CHAPTER 1088: CHAPTER 97

For the Heroes who have occupied Saturn and the vast space beyond its orbit, "resource shortage" and "population shortage" are huge challenges. Moreover, the banner of prosthetic body can’t be raised only at the frontier of the Solar System. Without extending their vision to the entirety of the Solar System, seeking merely to linger in its cold regions, this banner would lose its rationale for existence.

The residents of the Neutral City-States are exactly the force that the Heroes aim to rally.

Due to the extremely tragic lessons of the Fourth Martial God, Heroes rarely capture Space Cities and seldom construct them. Assassination within Space Cities, disrupting the organizational structure of Protectors, is a choice made out of necessity.

The residents of the Neutral City-States were driven here by war and man-made disasters, compelled to establish their city-states.

These city-state residents are not warriors and do not wish to become warriors. They come from the Jupiter Domain, where the Fourth Martial God once fought. Initially, they were destitute, seeking a place to survive. But the Solar System has no Heaven. Jupiter and Saturn, due to their mass and fusion fuel reserves, have become strategic locations with strict management. The further Ice Giants are almost devoid of solar energy, entirely desolate without nuclear fuel support, and are too far from Jupiter. Ultimately, they only built their city-states by scavenging remnants on the battlefield.

They wished to stay away from war but ironically could only find this kind of territory.

Their only available place was upon the remnants of two armies.

There are even some individuals, who have been frightened by the massacre committed by King Aqini. Even if their city-states are established, they do not reside therein, merely visiting occasionally to replenish resources; usually, they stay within the Asteroid Belt, seeking small asteroids about three meters in diameter to berth their spaceship. If truly lonely, they purchase broadcast services, relying on signals from the city-state towers to transmit broadcasts to their region. Although the download speed is only a few KB per second (forget about uploading), they can still download quite a bit of content.

These fearful individuals are the hermits of this age.

Despite views from King Aqini and several other "stabilizers" that Neutral City-States are inherently unstable factors, their residents do not submit to royal authority and are deemed killable, the nearest Conquest Heavenly King is famously indifferent to it. Brave King, though harboring intentions to sweep away this place, specializes in atmospheric combat.

The Heavenly God King and the King of the Firmament who took over the duties of the Holy Duke King have been entangled with the White Fleet Prosthetics Followers and the Black Ship Righteous Followers for long. Merely with these two forces, they can’t completely defeat the hidden heroic fleets within the Asteroid Belt or flatten the Neutral City-States.

Under this delicate and fragile balance, the Neutral City-States are gradually growing. Residents here smuggle some necessary research samples for Scientific Knights, also smuggling small amounts of nuclear fuel for Heroes, and occasionally transporting some refined metal materials—pre-calculated on orbit, then camouflaging powerless cargo containers as meteors for delivery.

Their methods of production and life differ from those of the residents of Terrestrial Planets, and under Protector’s control, they differ from Satellite Cities to some extent. Heroes study them and accumulate experience in propagating to them.

After the construction site for that fort, Jeanne and Asgard followed Liliang Chuangkou to four or five such places. All were similar defensive works construction sites and worker activity sites.

This took them about ten days.

During this process, Jeanne did not see members of the Six Dragons Sect.

Tumor Xiang Shan fell into contemplation: [Where is the problem? Is the density of Six Dragons Sect members inherently low, or have they simply not developed in this community?]

As known from intelligence so far, the Six Dragons Council actively recruits some arena fighters. These arena fighters exhibit similar personal styles. Reckless or confused? Something like that.

Such individuals are common among workers in Neutral City-States—or, one might say, amongst old Earth soldiers. These old guys are merely six or seventy years younger than the initial Xiang Shan, and they have also slumbered here for seventy or eighty years. They also survived from that old era. The ideologies and beliefs they forged in their first half of life were completely destroyed a hundred years ago.

[Not expanding rapidly among the worker group. Is it because the workers and old soldiers here have a much stronger collective consciousness compared to this era? They have experienced the old era, so they’re not as easy to deceive as contemporary people? Or... for the sake of concealment, they must control the scale, reduce numbers, to ensure the elite quality of the team?]

It’s still unknown for now. But one thing is certain, the power of the Six Dragons Sect in Neutral City-States is definitely far lower than their strength on Mars.

[Perhaps it can develop here... once this disappointing daughter learns to correctly use this Prosthetic Body...]

The spacecraft gradually approached Chaldea. From this distance, the group could see the reconstruction work underway in Chaldea. Hundreds of workers were laboring, reclaiming the scattered metal in space. If these items keep drifting, they will become space debris that obstructs spacecraft operations. Space Cities must reclaim these valuable metals.

At this moment, Jeanne and Asgard were discussing the next topic with Liliang Chuangkou. Under Asgard’s suggestion, they aimed the lens towards the direction within the Solar System’s Mars orbit.

Over there...

"The density of artificial celestial bodies is indeed much higher than over there." Asgard shook his head with a sigh: "The difference is truly vast."

"Actually, many Satellite Cities are basically unoccupied." Liliang Chuangkou said encouragingly: "Near Mercury’s orbit, there are a lot of Satellite Cities with unclear significance."

"Unclear significance... ah, I’ve indeed heard about it." Asgard snapped his fingers.

Liliang Chuangkou was slightly curious: "What?"

"I’m not really sure about it, at that time we were still serving under that... Old Dog." Asgard said: "We were Houndhawks back then, Houndhawks. There were indeed not many people daring to explore this issue then."

Over these days of interaction, Asgard no longer minded discussing his past as a Houndhawk with Liliang Chuangkou.

Jeanne asked earnestly: "Why do you feel those large structures have unclear significance?"

"Some of them are specifically for storing amber of ancient civilization, very few people visit those." Liliang Chuangkou said: "Yet, simultaneously there are some Space Cities that all Protectors avoid, practically never approaching. We’ve alternated equipment from different places for quite a while. Except for maintenance teams, no one has ever approached those buildings."

"Really?" Jeanne suddenly found a bit of interest.

Tumor Xiang Shan’s phantom knocked her on the head: "Don’t overthink it for now. Registering is more important now. But..."

Through the telescope, he also saw the artificial bright stars near the Sun.

"Indeed, it’s quite curious. Things more secretive than ’Amber of Ancient Civilization’? What could that be?"