Wasteland Development Diary

The earliest memory Iron had was of living in the mountains.

Her life was simple: hiding in a cave during the day and gathering resources at night, collecting fruits, catching mice, and birds daily.

The entire village lived this way.

There was a local tradition that the god's messengers would come to seek sacrifices.

If someone was chosen, they would ascend to the divine kingdom, and the village of the sacrifice would receive the protection of the divine messengers.

One day, the divine messenger arrived at Iron's village.

He descended from the sky, wearing a golden mask, revealing blood-red eye sockets, with long whiskers and a long tail.

Zhou Yi recognized him immediately.

Golden Mask Guard.

These were the guards of the Celestials.

The Golden Mask Guard held a crystal ball with a gem fragment inside.

He tested each child, bringing the crystal ball close; the white gem inside would emit a localized green light.

When he approached Iron, the gem fragment turned completely emerald green.

The Golden Mask Guard pointed at Iron's brow, designating her as the sacrifice.

The villagers were overjoyed, as this meant the divine messenger would protect the entire village, and monsters would no longer dare to come.

The only ones saddened were Iron's blacksmith parents, as their daughter would be leaving them.

More than a decade later, Iron had grown into an adult woman, and the Golden Mask Guard descended again, touching her brow once more.

When she awoke again, Iron was in a crystal palace, followed by being modified by the Celestials.

Unlike Li Mo and the Heavenly Dog, her modification involved a green gemstone that Zhou Yi had never seen before.

This green gemstone was filled with a large amount of liquid, in which tree-like glass fibers were submerged.

Iron was transformed into a glass person, and the key was this green gemstone.

When a section of glass fiber from the green gemstone entered the woman's body, it caused her entire body to become transparent, her internal organs gradually disappeared, and glass fibers extended from her body surface, as if she were freezing.

Finally, the Celestial placed her into a large white gemstone, completing the encapsulation.

...

Zhou Yi now understood that artificial glass people were transformed through a special green gemstone modification, using a white gemstone as a container.

The subsequent events matched what Iron had said.

She was required to independently reproduce, failed, and then sent to the gemstone chains.

In this step, Zhou Yi noticed a point that Iron hadn't mentioned.

The gemstone chains were in a crisscrossing ring shape, surrounding a pair of giant eyes with green pupils in the center—the pupils were entirely composed of green gemstones.

These two eyeballs were gemstone structures, connected to each other by gemstone lines, somewhat like two fruits growing on a small branch.

But they operated independently of each other.

The two pupils focused on different areas, examining each artificial glass person on the chains.

Under the gaze of the two gemstone eyes, modified people like Iron, fixed in white gemstones, were like exhibited ornaments.

"Why didn't you mention this part?" Zhou Yi asked her.

"I forgot..."

"..."

Soon Zhou Yi understood.

The gemstone eyes were doing the selection.

They had a special recognition ability, and the artificial humans they favored would glow all over.

Then a huge tubular gemstone body would extend from the darkness, pick up the target, and suck it in, sending it to the end of the darkness.

This was the same as the tube Zhou Yi saw in the ruby, where young Celestials were fed gemstones.

Ultimately, what remained were the substandard artificial humans.

Iron and the others would then have to repair the sun wall, purely as laborers.

Zhou Yi was most interested in this part.

In Iron's memory, the place where she worked was a peripheral area.

White gemstones floated in the air, and she and other artificial glass people had to pick them off and use them to piece together the gemstone wall.

Throughout the process, she needed to extend her glass fibers—or rather, blood vessels—to secure the gemstones with her body, waiting for the gradual change from far to near.

The newly installed white gemstones would gradually change to sapphires, and only after the connection between the gemstones was completely stabilized through the blood vessels would she continue to assemble the next one.

This work was accompanied by intense physiological pain, a chilling stinging sensation, as if the wounds on her body were exposed to extremely cold weather.

The glass workers were all numb.

Later, Iron became delirious, mistakenly connecting three white gemstones and one sapphire into a ring during installation, causing an energy surge to transmit over and trigger an explosion.

She was luckily blown away and didn't die.

The Celestials didn't punish her, but demoted her.

...

When Iron fell, she had already lost her vision, hearing, and other conventional physical senses, replaced by a sense of energy flow.

This perspective was very similar to that of transmigrators.

In the world composed of black and white, Iron herself was white, the local life was black, and the background was a light gray.

Their forms were constantly changing, like shadows constantly changing in the light.

Iron landed precisely on the floating island that was actually Xinqiu, and in her perspective, the surrounding bone men were just clusters of moving black monsters.

She tried to open her eyes, but couldn't see anything, and couldn't help but feel terrified because she didn't know what she was facing.

