Chapter 216: How Can One Manage Without the Internet

Chen Shu hung up the video call with Qingqing and scrolled through short videos for a while. He could still see reports about the Square Body from time to time, but they were almost all identical videos and captions from half a month ago, repeatedly posted by some marketing accounts as if they didn't know what else to post. It was incredibly boring.

Not a single new message.

It's better to read the news on specialized websites.

But that's also very boring.

Chen Shu opened the Ancient Cultivation Group.

Qingcai Keke: 【Image】

Qingcai Keke: The history expert and his three bodyguards.

Zhong Miao Zhimen: @Nainai Zongshuo

Nainai Zongshuo:??

Nainai Zongshuo: A connected person who wants to come for the prestige but is afraid of danger, and his three guardian deities!!!

Qingcai Keke: Childish behavior.

Qingcai Keke: The three exclamation marks are especially childish.

Zhong Miao Zhimen: /Hmm

Zhong Miao Zhimen: It's your turn to speak @Nainai Zongshuo

Nainai Zongshuo: Screw you.

Haoran Zhengqi: When are you all leaving Tasha?

Nainai Zongshuo: Who knows.

Haoran Zhengqi: I wasn't asking you.

Nainai Zongshuo: /Angry

Zhong Miao Zhimen: Can you put up with this? Amitabha, if it were me, I definitely couldn't.

Qingcai Keke: Hard to say, the situation changes every day.

Qingcai Keke: The situation in Leche, where the Square Body is located, has taken a sharp turn for the worse. I heard the flames of war even spread to the Leche urban area today. Plus, our side and the Blue side have yet to reach a consensus on the distribution of high-value items unearthed from the Square Body. As long as the two countries cannot agree on the distribution of benefits, the Square Body cannot be opened.

Qingcai Keke: So we can't go to Leche for the time being.

Qingcai Keke: Looking at the current situation, we might stay in Tasha longer.

Nainai Zongshuo: Duqin is truly pitiful.

Nainai Zongshuo: Watching others discuss how to distribute the Square Body unearthed in their own country, and they can't say a word.

Qingcai Keke: I am also very pitiful.

Qingcai Keke: /Complex expression

Haoran Zhengqi: Once the negotiations end, Leche will naturally stop fighting.

Qingcai Keke: Yes.

Eight-Pack Beauty: You all are talking about such high-level things.

Qingcai Keke: Just chatting, just chatting.

Qingcai Keke: Where are all the guards? Let's go wander outside the Duqin Wanggong tomorrow, I want to buy some local specialties @Nainai Zongshuo @Zhong Miao Zhimen @Wuming Renshi

Nainai Zongshuo:...

Zhong Miao Zhimen: Understood.

Wuming Renshi: Okay!

Zhong Miao Zhimen: Why aren't you agreeing @Nainai Zongshuo

Nainai Zongshuo: Lackey!

Chen Shu grinned.

The Double Ninth Festival had passed.

As he expected, the expert group and the guard team stayed in Tasha longer than anticipated.

During this time, a fierce tug-of-war was staged in Leche; the offensive and defensive positions repeatedly swapped, and Leche changed hands repeatedly. The tragic war situation made it onto the news of various countries.

In reality, this was a struggle for the right to speak regarding the Square Body between Yiguo and Blue.

Blue is closer to Duqin, and Duqin is within Blue's sphere of influence, so Blue naturally occupies an advantage in this negotiation. However, due to the recent turmoil in Duqin, Leche, where the Square Body is located, is currently in the hands of a government close to Yiguo, which allowed Yiguo to pull back a bit. If Leche is captured by the Watcher, then Yiguo will become extremely passive in the negotiations regarding the distribution of items from the Square Body.

That is what this battle is all about.

However, both sides are very restrained. Currently, on the surface, only the Dukin Government Army and the Watcher armed forces are fighting, and they should be quite restrained in the shadows as well.

October arrived quickly.

The group remained in Tasha.

For the first few days, Tasha was quite fresh for Chen Shu and the others; they went everywhere and ate everything, but later they got a bit tired of it. Because of the language barrier, they couldn't always drag the young lady from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be their translator. They could play outside, and if they randomly pulled three people on the street, one would always speak Chinese, but playing like that was quite meaningless and somewhat tiring.

