Chapter 93: Chapter 93: Faction Metrics and Double Beds

The two adjacent locomotives were instantly locked within a violent, crushing magnetic field.

The next second, Yu Nian’s smaller train violently sheared apart, its structural plating disintegrating into a swirling storm of metallic debris that hovered in mid-air. The magnetic vortex screeched as it funneled toward the rear of Bai Cheng’s flagship, snapping together with mechanical precision to assemble a brand-new third carriage.

As for where the surplus structural materials and redundant components went during the compression sequence, the system left no clues.

When the dust settled, the train boasted a total of three carriages, their profiles systematically tapering down in size toward the rear. Looking at the final result, Yu Nian pouted in immediate dissatisfaction. "Wait, why didn’t my carriage keep its upgrades? That was a Level 2 unit!"

Unfortunately, the system mechanics were absolute: only unattached, supplementary carriages absorbed during a merge would scale up to match the host vehicle’s baseline level. Any carriage that a teammate had personally upgraded beforehand had its structural tier completely wiped and reset to baseline upon integration.

In short, every scrap of rare material Yu Nian had poured into upgrading her carriage had been utterly atomized by the system.

The situation with the crew composition was equally unyielding. Though Bai Cheng had quietly abandoned her plan to hand over a spare employee card, the exact mechanical bottleneck she had feared played out anyway.

During a train consolidation, active employees were subjected to an immediate, forced evolutionary threshold; they were never reverted back into an item card state to allow for strategic level manipulation before re-summoning. Furthermore, the recently dissolved Azure Ox had vanished without a trace alongside the redundant locomotive scrap, leaving behind absolutely no card signature in their inventory ledger.

By now, Yu Nian’s second employee had officially completed its forced evolutionary breakthrough. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

The entity looked fundamentally altered from its original form, having undergone a radical, top-to-bottom metamorphosis. Its physical frame had expanded significantly, matching the height and bulk of an athletic, 1.8-meter-tall adult human male.

It stood in a powerful, semi-humanoid stance—bearing a pristine avian head atop a heavily muscled human torso. Its powerful lower limbs terminated in curved, predatory talons engineered for tearing through bone, yet its hands were completely indistinguishable from human hands. The creature was entirely bare-chested, its sleek, greenish-blue plumage covering the rest of its body, while a pair of massive, sweeping wings remained folded flush against its back.

It was undeniably striking, though its exact mechanical abilities remained unlisted.

Yu Nian blinked, her jaw dropping slightly as she audited the entity. "Huh? Wait... so you’re actually a guy?"

The avian warrior offered a low, intelligent nod. He clearly possessed high cognitive awareness, but he lacked the physical vocal cords required for human speech.

"I’m giving you Xiao Qing’s legacy name," Yu Nian decided, her expression softening. "From now on, you’ll be known as Qing Niao. That way, pieces of both my original companions will stay by my side forever."

With the entity formally renamed, Yu Nian clapped her hands together brightly. "Alright! We’re all part of the same operating crew now, so let’s make sure we maintain excellent synergy!" She turned toward the three powerhouses standing behind Bai Cheng, gesturing for her new recruit to step forward. "Go ahead and introduce yourself to the veteran staff."

Qing Niao couldn’t speak, but he gracefully mimicked a traditional human salute to show respect.

While he couldn’t converse with the rest of the crew, establishing an immediate rapport with Chi Yan was effortless, given the fiery general’s passive ability to commune fluently with all beast-type lifeforms. The two powerful entities simply traded quiet, sizing-up nods.

Zi Yuan immediately leaned forward, her violet eyes flashing with curiosity. "What did he say to you, Chi Yan?"

"He notes that your ambient aura is profoundly terrifying," Chi Yan replied meticulously, his face completely expressionless.

"Huh?" Zi Yuan’s small face twisted into absolute confusion, pointing a finger at her own nose. "Me? Terrifying? I’m literally just a baseline Legendary rank!"

Lü Duo, maintaining her flawless manners, offered a polite bow. "Welcome to the crew! Please look after me moving forward!"

Internally, the wood-elf sniper was nursing a quiet wave of relief. *Finally, I’m no longer the absolute rookie on the roster!*

Suddenly, Zi Yuan remembered an important organizational detail and turned to her captain. "Oh right, Young Lady... how exactly should the crew address...?" She trailed off, gesturing explicitly toward Yu Nian.

As a formal faction member permanently integrated into the locomotive’s core directory, Yu Nian’s institutional authority and division of labor were fundamentally distinct from the employee roster. It was a structural hierarchy question Bai Cheng hadn’t explicitly mapped out yet.

After a brief moment of deliberation, Bai Cheng answered, "Moving forward, the crew will address me as Young Miss. Yu Nian will be addressed as Second Young Miss."

The employees all nodded in immediate, unified agreement, raising no objections to the command structure. Yu Nian, on the other hand, let out a delighted giggle, the corners of her mouth curving straight up.

"Why does that sound like we’re running a high-tier criminal syndicate? That is incredibly cool!"

With the physical logistics of the train merge officially locked in, a mountain of transferred cargo still demanded their immediate attention. Yu Nian eagerly grabbed Bai Cheng’s hand, pulling her toward the exit. "Come on, Young Miss! Let’s go see the new train!"

