"A generator? What do you need that thing for?"
Present day, at the cafeteria of Jinling University.
Watching Professor Yanfeng, who sat earnestly across the table asking this question, Professor Wang Haiyang put down his chopsticks.
He didn't know much about Professor Yan, just that he was from the physics department and was about the same age as him, around thirty.
He couldn't remember when they had exchanged WeChat contacts, and they had never chatted before. Wang himself belonged to the Engineering Management department and didn't really interact with Yan in their professional work.
But today, out of the blue, he received an invitation from Professor Yan for lunch in the cafeteria because Yan had something to consult him about.
Honestly, when Wang saw the word "consult," he thought it was about a research topic, but he certainly hadn't expected such a peculiar question.
The conversation continued in a casual chat atmosphere.
Professor Yanfeng explained,
"...I've been reading this novel recently, it's a post-apocalyptic theme. I want to know if such a scenario really happened, how would the survivors solve the electricity issue?"
"Why take the stuff in the novel so seriously? Just see what the author writes," Professor Wang Haiyang chuckled, "But your question is quite interesting, post-apocalypse... It really depends on the type of apocalypse and how many days after the end of the world we are."
He also liked to read novels, but he mostly read cultivation stories, not much into post-apocalyptic themes.
Funny, he had never thought that one day he'd seriously discuss the contents of a novel with a colleague from university.
"The setting is two hundred years after a nuclear war."
"Two hundred years? Nuclear war?" Professor Wang Haiyang paused, hesitating, "That might be a bit tricky. Unprotected electronic devices would get damaged by the electromagnetic pulses produced by the nuclear explosion, the more sophisticated the equipment, the less likely it is to survive."
"Is there a solution?" asked Professor Yanfeng, with furrowed brows.
"There are some, for example, you could find backup diesel generators in common residential properties or restaurants, which aren't very sophisticated. But two hundred years… It's likely they've been scavenged already. And even if they haven't been, the parts would probably be degraded from lack of maintenance over a long time. Fuel would also be a problem; you can't expect to still find gasoline in petrol stations after two hundred years."
Professor Wang Haiyang stroked his chin, thought for a moment, and continued,
"But it's not completely hopeless."
"What could be done?" Yanfeng asked immediately.
"Generally speaking, every car has a recyclable generator. As long as you get the rotor spinning, it can generate a stable 12V DC electricity. A minor repair should make it work. For small-scale electricity generation, such as lighting, 12V is enough. And if you could find an inverter, turning DC into 240V AC isn't impossible… Do you really need to take notes on this?"
Watching Yanfeng seriously taking notes with his notepad, Wang Haiyang was baffled.
Is it necessary to be so serious about a novel?
Pushing up his glasses, Yanfeng replied nonchalantly,
"Don't mind me, please continue."
Wang Haiyang: "…"
He'd always heard people say that those in the physics department were oddballs, but he thought it was just a stereotype.
Now, he was starting to believe it.
...
Wasteland.
Shelter No. 404.
Chu Guang slept on the floor in the resident's hall until he woke up at four in the morning. The moment he opened his eyes, he saw a pop-up notification from the system.
[Congratulations Host, Achievement Unlocked "Novice Instructor" (Player logged in and stayed online continuously for over 8 hours on the first day)]
[Reward: +10 reward points]
A piece of good news like this?
He could draw from the blind box again after waking up.
Rubbing his bleary eyes Chu Guang opened the system and selected the "Manager's Allowance" subpage.
Hesitating between the basic blind box valued at 1 reward point and the intermediate blind box worth 10 reward points, Chu Guang finally put all his "chips" on the intermediate blind box and silently prayed in his heart.
Please let it not be freaking cough syrup!
A pale blue light flickered.
As Chu Guang watched tensely, the alloy door on the side of the resident hall's wall opened, and a plastic-wrapped injection appeared on the platform.
[Muscle cell enhancement injection. (Small, permanent boost to muscle strength, use interval 24 hours, diminishing effects with multiple uses)]
"Permanent boost to muscle strength?"
This is good stuff!
Chu Guang didn't hesitate, he immediately tore open the package, removed the cap but, surprisingly, there was no needle.
How do you use this thing?
Hesitating for a moment, Chu Guang pressed the tip of the syringe to his arm and pushed the button that looked like a switch at the tail. It felt like something had stung his arm, and then...
That was it.
"That's it?"
Chu Guang was a bit confused, waved his fist but didn't feel any significant change in his body.
Maybe it's expired?
After all, it was two hundred years old...
Being cautious, Chu Guang still performed a physical check on himself.
When he got the results, the confusion in his heart was finally resolved.
ID: Chu Guang
Gene Sequence: Manager
Level: LV.5
——Basic Attributes——
Strength: 9
Agility: 6
Constitution: 7
Perception: 7
Intelligence: 6
]
"The progress of gene development remains unchanged, strength and constitution have each increased by one point... Wow, that's something!"
