As expected, when Panam explained the situation to Sol, Sol thought for a few seconds and then firmly rejected this seemingly unreliable action.
In his words, the current Adcardo cannot risk going to war with the Night Wanderers for the sake of a stranger’s order, especially with unclear intelligence. He didn’t believe the Night Wanderers could complete the oil theft on their own. There must be something fishy going on under the surface, and Adcardo shouldn’t wade into these murky waters.
And if by any chance they run into Peizhuo Petrochemical’s task force, the end result would certainly be disastrous.
Then, the two of them argued again.
Lin Miao had seen it coming. If things continued this way, Adcardo would inevitably fall apart due to ideological disagreements between the two sides.
But to say Sol is wrong isn’t necessarily true because being conservative doesn’t mean being wrong, and being aggressive doesn’t mean being right either.
With Panam’s tiger-like personality, she might offend everyone around her within a year.
Still fuming, Panam saw Lin Miao leaning against the car and asked,
"What’s the deal on your side?"
"I’ve called my people over."
Lin Miao was a bit surprised. He thought Lucy would refuse to take his call or make sarcastic remarks after last night’s incident. But Lucy didn’t reject him; she agreed straightforwardly and said she’d be there soon.
"Your people? You have a hacker under your command?"
Panam was surprised. A hacker is different from a lone wolf. Anyone can call themselves a lone wolf as long as they hold a gun. But a hacker needs specialized network skills and deep-diving equipment. Since Bartmos blew up the net, the fourth corporate war has globally killed tens of thousands of hackers. Now, local internet power and technology training are almost entirely in the hands of companies.
From that point on, wild hackers became extremely rare. Most of the people you see in bars are those who escaped from companies. You can’t just call upon them as you wish.
"Uh... strictly speaking, the two of us are in a cooperative relationship. I provide the funds, and she does the work. But what about your side? It seems like Sol doesn’t agree."
If Panam couldn’t convince Sol to let Adcardo join the fight, he would have to negotiate with the other party himself.
Panam glanced angrily inside the tent at Sol,
"Don’t worry about him. I’m determined to fight this battle, no matter what supreme force comes my way."
"No, there will be Mitch, Scorpion, and Carol, altogether around thirty people."
Thirty people... Lin Miao was quite surprised.
That’s roughly the combat number he estimated for this camp, which means almost all of the militant faction supports Panam’s idea. He underestimated her influence here.
Maybe he could do some small business.
Speaking, Lin Miao gestured for Panam to look at a corner of the camp,
"Are those two tankers your water reserves? Where do you get your water from?"
Currently, players haven’t been online long, and the Evil Land environment is harsh. Bathing, drinking, and using the bathroom all require water. The small town has a water plant supply, but Lin Miao knocked a couple of times with no response, couldn’t manage it, and planned to look for the water plant people later to open a valve or something.
"Of course, it’s drawn from the river. Sometimes when it rains, we collect in advance. Can’t always buy from those damn water plants in Night City."
Night City has no clean groundwater, including those water plants. What they sell is actually all dirty water, not only poorly sterilized but also containing phenol groups, mercury compounds, heavy metal ions—just slightly better than licking sewage.
Theoretically, drinking alcohol in Night City is safer than drinking water, at least it doesn’t have that taste.
It’s like the rubbish mountains outside the city. If they don’t cause you organ failure, who’s going to buy those bionic kidneys?
And it’s even worse outside the city. Lin Miao went to see Panam’s so-called river, which couldn’t be called a river. More like a stinking ditch.
Under the sunlight, a colorful slick floated on the water, emitting a stench, murky as hell. Tasting it would let you sample the entire periodic table.
Panam was somewhat annoyed, being stared at with strange eyes by Lin Miao,
"Why the hell are you looking at me? You think we want to do this? And we do process it before using it, okay."
The processing Panam mentioned is mainly sedimentation, filtering oil and garbage, then using chlorine to kill bacteria, filtering with charcoal again, and most of the time even skipping chlorine and charcoal, just boiling the water for rough use. This is Night City, where the average life expectancy is 40.
Lin Miao indeed had water purifier design drawings, but just having the drawings is useless unless he can obtain the raw materials and assembly components. Apart from that, he doesn’t know where to get the supermolecular material with a net structure used for adsorbing heavy metal particles and pollutants inside.
Showing this stuff to a chemical plant wouldn’t help. A complete chemical process must be produced to develop it.
Should Lin Miao sell this thing to a company?
Not to mention that aiding enemies is unacceptable, and it’s not advanced technology to begin with.
Forget it, head hurts.
Edge of the small town.
The Wildman tapped the iron canister in front of him with a wrench, producing an empty echo.
He stood up helplessly and said to Potato and Bighead behind him,
"No water, it’s empty."
"Then what do we do? Damn, it’s been three days without a shower. I’m covered in sweat stink."
A group of people had been busy all morning and were sweaty, Potato and others couldn’t bear it, so they searched for water near the small town. After half a day, they managed to find an intact supply pipeline and storage tank only at the town’s edge.