Chapter 2961

"Come on! Peter, come over here! Quickly cool him down!"

"Here! Catch it! Rocket!"

A spray gun was thrown into Rocket Raccoon's hand, and he immediately pulled the trigger at the man lying on the ground, but the gun fired not bullets, but freezing spray, and the man's body temperature quickly dropped.

"Oh, thank you, little guy." He covered his head and let out a long sigh, saying: "I thought I'd go rest after delivering this, but I didn't expect to be unable to hold on. Thank you for saving me."

"It's fine, but you really can't work anymore." Rocket Raccoon jumped onto the nearby cabinet helplessly, saying: "If you hadn't run into us, lying there a few more minutes might have cost you your life."

"I can't help it either—I need to deliver ten items a day just to earn minimum wage." The man got up from the ground, leaned against the wall, and slowly walked away.

Rocket Raccoon walked over to Star-Lord, returned the gun to him, and then said: "Do you know what makes me feel the saddest? It's not that they're living poorly, but that they're actually doing quite well."

Even though Star-Lord was always joking around, he couldn't make a joke at this moment.

The Guardians of the Galaxy are quite skilled at finding work in unfamiliar environments and building temporary bases, because they've been doing this for years.

After landing on a planet, they first seek out the most densely populated area, find a job that requires only hands, and with their physical fitness and various high-tech equipment, physical labor poses no problem for them.

The same was true after arriving in Gotham—they declined Xilei Sect's invitation, didn't go to the wealthy district, but instead headed straight into the most densely populated eastern district, where they found a job as movers.

At first, the weather wasn't that hot, so their work went smoothly. After earning a little money, they rented a basement, and the group began splitting up to explore this miraculous area.

To their surprise, they discovered that although the city's architecture looked strange, like a sprawling, tangled maze, people actually lived quite well—at least everyone had a house, and the housing quality was decent, at least sufficient to keep out wind and rain.

Because this place functions as its own society, there are many job opportunities: those capable of physical labor work in delivery, the sharp-minded run stalls and do business, and even those who can't do much else can take on handicraft work at home to barely make a living.

This impressed the Guardians of the Galaxy with the city's builders and leaders, for without doubt, if they had the time and energy to build such a steel city, they could have earned more money—but they didn't; instead, they chose to let the people live better.

Just as the Guardians of the Galaxy felt their inspection was nearly complete and they could leave, Gotham's temperature kept rising, and various problems began to appear.

These large building complexes all have air conditioning, so theoretically no one should suffer heatstroke, but the eastern district isn't a single connected complex—it's divided into several sections, requiring people to do moving work between them.

More importantly, Gotham's current logistics industry still relies on manual movers, and the eastern dock is Gotham's busiest port, where most of the eastern district's young and middle-aged workers are employed. Although their homes have air conditioning, the dock has none, and the sun is brutally hot, making heatstroke extremely likely.

Previously, the Guardians of the Galaxy worked delivering goods between two building complexes—although they could drive most of the time, the final kilometer of moving was still no easy task.

They indeed have high-tech armor that can swim in magma without issue, but their teammates can't—either the truck driver passes out from heat while waiting, or they encounter someone collapsing from heatstroke on the road, or they're moving boxes when one passes out from heat and another gets knocked down by a falling box. They spend all their time rescuing people, and by day's end, they can't get much work done.

They had just rescued a person who fainted at the cargo station entrance when Gamora came running over, panting: "Is the defibrillator with you?! Someone's having a heart attack! Come quick!!"

The two of them rushed over, following the building's main door down a corridor, with Groot guarding the entrance, Drax performing CPR, Nebula preparing the injection, and Rocket Raccoon quickly grabbing the defibrillator.

After a frantic effort, the ambulance finally arrived, the patient was lifted onto a stretcher, and Star-Lord finally let out a sigh of relief.

Actually, the original purpose of forming the Guardians of the Galaxy was just to adventure across the universe—at most, Star-Lord was tasked with gathering intelligence for humanity, but he did it sporadically, three days fishing, two days drying nets.

To sustain the cost of adventuring, they became interstellar mercenaries, occasionally taking on missions.

Because of these missions, they travel across planets, shuttle between civilizations, back and forth—how to put it? This life makes them increasingly silent.

Although civilizations take many forms, one thing remains unchanged: the wealth gap exists everywhere, even in civilizations like the Kree, where everyone is a soldier and directly controlled by the Supreme Wisdom, there are still hierarchies of power—fundamentally, there is no fairness.

The universe is vast, and there is no place to call home.

