Forbidden Zone Stroll (Part 2)

Chapter 34: 034. Walking the Forbidden Zone (Part 2)

Yellow sand churned the ground, frost and snow filled the sky.

The off-road modified vehicle, which originally looked rugged and fierce, now appeared as gentle and quiet as a Persian cat in the cold wind and sandstorm of the Outland.

Nomi drove the vehicle skillfully. There were no traffic rules in the Outland; one could drive for hundreds of kilometers without encountering another living being. Instead of driving cautiously, she relied on the vehicle's performance and simply floored the accelerator, forcefully breaking through the heavy blockade of frost and sand.

Li Aoz placed the supplies down and replaced them with fuel. This was also to increase the vehicle's weight, preventing it from being blown away by the strong winds.

He wasn't worried about flipping over. In the Outland, on the frozen sand, this vehicle had a suspension system, so he wasn't worried about flipping over on this kind of terrain. However, based on Li Aoz's years of experience, if the car didn't flip, it would likely be carried into the sky during a sandstorm.

The supply packages took up space in the car, so it was better to replace them with fuel to weigh down the body. The remaining fuel barrels could also be exchanged for goods. Even if they weren't used, they could be modified into incendiary bombs or the like.

When driving in the Outland, unless it was a convoy, one generally couldn't turn on the headlights to avoid being targeted by bandits and mutated beasts.

However, Nomi had good eyesight. People who could be drivers in the Outland basically had night vision comparable to wild beasts. As a guerrilla of the Rose Army, she must have received specialized training.

Also, due to the muddy terrain formed by the combination of sand and frost, it was actually very fuel-intensive to drive.

Li Aoz heard a joke from a Mechanic Player: the Four Nations, due to their tanks' insufficient horsepower, couldn't move at all in the muddy terrain of the Outland and would easily be paralyzed. This forced them to develop new armored vehicles to cope with the rapid marches in the Outland.

And then came mechs and powered exoskeletons.

Later, because humanoid mechs were not cost-effective, had too little defensive area, and were too inefficient, and also prone to flipping over, they began to lower the chassis more and more.

But this way, the humanoid mechs' heads became too conspicuous targets, easily getting headshotted.

So, the cockpit was moved from the head to the chest. Later, they even replaced the mechs' heads with monitors.

Later, they discovered that humanoid legs seemed less effective than hovercraft. They directly increased the contact area, creating a hovercraft-like structure.

The result was a tank with arms, its feet resting on hovercraft, proudly named Mobile Armor.

Although it looked much uglier, it could indeed replace tanks in the Outland.

Later, after some wars broke out in the Four Nations, they found that this thing could only replace tanks. The problem of infantry's armored vehicles couldn't be solved; they would still be paralyzed in the snow.

This led to the situation where the Mobile Armors charged forward, but the infantry's speed was slow and they couldn't provide cover, causing their own armored units to be blown up by the enemy's anti-tank squads.

In the end, they simply brought hovercraft back for the infantry to use.

As a result, the hovercraft's armor was insufficient and they were targeted by the enemy's cannons.

So, they piled cannons and armor onto the hovercraft, but the power was insufficient, so they could only increase the fuel tanks. With the increased fuel tanks, there was no longer space to accommodate a large number of infantry, and they could only be piloted by four people.

The final result was a bizarre scene where infantry chased tanks, and tanks chased Mobile Armors.

Of course, this was just a joke concocted by the nerdy male engineers. These test-taking, science-and-engineering geeks often came up with some heavy industrial jokes, like whether the father of a robot's offspring should be C++ or Java, or calling the act of a catfishing scam for 8,000 yuan a practical application of social engineering. Li Aoz's impression was that they were all mentally challenged internet trolls.

Li Aoz sat in the passenger seat, his feet propped up on the dashboard, his eyes half-closed, his thoughts drifting.

The Outland was very boring.

The dance of frost and sand, while spectacular and beautiful when first encountered, was merely monotonous and tedious when truly experienced.

This epic scene of ice and fire clashing, which could be praised by poets, was a source of deep hatred and suffering for the people of the Outland.

There was no life in the Outland.

Miss Qiu Ran in the back seat gazed curiously at the scenery outside the car. The sky was dark, and she could only see the lightning flashing between the red and black clouds.

"There's no sun outside..."

She said regretfully.

Li Aoz's guess was mostly correct. Qiu Ran was a Frostplate Citizen, but her background was even worse than Li Aoz's.

According to her, she had lived and grown up in a remote scrap metal recycling station in the countryside. For more than ten years, she had never entered a city. If it weren't for the accidental diagnosis of being infected and her relocation to a shelter for treatment, she would never have seen the true vastness of the world until now.

"Of course not, country bumpkin!"

Nomi snorted, "Hundreds of years ago, after the atmosphere was enveloped by those red and black Esha, the sunlight couldn't penetrate. The people of the Four Nations relied on thermonuclear fusion technology to maintain small artificial suns, producing Walden Particles, which were then used by barriers made of particle lattices to block the sandstorms and frost of the Outland—although I don't understand the technical terms, basically every town in the Four Nations has a thermonuclear fusion reactor beneath it."

"You don't even know about Walden?"

Li Aoz glanced at Nomi, "Even vocational school teaches this: Dr. Walden was a nuclear physicist of the Old Era. His Walden Hemisphere technology changed the landscape of war. It miniaturized thermonuclear fusion, allowing it to be deployed on armored units, completely changing the face of war."

"Not to mention, there's also a small reactor under the shelter, which can operate with a small amount of uranium fuel rods."

"Annoying! I never went to school. Anyway, sooner or later, we'll kick the eggs of the Four Nations! Those reactors will be ours sooner or later!"

