Chapter 83 – Do You Have Any Manners?
“Isn’t its appetite a bit much?”
Xu Zhi looked serious, as if she had just discovered something alarming.
That cat ate a whole core and didn’t level up???
It’s only level one!
[Strong and easy to level up? Since when was the world that kind to me?]
Xu Zhi raised an eyebrow. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“You totally are.”
[So what are you gonna do? Call the cops on me?]
Even if she wanted to, where would she find cops in Cloud City now?
Xu Zhi stared at the game screen for a while, then muttered, “You’ve changed.”
[Yes, I’ve changed. Nothing stays the same. Even I can’t escape the effects of change.]
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
As vague and pointless as that sounded, Xu Zhi still caught the key point. “Can’t escape the effects of change”—was that referring to the changes in the [Moth] attribute?
The narration had mentioned before that as Xu Zhi’s power grew, it caused some changes in the narration as well. Now it was hinting more directly that these changes were linked to her attributes.
No matter how you looked at it, the connection between the console and herself was far too deep. She couldn’t help but revisit some thoughts she’d previously dismissed.
“You’re basically my supernatural power, right?!” Xu Zhi questioned loudly.
Xu Zhi clicked her tongue. “Why not?”
“Then what exactly are you?”
[Do you have any manners? Who just asks someone ‘what thing’ they are?]
“So you’re not a thing?”
[Heh. That’s a joke from the Stone Age.]
The narration didn’t argue further, but it also didn’t answer her question.
Seeing that she couldn’t get anything useful out of it, Xu Zhi gave up.
After all, she couldn’t threaten the game. What was she gonna do, throw a tantrum?
She wasn’t Little Aberration!
Besides, that might not even work on the narration.
She didn’t have many [Moth] attribute cores left—she had reserved some for her own daily consumption. She wasn’t a retainer, so she could only absorb a limited number of cores at a time, needing to build up gradually each day.
And the [Moth] cores she’d traded for weren’t that many to begin with. She had more of [Blade] and [Winter]. Now that she had a retainer with the same attribute as herself, Xu Zhi realized she didn’t have much to feed it.
Cores of other attributes were nearly gone too. It had been a while since she’d felt this strapped for resources. Clearly, her next core-harvesting scheme needed to start soon.
She quickly mapped out a plan: once she finished exploring the Third Ring, she’d head outside the city—probably next week, since she was nearly done with the Third Ring already. She’d trade for information and resources, then decide on her next move based on Yu Shenwei’s situation.
Once she wrapped up the matter with Yu Shenwei and the zealots, she planned to return briefly to the Old Residential District. First, to move the growing pile of mutant beast eggs from her warehouse and start forming the foundation of a plantation. Second, because as the founder of the district, she couldn’t just always be out running around—she needed to check if her help was needed.
By the time she finished patrolling the entire Third Ring, she estimated the number of people sent to the Residential District would total over a thousand.
That might sound like a lot, but compared to the pre-collapse population of the Third Ring, it was pathetically low.
Even before the catastrophe, the Third Ring had an aging population. Most of the younger people had gone to work in the Inner or Second Ring. And now, during her travels, Xu Zhi had barely seen any elderly survivors.
They couldn’t have all just left—this probably meant that the elderly were the first group to die in the disaster.
The next rarest demographic? Children.
The few she saw were always clinging to their parents. Orphanages had all been relocated early on by the Federation, which had always prioritized children’s safety.
So the bulk of the survivors now were young to middle-aged adults—and the proportion of transcendents among them was unusually high. In this city, ordinary humans had become the minority.
Still, the overall number of survivors in the Third Ring was far too small. Even without Aberration threats, the mental corruption from the Black Fog, combined with the growing number of beasts and zealots awakening to dangerous powers, had nearly wiped everyone out.
The tragedy was mainly due to how sudden it all was. The people left behind in the city were caught completely off guard—most had no combat ability, and even if they awakened, their combat power didn’t surge immediately.
Not to mention that survivors hadn’t banded together. Fighting alone made them easy prey.
After dealing with Yu Shenwei, Xu Zhi didn’t plan to stay in the Old Residential District for long. She needed to quickly gather people from the Second and Inner Rings. The longer she waited, the fewer survivors would remain. She even suspected that fewer than ten thousand people were left alive in all of Cloud City.
After organizing her thoughts and setting some short-term goals, Xu Zhi reluctantly pulled out two more cores and held them in her palm, offering them to the black cat.
This time, she didn’t say anything. She had realized talking was probably pointless. She was ready to play the long game in building a bond.
Unlike with Little Aberration, whom she just tossed the cores to, Xu Zhi was determined to train the black cat to come to her and eat the cores from her palm.
She also noticed that even though it acted aloof and standoffish, the cat never wandered off. Likely due to game restrictions, it couldn’t stray far without her permission, even if it wanted to.
It was a kind of forced affection… but hey, it was a cat.
A few days from now, once the cat got used to eating from her hand, Xu Zhi planned to push her luck: make it let her pet its head in exchange for food.
Cats were born to be petted by their moms, weren’t they?
That didn’t count as a dirty trade, right?
After feeding the cat, Xu Zhi returned to her desk to continue reading. Thankfully, Yu Shenwei’s physical condition was so poor that she could fall asleep even on a bumpy ride. Just the candlelight in the room wasn’t enough to disturb her.
*
The next day, Xu Zhi once again set off with her crew to the last uncharted section of the Third Ring.
Along the way, she “accidentally” picked up more and more Aberration beast eggs or larvae. She realized these creatures were obsessed with reproduction, and thanks to their mutations, their offspring were incredibly hardy. All you had to do was leave them near some mist—they’d absorb the energy and hatch on their own.
Huo Ze’s wounds had mostly healed, aside from his missing eyeballs. Xu Zhi continued to be impressed by zealots’ insane vitality.
Along the way, he hadn’t said much, but after she finished exploring the entire Third Ring—and still hadn’t helped him find his subordinates, and instead just kept killing every zealot they encountered—he finally couldn’t hold it in.
“Our deal… when do you plan to make good on it?”
Huo Ze carefully asked.
Xu Zhi watched as Zhen escorted the final batch of survivors back to the Old Residential District, then looked at Huo Ze with meaningful eyes.
“Don’t worry. I’m preparing to do just that—right now.”
