Wasteland Development Diary

On the deck, the men were playing cards by the light of the rhomboid stones.

They cursed and grumbled, each one with a short fuse.

Yuan Tong stood at the stern, his hands on the railing.

He knew everyone was upset.

He was too.

There was nothing he could do.

The situation was overwhelming. When Vice Admiral He Jiu of the Seventh Fleet spoke, it was the same as an order from the Dead Sea Knights. If his group wanted to make a living on the Dead Sea, they had to bow their heads.

After the last job, he wanted to retire and return to his old profession as a craftsman. Now that he had some savings, he could buy a workshop in the city and live a stable life.

But then a knight guard from the Dead Sea Knights came and praised him a few times.

He said, "All the jobs in the nearby sea will be given to you. As long as Chief Yuan is here, this area is yours. We trust you, and everyone is relieved that you're the leader."

"Chief Yuan, find a woman, have a child. If you need it, I can introduce you. There will be an heir here in the future. We trust the Yuan family. You are a friend of the Dead Sea Knights."

These words made Yuan Tong's heart skip a beat.

The Dead Sea Knights had no intention of letting him retire.

Although the other party didn't say it, Yuan Tong knew that if he refused, he couldn't bear the consequences.

Only sea raiders recognized by the Dead Sea Knights could survive. Otherwise, even large raiding groups would have to hide in the dangerous waters beyond the reach of the Dead Sea Knights.

Yuan Tong was over 47 years old, very old. His body was aging, and his years of wandering on the Dead Sea had left many hidden injuries. After fifteen years as a sea raider, he just wanted to retire peacefully and live a normal life.

But reality didn't allow it.

This reminded him of his youth. At that time, he was a craftsman in the steel port city's shipyard. His seniority increased slowly, and his income was meager for a long time.

In the craft industry, if you want to improve your skills, you have to practice more, and practice requires materials and tools, which requires money.

Yuan Tong went to the factory at the age of 10 and worked until he was 32, only becoming an ordinary craftsman from an apprentice. The competitors he encountered in the annual assessment became stronger and stronger. Becoming a registered craftsman by having his name listed in the Craftsman Guild became a distant dream.

If he were a registered craftsman, he could get a letter of recommendation from the Craftsman Guild, and living in various cities would not be a problem. Unlike ordinary craftsmen, he might be injured while working or become dismissed when he got old and his hands and feet became inflexible.

As he got older and saw no hope for the future, Yuan Tong felt anxious and bewildered.

At this juncture, the shipyard suddenly issued an announcement to recruit 5 craftsmen to be repairmen on the ship, requiring them to follow the ship for at least one year.

The shipwrights were responsible for the maintenance and repair of the ship along the way. It was hard and dangerous, but the income was much higher than in the shipyard.

Yuan Tong gritted his teeth and went.

He never expected to be on a pirate ship. Except for him, everyone on the ship was a genuine raider.

But what surprised Yuan Tong was that the raiders were very polite to him.

Because the sea raiding business was about risking your life, and anyone who had really done it knew that people could die at any moment.

The easiest way to die was not during the robbery, but the unpredictable Dead Sea. This was the strongest killer for raiders—or rather, all Dead Sea travelers.

Having a technically reliable, meticulous and pragmatic shipwright was equivalent to adding a layer of insurance for everyone, which could save lives at critical moments.

Not loving and messing with the ship could really kill people.

A surge, a flash explosion, could overwhelm the fragile hull, and if the ship sank, no one could survive.

So a strange thing happened.

Yuan Tong's treatment on the pirate ship was better than in the shipyard, and everyone respected and valued him more.

During the years he followed the ship, the ship never encountered danger due to technical maintenance problems. He always discovered hidden dangers in advance and made investigations and repairs.

After obtaining the boss's permission, Yuan Tong strongly recommended expanding the area of ​​light soot coverage on the bottom of the ship, upgrading the light seal structure on the keel to make it more flexible and faster, and equipping the ship with pop-up self-rescue rafts.

This allowed everyone to escape death several times.

The only time there was a near-accident was because a large monster passed by, causing the hull to partially crack. Yuan Tong desperately drilled into the cabin and used a hammer and nails to repair the fatal gap in a short time. But he also lost his left eye due to the ship's bumps and the continuous irradiation of high-intensity dead light.