So it became very boring.

Chen Shu had no choice but to harass Qingqing every day, scroll through short videos, chat with a few professors when he had time, and then go out for walks.

Zhang Suannai was also very bored and always egged Chen Shu on to go wandering after dark, with the goal of encountering a few blind thugs on the road to find some fun. For this, she even temporarily set aside the pride of a Sword Sect Disciple and agreed to be Chen Shu's sidekick when going out, enduring humiliation for the sake of the mission.

Otherwise, staying in this hotel every day would drive her crazy.

Finally—

The negotiations between Yiguo and Blue gradually yielded results; at least the fighting had stopped. The group received notice to head to Leche to make further preparations.

The Tasha police worked overnight to make a silk banner and, bringing the prize money, gave it to Chen Shu, who had repeatedly captured thugs before they departed. Considering it was a collective effort, Chen Shu used the prize money to split it equally with Zhong Miao Zhimen and Wuming Renshi, and left the silk banner to Zhang Suannai.

The distribution was reasonable.

They then set off.

The armed vehicles of the Duqin government escorted their convoy until they left Tasha, but they turned back after leaving the city. Then, the guard team from Yiguo took light War Chariots directly out of their Storage Artifacts, protected the bus carrying the expert group in the middle, and launched a Drone into the sky, heading all the way to Leche.

It takes more than half a day to drive from Tasha to Leche.

This long day was very boring, because in this country, once you leave the urban area, there is almost no mobile network.

Moreover, there were no accidents along the way, and not a bit of fun.

It was already dusk when they arrived at Leche.

This is a city located in the Gobitai; when the city was seen from afar, the setting sun was just approaching the horizon, the sky was fiery red, and the shrub-like plants in the Gobi and the buildings in the distance that had been blasted into gaps formed the foreground of the red sun.

The motorcade flew the Yiguo national flag before entering Leche City.

Leche was originally the third-largest city in the Duqin country, but it was still very different from Tasha.

Tasha is the capital of Duqin and is a modern city in any case, while Leche is different; its own natural conditions and the backward national economy make it look not even as good as a small county town in Yiguo.

After experiencing the ravages of war, it is even more covered in ruins.

Chen Shu was still sitting in the vehicle observing the outside.

Broken walls and rubble.

The signal became intermittent.

There were very few people on the street, and their expressions were all numb, yet they still had to walk out of their homes because there was no food left at home.

Bloodstains could often be seen on the road surface and walls.

Some walls were riddled with holes from being shot.

Because this is a small country fighting internally, some behaviors might be more cruel than Chen Shu imagined—if it were a major power's army, it would be fine, at least a major power's army has more or less some discipline, and the country wants some face, but small-country armed forces are not necessarily the same, especially anti-government armed forces, a group of lunatics who are capable of anything.

In these few days of repeated tug-of-war, one wonders how much torture they have suffered.

"Hmm?"

Chen Shu vaguely saw a monk.

The monk was bowing his body, one hand performing a single-palm salute, the other hand handing out a piece of flatbread, and beside him was a yellow dog with its lower body paralyzed and rotting.

This monk had a distinctly Yiguo face; even as fellow yellow-skinned Wise Humans, there is still a certain difference between today's Yiguo people and Duqin people, and it is not hard to distinguish. Furthermore, he was wearing the moon-white monk's robe common to Yiguo temples, and the style was also similar.

But before Chen Shu could see clearly, the vehicle had driven past.

Finally, the motorcade drove into a courtyard that was still relatively intact; except for the courtyard wall having many holes shot by guns and the corners having traces of being affected by explosion waves, the main building was still complete, and there was a five-story building inside.

It was still the guard team that got off the vehicle first to ensure safety.

Right now, Leche is a mixed bag of people, so one has to be on guard.

Some people jumped directly onto the roof, some entered the building to search, and the War Chariot's warning system had also been activated, bringing the entire courtyard into the warning range.

Even Zhang Suannai jumped onto a tree, stretched her neck to look around, pretending to check for safety hazards, but actually, she was just bored.

Chen Shu, on the other hand, was holding his Mobile Phone in the vehicle.

