Anyone traveling through the wasteland long enough eventually notices the same message appearing again and again along broken highways and abandoned roads. Sometimes it’s painted on cracked walls, sometimes nailed onto rusted poles, sometimes barely visible on metal boards half-buried in vines.
The wording rarely changes.
“Happiness City — The Hope of the Next Human Era.”
“Happiness City — Endless Food and Energy.”
“Happiness City — Where Everyone Earns Respect.”
For people wandering between ruined towns and overgrown highways, those signs mean more than simple propaganda. They point toward one of the few places where organized human life still exists.
Happiness City rises behind enormous defensive walls that run for kilometers across the landscape. From far away it almost feels out of place, like something that shouldn’t still exist after everything the world has gone through. Inside those walls, life somehow keeps moving—fields being worked, power still running, small markets open, people trying to live in a way that almost resembles the old days. Step outside the gates, though, and the difference hits immediately. The land beyond is wild and unreliable, crawling with twisted creatures, strange growths, and dangers that rarely behave the way anyone expects.
Because of that, the gates of Happiness City are guarded carefully.
Anyone hoping to enter must pass through inspection. It’s not just a quick look at belongings either. The checks are strict for a reason. Infection in the wasteland doesn’t always show obvious symptoms. Some parasites can use dead bodies like puppets, walking them straight into safe zones. Others spread through spores that can’t be seen at all until it’s far too late.
One mistake at the gate could put the entire city at risk.
Cheng Ye is one of the people responsible for preventing that mistake.
Only a couple of months earlier he had been living an ordinary life in a completely different world. A casual joke about wanting a stable job somehow turned into something much stranger. The next thing he knew, he had woken up in a place where humanity survives behind fortress cities and the outside world is something most people would rather never see.
Now Cheng Ye works as a border inspector at the city entrance. His job sounds simple on paper—question incoming survivors, check for irregularities, and decide who can pass through. In practice, it requires a sharp eye and a steady mind. The people arriving at the gate are often exhausted, frightened, and desperate. Some are telling the truth. Others might not even realize what they are carrying with them.
The wasteland beyond the walls produces dangers that don’t always behave the way people expect. And the gate inspectors are the first line standing between that chaos and the fragile order inside the city.
For Cheng Ye, the job has only just begun.