The two girls navigated back through the interior corridors. The primary control cabin had experienced virtually zero architectural changes, and the main system screen displayed only a solitary, glowing notification:

[Merge Complete]

When it came to the transferred inventory, Bai Cheng quickly realized the merge function didn’t grant a clean, itemized selection menu like looting a dead survivor did; instead, the system had simply dumped everything into their collective storage arrays.

The moment they slid open the heavy door to the newly attached third carriage, a chaotic, unorganized mountain of raw supplies spilled out over the threshold, tumbling across the metal floor.

Bai Cheng focused her gaze, spotting a massive, unwieldy stack of unsold winter coats blocking the immediate entryway. "We need to clear these coats out via a flash sale on the market at a steep discount. They’re taking up way too much premium grid space."

By this point in the server timeline, the vast majority of active survivors had already crossed into the sub-zero mountain ranges. Anyone who desperately required basic cold-weather gear had already acquired it, and the remaining stragglers wouldn’t have the liquidity to buy them anyway.

Yu Nian nodded in agreement. "Sounds perfect. Whatever you say, boss."

Pushing past the wall of heavy winter gear, the rest of the small carriage was completely packed to the ceiling with a disorganized mess of baseline materials: raw mineral nodes, fuel stacks, loose unlimited coins scattered across the deck, and various disassembled structural facilities. The complete lack of a one-click automated organization tool was a massive mechanical oversight on the system’s part.

Left with no choice, Bai Cheng and Yu Nian began manually sorting, stacking, and logging the resources. Fortunately, their main warehouse layout was situated directly inside the adjacent second carriage, making the transit loop relatively short.

Before long, the bulk of the raw logistics had been cleanly cataloged, leaving behind only a handful of large, intact facilities resting on the floorboards—specifically, a water condenser, an elemental collector, a manufacturing table, a basic bed, and a spare furnace.

"We can scrap or liquidate the water condenser," Bai Cheng noted, checking off her list. "Between my current infrastructure and my talent multipliers, we already have access to functionally limitless freshwater."

"Got it."

"The elemental collector stays," Bai Cheng continued. "This model can harvest six distinct elemental matrices simultaneously. That’s highly efficient for high-tier crafting."

"Mm-hmm."

"As for that spare bed, we should probably keep it configured..."

Before Bai Cheng could finish her sentence, Yu Nian cut her off with a wave of her hand, speaking with a look of absolute, righteous indignation. "Ugh, what do we need an extra bed for? It’s clunky, it’s massive, and it eats up an entire sector of floor space! Scrap it! It definitely needs to be liquidated immediately!"

Bai Cheng raised a skeptical eyebrow, her arms crossing. "And where exactly do you plan on sleeping, Yu Nian?"

Yu Nian looked at her as if she had just asked the most obvious question in human history. "With you, obviously! Your primary bed is literally configured as a double bed anyway!"

"But if I recall correctly, just five minutes ago, someone was loudly complaining that my primary bed configuration was way too basic and unrefined..." Bai Cheng rolled her eyes toward the ceiling again.

Yu Nian’s gaze immediately began darting around the room in a desperate bid to look innocent. "Did I say that? Wow, Xiao Cheng, your memory must be getting foggy in the cold weather! You’re totally misremembering things!"

Right as she was attempting to deflect, her wandering eyes caught a flicker of light from a localized auxiliary display tucked into the far corner of the carriage wall. She pointed a finger excitedly. "Xiao Cheng, look at the monitor!"

As it turned out, a consolidated faction carriage operated under slightly adjusted parameters compared to standard rolling stock. Even though Yu Nian had surrendered primary ownership of her train, she still retained a specific, truncated set of administrative privileges. She could still freely browse the global communication channels and execute transactions on the market exchange, but core architecture functions like the [My Train] function had been permanently disabled for her account.

The auxiliary screen was currently cycling through a series of system-wide notifications. The two girls leaned their heads close to review the text.

[Your train has completed merging!]

[Your Pioneer title has been released, current affiliation: Lieche Zhang (Train Conductor) - Title Pioneer Bai Cheng.]

[Your Armored Core ability has been unlocked!]

[Due to the special nature of the merged carriage, this carriage can also install an Armored Core, which will also be your main source of abilities later!]

[Your employees have completed strengthening, and you will no longer be able to recruit employees in the future!]

The bulk of the text consisted of standard administrative boilerplate, so neither of them paid it much mind. However, once they cleared the notifications, the primary dashboard updated to display the unified vehicle’s real-time development score.

[Train Prosperity: 501]

Yu Nian’s jaw dropped as she stared at the three-digit number. "Xiao Cheng... how on earth is your prosperity score that high?!"

Because she was intimately familiar with the brutal math behind accumulating prosperity points, the sheer scale of the metric left her completely floored.

Bai Cheng merely offered a silent, theatrical shrug, tilting her head with a look of casual indifference.

Yu Nian continued to swipe through the system sub-menus, searching for hidden tabs, when her finger suddenly locked onto a brand-new, completely unlisted option sitting at the very bottom of the directory.

"Wait... [’Cultivation’]?" Yu Nian muttered, her eyes widening. "What the hell is this function supposed to be?"