The signal here showed full bars, but before he could be happy, he discovered that this signal was fake; there was only signal, no network speed.

Chen Shu felt a bit melancholy.

Didn't expect that even in the year 5021, one still has to worry about signal.

At this time, the guard team began to get busy again, some tidying up rooms, some setting up warning and observation equipment, and some had already started standing guard; even at the courtyard entrance, there were two more soldiers wearing combat armor and holding firearms standing straight to deter those rats.

"Conditions here are a bit difficult," Colonel Song said to everyone, "The embassy originally arranged another place, and the conditions were quite good, but it was destroyed by a Cultivator of the Watcher during the war a few days ago. This is a temporary find, I hope all the experts will forgive us."

"No, no..." Professor Shi waved his hand quickly.

"We are not particular either," Professor Liu also said, "Sometimes when we go out for archaeology, we basically have to live in tents, sometimes even sleeping in the open; at most, we can have a basin of hot water to wash our faces at night, and we've seen mosquitoes and rats while sleeping, what is this!"

"Thank you for your understanding, if you have any needs, just tell me, we will try our best to guarantee them!"

"That will do, that will do," Professor Liu nodded.

"Don't be so polite..." Professor Shi said.

"In addition—"

Colonel Song paused: "It is much more chaotic here than in Tasha, filled with refugees and the original Cultivator forces within the Duqin country, and some foreign Cultivator forces have also infiltrated, so unless necessary, please do not go out."

Professor Shi and Professor Liu agreed repeatedly.

At this time, naturally, there was no place for Chen Shu to speak, and those few chiefs had not appeared again since arriving in Tasha; the ones with the most seniority present were Professor Shi and Professor Liu.

"You can go up."

"Okay."

A group of people followed a staff member from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and walked into the building in front.

A very old-fashioned building, cement stairs, metal railings, everywhere covered with traces of time. Originally, this seemed to be an office building for some agency; the side-by-side rooms were clearly offices, but they had already been emptied and iron-frame beds had been placed inside. On the beds were brand-new thin mattresses, and the bedding was also new; it seems it was indeed prepared in a hurry.

There was no independent bathroom; in a square room, there were only two beds and an old wooden table, not even a television.

To go to the bathroom, one had to go downstairs, where there was a large public restroom.

The conditions were not just generally poor.

Chen Shu was still staying in the same room as Professor Shi; the older generation of archaeologists were very capable of enduring hardship, looked left and right, put down their luggage, sat on the bed, took off their leather shoes very smoothly, took off their socks, smelled them in front of their noses, and stuffed them back into the shoes.

There was not the slightest dissatisfaction.

Chen Shu also felt it didn't matter; the most important thing was the signal problem.

He picked up his Mobile Phone to take another look.

Still full signal, still no network.

He inserted the Crystal Card and restarted it to try.

It eased slightly.

At least Feixin started to spin.

After spinning for a long time, the words "no network" were finally gone.

Let's test it.

Chen Shu: Rose petals drifting down one by one before my eyes

Chen Shu: Just like losing my nerves, I cannot feel my breathing

Chen Shu: I don't want to absorb oil like the wind, I don't want your tenderness, unable to hold on.

Chen Shu: What is a happy planet?

Every message started to spin.

Spinning and spinning.

In the end, one message broke through successfully, and three were killed in action.

Chen Shu clicked the exclamation marks one by one to resend.

Ten minutes later.

Finally, a successful breakthrough.

Only then did he receive a reply from Qingqing.

Qingqing: The signal is really bad.

Chen Shu: Yeah.

Spinning for another half a day!

Chen Shu pondered for a moment, then decisively went up to the roof from the second floor, held up his Mobile Phone to check, and the signal was finally a little bit better, though only marginally.

Then he turned on the satellite data to try it out.

This one was actually okay; he could send messages and receive or send pictures normally, it just wasn't very fast, and he couldn't start a video call.

Moreover, this service cost money, charged by data usage, and it charged very quickly; modern smartphones are all data hogs, and if you open an app without paying attention, a few hundred yuan can be gone just like that.

But at least it could serve as an emergency measure.

Chen Shu breathed a sigh of relief.