Nomi impatiently slapped the steering wheel, "If it weren't for the blockade by the Four Nations, even without the sun, humanity could still survive."

Qiu Ran asked curiously, "The Outland doesn't have energy materials, right? If there's no sun, how can people survive at all?"

"Then tell me, how did those scumbags from the White Fang Gang survive? How did those settlements survive?"

Nomi asked irritably.

"Hmm... I don't know." Qiu Ran leaned against the window, continuing to observe the distant scenery.

"No, it's not that the Outland has no resources at all."

Li Aoz thought for a moment and said, "But having resources doesn't mean you have the ability to develop them. Petroleum has always existed underground, but it wasn't discovered until long after the Industrial Age. In fact, the Outland is much larger than the territory of the Four Nations. 70% of the entire Azure Planet's area belongs to the Outland."

He took some time to explain it clearly to Qiu Ran:

Since the sun's rays were blocked and absorbed by the red and black Esha clouds, the land could not absorb and reflect the heat from the sun, and the temperature was generally lower than that of the clouds at high altitudes.

The temperature difference between heaven and earth formed desperate gales, and the gales then took away the moisture from the surface. Without the sunlight necessary for survival, plants could only die. As a result, the originally firm soil completely lost its foundation for windbreak and sand fixation, leading to rapid soil erosion.

So much snow fell, but it couldn't melt due to the cold temperature. Even if the sand was dug open, the deeper layers were just cold earth.

They had long been frozen solid by the cold; only diamond drills could be used for excavation.

But even if rivers and reservoirs were artificially dug, without sunlight and warmth, how could aquatic ecosystems be cultivated? How could farmland be farmed? How could people be fed? Without a population, there could be no sufficient productivity to develop industry, and without industry, there would be no way to excavate underground resources.

Only a very small number of areas with developed geothermal energy, leeward positions, and stabilized soil erosion, such as those backed by high mountains and river valleys, or areas around volcanoes, could potentially support large populations.

"But the Four Nations are different. After the war that ended all wars broke out in the Old Era, people discovered that everything had ended except for war. Small countries were annihilated, and the Four Nations became absolute behemoths on Azure Planet."

Li Aoz changed the subject: "The historical records of the Four Nations state that before Esha enveloped heaven and earth, they already possessed a large number of nuclear power plants, ocean resources, and wind power plants. Their industrial facilities were complete, their agricultural resources were abundant, and their military strength was at the peak of the world. Even if the population was smaller, relying on nuclear energy would naturally attract a large number of people."

To prevent the scramble for energy from triggering another world war, the Four Nations calmed down this time.

They placed the bulk of the energy in the hands of the GTB, the Global Trade Bank, which was jointly organized by the Four Nations.

The people of the Four Nations could easily obtain energy loans from GTB to develop immigrant cities in the Outland, raise artificial suns, and establish hemispheric barriers.

But other small countries and autonomous city-states in the Outland would have "a little bit" of difficulty.

The bank could, under various pretexts, block the energy loan applications of small countries, forcing them to purchase oil, natural gas, electricity, and iron ore at exorbitant prices from the Four Nations.

Li Aoz told a story about his home country in his previous life – the Alranka Kingdom.

Alranka was a vassal state of the Red Arrow Empire. The two countries shared languages and economies, but their races were somewhat different, a result of the Red Arrow Empire's cultural and economic colonization.

Despite sitting on a uranium mine, the small country of Alranka had to sell it to its neighbor, the Red Arrow Empire, at a low price of 200 Derby per ton in exchange for political, defense, and electricity support. In reality, the empire could have simply seized it, but they insisted on giving such a small amount of money. It truly made him cry.

Li Aoz wasn't being sarcastic here because the Alranka Kingdom was actually the luckiest of the small countries. Backed by the Red Arrow Empire, they had Gundams, resources, and earned a fortune by flattering His Majesty the Emperor.

Through its sycophantic stance, Alranka managed to become a force of dimensional strike among its neighboring small countries.

Meanwhile, the slogan in neighboring Heavenly Ring was "Leave the land, not the people," and the scene was a bit too graphic for Li Aoz to elaborate on.

With the capital provided by GTB, the population grew, the economy developed, and then various enterprises, factories, and service industries emerged, improving the quality of life for the people. This, in turn, further promoted population growth.

However, the growing population also brought pressure in terms of employment, survival, and the environment.

To develop and divert contradictions, they would turn their attention to the vast Outland.

Thus, the people of the Four Nations, unaffected by the cold winds and sandstorms, explored outwards. With sunlight and energy, they could build factories, establish large farms, and extract the mineral resources of the Outland, causing even more severe damage to the mountains and soil.

The destruction of mineral deposits was also largely the destruction of the geological environment. With the relentless construction of machinery day and night, the already severely eroded land became even more fragile.

The Outland people could only watch as their homeland was carried away by the wind.

Li Aoz described it in a very understated tone.

Beneath the brilliance and prosperity of each hemispheric city lay the piled-up bones of the Outland people.

However, the Four Nations were not entirely without conscience and only knew how to plunder.

"Damn it!"

Nomi suddenly cursed. Before that, she had slammed on the brakes three times, bringing the vehicle to a smooth stop. Li Aoz immediately pulled up his mask and jumped out of the vehicle.

As soon as he opened the car door, even with the mask's barrier, a strange, pungent smell that directly hit his forehead assailed him.

Li Aoz frowned, leaning on the car door, his thoughts churning within him.

"What happened..." Qiu Ran mumbled as she got out of the car, her hand shielding her eyes, peering through the gaps at the scene ahead.

Faced with the situation before them, the group could barely breathe.

About 800 meters away, they saw a steaming lake, shimmering with a faint orange-red glow amidst the red-black and ghastly white landscape.