As per usual, lunch consisted of two packs of nutrient paste for protein and carbohydrates, followed by a piece of malt sugar for a quick sugar boost.
The synthetic jerky given by Liu Bi was saved by Cheng Ye as a strategic reserve to be used for energy emergencies during field missions.
After finishing lunch.
He stayed by the window until the rain subsided a bit, then donned his raincoat and headed towards the isolation zone.
Perhaps due to the intimidating rainfall over in Cloud City, workers could be seen urgently constructing flood control structures everywhere, making the already narrow alleys seem even more hurried and chaotic.
Under a temporary rain shelter by the roadside, several new residents who had just joined Happiness City huddled together, worryingly watching the rolling black clouds in the sky.
Their damp resident IDs couldn't secure them a place to stay; to them, they had to seize every moment to find a job before the heavy rain arrived to have a place to stay.
"Inspector Cheng, you are still in charge of window number 8 today."
"It was quite crowded in the morning, and I didn't expect the crowd to be even larger in the afternoon. If there's any emergency you can't handle, feel free to call for support from the station."
"Understood!"
Cheng Ye nodded, put on his identity-concealing mask, and headed forward confidently.
Just standing at the passage to the front area, he could see a densely packed crowd squeezing in front of the conveyor belt.
At least seven or eight hundred people?
The heavy rain was one reason, and the infection wave from Cloud City was another.
Some survivors had no choice but to leave, making Happiness City the best evacuation option in the vicinity.
"Window number eight is open. Survivors, please queue orderly and enter the isolation cage."
As soon as Cheng Ye sat down at the quarantine desk, the loudspeaker from the watchtower chimed in timely.
After all, it was a secure job, and although he had taken a half-day leave this morning, even with the crowded survivors outside, window number eight remained unoccupied and unopened.
As the crowd on the other seven conveyor belts slightly stirred, the isolation cage was soon pushed to Cheng Ye in front of him by the conveyor belt.
Curled up inside the cage were three figures, two women, and one man, a common "family" formation on the wasteland.
"Name?"
"Circulation, Yun Zi, Yun Duo."
Clearly made-up names, Cheng Ye pretended to record while actually calling up the panel to view.
The blue panel flickered slightly, and the search function immediately displayed the information of the three people.
[Circulation, 42%, Searchable Range: Information, Items]
[Yun Zi, 55%, Searchable Range: Information, Items, Skills]
[Yun Duo, 18%, Searchable Range: Information]
"Just asked a name, and already reached a 55% cooperation degree?"
Cheng Ye was surprised.
He thought cooperation degree required these people to tell the truth, but it turned out the logic behind this measurement was far more ambiguous than he imagined.
Search or not?
Cheng Ye hesitated for a moment and decided not to waste the valuable opportunity on these three people.
Based on his observations these days, he summarized the strength hierarchy of family formations as follows:
One man, two women
The strength of the three before him was at the lowest level, and even if they entered the buffer zone, struggling to earn a meal through manual labor would be difficult, not worth wasting a chance on them.
However, Yun Duo's low cooperation degree made Cheng Ye raise his head, tapping his fingers on the desk:
"Yun Duo, can you see the first thermometer on the table in front of you? Pick it up, aim it at your forehead, press down, and tell me the reading."
Surprised by Cheng Ye's call, Yun Duo was momentarily taken aback but still obediently picked up the thermometer.
"Sir, the value is... 36.9."
"Very well, now please pick up the second thermometer, aim it at your chest, press down, and tell me the reading."
"The value is... 117."
"The third one."
"16."
As Yun Duo continuously reported as per Cheng Ye's instructions, the cooperation degree on the panel steadily increased.
After the three instruments were measured, it had risen from 18% to 44%.
This change gave Cheng Ye an initial understanding of the logic behind cooperation degree measurement.
"Alright, the three of you can leave now and proceed to handle the resident formalities at the back."
"Ah?" Circulation couldn't help but exclaim in surprise.
"Is there a problem?"
"Sir, aren't you going to ask us where we came from, if there are dangers, or if we're infected?"
"I already know, you came from Cloud City, encountered dangers on the way, but didn't have direct contact with infected bodies."
"?"
Circulation swallowed, his face slightly changing.