This is the conclusion they've reached after years of wandering the universe: no civilization is the utopia they imagined—not even the people of the three great empires, who each have their own suffering, let alone those civilizations inherently weak, where natural disasters and human calamities combine.

This has also shifted their mindset: originally, they truly had the grand goal of maintaining universal peace, but it was just lip service. Later, they increasingly felt the galaxy truly lacked a guardian force to as much as possible reduce the suffering of all living beings in the universe.

So later, the Guardians of the Galaxy lived up to their name—they're still a group of mercenaries, but after accepting a mission to a planet, they strive to live in harmony with its people, helping natives with troubles as much as possible.

The depths of suffering are bottomless—the deeper they go among the people, the more kinds of suffering they witness, and the more they see, the more dissatisfied they become with the current state of the universe, as the three great empires and the interstellar alliance are merely whitewashing peace.

They don't know if it's their universe that's flawed, but every universe is like this. This time, they accepted Xilei Sect's invitation to come to another great world, also wanting to verify this.

But they didn't expect that before even leaving the universe, they'd be held back by Gotham—the Guardians of the Galaxy's technology is indeed far beyond humanity's, yet they have no good solution to the current situation.

After working until dark, they rescued two more heatstroke and acute illness patients, returned to base, Rocket placed the bought vegetables on the stove, and during these years of wandering the universe, they've learned how to maintain their lives at minimal cost.

Gamora let out a sigh of relief, slumped onto the sofa, Star-Lord poured half a cup of ice cubes into a cup, downed a large glass of ice-cold cola, and finally let out a breath.

"Do you think it's possible to create a regional air circulation device?" Rocket looked at his design sketch and said: "Or cool seawater to achieve natural refrigeration?"

"It's somewhat difficult." Gamora said: "This isn't like the problems we've handled before—it's clearly not anyone's fault, but rather a flaw present since the city's founding. Latercomers have tried to compensate as much as possible, but the issue remains."

"Exactly." Star-Lord said: "The builders of this city were already quite good—they considered nearly every aspect—but this city has been strange from the start, and you can't solve the problem by just killing a few corrupt officials."

Rocket thought for a moment and said: "I think I can use the principle of this freezing spray gun to create a freezing mist, spray it during peak heat for cooling, but this equipment would require massive energy—I don't think human energy levels can bear it."

Star-Lord was about to nod, but then he seemed to think of something and said: "Say this is such a huge steel city with so many air conditioners—who's paying the electricity bill?"

"Anyway, it's not the residents." Gamora said: "According to your U. S. electricity rates, if they ran air conditioning like this, everyone would go bankrupt."

"Not every state has such high electricity prices..." Star-Lord muttered, but he also knew Gotham's status should be comparable to New York's, where electricity prices are already high and keep rising year after year.

But he also knew Gamora had a point: if residents had to pay themselves, they wouldn't dare run the air conditioning, and besides, all the air conditioning here is central, so it should be uniformly controlled—but if the city government were to run it uniformly, where would it get so much money?

"I suspect there's an energy hub here." Technical issues are clearly Rocket Raccoon's forte. He said: "It should be an energy core surpassing traditional human power generation technology."

"Is it not going to be another energy crystal that could explode at any moment?!" Gamora nearly jumped up, recalling how they once encountered a civilization, snatched an advanced alien ship's energy core, wired it chaotically, caused a massive explosion, and blew a hole in their own ship.

"It probably won't be?" Star-Lord scratched his head, saying: "From the city's construction approach, it's clear the builders couldn't possibly be that brainless."

"Hard to say." Nebula finally spoke up.

But they all trusted Rocket Raccoon's judgment, because the state of this steel city is indeed abnormal—seemingly unconcerned about energy, yet when you calculate the energy consumption of such a massive city, you know it's unreasonable.

Rocket Raccoon stroked his chin and said: "Now there are two methods: one is to contact the city's builders, tell them we have this technology, and ask if they'd be willing to provide a port on the energy core for us; the other is to directly find the energy core and modify a port ourselves."

"I choose the first." Gamora said: "Don't you remember our principle? Respect civilizations' fates, don't over-interfere."

Star-Lord nodded and said: "After all, this is Earth, not some terrifying alien monster lair. Since the builders are willing to sacrifice so much for the people, perhaps they'd also accept our technical aid."

"Do you really think they lack technology?" Drax suddenly said: "If they can create such an energy core, why can't they make a cooling device?"

He hit the nail on the head, the others fell silent, but Star-Lord still stood up and said: "I'll call Professor Xilei—he should know what's going on."