Chapter 771.1: Frontline Status
Chapter 771.1: Frontline Status
“Not a bad performance.”
In the captain’s cabin on board the Heart of Steel, Chu Guang sipped a cup of black tea with milk while watching the stage play on the holographic screen, an amused expression on his face.
“The acting's solid, and the script isn't bad either. Though there are way too many hammers and mothers in the dialogue... The locals actually wrote this themselves?”
He had long since grown tired of films from the real world, while the localized adaptations made by players often leaned too heavily into awkward humor. By comparison, he found himself far more interested in the original creations born from the wasteland itself.
For example, Spielberg's Bore the Awakener had genuinely impressed him. Before that, there had been Hal's humorous poem plays, and even the picture book the Honey Badger Kingdom’s Princess had dedicated to him, The Hairy Father and Son.
Compared to imported works, those homegrown creations revealed far more about the inner world of the wasteland's survivors.
As the administrator of the New Alliance, his responsibility was not merely to guide people, it was, more importantly, to understand them. Coincidentally, the latest sociological report on the Poro Province submitted by Han Mingyue included one such representative work as an attachment.
While an old-fashioned stage play felt somewhat mismatched with cutting-edge holographic projection technology, on the wasteland, the pairing somehow felt perfectly natural.
Returning to the play itself, it was titled After the Storm, written by a Bullfolk poet. He had written the script, designed the dialogue, and even composed the music entirely by himself.
Every scene in the play took place within a single mansion on Tulip Street. According to the descriptions in the play, however, that mansion was actually Nihark's place. The "storm" referred both to the rain outside the windows and to the winds that had swept into Port Gallon.
However, the play was not about Governor Nihark or his servants, nor was it concerned with current affairs or grand politics. Instead, it witnessed the end of an era through the eyes of a minor nobleman. Two love stories that never came to fruition served as the thread highlighting the protagonist's confusion during the Age of Exploration.
Everyone around him was leaving him behind. Yet he himself had no idea where he should go, or even where he truly belonged.
In a sense, the protagonist's spiritual state closely mirrored that of the old aristocracy throughout the province.
After the New Alliance landed in the Poro Province, they had not confiscated the locals' wealth. However, the nobles no longer enjoyed any of the privileges of the old era, nor did they command the respect and admiration of those around them. Their lives might still be comfortable for the time being, but if they failed to adapt to the changing times, being swallowed by the tide of history would only be a matter of time.
At the end of the stage play recording, Han Mingyue had appended her own observations as a researcher.
[What interested me wasn't the plot itself, but the simultaneous presence of existentialism and nihilism throughout the play. I believe this work is just as representative as Red Soil. The latter represents the radicals, while the former speaks for the conservatives. Both belong to this era and together reflect a cultural phenomenon unique to this particular period.]
Closing the holographic recording, Chu Guang continued reading Han Mingyue's report.
According to her latest findings, a new cultural movement was flourishing in Port Gallon with an intensity that rivaled the city's massive infrastructure boom. The seeds of both romanticism and realism had begun to sprout there simultaneously.
Even more remarkably, the former had continued evolving, almost by leaps and bounds, eventually giving rise to the earliest form of existentialism.
In other words, aside from human existence itself, there existed no inherently ordained morality nor any soul existing outside the body. Morality and the soul were creations born through the process of human existence. Therefore, people had no inherent obligation to believe in any particular religion or moral code.
Such ideas had all appeared at various points throughout the history of the Federation of Human.
To witness them emerging once again in the Wasteland Era after the Age of Prosperity, however, was extraordinarily precious.
Of course, another ideological extreme had emerged alongside them in Port Gallon.
Nihilism, the complete rejection of all meaning.
The belief that everything human beings did was ultimately powerless and futile.
The survivor culture of the Poro Province had originated from Rowell Camp. The civilization its survivors took pride in stretched across 4,000,000 square kilometers. By comparison, the Ocean Edge Province, the region that constantly kept the three "Fallen Empires" on edge, wasn't even as large as a single state.
Even slaves working on rural plantations could proudly declare that the so-called Fallen Empires and the so-called War for Paradise were nothing more than a few strange-looking crabs fighting inside a tiny cage.
Yet when confronted by a newly risen survivor faction that had existed for only two and a half years, their pride had been utterly shattered.