However, after the modification, Iron was already a super mutant, and all the organs throughout her body were transformed into crystal structures, and the radiation she carried was enough to kill the surrounding bone men.

In fear, she desperately released her radiation power.

"Don't come over! Don't come over, don't come over!"

She shouted in her heart.

As Zhou Yi read the memories, he asked Iron, "So you disrupted the consciousness time of other lives."

"Ah? I don't know."

Iron said, "I can make others forget my existence, that is, they don't remember things related to me, the shorter the time span, the more effective it is, I call it [Forgetfulness]... This is also the power bestowed by the gods."

"It's just that I was weak after being released, and I was very hungry, so the effect was very poor."

Xiao Fu couldn't help but interject, "This is a time-related ability. Consciousness itself cannot be erased and tampered with at will, but it can be hidden and disrupted through time."

"This is very useful in some special environments, such as when we go to excavate cultural heritage in the future... For ordinary bone men, the consciousness impact alone is enough to make them fall into a coma."

But since Iron's ability is not combat-related, how were the bone men killed and their memories cleared?

Zhou Yi felt a burst of doubt in his heart.

He continued to look down.

When Iron landed on Xinqiu, which was in the form of an island, two peculiar white shadows appeared in the sky.

They were clearly different from the bone men on the ground.

Those two white shadows, from the perspective, belonged to the same type as Iron.

Their outlines were fixed, with two whiskers on their heads and tails behind them.

Two Golden Mask Guards.

The white light they released covered all the black shadows, and then these shadows gradually shattered and disappeared.

Zhou Yi understood.

The Golden Mask Guards silenced the bone men on this island.

Then they left.

Zhou Yi told the bone man next to him about this.

Wu Yi was stunned for a moment: "At that time, that's what happened... That is to say, everyone is already dead after all."

Zhou Yi wanted to say something to comfort him, but couldn't find the right words.

"..."

The bone man looked at his watch and said softly: "Actually, I had a number in my heart before, knowing that they were likely to be unsavable, but I still had a glimmer of hope and wanted to try."

"Resurrection is ultimately an impossible thing."

At this time, Xiao Fu suddenly opened his mouth: "Da Zhou, you can tell it that resurrection is not impossible. You just need to enter the Great Holy Spirit, and through the Great Holy Spirit, you can find the consciousness bodies of these dead people."

"I once heard that some civilizations can even define the order after death themselves, allowing consciousness bodies to enter specific areas, start the next life journey, and construct a special cycle of surface and inside. Memories and knowledge can all be preserved and retrieved. These can all be done."

Zhou Yi relayed Wu Yi's words verbatim.

"Really? Chairman?"

"Really."

Zhou Yi told it: "It's up to people to make things happen. As long as you become strong enough, you can resurrect them."

"I can actually do such a thing..."

The bone man suddenly rekindled hope: "Understood! Chairman, I still need to become stronger!"

Then Zhou Yi turned his attention back to Iron.

He continued to read the memories.

Subsequently, Xinqiu in the form of an island evaporated, and Iron further sank into the Dead Sea.

The memory time about this part is very short, but the amount of information is quite large.

When the floating island fell, Iron's physiological damage was extremely severe at first.

She learned a lot almost instantly, and then began to use the surrounding materials to build quartz crystals to wrap herself, avoiding further collapse.

Iron herself couldn't say it either.

"It's like someone suddenly taught me. At that time, I just felt that I was going to die, and my whole body was melting... I shouted for help in my heart."

"Then I would."

Xiao Fu said about this: "It's Xinqiu. If I'm not mistaken, the Celestials deliberately landed her precisely on Xinqiu so that she could read the information in Xinqiu, so as to screen out the parts that can fit her self-preservation."

"The result is indeed so."

"The two guards sent were also for her. They left only after confirming that she had landed safely and eliminated the surrounding eyewitness bone men."

Zhou Yi frowned: "Why? If she is so important, why abandon her completely after投放?"

"Da Zhou, would you care about a sand mouse you released?"

Xiao Fu gave an example: "In the eyes of the Celestials, Iron and Li Mo are their pets. Abandoning or releasing them for various reasons is just a trivial matter for the Celestials."

"In the eyes of advanced life, low-level life is like this. If there is no relationship, it is a wild monster that can be destroyed at will. If they are interested in raising or taming them, then they will also help them."

Zhou Yi couldn't help but think of Li Mo's experience.

When facing weak and humble life, the Celestials will show a kind of generous compassion and kindness.

But when encountering competitors or resisters like the Stream Tracers, they will not hesitate to destroy and strangle them.

The key is whether there is a threat.

Zhou Yi immediately ordered: "Everyone, return."