The Great Merchant in the Cataclysm - Chapter 126

Chapter 126: Sneaking Into The City

Despite the lack of his left arm that caused him to lose a little balance while running, Zhang Mu never slow down his speed. In his mind, all he could think of was completing the era merchant task assigned to him. If he completed the task, he would have another year of breathing time. If not, he had to face the inevitable death.

For a half day, Zhang Mu did not have the strength to take out dry food for himself to eat. Maintaining his speed, he finally arrived at the fortification outside Shan Xi city. For him to arrive at Shan Xi city, Zhang Mu had to make a lot of turns here and there as he was dragged by the river to a place far away.

Fortunately, the evolvers from Shan Xi city already swept clean most of the area. So basically, there were no mutated animals above the second rank. That was a good thing for Zhang Mu, who was in a poor condition now. Although time is equal to money, if he lost his life before entering the city, then the efforts he put in for weeks would be all in vain.

Having said that, Zhang Mu did not make the choice of fighting mutated animals for convenience sake. The him now, could not afford to have any more setbacks. If he suffered another serious injury, he would not be able to save his own life since he had used up his only first-ranked recovery potion.

Zhang Mu lifted his head to see the outside of Shan Xi city right before his eye. His heart was full of emotions as it appears that his efforts were not in vain. Using a period of ten days, he finally reached the city.

So what if he had almost lost his life? Even without an arm, he, Zhang Mu, still arrived at the era merchant shop in Shan Xi city.

There was no time for Zhang Mu to delay anymore. He did not know how much danger would be waiting for him when he returned, especially that the shortcut he discovered was totally unusable now. In addition, the alternative that everyone recognized, which was the big river earlier, Zhang Mu did not have the guts to swim in it anymore.

In the end, there were only 20 days for him to return to Luoyang city!

He could only take detour using the safest yet the longest road which he had tried before. With his speed, he could probably return within 19 days. That meant that he only had one extra day for him to deal with any unexpected encountering in this Cataclysm.

With this, Zhang Mu quickly walked to the gates. The gates at the base were all similar. Even though the number of people that Shan Xi city could take in was limited, refugees from all parts of the world began to squeeze into the city that was basically enough to accommodate nearly ten thousand people, when they heard the news that it had the strongest evolvers within the radius of five hundred miles. Making the city crowded with people.

The existence of refugees helped Shan Xi city to have sufficient manpower in areas that evolvers would look down on. For example, fundamental practice and food plantation, that was the most crucial task in the base.

At the same time, due to this reason, the city capacity was at its limits. However, to throw the refugees out in the wild was considered heartless as the death rate in the wild was too high.

But there was also a number of evolvers that would adopt some ordinary people. To put it nicely, it was a job position to give them a chance to survive, but in fact, they were treated as a slave.

That was actually permitted by the high-leveled base member. Because once the fortification was repaired, and with the limited manpower that was required to grow crops, there would be excessed labor force. In that case, many people would be reduced to the state where they had to snatch food from the mutated animals.

The reality was brutal. Everyone could only close one eye on the matter that the ordinary people was kept captivity. After the cataclysm started for many years, no one had been that naive and selfless anymore.

Nonetheless, some kindness would still exist. However, it was impossible for people to give up the necessity for their own survival in order to have the so-called moral standards and justice.

Therefore, the survival for these ordinary people that were at the bottom, including those first-ranked and second-ranked evolvers with no awakening ability, were related to the vital interest of the upper-class society.

With the suggestion from many evolvers, Shan Xi city’s base leader made use of the power from the earth-type evolvers to build a relatively simple wall outside the city within a month. Although the defensive power was not that strong, the base core power was not stationed there. The wall acts as a hope for the refugees to protect themselves from the low-ranked mutated animals who were wandering near the city.

The previous city also changed its name and was called Inner City. It would be a place for third-ranked evolvers and above to live in. The minimum requirement for second-ranked evolvers to live in was them having a rare or beneficial ability.

The Inner City was built extremely luxurious. Since it cannot be expanded, those who had doubts about evolving further have chosen to indulge themselves there. There were numerous entertainment facilities from the original world being reconstructed inside the Inner City, even though the existence of the original world was prohibited.

In this cataclysm, the base leader was afraid of losing a large number of high-ranked evolvers. Hence, if they act based on the so-called mortal standard from the original world, they would have the reputation of a hypocrite. Therefore, if they did not, they would attract a lot of high-ranked evolvers to the base.

Moreover, going out to fight against the mutated animals, cleaning up the walking dead as well as competing with other human bases, put pressure on the evolvers. Hence, they must build a place for them to relax to avoid them causing a rampage within their territory.

Zhang Mu strolled into the outer city and paid for the entry fee as well. As it was only the outer city, he only required to pay one first-ranked crystal.

The pedestrians on the road seemed to be in a hurry. The people there had to work continuously in exchange for a day’s worth of rations. Because Zhang Mu was wandering slowly, he stood out from the crowd of people.

When the people saw that Zhang Mu’s left arm was empty in his sleeves, the looks in their eye was as if they were looking at a person who was dead.

Ordinary people with no background or power to support them, in this Cataclysm, disabled means death. That was a piece of general knowledge, so they naturally thought that Zhang Mu had given up the hope of surviving.

Zhang Mu knew that with his own power, he could not enter the Inner City as he was unable to meet any of the criteria. However, the era merchant shop was in the middle of the city.

So the only alternative for him, was to sneak in a name to enter.