Even if they counted every one of Tassen’s pillars ten thousand times over, they still couldn't understand why, when the New Alliance fought the Torch Church, the mere wind stirred up by an offhand swing of their fist had been enough to destroy the Xilande Empire's proud spearhead, the Gray Wolf Army.
Arrogance and inferiority might represent opposite extremes of self-perception, yet there was no contradiction in both existing within the same person. If anything, the two almost always went hand in hand.
Compared to Tassen, Rowell Camp, the true symbol of authority, was the genuine spiritual totem in the hearts of the Poro Province's survivors.
The locals had never prayed to it. Yet whenever they passed by its gates, they instinctively lowered their heads and quickened their pace.
Few survivors of the Poro Province truly realized that prayer was merely one way believers expressed reverence toward the divine.
It was never the entirety of faith, nor its true essence. Primitive societies created myths out of their awe of wildfires and thunder. Out of that same reverence, they danced for their gods and offered sacrifices to their totems.
Myths, dances, and offerings could never fully define faith. True faith lay in the reverence, or more accurately, the fear, that came from the heart.
With the New Alliance's arrival, Rowell Camp's authority had been trampled beneath everyone's feet. The old nobility had not only lost the wealth their slaves generated but also the spiritual pillar upon which they had depended upon.
At present, nihilism had become fashionable among the province's upper classes, expressing itself primarily through music and painting. After all, compared with literature, those fields demanded a much higher barrier to entry. Most residents of Port Gallon had only recently become literate and were still in the stage of learning the language from the Federation of Human heavily influenced by the New Alliance.
[After the Storm is merely a small anecdote within my report. I know your attention is focused more on the voice of progress than on the laments of conservatives. However, I believe you are rational enough to understand that radicalism and extremism are separated by only a single step. The Torch Church itself is the most direct example.]
[At present, the survivors of Port Gallon have reached a broad consensus that the thousand pillars of Tassen should be torn down. Society has become more united than ever because of this shared conviction. Personally, I believe most people mean dismantling them symbolically rather than physically, but I worry that the movement may ultimately spiral out of control, resulting in irreparable damage to valuable historical ruins and research materials.]
[Before that happens, I would like to conduct field research there and preserve as much photographic and video documentation as possible. These are invaluable materials for sociological research... Although my findings may not produce any immediate practical benefits, I would still like to request expanded regional mission authority, along with one Viper transport aircraft and a 12-man tactical team.]
Chu Guang finished reading the report, lightly tapped the desk with his index finger, and ultimately rejected her request.
[It isn't that I look down on sociological research. On the contrary, I value it immensely. However, we have already signed a ceasefire agreement with the Xilande Empire. Crossing the ceasefire line without authorization could draw the Army into an already complicated regional situation and even drag the Mutant Slime Mold Research Committee into yet another quagmire when it should be focusing all its efforts on the front lines. I cannot approve your request.]
[That said, I will seriously consider your recommendations. I'll encourage shelter residents operating in the region to support your research through indirect means while also helping preserve these new cultural relics of the Post-Prosperity Era.]
The Torch Church was deliberately stalling for time. The Mutant Slime Mold Research Committee had merely completed its encirclement. Eliminating the organization completely would still require time.
If the New Alliance increased its involvement in the Poro Province, the Army would immediately respond by expanding its own influence and territorial presence there. In the end, that might actually hinder the organic transformation taking place among the local survivors.
It would be better to maintain the status quo, using Port Gallon to keep a check on West Sail Harbor while allowing the locals to determine their own future.
Besides, the survivors there were already doing a pretty good job. The officers trained and dispatched from Port Gallon had completely reversed the decline of the Moonfolk Resistance Army. They had already pushed through Tiger State and were advancing toward the northeastern corner of the Poro Province.
According to Ample Time's report to Xiaoyu during the hearing, the militia they had cultivated with an investment of 10,000,000 Silver had successfully secured the first round of civilian venture capital from both Port Gallon and French Fry Harbor, leveraging nearly 20,000,000 Silver in funding.
His next step was to establish "a new Port Gallon" at the mouth of the Tassen River in Mammoth State.
Although the port's economic potential would probably never rival Port Gallon at the mouth of the Everflowing River, it would still be capable of radiating economic influence into two or three inland states.
While that grand vision hadn't fooled Xiaoyu, several shareholder representatives attending the hearing had been thoroughly tempted by it and immediately sided with Ample Time.
After all, if they really could build another Port Gallon, was spending 10,000,000 Silver really a bad investment?
Not at all.