027 Long Time No See, Have You Eliminated Poverty Yet? (Part 2)

"Let's get off the bus," Li Aoz said when he saw a building that looked similar to his memory.

"Hey, this dosage could kill someone!" Barnum gripped the steering wheel tightly, refusing to let go no matter what.

"What's there to be afraid of? The radiation level is only that low. It's at most equivalent to taking 10 X-rays. Just go back and have some green tea and it'll be fine."

Li Aoz grabbed an entrenching tool, opened the car door, and with a grieving hook, pulled the mournful-looking Barnum out of the car.

It has to be said that ordinary teammates are far inferior to extraordinary warriors.

He had already started missing Du Zexin. You could say that Mouldy Crotch anyone else in every way: handsome, strong, smart, loyal, brave, and a civil servant.

I was just unlucky.

Barnum insisted on wearing a lead groin protector because he was afraid that he would lose his fertility due to radiation. Li Aoz didn't care and led him around aimlessly, passing through the forest and arriving at a residential area.

The Old Era is about 300 to 400 years ago. The reinforced concrete houses have naturally degraded, removing the original traces of human decoration. Spiral steel bars extend from the dilapidated walls. Due to the ravages of Malefic Calamity, these things have rusted faster and are covered with a layer of crystalline red and black prisms. When the wind blows, they immediately make a crisp tinkling sound.

The place was eerily quiet. Occasionally, one could see vaporized black human figures on the walls, one of a person desperately holding their child in their arms, but still unable to escape their fate, leaving only a mottled black shadow for posterity.

However, in this forbidden land for humans, Barnum saw all kinds of wild animals.

"Wow, is that a deer?" He pointed in surprise at the sika deer foraging for food in the bushes in the distance. Li Aoz looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a mother and her child. There was no sign of deformity on their bodies. Apart from having more spots, they looked no different from creatures from hundreds of years ago.

These wild animals were clearly more adorable than creatures from the Outland. Barnum had only heard of animals from the Old Era in the private zoos of some Noble Clan. He couldn't resist taking out his terminal to take a picture, but the flash scared the mother and child away.

"Huh?"

Although Barnum's attempt to take a picture failed, the flash happened to illuminate a dark corner of the forest. Li Aoz noticed a distinct metallic reflection in the forest and immediately led a disappointed Barnum inside.

The ecosystem here was too wild; he had to burn away the tangled tree roots with fire to find a stone tablet buried in the natural forest. Fortunately, the inscription was written with a special kind of pigment and hadn't degraded. Li Aoz used the fire to illuminate his vision and read the inscription:

"The nameless heroes come here, leaving you with hope and a future."

Barnum also recognized it. "It is an Old Era script, Amirelian."

"You actually understand this?" Li Aoz somewhat surprised; he had thought that only players possessed this language.

"Uh, I don't really understand." Barnum scratched his head a little embarrassedly. "I studied it for a while in college to get Credits."

"Not bad, not bad." Li Aoz patted the other person on the shoulder and said, "A civilization that forgets its history has no future."

Finding this stone tablet meant that Li Aoz was on the right track. They continued walking along the forest and soon found an abandoned cemetery.

Solitary tombstones stand in the ground, weathered and degraded by years of Malefic Calamity and Frost and Snow. They are nothing to be brought into this world, nothing to be taken away. The firefighters who saved us from the nuclear leak are now resting here, seemingly guarding this wasteland even in death.

Barnum felt a solemn atmosphere wash over him, as if the dead history had come back to life. Perhaps a heart-wrenching funeral had taken place here, with people offering white flowers to the fallen soldiers, and the sound of bells bidding them farewell, their echoes lingering in the air.

Chirp chirp chirp—

The Yellow Azalea's call rang out, but the cemetery was deserted.

Barnum regained consciousness. Perhaps the excessive radiation had affected his cognitive nerves, causing hallucinations. He looked closely and saw that Li Aoz had walked to the deepest part of the cemetery, next to a very inconspicuous tombstone.

The tombstone, weathered by wind and rain, is devoid of any carvings, leaving only a thin number, '1917'.

"Mr. Li Aoz— " Barnum called out.

The tombstone number in front of me overlapped with my memory, which was also the place that Malish had described.

"This is it."

Li Aoz folded his shovel, used gravity to move the tombstone, and began digging the grave.

"Hey, hey, hey, this is going too far... these are the coffins of heroes from the past."

"No, there are still living people inside."

"Live—" Barnum choked with emotion, speechless.

Are there still living people here? Putting everything else aside, the fact that there is still this level of radiation after so many years indicates that this was not a place where humans could live for a long time before.

Not to mention, these tombstones were erected so early, at least 400 to 500 years ago. The Grant Duchy probably didn't even exist back then—no, Frostplate probably didn't exist either! Li Aoz dug very quickly. In order not to cause large-scale damage to the cemetery, he chose to dig only with tools. As his entrenching tool hit a solid surface and made a crisp sound, he immediately knew that he had struck something.

He quickly cleared away the dirt, jumped out of the pit, and used gravity to pull the entire alloy coffin out. When Barnum saw the bronze coffin, something occurred to him, and his expression changed drastically.

"My God, were resources this abundant Old Era?" He reached out and touched the alloy plate in disbelief; the smooth texture confirmed Barnum's suspicions.

"This is Erbium Gold! An extremely precious aerospace material, 200 times stronger than Titanium Alloy, but only one-third the density of iron! So much Erbium Gold is worth at least 1.8 billion derbies!"

1.8 billion derbies, that's more than the Grant Duchy's military expenditure over ten years.

This is still the most conservative estimate, because in reality, no country can produce Erbium Gold; they all rely on their ancestors' reserves.

The aircraft, made of Erbium Gold, can easily accelerate to Mach 5 without any concern for overheating or disintegration. In the battlefield, it would be capable of taking on a hundred enemies at once, and no Air-to-air Missile in the world can penetrate it.

If you add the best pilots to carry Nuclear Warhead and accurately drop them on any city—that would be nothing short of divine.

This thing is a vital national asset.

If Li Aoz's fiancée is indeed Erbium Gold, Barnum not only believes it, but also doesn't mind that this 'beauty' is nearly 500 years old. She's not old and faded; she's still incredibly charming!