The cold rain pattered, drip by drip, tap by tap.
It was still falling, sometimes heavily and sometimes lightly.
Floodwater spread across the streets above ankle level, filling the air with an indescribable stench of decay.
A squad of six guards from Yin Clan Shelter hunched their heads and quickened their pace, wishing they could sprint back to the warm shelter at once and take a hot bath that would soothe both body and mind.
Ever since surface-level peace had returned to Qinggang City, patrolling the neighborhoods above the shelters had become a daily duty.
Even in this freezing weather, every shelter had to take responsibility for security in its own district.
Of course, some shelters had initially been unwilling to accept this arrangement, unwilling to increase their manpower costs for no reason.
But after the uniquely profitable Tian Yuan Shelter made a forceful move and announced that any shelter unwilling to handle neighborhood security would never again see its convoy enter their territory, things changed.
In the chaotic southern suburbs, dozens of shelters quickly and obediently compromised under the pressure of profit.
Although it sounded rather strange.
Back when Qinggang Shelter had been at its strongest, these people had dared to band together and resist without the slightest fear.
Why, then, had profit's artillery shells now blasted open the gates of their shelters? Yet under the bombardment of countless inexpensive industrial goods and delicious fruits and vegetables, the managers of the southern-suburb shelters understood one thing with exceptional clarity.
Compared to those direct confrontations thick with gunpowder, this present calm, without even the slightest trace of smoke, was the real war!
Whoever was too slow and failed to establish a trade route with that flourishing Tian Yuan Shelter would find the supplies in their shelter unable to circulate.
And