Zhe'rong Masternode

So sorry I was busy with other projects and didn't have time to write.

The drawing is simple and it's just Kuri taking refuge in Zhe'rong after escaping from Kiri's team, with the help of Shangwu and Simo. There's not much to say about the characters so I'll write about the region instead:

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/88621206

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/92816578

The Ochre Stone Plateau had historically been uninhabitable due to its harsh climate and a lack of easily-harvestable resources above ground, human activity in the region began mere hundreds of years ago after rare earth materials were discovered in the region. 

In the pre-Engine days, condensed fuel-tofu (not joking here, in Nusisring certain types of magical tofu are used as fuel) was already widely used in various industries and here it was used to power heavy mining machineries. However, the technology at the time wasn't mature enough and the amount of energy extracted from fuel-tofu was very inadequate. Poorly preserved fuel-tofu with high levels of residual energy tend to turn into a hardened rock-like formation, preventing it from being used further. Without proper understanding of the adverse effect hardened dark-tofu caused on living things, these waste materials produced in the mining process were carelessly disposed of around the mining sites and have since become a source of pollution, further rendering the region inaccessible.

After the Blue Heaven takeover, Causality Engine's unprecedented computational power allowed new technologies to be quickly developed. Zheshi was one of the major groups from the region that contributed to the construction of the Engine, so in return, Blue Heaven granted them access to a significant portion of the Engine's idle computing power. With which, new processes were developed to fully utilise fuel-tofu while producing minimum waste, ways to counter the adverse health effects were also discovered. Later Zheshi researchers had also developed methods to recycle hardened dark-tofu formations polluting the region and continue extracting energy from them.

Blue Heaven provided people of the Oche Stone Platou with knowledge and means to cure their sickness caused by the pollution (also eliminating superstitions grown from it) and undo the damage their ancestors did to the environment, and for the first time in centuries, the area is habitable again, even crops that couldn't previously survive can now be grown. In their eyes, Blue Heaven helped them regain lands their ancestors (colluding with all the human dynasties of the past) took away from them. This is partly the reason they were one of the first people that recognised Blue Heaven's legitimacy as the new Emperor, and started referring to themselves as Zhe'rong: same name as the Masternode (that spiky-looking construct in the background) newly constructed to enhance Blue Heaven Network coverage in the region. The settlements formed around the Masternode servers would later become an Imperial stronghold that played a critical role in the Great War between the Loyalists and the anti-Blue Heaven forces.