Normally, a 20-year-old adult male without any special training would typically have five points each in strength and constitution, where five is also the baseline value for all attributes.
That is to say, this one point in strength and constitution is equivalent to 20% of a normal adult male's physical capacity.
Chu Guang now only lacks one point in strength attribute to have twice the strength of a normal adult male.
Looking at the updated attribute panel, Chu Guang contemplated whether to test his strength with a few push-ups, but just then, he suddenly noticed that the Administrator's Log had updated with new tasks.
When he opened it, Chu Guang was a bit stunned.
Oh boy.
Before going to bed yesterday, there was only one unfinished side task remaining, but today, the number of incomplete tasks had jumped to 20+!
The variety of tasks was also a mixed bag.
From relatively easy tasks like "hunt a variant," "hoard 5 tons of wood," "hoard 100L of freshwater," to troublesome tasks at first glance like "repair the external wall of the sanatorium," "repair the second-floor wall of the sanatorium."
As for the rewards, they ranged from a minimum of one point to a maximum of 20 points.
All these tasks had one common label—"Daily."
"What does 'daily' mean? Will it refresh every day?" Chu Guang couldn't help but complain.
However, nobody minded him.
The shelter system didn't talk, and Xiao Qi was on duty at the sanatorium outside, leaving Chu Guang alone in the entire shelter.
Chu Guang silently calculated that if he could complete all 20 tasks, he could earn a total of 150 reward points.
Of course, at least three-quarters of those reward points were not so easy to obtain, at least not something that could be handled in just one or two days.
Chu Guang fell into thought.
If he were to tackle these tasks by himself, he would definitely be exhausted. But if he left the tasks to the players, it seemed he would only need to spend a few "contribution points."
Thinking this, his thoughts suddenly cleared.
In the drawer of his computer desk were marker pens.
Taking a pen, without another word, Chu Guang took the elevator to the surface. After searching through the sanatorium, he found a plastic board that the scavengers had not yet taken and burned.
After dusting off the plastic board, Chu Guang used the marker to draw two lines, then erased them, nodding his head in satisfaction.
"Not bad."
Erasable and writable.
This one's it!
It took some time, but Chu Guang picked a few tasks from the Administrator's Log that he thought players could likely accomplish and wrote them on the plastic board.
[Collect wood (requirement: can be used as building material): 1 point contribution per meter.]
[Find water storage containers (material: plastic, metal. Shape: barrel-like, jug-like. Requirement: the bigger, the better!): 1~10 contribution points.]
[Search for recyclable waste: 1~? contribution points.]
[...]
"Mission accomplished!"
Glancing at the time, it was now four-thirty in the morning, still an hour and a half before the scheduled online time.
Chu Guang didn't idle around; he returned to the shelter, turned on the computer, logged into the official website backend, and noticed that the number of reservations had increased by 10 compared to last night.
Now it was 35 people.
It seemed that yesterday's discussion in the group had some effect in drawing people in, and ten more fresh "little leeks" had raised their hands.
However, Chu Guang pondered that the potential of "Bulls and Horses Club" users might also seem to have reached its limit.
After all, it was just a gaming group of around a hundred people, with only a handful of active users. Perhaps these 35 people were all the real people there.
"Should I consider changing the promotional method?"
Placing ads wasn't very realistic as the Wasteland OL's official website was not registered in the country, and the server might not even be on Earth.
There was another problem as well.
Once they drew from a larger pool of traffic, it would inevitably usher in a wave of "low-quality users," those who were troublemakers.
These people might just be clicking yes for fun, or they might have clicked by accident.
Bringing such players in would only cause trouble.
"We must raise the bar for reservations…"
Chu Guang pondered quietly, noting this action down for later.
When he had time, he'd have Xiao Qi modify the official website again, such as moving the reservation option from the first-level page to a second-level page, and requiring users to register an account as well as fill in their phone numbers and delivery addresses to make a reservation.
Although the shelter system seemed not to need players to fill out delivery addresses, this approach could at least filter out some less determined players and "invalid reservations."
What if someone made multiple reservations using several devices?
Or were they simply bots + virtual machines?
But after a thought, Chu Guang discarded this problem.
Since the system could deliver helmets accurately to users' hands, it should definitely have the means to identify the identity of those reserving.
It was somewhat worrying over nothing.
"The new main task hasn't been triggered yet, probably the conditions haven't been met."
"Let's put the daily tasks aside for now; the important thing is the remaining 'side task'—needing a 10KW power generator."
Electricity was a big issue.
The shelter couldn't be living in the future while the surface was still stuck in a primitive society.
For Chu Guang, who came from modern society, having no electricity was practically no different from primitive society.
"Better think about how to handle this generator issue!"