Wasteland Development Diary

Zhou Yi conducted an on-site inspection.

These two small houses, standing side by side, each had a door for entry and exit. Inside, there were partitioned toilets and urinals, equipped with washbasins—indeed, they were simple public restrooms.

The left one was for men, the right one for women, and each had a figure engraved above: a small man representing the men's restroom, and a woman in a skirt for the women's restroom.

Zhou Yi placed his hand on the outer wall of the public restroom.

In the synchronized consciousness, two voices were chatting.

"Yalong Bay, hello. How is the Dead Sea today?"

"Hello, Emerald City. The energy density in the Dead Sea is moderate, and there are no disasters occurring nearby. How are the residential areas on your side?"

"The number of occupants within me has increased. Residents are now raising children. The consciousness of young humans is very active. Although the sequence of thoughts is often confusing, making it difficult for me to process, it is also very beneficial to me."

"That's great. It's very quiet here. There are only Li Mo and Tian Gou, and they are developing new containers."

Emerald City and Yalong Bay were actually directly conversing.

However, their conversation reminded Zhou Yi of when he first learned to chat online as a child—cautious and polite.

Zhou Yi joined the chatroom.

"I'd like to interrupt."

"What's the situation with this public area?"

Emerald City: "Committee Member, Yalong Bay should explain. He initiated the public area."

Yalong Bay: "Okay."

"Chairman, Emerald City and I started building the public area two months ago. Initially, we tried to construct an underground hut using steel bars."

"That hut could perform some simple information exchanges, but it quickly revealed its flaws. Connecting directly with steel bars caused our consciousness to become chaotic, making it difficult to distinguish ourselves from each other."

Sometimes Emerald City thought it was Yalong Bay, and sometimes it would revert to Emerald City. This back-and-forth confusion of consciousness made both architectural lifeforms feel very dangerous.

So, they abandoned this method.

Based on the failure, they improved the process and built a real house using stones and sand. Each connected a metal structure to one wall of the house, using this house for indirect conversation.

If the previous method was like connecting two brains, this was like creating a chat lobby that could be entered and exited at any time.

"Based on this, Emerald City discovered a pattern. Emerald City, it's your turn to speak," Yalong Bay indicated.

Emerald City then spoke again: "The public area we built sometimes allowed for very smooth communication, stimulating pleasure in both of us and generating something similar to what you call inspiration, Committee Member. But sometimes it didn't, and it felt like we were just exchanging information."

"Later, I discovered that people would walk into the public area's house. They treated it as an abandoned house, would excrete there, bury the excrement with sand, and then collect it periodically."

"Every time they were there, the conversation between Yalong Bay and me would change, as if something was activating us."

"After testing, we determined that the key was to have people present. When people were present, their consciousness would create some kind of special reaction with us, which could activate us."

"Later, we further discovered that we needed all kinds of people. Different people would bring different effects. They were like a catalyst, causing more changes in our overly stable consciousness, like the wind on a rainy day."

Zhou Yi was shocked.

It was the first time he had heard Emerald City use a metaphor to express itself.

Obvious growth.

"So, Yalong Bay and I discussed creating a public area specifically for humans to excrete in."

Emerald City said, "People are slowly increasing. This area is near the dam, and the people who come here are all guangtai workers."

"This is our public area."

Zhou Yi understood immediately.

As the scale of the guangtai dam continued to expand, the number of workers soared, and sanitation problems became increasingly serious. Now that there were public restrooms, there was no need to go into the wild.

Because the workers' income was good, they no longer needed to collect feces to supplement their household income, and this habit from the past period of poverty was gradually disappearing.

Convenience, cleanliness, and comfort became the direction pursued by the employees.

Public restrooms were now a necessary public facility.

Zhou Yi sorted out his thoughts: "You mean that people are an important carrier for the communication of architectural life consciousness?"

"Yes, that's what we mean."

Emerald City said, "High occupancy helps my consciousness grow and spread, and it's the same here. Visitors come and go, keeping it constantly occupied. The flow of different people and their consciousness operations bring inspiration to Yalong Bay and me."

"People are important. We need more people to participate in our discussions."

Yalong Bay also said, "In the past, I always thought that the most important thing was to open up restrictions within the architectural life group and gradually begin to contact and exchange with each other... Now it seems that I have entered a misunderstanding."

"We do not exist alone in this world. We were built by prehistoric humans and were originally symbiotic with humans. This is the path that allows us to further evolve."

"Architectural life brings convenience and safety to the humans who live there, and humans bring the vitality and change that architectural life lacks. We should have been united for a long time."

Zhou Yi said, "This is an important discovery that you have explored. Congratulations."

Both architectural lifeforms were very happy.

Next, Zhou Yi began to promote their experience.

He helped Maria Hospital and Emerald City and Yalong Bay build public areas respectively, allowing them to converse in pairs, and built a public area where all three intersected.

The only one absent was the Great Buddha.

He was still meditating by the coast in Shagang City.

Zhou Yi flew over to inform him of this matter.

The Great Buddha also said, "Zhou Yi Great Buddha, I will return after this practice is completed and ask everyone about public area practice. But it is not possible at the moment."

