177: Wanli Jinsha (3)

"Everything in that cave was like a dream,"

"When I returned to that cold settlement, I didn't realize the dream should have ended long ago."

Muldra's gaze refocused on the camera in front of it.

Having learned to read and write, the youth's first thought upon returning to the city was to find a "decent" job for itself.

As for those two books, it simply buried them deep in its heart, no longer willing to mention them.

Being able to read and write, in the Wasteland, could naturally raise its value as "merchandise" by a significant margin—

Even if the appearance of this merchandise wasn't necessarily great.

Perhaps because sandstorms had been breaking out in the desert for no reason recently, working on the outskirts of the settlement had become a hot potato; no one was willing to take that legendary position with a ninety-five percent mortality rate.

Muldra quickly obtained a clerical job registering arrivals at the settlement's checkpoint.

Its daily duty was to write down the departing caravans in one notebook, and then write down the arriving caravans in another.

This job was effortless for it.

It had assumed that if it just continued like this, it could live safely and comfortably, right up until it married, had children, and then died, turning into a handful of yellow sand.

But what it hadn't expected was that the peaceful days wouldn't even last two months—

War and death came knocking.

Trucks covered in metal plating crushed corpses, and white smoke filled with the smell of gunpowder shrouded the sky of the settlement.

Those guys holding homemade firearms fired indiscriminately at people, at livestock, at vehicles—they fired at everything they could see.

The cause of this conflict was the settlement's three springs, and for those raiders, the spoils of war also included a large number of slaves—food and labor combined.

In the chaos, listening to the gunfire that sounded like popping beans, it fled in a panic into a basement.

Subsequently, a burst of exclamations arose—

As it turned out, the basement was already packed with people, and they mistook Muldra, who had suddenly burst in, for a raider coming to harvest them.

The entire basement instantly descended into chaos.

Chaos created huge noise, and noise, without a doubt, would bring disaster.

But by the time someone realized this and wanted to restore order to the scene, it was too late—

"Bang! Bang!"

Two gunshots rang out, and the man standing on the central platform shouting to maintain order fell to the ground, while the screaming and roaring crowd instantly returned to silence.

Two guys with strange greasepaint on their faces walked down, holding guns.

"Those two guys, that red and dark brown graffiti on their faces, I don't even know if it was greasepaint,"

"I still have a vivid memory of that time—it stank so fucking bad."

In the interrogation room, the burned Muldra became spirited when talking about this part.

Even Xi Hai, who was listening from the other side of the screen, was unwittingly captivated.

"What happened to those people in the end?"

Facing the question coming from the microphone, Muldra proudly puffed out its chest.

"Of course I killed them."

"I was leaning against the door at the time; they didn't notice me,"

"I ambushed one of them, and then quickly used his gun to mow down the other."

At that moment, the surging adrenaline and the fearlessness of a newborn calf became the sharpest spearhead for the young Muldra.

It had recalled that day on countless nights afterward, waking up from its dreams in a start, followed by endless palpitations and lingering fear.

At the same time, those two dead raiders were also the beginning of its wild rampage.

"Undoubtedly, I succeeded in resisting,"

"And what followed was a whole heap of trouble."

At that time, in the basement where the chaos had just ended,

Most people blamed Muldra for bringing the disaster, but a few regarded it as their savior and expressed their willingness to follow it.

They began to move.

At the same time, Muldra's brain was spinning wildly at this moment; it remembered the contents of the two incomplete books it had found in the cave before—

"For instance, it once proposed: when the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy camps, we harass; when the enemy is tired, we ■"

This half-sentence suddenly appeared in its mind.

In the interrogation room, Muldra continued,

"Just like that, relying on our familiarity with the terrain, we fought, ran, and harassed,"

"Neither side was a professional army; they were just relying on the morale of rushing in with their cars to scare us all silly,"

"But as more and more people joined me,"

"When it came to actual street fighting, they weren't as good as us—"

"In the end, they were even willing to burn everything down to force us out."

As it spoke, a trace of a smile appeared on Muldra's aged face,

"Unfortunately, they were too unprofessional."

"Those ridiculous arson squads actually dared to split up?"

"It was like a piece of meat cutting itself up and serving itself to us on a platter."

Undoubtedly, those invaders were few in number to begin with,

And under the command of whoever grew their brains, they actually dared to make such a suffocatingly stupid move as splitting their forces,

So, overnight, those invaders were cleaned out completely.

And Muldra, inexplicably, became the military leader of the settlement it was in.

Life finally shifted back toward how it was supposed to be, and Muldra calmly accepted its new status—

Anyway, doing anything is better than being a rat, isn't it?

And the "noble class" in the upper levels of the settlement, after weighing the pros and cons,

Chose to accept it, the recognized leader of the armed forces who had fought his way up.

Muldra, describing its story in the interrogation room, gave a bitter smile and said:

"Those days, I really found it incredibly difficult to adapt."

"Do you understand? It was like suddenly barging into a world that didn't belong to me,"

"The people around me were hypocritical, treacherous, and treated me with contempt and disdain,"

"And—they tried to corrupt me with their set of ideologies."

As it spoke, it shook its head,

"But how could I possibly be seduced by them?"

"When I learned to read, I read the Virtue Chapter of the 'Ancient ■ Scripture'."

"And that incomplete scroll of the '■■■■■' implanted a worldview in me that allowed me to convince myself,"

"So, after several nights of deep thought—"

"I chose to stay with the ordinary people in the settlement."

"That was what I wanted, the life that belonged to me."

"As for those gangs, nobles, slave owners..."

Muldra's eyes suddenly turned fierce; it made its left hand into a knife-hand and slammed it hard into the palm of its right hand,

"In the world I want, there are no such characters."