In the northern part of Jinchuan Province, nestled among mountains and forests, stood an old ruin.
Its name was Jinh River City, seven or eight hundred kilometers from Clear Spring City—roughly the distance from River City to Mountain City in the real world.
On a gentle slope at the edge of the forest in Jinh River City's outskirts stood a small settlement called Dust Town.
Two or three hundred households lived there. A one-meter-tall low wall surrounded the town, and within it stood a granite-built watchtower.
Settlements of this kind were common in Jinchuan Province.
After all, this was unlike Sunset Province, which had deserts and riverbanks as natural barriers that limited the migration and hunting of mutants.
Instead, because it lay in the subtropics, where the climate was humid, warm, and rainy, large numbers of mutants had migrated here from other provinces.
Here, mutant slime molds were not the most dangerous threat. The real dangers were the mutants who had migrated from the eastern coast, as well as radioactive waste scattered throughout the land.
About a month ago, while The Alliance's army was fighting the Legion fiercely in Sunset Province, Dust Town, tucked away in this remote corner, had been quietly making a fortune. The mayor had earned quite a few silver coins trading with The Alliance.
He then used those silver coins to buy a large number of LD-47s and Maxim guns retired from the front line, replacing the old pipe rifles and rusty short blades. He also hired some vicious thugs as bodyguards, making it easier for him to further exploit the old farmers laboring in the fields and protect the silver coins he had stockpiled in the watchtower.
However, good times did not last.
The mayor was a man with ideas, and coincidentally, so were the