The Fourth Disaster

Cowboy Club management discussion group.

This is a small group of only four people.

The group owner is White Steed Passing (Old White), and the group members are three from the Cowboy Club – in other words, dog management: Enemy of Maidens, Ten Times a Night (Night Ten), Level 8 Gale (Gale), and Long Days Ahead (Fang Chang).

Night Ten: 【Have you all received the helmets???】

Old White: 【Received it…this thing is quite bizarre, it was thrown directly in front of my house door.】

Fang Chang: 【I found it at my garage door…】

Gale: 【It was on my office desk…I thought it belonged to a coworker at first.】

Night Ten: 【You guys aren’t as bizarre as me, this package was directly delivered to my dorm room! All three of my roommates were there, but none of them saw how this thing was sent in! And the most bizarre thing, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, when you put on the helmet you can see a countdown, but others can’t see anything.】

The group fell into an eerie silence for a while.

The first to break the silence was the group owner White Steed Passing.

Old White: 【…Now that you mention it, that does seem a bit bizarre.】

Fang Chang: 【You guys said, what game company is so powerful that they not only know our addresses, but can also secretly deliver the packages to us?】

Gale: 【Yeah, that’s what concerns me the most too. The addresses are easier to explain, they could theoretically analyze our real locations from the IP addresses of the link clicks. But the logistics…I can’t figure it out. I’m in Jinling, and if I remember correctly, Night Ten you’re studying in Jiangcheng, which is 500 km apart, but we almost discovered we received the helmets at the same time.】

Night Ten: 【Yes…and it was right after clicking the link too.】

Old White: 【Damn, should we report to the police?】

Fang Chang: 【There’s no property damage, so the police probably can’t do much about it. And the problem is, what would you even tell the police? Wrong delivery? Issues with the helmet? Other than the recipient, no one else can see anything when wearing it.】

Gale: 【Yeah, that’s the biggest problem, it’s hard to explain to others what this thing really is. I tried putting my phone in together when wearing the helmet earlier, but the phone couldn’t capture anything I could clearly see.】

Gale is a teacher in reality, probably teaching science subjects, so he speaks in a more organized manner, and this statement was agreed upon by Fang Chang and Old White.

Night Ten: 【Then…should we try disassembling the helmet?】

Gale: 【That’s not impossible, but there are risks. At least I haven’t found any way to disassemble it. If we force it apart, it’ll be hard to put it back together.】

Fang Chang: 【Indeed, we can’t let Brother Light down either.】

Being able to mysteriously deliver this helmet to his garage door, he’s starting to believe what that ID called Light said.

Who knows, maybe this company is some kind of mysterious research institute supported by national authorities?

Regardless of what it is, for now at least, they haven’t suffered any losses. And he’s personally quite interested in fully immersive VR games too.

That countdown has piqued his interest.

Gale: 【I sent Light a private message on Penguin, but he hasn’t replied yet. The website URL doesn’t seem to be a domestic site, it doesn’t even look like a normal website domain name. I can’t find any registration information for it.】

Night Ten: 【The dark web?!】

Gale: 【Unclear.】

Old White: 【Let’s leave it at that for now, no point discussing further. At the end of the day, in three days we’ll be able to confirm what this helmet is all about!】

…

While the players were discussing, Chu Guang in the wasteland was still busy with the final preparations.

5kg of green wheat and some iron tools.

Chu Guang took great effort to move these things from Beit Street to Wetland Park 3km away without drawing attention.

Shelter 404 was hidden underground in this park, with the entrance inside an unremarkable nursing home.

This area had lush vegetation and was next to a lake, so theoretically there should be quite a few wild animals active in this region.

As he approached, Chu Guang became very cautious, wary of possible dangers in the surroundings.

Fortunately, no accidents occurred.

After checking the marks he made at the nursing home’s entrance to confirm no mutants or scavengers had snuck in while he was away, Chu Guang used a sharpened pipe to pry open the door and carefully went inside.

The entrance to Shelter 404 was at the elevator in the innermost part of the lobby, the only elevator with a B1 floor marking on its panel.

Chu Guang first went down and threw the food supplies in the corridor between the elevator base and the outer airlock door of the buffer room.

This was an open area, probably around 40-50 meters underground.

Truthfully, it wasn’t a very suitable place to store food, but it was better than leaving it in the rehabilitation center to be targeted by rats or mutant cockroaches.

After passing through the two airlocks of the buffer room.

As Chu Guang entered the main hall, he saw Little Seven crouching in the corner and said.

“Has the forum function on the official website been developed?”

“It’s done.”

“What about the players? Have they received their helmets?”

“They’ve received them.”

So fast?

Chu Guang was a bit surprised. He remembered leaving the shelter at 6am, and it was only around 1pm now, just seven hours apart.

“Is the time in the wasteland really flowing 1:1 with the modern world?”

“Of course, but the time here corresponds to the Western Four Time Zone on Earth.”

China was in the Eastern Eight Time Zone, so there was about a twelve hours difference from Western Four time zone. Meaning it was around 1am in eastern China right now.

Chu Guang sat at the computer and logged into the website backend.

As per his instructions, Little Seven had added a forum function to the website, but with no traffic yet, there were no posts.

The same went for the database and illustrations.

“How do I upload photos from here to the gallery?” Chu Guang pointed at the gallery on the screen.

“You can just directly upload them.”

“…I mean, how do I take photos, or do you have something like a camera?”

For such a big shelter, it would be weird if there was nothing at all on B1.

Not to mention leaving some weapons for himself, at least some basic survival tools should be prepared, right?

“Uh, we probably don’t have a camera, but my video camera can help you take photos…what did you want to take pictures of? Here in this place?”

Looking at the robot crouched in the corner like a trash can, Chu Guang sighed and said.

“What’s the use of taking photos here…never mind, I’ll figure out a way myself.”

He couldn’t just capture mutants and bring them here.

However, it was worth considering taking Little Seven outside.

Most mutants weren’t very interested in inedible metal lumps, if disguised a bit and stuck on the roof like a decoration, it would be an awesome home security device!

The more Chu Guang thought about it, the more viable it seemed.

He logged onto Penguin through the computer in the residents’ hall.

Chu Guang found that all four players had sent him private messages, inquiring about which company he worked for, what he meant by a fully immersive game, and what was going on with the game helmets.

Truthfully, Chu Guang didn’t know how to answer these questions either, nor could he reveal the reality of this world to them.

He could only make them believe this was a game world.

Only then could they descend as the “Fourth Disaster”, fearless and selfless, becoming his strongest tools.

“Master.”

“What is it?”

Seeing Chu Guang shut down the computer and stand up from the chair, Little Seven crouched in the corner asked curiously.

“Don’t you need to reply to their messages?”

“No need.”

The more he explains, the more loopholes there will be. It’s better to brush them off with vague corporate secrets and state secrets.

As for the rest?

Let them guess for themselves.

Isn’t that what brains are for? To fill in the blanks?