Chapter 146: Logistics Network
Once the zone merger concluded, Old Black finally returned from his procurement run.
The item he brought back was a vehicle attachment: a spatial leap device that could level up alongside the vehicle itself.
Lin Huai raised an eyebrow, genuinely impressed. Old Black really did know what she needed; this hardware was tailor-made for Little Yellow’s delivery van.
Opening her private chat, she located Little Yellow’s handle.
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: Little Yellow, I have something good for you. Want me to come find you?
[Flash Delivery Yellow Knight]: Thank you, Boss! Just hold on a moment—I’ll come to you right away!
The instant the message sent, Lin Huai looked through the windshield. A bright yellow delivery van blinked into existence directly on the asphalt ahead, materializing out of thin air.
What caught her attention wasn’t just the sheer speed of his arrival. More shockingly, the road beneath them hadn’t expanded; there was no extra lane merged alongside her own.
This meant Little Yellow had shifted himself and his vehicle across space directly, rather than using a standard Teleportation Talisman to merge highway tracks.
Spotting Lin Huai’s startled expression, Flash Delivery Yellow Knight grinned from ear to ear. “Boss, your eyes are as sharp as ever! I only started testing this over the last couple of days. I just ran my first upgrade on it, gave it a spin, and you caught it right away!”
“What kind of ability is this? A special item?” Lin Huai asked, genuinely curious.
Little Yellow scratched the back of his neck, looking a bit sheepish. “During the last trial, when I laid down my life to buy time for the squad, the system triggered a unique milestone reward called ‘Peerless Teammate.'”
“It rewarded me with a Boundary-Breaking skill card. With this card, whenever I need to crack open a resource node or a sealed crate, I don’t even need a Boundary-Breaking Talisman anymore—a simple touch does the trick.”
His eyes sparkled with pride. “And the best part is that I can phase my van straight onto another survivor’s stretch of highway without needing a single Teleportation Talisman.”
A thought crossed Lin Huai’s mind. “Can you punch through regional borders and cross between zones?”
Flash Delivery Yellow Knight gave a sheepish shake of his head. “Not just yet. But maybe once the card levels up higher, it’ll unlock.”
Lin Huai retrieved the spatial component she had purchased through Old Black and pushed the trade prompt across her screen.
“Take this. Pair this spatial leap engine with your Boundary-Breaking card, and I have a feeling the synergy will be remarkable.”
Little Yellow tried to wave it off, embarrassed to take another high-tier gift, but Lin Huai insisted until he finally slotted the device into his van’s console.
Right after, Lin Huai instructed the Young Miss to pull skill upgrade cards and catalysts from the guild vault for him. True to her earlier promise under the apartment tower, the Young Miss even reached into her own pockets to cover the remaining costs.
Backed by the full resource pool of the Elite Squad, Little Yellow’s skill card shot straight to Level 4, while his van hit the Level 5 benchmark.
With those two upgrades combined, he unlocked inter-zone spatial leaps. Because his jumps never merged lanes, his name never popped up on the target zone’s active player roster. It was true stealth infiltration.
Though he couldn’t hop across dozens of zones in a single breath yet, for the Young Miss’s fledgling trade network, this was a massive breakthrough.
Brother He Ping had been looking for a discreet way to plant listening bugs across rival territories. Now, Little Yellow could simply slip into an outside zone, slap a sensor onto a random player’s chassis, and give Brother He Ping a live tap into that zone’s communication feeds.
At the same time, the Young Miss had already recruited one or two local trading agents in outside sectors. Her main headache had been the danger and friction of making physical supply runs—carrying huge bulks of inventory required multiple trips and burned through rare zone transfer passes.
With Little Yellow’s new capabilities, he could slip in and out undetected without consuming passes at all. Turnaround times were slashed, cargo moved freely, and the team’s dedicated logistics supply chain snapped cleanly into place.
With Little Yellow running express freight, the Young Miss’s profit margins surged. A few days after the merger, the calendar finally rolled over to the last day of the third month.
By that evening, every core member of Lin Huai’s Elite Squad had successfully brought their vehicles up to Level 5. Lin Huai remained at Level 6; the catalysts needed to push her hearse to Level 7 were exceptionally rare and difficult to trace.
As for Shudao Mountain and her companions, Lin Huai folded them into the larger Elite Guild for the time being.
The following morning, the server refreshed the monthly leaderboard.
Unsurprisingly, Lin Huai sat firmly at the peak once more. The top three global slots remained held by the same three titans, solid as Mount Tai.
A few familiar names she had kept an eye on, like Eastern Divine Sword and Lan Mingyue, had slipped down a few ranks, though both managed to cling to the top ten.
While she missed out on the milestone system rewards this cycle, Old Black quietly slipped her a handful of rare crafting items, which happened to include the exact Spirit Gathering components her coffin needed.
Carrying the fresh loot, Lin Huai stepped into the monthly Arena matches.
She didn’t run into Master Cloud Cliff or Old Mo of Western Hunan this time around, but her coordination with Eastern Divine Sword grew noticeably smoother.
When the matches wrapped up, her prize crate contained another batch of Level 7 upgrade materials, though she was still far from hitting the required quota.
Studying the updated rankings, a faint sense of unease settled in her chest. Not seeing Master Cloud Cliff face-to-face left her feeling restless.
The official registry for his entry had changed: Master Cloud Cliff, Sector 888!
He had deliberately merged into Sector 888. Chen Feng was long dead, and the district’s elite vanguard had been wiped out during the previous clash; merging with them was a net loss in overall combat strength. Yet Master Cloud Cliff had abandoned his original home district to take over Chen Feng’s sector number.
Lin Huai couldn’t wrap her head around the play. Master Cloud Cliff was not the type of person to obsess over an auspicious number. He was a ruthlessly pragmatic strategist who would use any means necessary to secure an advantage.
What was he truly hunting for?
As she sat turning the puzzle over in her mind, Old Black’s familiar, abrasive cursing echoed over the district feed, yelling at slackers to put miles on their odometers. A sudden spark went off in her head.
Could it be… Desert?
Desert was the administrative system assistant assigned to Sector 888.
Lin Huai leaned back into the sofa on the second-floor observation deck, glancing at the Black Impermanence shrine beside her. Old Black was clearly an outlier among system assistants; his underlying permissions and authority went far beyond standard parameters.
If that was true, were there other rogue handlers like him across the system?
An urge to confront Master Cloud Cliff directly flared inside her. The man hadn’t swapped his sector handle and assigned handler on a whim—he had discovered something critical.
Before she could dwell on it further, the fourth month of Road Survival officially arrived.
This month’s seasonal catastrophe was dense fog.
The Yellow Springs Road Guide on her dashboard instantly became frantic, chiming warning after warning through the cabin speakers.
[Sharp turn ahead. Please reduce speed.]
[Obstacle detected on the road ahead: fallen boulder. Please maneuver around it.]
[Entering dense fog zone in 100 meters. Visibility dropping below 5 meters. Proceed with extreme caution. Warning: the dense fog carries heavy Yin corrosion. Keep the Blood Jade Coffin’s barrier active and maintain the vehicle’s Yang shield at all times. Monitor energy crystal reserves and replenish fuel promptly.]
Lin Huai was fully prepared. Between the autonomous driving module, the Road Guide, her psionic security cameras, and the vehicle’s golden searchlights, the murky highway ahead remained reasonably navigable.
As for structural defense, the coffin’s passive Yin ward worked in tandem with the hearse’s active Yang field, forming a dual-layered, airtight shield against the corrosive dampness outside.