Seven years after boarding the ship, the boss retired and designated Yuan Tong to take over his class as the leader of the raiders. No one had any objection.

A boss who can save his brothers is a good boss.

Otherwise, no matter how much you grab, everything is gone when people die.

Yuan Tong planned that after his 7-year term, he would find the next heir to take over, and he would happily start his retirement life.

In order to retire safely, he improved the operating procedures, requiring everyone to move quickly.

Intercept quickly, load quickly, escape quickly, no killing, no anger, no meddling, and maintain the professionalism of the entire operation.

With this trick, one ship became two, and the number of people also increased from 9 in the past to 22 now—all other raiders who had switched over.

Yuan Tong's group became a little famous in the nearby raider circle, and their style of behavior was praised by many people.

Then this attracted the attention of the Dead Sea Knights.

They extended an olive branch, hoping that Yuan Tong's raiding group could become their friend.

This was of course impossible to refuse.

There were also many benefits. With the backing of the Dead Sea Knights, a huge organization, it would be much safer. Other raiders on the road would give face to the Knights, restrain black eats black behavior, and even if someone was arrested, they could be bailed out through the Knights' channels.

In short, it's good to rely on a big tree to enjoy the shade.

But where there is gain, there must be demand.

What Yuan Tong had to pay was to unconditionally execute the orders issued by the Dead Sea Knights. As long as it involved the sea area where he was active, they would find him.

Before, ordinary knights came to find him, but this time it was Vice Admiral He Jiu of the Seventh Fleet who gave the order in person.

"We need you to investigate an organization called the Wasteland Development Company."

This organization robbed the Dead Sea alien that the Knights had painstakingly found. The Seventh Fleet's 'Organ Ship' went to confront them, but never returned.

Yuan Tong was clear.

The other party could easily destroy even the Dead Sea Knights' warships, and was by no means someone that small people like him could provoke.

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But the Knights' orders must be carried out.

So he led his men to detour around the core area of ​​the Wasteland Development Company and inquired about news through the local Maogu Town people.

In addition, he sent out sentinel birds to ensure that dangers could be detected as soon as possible.

The two ships were also docked in the distant northern beach area.

But for some reason, Yuan Tong always felt a little uneasy.

The key was that amazing Dead Sea alien.

Inside its mountain-like body grew distorted steel arms. These arms dug out the old internal organs in the body and discarded them, and then used mud, iron and other substances to create new organs and stuff them into the body to replace them.

The alien continued to emit light, and its whole body was covered with eyes that could shoot out light, as if no place could escape its gaze.

That scene was really shocking.

What was even weirder was that the leader of the Wasteland Development Company actually lived inside the alien.

The main thing that the chairman did was to develop land for planting crops. He even hired two electromechanical light nano-farmers to do the farming at a high price.

This was a bit beyond Yuan Tong's cognition.

He had heard in the past that strong people had some quirks.

Maybe this one's hobby is to do some land work or something.

…

In the night.

Yuan Tong was just distracted for a moment, when he suddenly discovered that the card playing and cursing had disappeared, and the ship was eerily quiet.

He slowly turned his head.

The crew members on the deck were all subdued by black samurai crabs. Sharp crab claw knives were placed on their necks, making them stiff and afraid to resist.

A black-clothed, black-haired young man looked over: "Are you their leader?"

This face was very familiar.

The chairman of the Wasteland Development Company, Zhou Yi.

He had indeed discovered his group long ago.

Yuan Tong suddenly felt a sense of relief.

Finally free.

"Please spare their lives. They are just a group of ordinary raiders who don't know anything. They just have to carry out orders and pose no threat to a strong person like you."

Yuan Tong knelt down and pressed his head to the deck to show his surrender: "Please feel free to kill or cut me. I will tell you everything I know."

He thought silently in his heart.

This is probably the path that raiders take in the end.

Even if the brothers can survive here, He Jiu will kill them to silence them.

Why is it so difficult to retire?

But the young man squatted down and said softly to him: "He Jiu sent you here, he didn't intend to let you go back alive."

"If your answer satisfies me, I won't kill you, and I'll give you a way out."

Yuan Tong looked shocked.

His conversation with He Jiu was in the defense station of the Knights' garrison, and there was actually someone from the other side there!

This chairman is well-connected.

Maybe he really has a chance to survive!