: they were people from a Parallel Universe who had come to rule them.

Well, whether they were aliens or people from a Parallel Universe, it didn’t make much of a difference, good or bad, for the current state of Rhombus Star.

For a civilization that had already rotted to the core, it was hard to imagine a more unacceptable future.

"You must be the leader here," Zhang Ji said to Xu Xuan.

"And this is?" Xu Xuan asked Lan Zhigao.

"The Supreme One of the Saint King Council," Lan Zhigao said.

He had just cautiously mentioned Zhang Ji’s status. Hearing this, Xu Xuan immediately understood and said, "What guidance do you have for us?"

"Guidance is too strong a word. As fellow humans, we will be conducting humanitarian aid here. We will help you recover your ability to survive and rebuild your civilization as much as possible. I hope we can count on your cooperation," Zhang Ji said.

"And... what’s the price?" Xu Xuan asked tentatively.

Having lived in the apocalypse for so long, he was accustomed to the principle that there is no reward without a cost.

"The price?" Zhang Ji smiled. "There is no price. Or rather, the greatest price is that we become a community of shared interests."

From the moment they arrived, this place had become the Saint King Council’s territory.

’Why would we talk about a price for rescuing our own people?’

Xu Xuan understood Zhang Ji’s meaning, but he wasn’t the least bit displeased. In fact, he was overjoyed.

Considering the current state of human civilization on Rhombus Star, the word "civilization" itself had long ceased to apply.

The Saint King Council was willing to incorporate them into its dominion. They couldn’t welcome it fast enough; how could they possibly refuse?

Xu Xuan immediately expressed his gratitude and promised his full cooperation, saying he would have everyone help.

In reality, the help of the base’s inhabitants wasn’t needed.

Once they received their orders, the research personnel they had brought sprang into action. Robots were taken out of Spatial Artifacts and activated on the spot. They began distributing food and providing medical aid using techniques like Magic Potions. Drones ascended to survey the area, plan the construction of simple defensive fortifications, map the surrounding terrain, collect material samples, and simultaneously begin calibrating data to launch surveillance satellites...

The series of support measures was carried out in an orderly fashion.

They had already implemented these procedures in the Celestial Essence Realm and Lan’er World.

Here, they only needed to make a few minor adjustments.

In just half a day, the interior of the base was completely transformed, equivalent to having built a small town from scratch.

Modular construction was just that fast.

They simply demolished the original structures, moved the supplies, took out the building modules on the spot, and unfolded them.

Two Realms City was built the same way.

Of all these technologies, only Space Technology was a more recent development.

The rest were all technologies that Origin Star possessed in the past.

It was just that in the past, even transporting modular buildings was extremely difficult.

But now, even an entire city could be moved in a short time by dispatching just two or three people with some folding Space Boxes.

The advent of spatial storage technology opened up new applications for many other technologies.

This was just one of the changes.

Once the initial construction was complete, the surrounding area had also been thoroughly scouted.

Next, they would gradually clear out the Exotic Beasts and expand construction outward to secure a sufficiently large living area.

After eating the nutrient-rich meals, Xu Xuan and the others were overcome with emotion, finding it hard to believe and fearing it was all a dream.

The people who received treatment were also mad with gratitude. Many who had been simply waiting to die were now even moved to tears.

After being tormented into near-unrecognizable states by the apocalypse, the sudden arrival of a deus ex machina-like force allowed many people’s tightly-wound spirits to finally release, and their emotions burst forth uncontrollably.

Of course, a few had gone a little crazy.

Their minds were a bit unstable, and they were still complaining about why Zhang Ji and his group hadn’t arrived sooner.

However, words like that basically never reached the ears of the people Zhang Ji had brought. Xu Xuan’s men would shut them up midway.

And if they didn’t stay quiet after that, they would be made to disappear.

Zhang Ji could hear these voices, but he didn’t care.

He had heard far more complaints on Origin Star.

Even Gu Jie would occasionally have some minor complaints in his heart, but that was just human nature.

If one were to nitpick, a problem could be found with everyone.

When Zhang Ji used people, he never cared what kind of person you were or what you thought. What mattered was what you did and whether you were valuable to him.

"Let’s go," Zhang Ji said to Tran. "Time to find the source of the calamity."

Tran nodded, and the two of them immediately took to the sky.

Witnessing this, Xu Xuan and the others had looks of amazed contemplation in their eyes.

While the act of flying wasn’t difficult for Extraordinary beings of a certain power level, it was something everyone yearned for, and a skill they could not currently grasp.

...

「The Li Sea.」

After the calamity, this became the largest sea on all of Rhombus Star.

It covered thirty percent of the planet’s surface.

After the great meteorite named "Knoer" fell, its main body had crashed here, plunging into the depths of the ocean and significantly expanding it.

It took Tran and Zhang Ji nearly ten minutes to fly here.

Of course, to be precise, it took Tran ten minutes. For Zhang Ji, at full speed, he could have arrived in just two or three flashes.

After arriving at the sea above the meteorite, Zhang Ji and Tran entered the water together.

The seabed also teemed with numerous mutated beasts. The energy radiated by the great Knoer Meteorite caused flora and fauna to mutate. Some failed mutations resulted in death, but those that succeeded could continuously absorb this radiation to strengthen themselves.

Therefore, they were all drawn to it.

Zhang Ji and Tran were fast enough that few of the undersea mutated beasts could get close to them.

Soon, they dove deep into the sea, reaching the bottom at a depth of over forty thousand meters.

A massive meteorite, at least twenty kilometers in diameter, lay here. Its surface emitted an orange-red glow, radiating outward. Tran felt the radiation and sensed their cells beginning to change uncontrollably, so they doubled the protection of their Telekinesis, not daring to let even a trace of it penetrate.

Zhang Ji, on the other hand, didn’t feel much. He had his own Life Force Field, and unless he consciously allowed it, ordinary methods could not alter his physical body.

Around the meteorite were several gigantic deep-sea creatures.

There was a giant crab-like creature the size of a mountain range, a massive octopus with thousands of tentacles, and even a vast patch of dark red seaweed...

Among these mutated beasts, the strongest was a bivalve resting on top of the meteorite. Although it was less than a hundred meters in size, its energy level alone had reached S-class.

None of the surrounding mutated beasts dared to rest on the meteorite as it did.