Yun Duo and Yun Zi also gasped slightly, their gazes towards Cheng Ye changed.
"Rule number one of the Happiness City Resident Manual: Never doubt the professionalism of official personnel."
It wasn't the legacy left by Cheng Long or Liu Bi's face that secured a window seat for an intern inspector like Cheng Ye in just a month.
Cheng Ye's fingertip lightly tapped the desk, his gaze sweeping over the mud trails left by the three on the isolation cage, "Continuous rain, the provincial and county roads from Cloud City to here have had landslides half a month ago, only one abandoned country road known to Cloud City survivors not shown on the map is passable, and the black sandy soil on your shoe soles is unique to the rock debris of that country road."
"Looking down, the muddy stains on the two women's raincoats' insides are splattered rather than dragged or smeared, aligning with frantic escape when encountering dangers but not with combat marks."
"Furthermore, the tremble in your knees is too fast, inconsistent with long-distance travel but identical to refugees escaping from Cloud City; it's a residual effect from sprinting under extreme fear. So, stop asking why I don't inspect; since the physical data is normal, proceed to handle your residency documents, don't stand here wasting my time with nonsense."
Cheng Ye impatiently said, causing the three to shrink their necks and leave, not daring to ask anything further.
Are all inspectors in Happiness City this professional?
Knowing everything without asking anything made them feel stripped of their clothes, utterly exposed, with no secrets left!
"Next."
The conveyor belt continued operating, transferring over another family of one man and two women inside the isolation cage.
This time Cheng Ye was faster, only taking a little over ten seconds to verify cooperation degree before choosing to let them pass.
In fact, those infected bodies daring to openly enter Happiness City's checkpoint are extremely rare.
This isn't like the checkpoints of those small Shelter Cities, lacking sufficient intelligence support and auxiliary judgment instruments implies relying only on progressive human judgment.
Thermometers, pulse meters, respiratory frequency meters.
As long as the whereabouts are clear and the three physical indicators are normal, the probability of being an infected body becomes negligible.
Of course, there are also deeply latent special infected bodies, but even the high levels of Happiness City do not expect the inspectors in the isolation zone to detect them.
The massive buffer zone and stable high walls are meant to keep all threats outside the Inner City.
...
An hour quickly passed.
The queue at the gate didn't diminish due to the opening of window number 8 but instead grew larger as time went by.
Cheng Ye already let seventy-one people through but still hadn't found a target worth using the search on.
This was an inevitable result.
With an increase in survivor numbers, the poor quality portion among them becomes exponentially magnified.
And the uncertainty of the eight conveyor belts further decreases the probability of drawing the strong ones.
"Based on these survivors' performance just now, they're likely three-no personnel like me at the bottom of the food chain."
"There are a lot of people today, patience is required."
Cheng Ye wouldn't want to be excited about searching a skill only to find that all three skill bars of the other party are empty like his own.
Even wasting both opportunities on strong individuals is far better than gambling on these weaklings.
Quickly, another hour passed.
Bang, bang-bang.
Three gunshots in succession startled Cheng Ye, causing him to instinctively turn his head.
In the isolation cage of conveyor belt 4, a pair of men and women undergoing inspection had their heads blasted by sentinels.
Immediately, tentacles Cheng Ye had only seen yesterday extended from the two peoples' throats, indicating yet another deeply latent 'Death Language Tentacle.'
These special infection sources that dwell on human obsessions, when reaching small Shelter Cities or settlements, only need about a month to hatch hundreds of tentacles, easily causing large-scale human calamities.
But fortunately, few people in the vast wasteland possess obsessions with small Shelter Cities.
"In a way, frequent appearances of Death Language Tentacles also acknowledge the strength and influence of Shelter Cities."
Cheng Ye thought to himself, soon brushing off the slight fear in his mind.
Due to the tragic event in isolation zone 4, surviving the scene with a headshot and still daring to enter the isolation cage indicated that the quality of survivors rapidly improved, causing Cheng Ye to perk up at the two-person (a man and a woman) transfer at the end of conveyor belt 8.
However, a sudden argument next door caught his attention.
Turning to look.
"Oh shit, has the Wasteland King finally arrived—an adult man and woman with a child?"
...