Walking Through the Forbidden Zone (Part 2)

Yellow sand swept across the ground, Frost and Snow stretched to the horizon.

The off-road vehicle, which had originally looked rugged, wild, and vicious, seemed as gentle and quiet as a ragdoll cat amid Outland's freezing winds and sandstorms.

Nomi drove skillfully. There were no traffic laws in Outland, and one might travel hundreds of kilometers without encountering a living thing. Rather than drive cautiously, it was better to rely on the vehicle's performance, floor the accelerator, and force their way through layer after layer of frost-sand obstruction.

Li Aoz had replaced the supplies with fuel partly to increase the vehicle's weight and keep it from being blown away by the wind.

He was not worried about it flipping over. In Outland, the ground was basically cold, compacted sand, and the vehicle had a suspension system, so it was unlikely to overturn on this terrain. But based on Li Aoz's years of experience, if a car could not be flipped by the wind, then it would probably be carried straight into the sky during a storm.

Supply packages took up space inside the vehicle, so it was better to replace them with fuel to weigh down the chassis. The remaining fuel drums could be traded for things, and even if they were useless, they could be modified into Molotov cocktails or something similar.

When driving in Outland, unless one was part of a convoy, one generally could not turn on the headlights, lest bandits and mutated beasts notice them.

Fortunately, Nomi had good eyesight. Anyone who could work as a driver in Outland generally had night vision comparable to a beast's, and as a Rose Army guerrilla, she had surely received specialized training.

Likewise, the muddy ground formed by the mixture of sand and frost made driving extremely fuel-consuming.

Li Aoz had heard a joke from mechanic players: because the Four Nations' tanks lacked horsepower, they could not move at all through Outland's muddy terrain and would easily become immobilized. They had no choice but to develop new armored vehicles to handle rapid marches through Outland.

That was how mechs and powered exoskeletons came about.

Later, they found humanoid mechs were not cost-effective. Their defensive surface area was too small, their efficiency too low, and they were prone to tipping over, so their chassis was modified lower and lower.

But then the heads of humanoid mechs became far too conspicuous, making them easy targets for headshots.

So the cockpit was moved from the head to the chest, and eventually the mech's head was simply replaced with a monitor.

Later, they discovered that humanoid feet did not seem as useful as air cushions, so they directly increased the contact area and made them into hovercraft-like structures.

What they ended up with was a tank with arms and feet standing on air cushions, grandly named Mobile Armor.

It looked much uglier, but it really could replace tanks in Outland.

Later still, after the Four Nations fought several wars, they discovered that the thing could only replace tanks. It did nothing to solve the infantry's armored transport problem. If they were meant to be immobilized in the snow, then they would still be immobilized.

This meant that after Mobile Armor charged ahead, the infantry was too slow to keep up and provide cover, resulting in their armored units getting blown to pieces by the enemy's Anti-Tank Squad.

So in the end, they simply brought hovercraft back for infantry use.

But the hovercraft's armor was insufficient, and enemy artillery set them ablaze.

So they piled artillery and armor onto the hovercraft, but the power was insufficient again, leaving them no choice but to enlarge the fuel tanks. Once the fuel tanks were enlarged, there was no longer room for large numbers of infantry, and they could only seat four operators.

The final result was the bizarre sight of infantry chasing tanks, while tanks chased Mobile Armor into battle.

Of course, that was only a joke made by those mechanically horny men. These test-taking engineering nerds often came up with heavy-industry jokes, like whether the father of a child born from a pregnant robot should be C++ or Java, or whether getting scammed out of eight thousand after meeting an online date should count as a practical application of Social Engineering. Li Aoz's impression was that every last one of them was an idiot-forum moderator.

Li Aoz sat in the passenger seat with his feet propped on the dashboard, his eyes half-closed as his thoughts drifted.

Outland was boring.

The dance of frost and sandstorms was indeed magnificent and beautiful at first sight, but actually walking through it only felt monotonous and tedious.

This epic scene of ice and fire clashing together, worthy of praise from poets and scholars, was a suffering the Outland People deeply hated.

There was no life in Outland.

Miss Qiu Ran in the back seat curiously watched the scenery outside. The sky was dark, and all she could see was lightning flickering between the red-black clouds.

"So there really isn't a sun outside..."

She spoke regretfully.

Li Aoz's guess had been mostly correct. Qiu Ran was a Frostplate Citizen, though her origins were even worse than Li Aoz's.

According to her, she had grown up in a remote rural scrapyard and had never entered a city in more than ten years. If she had not been diagnosed as an infected person by accident and relocated to a shelter for treatment, then even now, she would never have seen the true vastness of the world.

"Of course there isn't, country bumpkin!"

Nomi snorted. "Several hundred years ago, after the atmosphere was wrapped in that red-black Malefic Calamity, sunlight could no longer get through. The people of the Four Nations rely on nuclear fusion technology to maintain small Artificial Suns, which produce Walden Particles. Then they use barriers formed from particle lattices to block Outland's storms and frost. I do not understand what any of those terms mean, but basically every town in the Four Nations has a nuclear fusion reactor underneath it."

"You do not even know Walden?"

Li Aoz glanced at Nomi. "They taught it in vocational school. Dr. Walden was a nuclear physicist from the Old Era. The Walden Hemisphere technology he developed changed the face of war. It miniaturized nuclear fusion so it could be deployed on armored units, completely changing the landscape of warfare."

"Not to mention, there is a small reactor beneath the shelter too. It can operate on just a few uranium fuel rods."

"Stop nagging! I never went to school. Anyway, one day we are going to kick the Four Nations' balls in! Those reactors will be ours sooner or later!"

Nomi impatiently patted the steering wheel.

"If it were not for the Four Nations' blockade, humanity could survive even without the sun."

