Chapter 53: Trust, Secrets, and the Weight of Responsibility

Running won’t help. Killing Luo Pei to keep her quiet isn’t an option either. I have to calm down, figure out Luo Pei’s agenda, and then make my move.

Xia Qing clenched her fists, trying to keep her voice steady. “I thought I was pretty well hidden.”

Luo Pei reached out, groping for her teacup, then tipped her head back to take a drink. She left her throat—the spot where one blow would be fatal—completely exposed to Xia Qing, then tossed out her trump card. “You really were well hidden. Most people probably would’ve been fooled. But I’m a Level 10 Vision Evolver and Level 6 Hearing Evolver. Spotting details everyone else misses is easy for me.”

Xia Qing couldn’t keep up her act anymore. She stared, wide-eyed. “Wait—Luo Ge, you have Level 6 Hearing too?!”

“Just like you, nobody wants to show all their cards.” The girl who always pretended to be a block of wood was wearing her emotions openly now, and Luo Pei couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Even within our squad, hardly anyone knows I’m a dual-type evolver. You have to keep this a secret for me.”

Xia Qing nodded right away, then asked carefully, “Of course. Luo Ge, does anyone else know I’m a triple-type evolver?”

Luo Pei answered honestly. “As far as I know, it’s only me, Yang Jin, and Xie Yu. I’m not sure about anyone else close to you, but don’t worry—we’ll keep your secret, too.”

Xia Qing’s circle was made up of regular people or basic evolvers, so she was sure they hadn’t picked up on it. That settled her nerves a bit. “Did you tell Yang Jin and Xie Yu?”

Luo Pei shook her head. “Yang Jin figured it out on his own.”

Xia Qing was shocked all over again. “How? I’ve never even worked on a mission with Yang Jin. We’ve barely spoken before.”

“He never said,” Luo Pei admitted. Yang Jin clearly took Xia Qing seriously, but Luo Pei had no idea why, so she kept her mouth shut about her suspicions.

With her mind spinning with questions, Xia Qing forced herself to refocus on what mattered most. “Luo Ge, I still don’t get why the mountain is better off with me. I mean, if I put myself in your shoes, I’d never hand it over.”

It was normal for Xia Qing to be confused. After all, she’d spent years at the base’s lowest rung and knew little of the bigger picture. Luo Pei patiently guided her. “You know the value of uncontaminated spring water, right?”

Xia Qing nodded and raised two fingers. “For medicine and for growing crops. But I’m not too clear on the details.”

Luo Pei nodded back. “Then, do you know how many springs, besides the one in your territory, our base has?”

Xia Qing knew this answer for sure. “Four—but I don’t know where they’re all located.”

That was top-tier classified info, after all. Luo Pei corrected her, “To be precise, in the last ten years, Hui San Base has only ever found four springs. Now there are only two left.”

Xia Qing’s eyes went wide again. “What about the other two? Did they dry up, or were they taken by another base?”

Luo Pei took her time explaining. “You’ve had your territory for almost two months now. You should’ve noticed the water flow from your spring changes every day?”

Xia Qing shook her head honestly. “No, it seems about the same each day.”

So straightforward, Luo Pei thought, grinning a little as she tried to make her point. “Maybe you just haven’t been there long enough. The water output from the springs actually changes with the seasons, just like it did on Blue Star before the cataclysm. That’s why, after we found the springs, most people here wanted to scout the sources, analyze how they formed, and find ways to get even more uncontaminated water to help everyone.”

Xia Qing nodded. “That actually makes a lot of sense.”

But Luo Pei’s tone darkened. “Blue Star now isn’t what it was before the disaster. Almost every old technique is useless. Every uncontaminated spring humans tried to study and research has turned into just another polluted water source.”

Xia Qing’s heart ached for them all. “Nobody figured out why?”

Ever since the cataclysm, there are so many mysteries nobody understands. Lots of people gave up on science and started following all kinds of bizarre beliefs, leaving the Safe Zone a mess.

“There’s one theory that’s widely accepted, even if unproven: Under the effects of nuclear-contaminated water, intense tectonic shifts, and cosmic gamma ray bursts, all water sources on Blue Star became polluted. Only a handful of mountains, under a very specific combination of factors, turned into huge and complex natural filters. These mountains remove the Xiang element, radioactive materials, and most other poisons from the water. That’s how uncontaminated springs are formed.”

“But this structure’s complexity is way beyond anything humans can figure out or build right now. If anyone messes with or damages the inside of a mountain, and the filtering system is ruined, we can’t ever fix it. So, the highest authorities banned any further exploration or deep development of these springs.”

Luo Pei emphasized again, “If a spring is ruined, the consequences are drastic. That’s why the authorities keep it completely under wraps. Just keep this to yourself—don’t spread it around.”

Xia Qing listened carefully, trying to take it all in. “I get it. So what you’re saying is, we can’t artificially create uncontaminated water, and even researching it is banned because it would destroy the source.”

“Exactly. Sure, we can distill water and get it clean, but we can’t stabilize the Yi element in it. So distilled water is no match for real uncontaminated spring water packed with Yi.” Luo Pei explained further, “That’s why pure spring water is such a prized resource. It makes whoever controls it powerful, which means everyone else wants to sabotage it any way they can, just to drag the owner down. Our base used to have a spring with the highest output, but it was destroyed like that.”

Xia Qing was furious, eyes flashing. “Who did it?”

Luo Pei just shook her head. “Knowing more won’t do you any good.”

“…Alright.”

Xia Qing just let out a quiet sigh and dropped the subject.

Luo Pei went on. “Since the spring is inside your territory, it’s rightfully yours. If we tried to take it from you, you’d never hand it over. If the mountain up north was given to the Azure Dragon Unit, there’d always be people in the squad wanting to dig for new springs. But if the Azure Dragon Unit’s successor started digging up Mountain 49, the structure inside would be damaged, and the spring in your territory would almost certainly be ruined, turning into just another polluted water source. In the end, you’d lose your uncontaminated spring, and the Azure Dragon Unit would get nothing. That’s why you—already owning a spring—are the one person least likely to destroy the structure inside Mountain 49.”

There was something Luo Pei kept to herself: There actually was another option—Xia Qing joining the Azure Dragon Unit with her spring. But since Xia Qing had hidden her abilities and chosen to join the Construction Crew instead, and now had her own territory and spring, joining the squad was out of the question.

Like most survivors who’d clawed through ten years of disaster, Xia Qing only trusted herself and kept her guard up around everyone else.

Yang Jin once said, if you pushed Xia Qing too far, she’d rather destroy the spring and go down with it than give in.

Now, Xia Qing finally understood. “Luo Ge, so you already searched every inch of Mountain 49 and didn’t find any new springs?”