Chapter 32: What's So Interesting About Rollie?

Before arriving, she had imagined countless scenarios: what River City might look like, what architectural styles would emerge after the great calamity, how the city would be laid out, and what kind of people would live within its bounds.

Would it be a desolate wasteland, steeped in radioactive ruin? A world of terminator machinery? A place where mutated creatures played a deadly game of hide-and-seek? Or perhaps something as mad and untamed as a post-apocalyptic road war?

Yet never in her wildest dreams did she expect River City to be a single building.

Yes, River City was just one structure.

But it was so massive, so thick, so immense, that Alpha Ji had to crane her neck back at an eighty-nine-degree angle to glimpse the whole of this city—or rather, this building.

How tall was River City?

Before the disaster, the world's tallest building was the Burj Khalifa, standing at 828 meters, just under 700 if you discounted the spire. River City might not quite reach the Burj Khalifa’s height, but it was without doubt in the three- or four-hundred-meter class of skyscrapers.

After the catastrophe, plants everywhere grew to monstrous proportions—the trees in the forests now boasted trunks a dozen or twenty meters thick, regularly shot up over a hundred meters, sometimes two hundred. Yet, even those giants were dwarfed by this building.

How broad was River City?

Most skyscrapers were modern, built slender, their height exceeding their width. River City, in contrast, felt ancient—more specifically, it evoked the grandiose scale of the Tang dynasty. Its width far surpassed its height.

Three or four hundred meters tall, with a diameter of at least seven or eight hundred meters—yet it didn’t rise straight up. Instead, it narrowed gradually as it ascended, tiered like a South American trapezoidal pyramid, separated into perhaps three, four, even five distinct levels.

From the ground, it was impossible to count the exact number of tiers; the building was simply too colossal. The upper layers curved inward, obscuring the view—like a stout man unable to see his own feet.

She could just make out the brim of the second and third levels, where the muzzles of great cannons protruded.

Even from a distance, it was clear: the people of River City thoroughly understood that caliber is justice.

The entire city resembled a vast, circular stadium, with smaller stadiums stacked atop it—third, fourth, and so on. Or perhaps it was like an unsinkable aircraft carrier, built not for the seas but for the land.

Next to it, the pyramids, vaunted for thousands of years, were mere adolescents, barely able to reach River City’s waist if they leapt. Even the Great Wall, pride of ancient China, was outclassed; it would have to wind for over a thousand kilometers to match this scale.

After all, this was a modern marvel of steel and reinforced concrete.

It made sense, really. According to Ye Chao, River City housed two hundred thousand people. Without such monumental scale, how could so many live and work in any semblance of order?

Suddenly, a thunderous rumble shook the world, so close it stirred the sleeping students in their baskets, rousing them groggily.

Were the cannons atop the city firing? Was there an enemy? Alpha Ji was instantly on guard.

But the awake members of the Dog Squad, including Xu Tiange, remained utterly unperturbed, as though this was routine, or as if they had entered a state of zen indifference.

“What’s going on?” Alpha Ji turned a questioning gaze to Ye Chao.

Ye Chao, half lost in thought with his connection to the building, was slow to respond; only after several prods did he perk up, cocking his doglike head to listen. “Oh, that’s Gun Gun rolling.”

Gun Gun? Only then did Alpha Ji notice that the sound was coming from a bamboo grove—though the bamboo here was unusually thick and tall, its pale color suggesting a lack of sunlight.

=￣ω￣=

Could it be the Gun Gun she was thinking of? Alpha Ji conjured an image of a rolling, playful national treasure.

Ye Chao glanced at the animation, confusion in his eyes. “…I suppose so?”

“Ye Chao, take me to see!”

“Take you? What’s so interesting about Gun Gun?”

What’s so interesting about Gun Gun?!

Say that thirty years ago, and maybe not everyone on earth would want to hit you, but at least half would be tempted—wouldn’t you agree?

[Favorability -44]

Damn it, her favorability had dropped again by accident.

[Favorability -10]

…

While they bickered, the long Dog Squad caravan reached River City’s grand gates, hauling students, teachers, hunted prey, as well as gathered fruits, insects, fungi, and other wild bounty.

Above the main gate, the name “River City” was inscribed in understated, three-thousand-inch-high characters.

At the entrance, guards in thick steel armor wielded ultraviolet lamps, greeting the teachers with practiced familiarity. They checked identities, inspected and filtered the collected goods, scanned for contaminants—a process as meticulous as that of the Zoldyck family. Only then did the massive gates slowly swing open.

It was ancient in its grand, unchanging style, reminiscent of an old city gate.

Yet high-tech, too, for the metal shimmered with a strange luster. The gate stood over thirty meters tall, more than twenty wide—rivaling the Zoldyck estate—and shockingly, a full meter thick!

Each leaf of the gate was three hundred cubic meters in volume; if made entirely of iron, it would weigh around twenty-four hundred tons—two leaves, nearly five thousand. Even with hinges, tracks, and some hydraulic mechanism, how could such a thing open and close without warping or binding, and without wasting vast amounts of energy?

Even hollow, it would weigh several hundred tons.

Alpha Ji was completely at a loss.

After paying a small price for an answer, she learned the truth: the gate was made of nano-foam alloy. It looked massive and heavy, but ninety-nine percent of it was hollow, soundproof, airtight, impact-resistant—clean and neat, without the slightest hint of greasiness.

“I never went to school, so stop trying to fool me…” Alpha Ji smacked her lips.

Foamed metal of high strength did exist in theory. After all, atoms and molecules were mostly empty space, their orderly arrangements held together by electromagnetic force.

If metal could be foamed at the nanoscale, arranged in precise patterns, it would indeed gain incredible properties of strength, optics, and electricity—a field many laboratories had explored before the disaster.

But manufacturing nano-foam metal was nearly impossible! How could every cavity be identical in size and shape? Even a military parade required months of rehearsal!

A change in temperature, humidity, even a stray magnetic field could affect the product…

In fact, industrial foam materials could only manage cavities at the millimeter scale—already an achievement.

One was to the power of minus three; the other, to the power of minus nine. The difference was—

===

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As vast as earth and sky!

“Is that… really so hard?” Ye Chao was baffled by Alpha Ji’s astonishment. “I don’t know the exact process, but it’s just a matter of using one’s ability to foam the molten iron as it comes out of the furnace…”

Alpha Ji’s mind conjured a vivid scene: blazing molten iron poured from the furnace, shaped by the operator’s will into a seething ball, floating and shifting in midair. Then, with a sudden “pop,” as if making popcorn, the molten iron ballooned into foam alloy.

“You… you’re cheating, you know that…”

So, even though their exchange was calm, Ye Chao’s favorability took another hit.

But afterward, it wasn’t Ye Chao who grew anxious—it was Alpha Ji herself.

This couldn’t go on, truly it couldn’t! His favorability had already plunged past minus fifteen hundred, racing for negative two thousand.

She needed restraint. She had to curb her curiosity, or dislike would soon turn to hatred!

He was carelessly indifferent, but she couldn’t afford to be. At least now she could still call him “dog head.” But if she reached hatred, she wouldn’t even be able to speak—just hearing his voice would make her want to vomit. What then?

So Alpha Ji struggled with all her might to suppress her curiosity—for five minutes.

Five minutes later, she finally understood why Ye Chao had said, “What’s so interesting about Gun Gun?”