The Stellar now had eleven carriages. The rooftop of the high-rise couldn’t accommodate all of them, so three carriages hung in mid-air, perpendicular to the ground, clinging to the wall.

It created a strangely beautiful, apocalyptic aesthetic.

He then turned his gaze to the carriage exposed in the middle of the pond and began to think.

How was he going to get these people back?

A few external injuries were fine; the Stellar had excellent medical treatment for external wounds, even capable of reattaching severed limbs. But this black, murky water... if an open wound touched it, a severe infection was almost guaranteed. Whether they survived after that would be up to fate.

Biao scanned his surroundings and quickly came up with a plan.

Ten minutes later, two tree trunks from the edge of the pond had been felled by Biao and his men using their Carriage Blade shards and pushed into the water, forming a crude bridge.

The two trunks connected the edge of the pond to the exposed carriage.

Soon, several survivors climbed out of the train and onto the trunks, lying flat and inching their way across with painstaking slowness.

By the time all the survivors had reached the shore, the Stellar had, at some point, driven down to the water’s edge.

Sitting at the control console, Chen Mang’s eyes immediately fell on Ji Chuchu in the crowd. Though her hair was a mess and her makeup was ruined, her underlying features were still good.

There were several other good-looking women as well.

They were all minor celebrities in this world.

Ji Chuchu was just more famous and more popular.

"Not bad."

Chen Mang nodded lightly. These were rare resources.

Just then, Lao Zhu walked out of the train and over to Biao, his voice low. "I’m taking these celebrities. Boss Mang wants me to take them to the guards’ carriage and have someone clean them up. You take the rest to the last carriage."

"Understood."

"Oh, right." Lao Zhu pointed to the man who was now grinning fawningly. "You’re the captain of this train, right?"

"Yes, yes..."

"Kill him."

"Huh?"

The man froze, terror, flooding his nerves. He was about to turn and run when his vision suddenly went black. Sticky blood trickled into his eyes, and as his consciousness faded, his body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground.

His last thought was:

We met at the gathering. Don’t you remember? We even had a connection.

"..."

After carrying out the execution, Biao took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, but his index finger was still trembling slightly.

"What’s wrong with you?"

Lao Zhu, who had been about to leave, noticed Biao’s state and asked, puzzled. "Did you suddenly become a Buddhist? Are you struggling with killing?"

"This man was a Train Captain. Boss Mang would never allow a former captain to become a slave on the Stellar."

"Someone who’s been a captain will never be content in a subordinate position. They’re bound to cause trouble later."

"In the wasteland, whether a train is captured or absorbed, the captain always dies. And if any slave is discovered to have been a captain, they’re killed, too. Isn’t that an unwritten rule by now?"

Biao forced a pained smile and shook his head bitterly. "Sigh, I know all that. He was Ji Chuchu’s manager. My mother, when she was alive, really liked this guy. It feels like I just killed my mother’s idol. It’s just... a little emotional."

"Is that so? Someone would be a fan of a manager?"

Lao Zhu didn’t think much of it, just waved his hand dismissively. "Next time something like this comes up, just have one of your men do it. The apocalypse is shitty enough without forcing someone to kill their mother’s idol, right?"

"But this is good, too."

"Since your mother liked this guy, you’ve just sent him down to keep her company. At least she won’t be lonely."

"Pull yourself together. There’s another mission to carry out. Don’t slow us down."

"Don’t worry, Vice-Captain Zhu. There won’t be any problems."

"Hooo..."

Watching Lao Zhu’s retreating, Biao took a deep breath and looked down at the body lying in a pool of blood. He had been a Train Captain several times. This was his biggest secret on the Stellar, a secret that must never be discovered.

He had once held onto a sliver of hope, thinking that even if his secret was revealed, Boss Mang, seeing his loyalty, wouldn’t kill him.

But now...

This secret had to stay buried. In the wasteland, no one would tolerate a subordinate who had once been a captain. It was a ticking time bomb.

And he had no way to prove that he wouldn’t explode.

Proving a negative has always been a difficult task.

The best way was to hide the bomb, so no one even knew it existed.

He subconsciously glanced at Hei Wa and his other loyal subordinate standing beside him. Only these two knew his secret. No one else.

"Brother..."

Hei Wa instantly understood the meaning in Biao’s eyes, and his mouth twitched. "You wouldn’t, would you?"

"Ahem."

Biao cleared his throat, trying to cover his embarrassment, and clapped Hei Wa on the shoulder. "What are you thinking? I just spaced out for a second. Come on, let’s get these survivors into the carriage."

"We still have to go to the next area to continue our search."

"Don’t get any funny ideas. We’ll always be brothers."

With the "Search Radar" as support, and the Stellar’s "Spider Legs," it could travel through most of the ruins of Taiping City.

By nightfall, the search for survivors had come to an end for the day.

The reactions of the survivors varied, but no one cared.

No one cared what these survivors thought.

They were all just stuffed into the carriages.

By nightfall, they had searched the entire western suburbs of Taiping City. Except for a few inaccessible locations, most of the hiding survivors had been rescued.

The survivors who had managed to stay alive this long were all hidden in extremely concealed locations.

Like those hiding in air-raid shelters. They couldn’t break down the steel doors from the outside, and if the people inside didn’t want to come out, they had no choice but to leave.

And at the end of the day, they had found a total of 289 survivors.

"..."

By now, it was dark. The Stellar was parked on the wasteland outside the ruins of Taiping City for a rest. In the locomotive, Chen Mang frowned as he tallied the day’s haul.

Nearly 300 new slaves.

It was a good haul. Production efficiency would increase significantly.

But...

This was a city. He had searched one suburb and only found this many people.

Was everyone else dead?

Wasn’t this mortality rate a bit too high?

He had even taken the train to a library and scavenged a lot of paper materials, which had given him a better understanding of this world. This city, not counting its transient population, had a permanent population of several million.

And after only a year of the apocalypse, they were all gone?

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