Xiao Yunjie: "Miss Leina, do you know who she is?"
Leina for a moment and said, "The name Han-Tang Group gave him is... Fan Cang. Have you heard of it?"
Upon hearing the name, Xiao Yunjie was stunned.
Xiao Tong blurted out, "It was him!"
Leina looked at Xiao Tong: "You know him?"
Xiao Tong: "It was him... he's the one who broke through the cordon!"
A flicker of surprise crossed Leina's eyes, but she quickly composed herself, maintaining her indifferent demeanor. "With the help of the Day After Tomorrow Society, he will be able to break free from the shackles of the ' Testing Ground '."
Xiao Yunjie, Xiao Tong, and Qiu Shuyu were all shocked and unsettled by the news brought by Leina.
Only Song Xiaozhu noticed the contradiction and lack of confidence in Leina's words.
It seems that this Miss Leina doesn't actually "know as much" as she appears.
What is she doing in Liu Family Village?
Should we kindly educate them about the outside world and tell them the truth about the Fortress?
It's probably not that simple.
Xiao Yunjie, as expected of the most clear-headed person in Liu Family Village, quickly recovered from her shock and pieced together the whole story. "So... the Han-Tang Group built the Ink City Fortress in order to control the Heart of the Creator?"
Leina: "It's not just about control, it's about observation, experimentation, and incubation."
Xiao Yunjie closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again, her eyes blazing with barely concealed anger. "And what about us? What are we anyway!"
Leina gave her the answer, "The descendants of workers."
Xiao Yunjie was stunned.
Leina said, "In each ' Testing Ground,' there are experimenters, who are all located in the 'city,' surrounding the heart of creation."
"But to demarcate this area, we also need a large number of low-level workers, such as ' Digger,' ' Logger, ' and ' Hunter '... Some of them are responsible for digging, logging, and construction, while others, like the ' Hunter,' are there to hunt down the Polluted Beast... There can't be any Polluted Beast in the Testing Ground,' as this will interfere with the hatching environment."
Therefore, there isn't a single "animal" in the entire Ink City area.
It is illogical that such an ecologically unbalanced and closed environment could be maintained for so long.
Leina continued, "After the early workers built the ' Testing Ground,' a large portion of them were trapped here, especially the ordinary people who hadn't awakened. They weren't allowed into the city and had signed an 'unspeakable' contract, forcing them to live outside the city."
As time went by, they even had offspring...
Xiao Yunjie was the oldest person present.
The Ink City was founded at the beginning of the Dawn Era, and it is now the 116th year of the Dawn Era...
Song Xiaozhu thought of Master Bai.
I wonder if he knew about these things.
After saying everything that needed to be said and giving them some time to process it, Leina softened her voice slightly and said slowly, "You can rest assured, the Han-Tang Group only cares about the Heart of the Creator, Fan Cang has also left this area. You are free now."
"Of course, freedom does not equate to safety. The buffer zone not only keeps out the Polluted Beast, but also other greedy and insatiable invaders."
Leina paused slightly before continuing, " The Day After Tomorrow Society won't be able to protect every village. All we can do is offer some assistance, which will require you to pay accordingly."
As she spoke, she tapped her wrist, and a new watch appeared out of thin air. It looked exactly like Leina's, only slightly older and with some scratches on the side.
"This is a personal terminal, a high-level device only members of the Day After Tomorrow Society possess." Leina looked at Xiao Yunjie and said, "I can sell you one. With a personal terminal, you can not only purchase high-level weapons and armor, but also sell the pelts of Polluted Beast... or other local specialties."
Xiao Yunjie's face was still a little pale, but her eyes showed that she had calmed down. She asked, "How do I buy it? What's our currency here...?"
Leina shook her head and said, "You don't have a common currency. So... you've survived the beast tide, and you must have harvested quite a few Polluted Beast. You can keep their pelts to trade; I only need some hearts."
Xiao Yunjie remained calm. "The heart?"
Leina calmly replied, "Without a ' Purifier,' only the heart of Polluted Beast is edible."
Xiao Yunjie nodded. "I see."
Leina said, "This personal terminal sells for a very high price on the black market, at least a thousand Polluted Beast Hearts. I can sell it to you at a low price, only five hundred Polluted Beast Hearts!"
Chapter 77
After a brief silence, Xiao Yunjie pondered for a moment, then said, "I see..."
It has to be said, experience is the best teacher.
At this moment, with Qiu Shuyu and Xiao Tong both looking strange, Xiao Yunjie spoke up in time, covering up the awkward atmosphere and drawing Leina's attention.
Song Xiaozhu also fell silent for a moment.
She didn't reveal anything, but because of her previous silence, she didn't feel comfortable speaking up now.
From the moment Song Xiaozhu first saw Leina, she never let her guard down.
This is due to her personality, and also because she understands the outside world better than Qiu Shuyu and Xiao Tong, who grew up at the foot of the Garbage Mountain.
At the Garbage Mountain, resources are scarce and living conditions are extremely poor. People struggling to survive don't have many complicated thoughts.
It's not that the refugees weren't bad; in fact, they burned, killed, looted, and committed all sorts of evil deeds.
But they didn't have much opportunity to use tricks, or even time to cheat—cheating takes time, and when they were starving, robbery was the fastest way.
The moment Leina took out her personal terminal, Song Xiaozhu knew that the outside world wasn't so lacking in resources or so harsh in conditions. In particular, the development of civilization had not only not regressed significantly, but was probably even more advanced than before the Great Cataclysm.
This high-tech product, similar to a mobile phone, requires a certain scale of "infrastructure" for convenient use.
Even if such mysterious things as Awakening Stone exist in this world, setting up a "network" is not an easy task.