Qiu Ran asked curiously, "But doesn't Outland lack energy resources? Without the sun, wouldn't survival be impossible?"

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

Nomi snapped.

"Mm... I do not know." Qiu Ran leaned against the window and continued watching the distant scenery.

"No, it is not that Outland has no resources at all."

Li Aoz thought for a moment before saying, "But having resources does not mean having the ability to develop them. Petroleum has always existed underground, but it was not discovered until long after humanity entered the Industrial Era. In fact, Outland is far larger than the territory of the Four Nations. Seventy percent of Azure Planet's total area falls within Outland."

It took him some time to explain it clearly to Qiu Ran.

Because sunlight was blocked and absorbed by the red-black Esha Clouds, the ground could not absorb or reflect heat from the sun, and temperatures were generally lower than the clouds high in the sky.

The temperature difference between heaven and earth created despairing winds, while those winds carried away the moisture from the surface. Without the sunlight needed for survival, plants could only die. As a result, the once-solid soil completely lost its foundation for resisting wind and holding sand in place, rapidly eroding away.

There was so much snowfall, but the freezing temperatures kept it from melting. Even after digging through the sand, the deeper layers beneath were nothing but cold earth.

They had long since been frozen solid by the cold. Only diamond drill bits could excavate them.

But even if people manually dug rivers and reservoirs, without sunlight and warmth, how could they cultivate aquatic ecosystems? How could they farm the land? How could they feed people? Without population, there could not be enough productive power to develop industry, and without industry, there was no way to extract underground resources.

Only a very small number of regions that combined abundant geothermal energy, shelter from the wind, and controlled soil erosion—such as areas backed by high mountains and river valleys, or surrounding volcanoes—could possibly support large population centers.

"But the Four Nations are different. After the war that ended all wars erupted in the Old Era, people discovered that aside from war, everything had ended. Small nations were wiped out, while the Four Nations became the undisputed giants of Azure Planet."

Li Aoz shifted the subject. "The Four Nations' historical records state that before the Malefic Calamity covered heaven and earth, they already possessed large numbers of nuclear power plants, marine resources, and wind farms. Their industrial infrastructure was complete, their agricultural resources abundant, and their military strength stood at the pinnacle of the world. Even if their populations were somewhat smaller, people would naturally flock to them because of their nuclear energy."

To prevent another World War from erupting over the scramble for energy, the Four Nations remained calm this time.

They placed the bulk of the energy supply in the hands of GTB, the Global Trade Bank formed jointly by the Four Nations.

The people of the Four Nations could easily obtain GTB energy loans to establish immigrant cities in Outland, raising Artificial Suns and Hemispheric Barriers.

But other small nations and Outland's autonomous city-states would encounter "a little" difficulty.

Banks could obstruct small nations' energy loan applications under various pretexts, forcing them to purchase outrageously expensive petroleum, natural gas, electricity, and iron ore from the Four Nations.

Li Aoz told a story about the country of his previous life—the Alranka Kingdom.

Alranka was a vassal state of the Red Arrow Empire. Their languages and economies were interconnected, though their peoples were rather different. That was the result of the Red Arrow Empire's cultural and economic colonization.

Though the small nation of Alranka sat atop heaps of Uranium Mine deposits, it still had to sell them cheaply to the neighboring Red Arrow Empire at two hundred debis per ton in exchange for political, national defense, and electrical protection and support. In truth, the Empire could have simply taken it, yet it insisted on paying that little bit of money. It really was so touching that he wanted to cry.

Li Aoz was not being sarcastic here, because the Alranka Kingdom truly was the luckiest small nation. Backed by the Red Arrow Empire, it had anything it wanted. Want Mobile Armor? It had Mobile Armor. Want resources? Praise His Majesty the Emperor a few times and it would make a fortune.

By acting like an obedient lapdog, Alranka had somehow become an existence capable of a Dimensional Strike against the surrounding small nations.

Meanwhile, neighboring Sky Ring's slogan was "Leave the land, not the people." The scenes were a little too inappropriate for children, so Li Aoz did not dare say much more.

With the capital provided by GTB, populations could grow and economies could develop. That in turn gave rise to all sorts of businesses, factories, and service industries, improving people's quality of life and further promoting population growth.

But a growing population also brought pressure in employment, survival, and the environment.

To develop and shift those conflicts elsewhere, their gaze would turn toward vast Outland.

Thus, the people of the Four Nations, untouched by the freezing winds and sandstorms, explored outward. Possessing sunlight and energy, they could build factories, establish vast farms, extract Outland's mineral resources, and inflict even greater damage on its mountains and soil.

Damage to mineral deposits was, to a great extent, also damage to the geological environment. Through the merciless, ceaseless work of machinery, land that had already suffered severe erosion became even more fragile and worn down.

The Outland People could only watch helplessly as the wind carried away their homeland.

Li Aoz described it in an extremely casual tone.

As for the countless corpses of the Outland People buried beneath the splendor and prosperity of every hemispheric city—

But the Four Nations were not entirely without conscience, nor did they know only how to plunder.

"Fuck!"

Nomi suddenly cursed. Before that, she had slammed on the brakes three times and brought the vehicle steadily to a stop. Li Aoz immediately pulled up his face covering and jumped out.

The instant he opened the door, an uncanny, pungent smell rushed straight at his head even through the cloth.

Li Aoz frowned, bracing himself against the door as thoughts surged through his mind.

"What happened..." Qiu Ran climbed out of the vehicle groggily, raised a hand before her eyes, and peered through the gap toward the front.

Faced with what lay before them, none of them dared breathe.

More than eight hundred meters away, they saw a steaming lake. Between the red-black and deathly white world, its surface rippled with faint orange flashes.