This Game Is Too Realistic-Chapter 504.1: Survivors!

The piercing white light slipped through his eyelids. Lying flat on the hospital bed, Yi Hai’s brow twitched.

As consciousness gradually returned, a searing pain suddenly surged up his throat, and he reflexively turned to the side and dry heaved. “Ugh! Cough, cough...”

After vomiting up a stomachful of bile, he was quickly pinned back by two people in white lab coats.

Thinking he had been captured by the Wislanders, he instinctively struggled. But after hearing the nearby conversation, he stopped resisting. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

“Doctor! How is he?!”

“Post-cryosleep complications... For hibernation lasting over six months, long-term sedatives are required. Using short-term ones causes reactions like this. Luckily you brought him back in time. Another two months and he really would’ve become a popsicle.”

“Yi Hai...”

Hearing the familiar voice, his drifting consciousness finally returned to his body. Yi Hai stiffly turned his neck and looked at the young man standing beside him. “... Yi Chuan?”

“It’s me!” Yi Chuan, looking at the barely-conscious man on the bed, couldn’t hold back his choked voice. Sniffling hard, he forced a reassuring smile. “We came to bring you home!”

Yi Hai gulped and a look of relief slowly eased across his haggard face. “You came...”

“We won’t abandon a single citizen stranded out there. No matter the cost, we’ll bring them home.”

A solemn voice accompanied the sound of footsteps.

Walking to the bedside, Wu Changnian patted Yi Chuan’s shoulder and continued in a gentle tone. “Your brother is out of danger now. But for the sake of those we haven’t saved yet, I’d like to talk with him.”

Yi Chuan nodded firmly, gave his brother a look to reassure him, then turned and walked out of the tent.

Watching his brother’s figure disappear through the doorway, Yi Hai glanced at Wu Changnian beside the bed, then turned to look at Chu Guang, a hint of surprise suddenly appearing on his face.

“You’re... the administrator?”

“I am.” Chu Guang smiled and nodded, looking at the face filled with shock.

He knew very well that the deputy to Captain Lu Yang must be full of questions. Even the look on his face seemed to be asking ‘Why are you here’?

His reaction was natural.

After all, Yi Hai’s memories of Clearspring City were stuck a year ago, back when the concept of the New Alliance didn’t even exist.

To the crew of the Pioneer, Clearspring City had just been an inconspicuous little village they passed by, where both sides had helped each other out in small ways.

Looking at those confused eyes, Chu Guang continued causally, “We could talk about our story for three days and nights and still not finish. I bet it’s no less thrilling than your journey... but before we get into that, I’d like to ask, where are the remaining crew members?”

Wu Changnian added, “What happened to the others from the Pioneer?”

Resting his head against the cushion, Yi Hai closed his eyes for a moment, sorting through his scattered memories and piecing them together like a puzzle.

“They... should’ve already gone in.”

“Gone in? Where?” Wu Changnian pressed urgently.

“The shelter...”

“You mean Shelter 0?”

“I’m not sure,” Yi Hai said with uncertainty in his eyes, his voice tinged with hesitation. “But it probably is... We found its entrance. Lu Yang said he planned to take the rest of the group into the shelter to hide from the Wislanders and Mutant Humans.”

A dull ache throbbed in his forehead, and he raised a hand to press against it.

“... It probably wasn’t just the Wislanders and Mutant Humans attacking us. Their gear was more advanced than the Army’s, closer to pre-war tech.”

More advanced gear?

Wu Changnian furrowed his brow. “Could it be the Academy?”

“Doesn’t seem like it...” Yi Hai shook his head and coughed before continuing. “We never saw anyone from the Academy... Those people seemed like they’d lived in the Great Desert for a long time and knew it well. At first, we thought they were, like us, heading for Shelter 0. Captain Lu Yang suggested cooperating, if Shelter 0 really could end the wasteland, having more people to open it wouldn’t hurt. But later, we found out...”

Noticing he had trailed off, Chu Guang, listening intently, immediately asked, “What did you discover?”

Yi Hai was silent for a long time. “...Those people had intel beyond what we imagined. It seemed like they already knew where Shelter 0 was from the start. And from the beginning, they weren’t aiming for the shelter. They seemed intent on stopping us from reaching it.”

Chu Guang frowned. “Who were they exactly? Did they say who they were?”

“They seemed to be called something like ‘Enlightenment...’ something.”

...

In the following account, Yi Hai briefly explained what had happened, how they found Shelter 0’s location, how they clashed with the Wislanders, and how they fell into danger.

Back aboard the airship, Chu Guang sat in his office, staring at the notepad in deep thought.

A blank page was marked with a crude pencil sketch, two inverted triangles joined to resemble a torch.

Yi Hai had claimed to see that symbol on the attackers, though he had no clue about the so-called Torch Church.

The group identified themselves as the Enlightenment Society. Most of their members wore blue coats. It was clear they were residents of a shelter.

After all, the four major industrial zones and the space elevator in the center had once been the economic and industrial heart of the Federation Era, and the number of shelters in those areas far outstripped those in Sunset Province or the River Valley Province.

Since the end of the nuclear winter, people had been waking up in remote corners every year... The Enlightenment Society was formed by some of these shelter residents.

The organization’s mission, true to its name, was to restart fallen civilization and save a world mired in ruin for 200 years.

That was also why Lu Yang had agreed to work with them in the search for Shelter 0.

Meeting like-minded people in the Wasteland was exceedingly rare.

But no one had expected those seemingly kindred spirits to betray them at the last moment...

Still, one thing didn’t add up. If, as Yi Hai claimed, the Enlightenment Society already knew Shelter 0’s location and their goal was to stop others from reaching it, then why pretend to cooperate with Lu Yang’s group?

Even if they needed to resort to ambush because they couldn’t win in a fair fight, they didn’t need to wait until the Pioneer found the entrance to act.

“... Maybe the Enlightenment Society wanted the Enterprise to find the place, but they disagreed internally on what to do with Shelter 0.”

Chu Guang closed his eyes and pondered for a while, then shook his head.

There just wasn’t enough intelligence.

He saw two possible explanations, but neither had solid evidence. Maybe the answer lay inside Shelter 0.

In any case, they had now obtained the exact coordinates of Shelter 0’s entrance from Yi Hai.

It was a colossal industrial building spanning over a thousand acres, essentially a vertical assembly plant.

The Prosperity Era had achieved two major feats. One was cramming farmland into skyscrapers, and the other was cramming entire production lines in as well.

According to Yi Hai, the building was the entrance to Shelter 0.

A large piece of debris from the space elevator had landed in the area god knew how long ago, and due to lingering radiation, many dangerous mutated species roamed nearby.

The Enterprise’s 26th Assault Squad had secured the building’s entrance. The next day, the different factions would officially enter the ruins and unveil Shelter 0’s secrets.

Chu Guang deployed a drone-based relay from the airship. Taking the opportunity to sync their archived data, he uploaded all the recent findings to the official website.

At that moment, the forums were still buzzing with the joy of victory in the Sunset Province War Campaign.

Since only a small number of players had traveled with the airship, most of those in the expedition were returning on foot with NPC troops, or wandering back in groups.

Many players were posting about things they’d seen on the road, discoveries in the Honey Badger Kingdom or Lion Kingdom, or new side content unlocked by accident.