Chapter 817: Investigated the Fettered Dimension

“Alright, alright!” Chu Fan gritted his teeth. That was exactly what he wanted to do. But after being ordered by Qin Feng, he was beyond irritated.

Looking at Chu Fan’s frustration, Qin Feng found it amusing.

“I will be leaving then. See you in a month.” Qin Feng left the central square after waving Chu Fan goodbye.

Chungluo City had completely turned into an abandoned ruin. Because of a small-scale beast wave, it was more shambolic than before.

Qin Feng found an old truck and steered it to b.u.mp away those wasted, once valued more than a few hundred million high-cla.s.s hovercrafts. He crushed all the way through the north.

The engine howls of the truck startled the beasts and humans wherever it pa.s.sed by. People who remained in the city had been traumatized by the beast wave and no longer had the courage to leave their vaults. They all thought Qin Feng must have been out of his mind to make such a glaring tumult out there.

Qin Feng, as usual, cared not about how others thought of him and did things his way.

He banged on all the beasts coming at him and left behind a trail of beast corpses.

Eventually, the giant truck exited the overlapped area and entered the actual Fettered Land.

***

On the outside, of all the people saved by the Fengli organization, some had chosen to leave together with them. They boarded the aircraft and were on their way to Fengli City.

The rest stayed and waited for shuttles arranged by the Zhongcheng Organization.

One of them was Li Yuanshan. He glanced back at the less than ten thousand people who had to make the same decision as him, and suddenly doubted his own choice.

His doubt mattered little, though. He would not surrender himself to Qin Feng anyway.

As compared to the people who stayed, those that had chosen Fengli and left through the latest portal technology earlier stirred envious thoughts.

“Argh! I should have chosen Fengli.”

“Liu Chong has left. Are we going to rebuild Chungluo or not?”

“Why didn’t I choose Fengli?! When will the shuttles from Zhongcheng arrive? Would there be danger traveling by the route in the wild?”

Fear toward the uncertainties lying ahead spread feverishly among them. Through their never-ending complaints, it was not difficult to tell that their loyalty toward the old Chungluo City had completely evaporated by now.

Unfortunately, their future held not much of a promise too.

As the transporters from Zhongcheng finally transferred the last batch of refugees away from the city, Chungluo had officially become a no-man’s land. Nothing left in this forbidden land was worth staying for.

In stark contrast, Fengli City was more vibrant than ever.

The population of Fengli had multiplied overnight. The already large city in the first place was being continuously expanded. It had now reached the fourth ring of the city wall due to the ever-growing constructions.

Even so, there was hardly a vacant spot inside the city.

In less than two years, Fengli City had developed into a great metropolitan little had first envisioned it to be. The joining of one B or C-tier would bring in a large band of followers. It then created a positive loop as more people would follow suit to be part of this prosperous city clearly in an upward trajectory.

This was, however, probably as large as the city could stretch. To spread the city past this point would require too much modification of the land in the wild. A lot of cities had thus restricted the maximum expansion at the fourth ring, including Fengli City.

To further develop, there was only one way left—surrounding colonies.

As such, places that were once barren desert at the south of Fengli City had been transformed into three large colonies. Its size was close to Chengbei colony, and they were named respectively as *Fengchi, *Fenghuang, and *Fengcheng colonies.

At first, these three colonies served as the production line to complement the main industries inside Fengli City.

Right now, on top of Fenghuang, a large aircraft was delivering the refugees to the colony.

Underneath the Fenghuang colony hid a huge underground base. Bai Li, w.a.n.g Chen, and people handpicked by the latter had all gathered in there.

“Ms. Bai, these are all the peoples selected by me according to the president’s preference. For now, half of them are gunners who are battle-tested, while another half are all civilians. There are also more than two thousand backup names in my list, which could be called in anytime,” w.a.n.g Chen reported.

“Okay. Standby for now. We don’t know when Qin Feng will come back with a suitable location. He hasn’t responded so far.”

“If that is so, then I will have someone train the civilians first. This would at least prepare them for future battles.”

“Good idea!” Bai Li nodded. She then said, “Have you prepared the lab for Professor Z as told?”

“It’s done. I have it set up right next to our lab. Their activity there would be under surveillance 24/7.”

“Great!” Bai Li nodded in satisfaction. Since Z wanted the resources from Qin Feng, and to restrain Z from doing nonsense or dangerous experiments in the future, Bai Li reckoned why not have Z work under their watch?

It was better than having him experimenting in places that they had no eyes on.

Besides, if Qin Feng managed to exploit the Fettered Land first, then they would be in a favorable position.

Qin Feng could use it as a chip to negotiate with Z as an equal rather than an inferior.

They were now waiting only for Qin Feng’s instructions. Bai Li would create a tunnel to connect the two dimensions as soon as Qin Feng’s words returned.

The wait lasted for three days.

***

Inside the Fettered Land.

After Qin Feng drove the truck out of the city, he gave up on driving due to the b.u.mpy road. He threaded through the outermost forest cautiously on foot.

The forest was largely different from what he imagined it would be. He began to explore the Fettered Land.

Without the protection of the dark runes, Qin Feng was ambushed by beasts every few minutes. It was a thrilling walk.

He needed two days to finally trek through the forest. A large landscape opened up in front of his eyes.

He was following a stream, which suddenly plummeted at about a hundred meters ahead of him.

He quickened his pace and stepped on a giant boulder. Qin Feng looked down and realized he was on top of a waterfall.

The waterfall plunged for at least eight hundred meters before it reached the bottom. A light fog was swirling around the waterfall. If the stream was a river, then this would be a majestic fall.

Instead, it was just a stream less than two meters wide. The water flowed by calmly.

‘It could have been once a wide river here.’ Qin Feng made the a.s.sumption based on the old riverbed trail that measured about a hundred meters wide. Moreover, the stones at the bottom of the waterfall had a smooth surface, a sign of constant erosion by more powerful flows.

Either the river had branched off, or perhaps the landscape had changed due to crust displacement. Eventually, the great river had now been trimmed to a two-meter-wide stream. The water flowed down through the rock cleft and hardly made any notable sounds.

The stream merged with a small pond at the bottom of the cliff. Qin Feng saw a herd of unicorns filling their thirst at the side of the pool. Most of them were D3-tier, with the head of the herd a D7-tier beast king.

He then gazed up across the huge plain that extended beyond the horizon. The gra.s.sland in front of him was nurturing various species of ultra beasts, which scattered all around the robust land.

*Translator’s note: chi (赤), huang(黃), cheng(橙) correspond to red, yellow, and orange color, respectively.