Chapter 30

“Oh? Has someone already started to cause trouble?”

“It’s not that bad.” Chen Haiping shook his head. “But I think that some people are slacking on their work. It’s primarily because we have too many survivors but lack any supervisors, so we can’t get a clear view of the situation. There’s been no big problems so far, but in the long term, this will be very disadvantageous to the development of the shelter.

“In addition, during meal time, I suspect that someone is storing away food, causing the amount of food consumed every day to be much greater than anticipated. I only realized it when I was running the numbers on the food stores this morning, but this can’t have been something that’s been going on for one or two days!”

The shelter’s rules had been extremely simple, or could even be said to not exist.

The arrangements made for survivors every day were really just a general guideline for each survivor. There was no auditing of what they did or how much they worked.

The same was true for meal times. With the increased number of survivors, food was distributed from a large communal pot that could fill the stomach. The food provided was much better than that provided in the average shelter, but it was clear that some greedy people would never be satisfied or grateful no matter how much they received.

Chen Haiping couldn’t do anything about that.

In the end, he had been a former soldier, and though he had managed to reach the officer level, he felt great despair when asked to resolve these problems.

Tang Yu indicated that he understood.

The shelter was in the developing phase and had a pile of problems to take care of. Chen Haiping clearly wanted to prioritize these particular problems first.

In the end, they lacked trustworthy people.

He, Yilian, and Roger were the core leadership of the domain.

Chen Haiping belonged to the next tier of leadership.

After that were a small number of trustworthy survivors. These people were mostly assigned to important posts or managerial positions, but there clearly weren’t enough. As the number of survivors in the domain rose, the proportion of trustworthy people dwindled.

This was because the shelter’s foundation had essentially been lacking. With other shelters, if they weren’t set up by the government, they were set up by people with large numbers of subordinates. These shelters had started off with population, resources, and rather complete operating systems that allowed them to constantly absorb new survivors.

But this domain clearly could not be considered a true shelter, and it lacked the ability to awe and intimidate outside survivors that other shelters had.

This was even more problematic with the many untameable and unruly Awakened among the outside survivors.

Tang Yu looked at the domain map, at the little dots that represented the survivors.

Besides the earliest two batches of survivors, the remaining survivors were mostly yellow sprinkled with green and red.

The red stood out.

These red dots were not those people Lin Wei had sent to investigate, but certain thorns among the survivors.

While these people had yet to do anything that would endanger the shelter, the fact that they were red dots meant that these people were hostile to the domain.

Dealing with these people was rather troublesome… no, he would not admit that he hadn’t dealt with them because it was troublesome. It had to be because he was so busy building up the domain that he didn’t have the time.

Fortunately, now that he had Origin Crystals, the problem of the Town Portal Scroll would be very quickly solved.

Before heading off to Lindong, he would take care of these miscellaneous concerns in one go.

“Let’s do this. Old Chen, post an announcement. With the exact wording… just write whatever. After that, find a time to carry out a census of the survivors. There’s no need to make it very soon. Give those people some time to prepare. When the time comes, we can make back our capital and make a little profit. Yeah, that’s about it.”

Chen Haiping covered his face.

He felt that the burden on his shoulders had only grown heavier.

…

On the outskirts of the vacation villa, in a small forest…

Ding Qiang was seated on a rocking chair and relaxing under the shade of a tree while he slowly snacked on a sausage.

“This taste… wonderful. I never realized how tasty sausages were.”

A rumbling came from the distance: the sound of automatons demolishing stone.

This was the time of day in which materials were transported.

But Ding Qiang was leisurely relaxing on his rocking chair as if this work had nothing to do with him.

He naturally had to reject the shelter’s arrangements. He was a mighty Awakened that would be an honored guest at any other shelter, yet he had been assigned such lowly work. In his view, this place couldn’t even be considered a real shelter.

There was nothing much that was special about this shelter. Only that wall seemed incredible. If not for the fact that this place had been generous with the food, he would have never paid this place any mind… Perhaps there really had been a shelter here, but it had been destroyed by a demon flood. This would explain why this place had so much food.

But Ding Qiang was still somewhat wary of this place. There was nothing simple about those automatons that were mining stone. They were probably the product of some ability user. Otherwise, he would have never pretended to follow the orders of the shelter.

Suddenly, a young man with some facial stubble ran over. “Big… Big Brother, bad news…”

“What are you in such a panic for? At most, the fact that we were secretly seizing food from other survivors was discovered, but that’s nothing to be worried about. Your big brother is an Awakened and isn’t afraid of this so-called shelter,” Ding Qiang proudly said as he glared at the young man.

The young man panted for breath, a look of admiration on his face.

Truly, this was their Awakened big brother, always speaking in this domineering tone. In contrast, he had panicked over that tiny bit of bad news. It was just too shameful. His big brother had already said that there was no need to fear the shelter. Since that was the case, that bad news probably wasn’t a big deal to his big brother.

“Big Brother, it’s not about that. It’s the shelter. The shelter has posted an announcement saying that it is reforming the rules, dividing the survivors in the shelter into residents and wanderers. Residents have to follow the work assignments of the shelter, and their food will be distributed in accordance with their accomplishments, and they will also receive greater benefits. But if they violate the work requirements, they will be punished in various ways, like having their remuneration cancelled…

“As for wanderers, these people won’t be restricted by the shelter so long as they don’t break the rules. It also said something about the shelter giving out missions at certain intervals, and wanderers could complete these missions in exchange for resources. Apparently, these missions would include searching the surrounding regions, gathering certain items…”

The young man failed to notice that Ding Qiang’s expression was turning darker as he went on, and by the time he reached the end, his face was pitch-black.

…

The small square in front of the villa area had always been the most active area in the shelter. Every day, large amounts of wood and stone were transported here by survivors. Besides work, many survivors would also gather here to chat. This was one of the few methods of leisure in the apocalypse.

The shelter permitted appropriate breaks. After all, ordinary people couldn’t work from daybreak to nightfall without rest. So long as they weren’t intentionally slacking, Tang Yu didn’t care.

In truth, this level of work was something that the vast majority of survivors could bear, and the rewards far surpassed anything they could get from elsewhere.

At this time, a survivor pushing over a cart saw an announcement posted on the side of the gate. Something important seemed to be written there, and quite a few survivors had gathered around it.

Zhao Xingping hastily pushed the cart of materials to the assigned area, and then he quickly returned to the square to see what was written on the poster.

He had come to the shelter two days ago. Unlike many others, he was not an outsider who had come here through his own power, but an ordinary person, and he also hadn’t been lucky enough to join a group with an Awakened. But Zhao Xingping still felt fortunate. He keenly remembered that day. He had been hiding in a dark corner, trying to suppress his hunger as a demonized beast roved around the place he was staying.

He had been filled with panic and unease until… Captain Roger appeared and sliced the demonized beasts in half. He was brought to the shelter, where he became an ordinary survivor.

He could eat three meals that filled his stomach every day, and they even included both meat and vegetables. It all felt like a dream.

He didn’t know how he could repay the shelter’s kindness. All he could do was perform his assigned duties as well as he could.