"I can feel that there is a lifeform in the Dead Sea staring at me. It is constantly observing me. I need to wait for it to come over before returning."

Zhou Yi urged him to be careful and not to think that he was indestructible.

"Zhou Yi Great Buddha, I will run if I encounter danger, please rest assured."

...

After clarifying the issue of the public area, Zhou Yi boarded the Poseidon and entered the Dead Sea, all the way to the dark domain under the broken overpass.

The black space bubble was still on the bridge pier.

But he did not see the figure of the Breaker.

Could it be that Haruke took one look at the life core and ran away?

Zhou Yi wondered.

He could still provide new life cores here. Haruke wouldn't abandon the strategic resources here to avoid repaying the remaining 50,000 light seeds.

It was probably delayed by some special circumstances.

After waiting for an hour, there was still no movement here.

So Zhou Yi stopped waiting and took the Poseidon to the north at high speed from the seabed to find the location of the Alien Bridge.

With satellite navigation, there was no need to worry about breaking into the Mie Ding Gong's fleet activity area.

After two days of rushing along the way, the Poseidon safely detoured near the target location.

The high-pressure area east of the Shuanghe area was clear at a glance. The satellite map not only had a red text marker for [High Pressure], but also warning icons for [Defense↓] and [Speed↓].

Zhou Yi turned on the [Light Wheel Well] in the submarine.

On the white disc-shaped space, fire sparks lit up one by one.

On the other side of the many large and small fire sparks, a lonely bright bonfire was particularly eye-catching.

This was the architectural life's ideology.

Zhou Yi followed the guidance of the Light Wheel Well, constantly adjusting his direction, and finally overlapped with this bonfire.

He looked at the seabed.

Here lay a severely damaged overpass, or rather, a section of an overpass. Its bottom bridge piers had collapsed, the pillars were damaged, and the bridge deck also had large areas of gaps, so broken that it couldn't even be picked up.

Without the Light Wheel Well's identification, people would probably only think it was a pile of worthless ruins.

He had switched to No. 2, and the Tracer's defense was completely zero. Letting it continue to decrease didn't even show as a negative number.

However, the speed was still reduced, causing both Zhou Yi and the Poseidon to seem to be in an almost solidified strong glue. Not only was the movement extremely slow, but the energy consumption was also particularly large.

He had to seize the time.

Zhou Yi placed his hand on the broken bridge deck.

Energy was input into this architectural life little by little.

Consciousness synchronization was activated.

He needed to first confirm whether the other party was willing to come out of the mountain. In case he worked so hard to bring it out, and it turned out to be a troublemaker or had a tendency to destroy, then it would not be worth the loss.

"Can you hear me?"

The response was an impatient voice: "What? Why are you waking me up? Don't disturb my rest."

It sounded like a grumpy old man.

"I would like to invite you to join our company. I will help you leave the seabed and restore you to your full prosperity."

"I'm not going. Who are you? Why can you enter my consciousness?"

Zhou Yi introduced himself.

"No, no."

The other party was very defensive: "Don't think I don't know what you're up to. I'm not your weapon, don't even think about it!"

"I would rather die, explode, and be forever silent here. I will never be fooled again!"

It sounded very resentful.

Zhou Yi said, "Are you talking about the Mie Ding Gong's business?"

"Who is that?"

Zhou Yi described the deeds he had heard from Liu Zhaoshan.

The other party said coldly, "So you're talking about that bastard. I've been deceived by two such bastards, so you can't possibly succeed. Give up."

"Your paths are all similar. First, you replenish my energy, pretend to help me repair, and then start to forcibly transform me into a destructive weapon."

"..."

Zhou Yi did not expect that the bridge had been transformed several times.

But he was still prepared to fight for it again: "I hope you will open up our Shagang area and build a fast passage between different residential areas."

"Transportation?"

The other party was stunned: "Do you know transportation?"

"Of course, aren't you an overpass?"

"No, I'm an elevated bridge."

The other party corrected: "My name is 'Wuhu Elevated Bridge'."

"So you're from Wuhu."

The Wuhu Bridge was silent for a while.

"Do you know Wuhu?"

"I know, it's in Anhui."

"Where is Anhui?"

The more Zhou Yi explained, the more questions the other party had.

He said, "This is a very dangerous high-pressure area. I'll take you away from here first, and then we'll talk about the specifics."

"..."

The other party hesitated for a while: "You won't lie to me, will you? Let me be a weapon again? I'm a transportation building, I don't do that kind of thing!"

"Rest assured."

"...If what you say is false, I'll explode with you! No one will have a good end!"

"No problem."

Zhou Yi was a little dumbfounded.

Although the Wuhu Bridge was ruthless and talkative, it was essentially an architectural life that was easily deceived.

No wonder it had been scammed twice before.

Zhou Yi immediately activated the [Huan Guang Yi], aiming at the broken and damaged seabed bridge remains for transformation.

Under the illumination of the lamp ball, energy was consumed rapidly.

A total of 10,000 light seeds were consumed, and Zhou Yi completed the transformation.

The Wuhu Elevated Bridge turned into a silver bridge-shaped electronic tattoo.

Zhou Yi immediately boarded the Poseidon and flew back to Shagang at high speed.