In the western region of Shen Cheng city, near the southern bank of the Huangpu River.
It used to be one of the most expensive areas of Shen Cheng city in the age of light. There used to be countless skyscrapers spread across the riverbank, and the streets in that area were always crowded with people.
However, nowadays it was only left with collapsed buildings and some broken skyscrapers that were still standing in ruins under the hazy shimmer.
After some time, in this ruined place where the hazy shimmer seemed to be the only light source appeared some small and blurry thin figures. They were crawling from one collapsed building to another one through the holes and cracks of the concrete buildings.
From the direction that those blurry figures traveled in the hazy shimmer. It appeared that this group of figures was heading towards a collapsed viaduct that was quite far away from them.
…
“Look what I found!?” a young boy said loudly and then quickly slid down from a pile of ruins while waving a glass bottle in his hand. He looked around ten years old, and his excited expression could even be seen behind his dirty face.
Immediately, all other kids below the ruins began to surround the young boy.
A slightly older kid, who had a big head took over the bottle, and used his spit to carefully clean the dirt off the label on the side of the bottle.
“Yang… Yang… river… something…” he struggled to read the words that were displayed on the label.
It instantly caused other kids to laugh non-stop. “Haha…. Big-head Niu, what did you say!? We didn’t understand a single word. It is better to ask the Scholar to read it…”
“It must be a bottle of alcohol, I have seen one like it when I was young.” said the boy whose head was indeed slightly bigger than others. The boy felt embarrassed. He stroked the back of his head, laughed with the rest of the kids.
“Haha… big head, why don’t you say that you used to see the sun? You are not much older than us! Haha…” a kid who was wearing a tattered cloth laughed.
“It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not!” The big-headed kid slowly changed his tone.
Soon, a girl who was wearing an adult-sized cotton coat was led towards them.
“Scholar, can you tell us what was written on the bottle.” said the big-headed kid.
“Yang, river, blue… oh… River Yang Classic Blue.” said the girl after she checked the label carefully. It seemed like the girl was very weak. When she took the bottle, she almost dropped it.
“Classic blue? What is that? Anyone heard of it?” the kid who found the bottle looked at other kids and said. However, none of them knew what it was.
“Look at the smaller words. Three are some more.” The big-headed kid pointed at the bottle and said.
“Hmm… something alcohol… company…” the girl looked at the words and said slowly.
“See! I said it is a bottle of alcohol.” the big-headed said cheerfully.
“Then, how much is it worth?” the kid with a dirty face said with envy.
“At least one big car of food!” another kid spread out his arms and said.
“All you know is eat, can you not think of something else?”
“A bunch of naive kids. We should give this to the leader. If he is happy, he might help you to become an awakened warrior!”
“Wa… you are the youngest amongst us. You dare to call us a bunch of naive kids?!”
…
While all the kids were immersed in the happiness of discovering a bottle of alcohol, another kid suddenly shouted from the top of the pile of ruins. “Look, there is more!”
Then everyone saw a kid waving a red box excitedly.
Quickly, all the children began to climb up the pile of ruins and used all their energy to dig the pile of ruins as if they had just found the location of a grand treasure.
Soon, more and more stuff that they had never seen were dug out of the ruins and piled up on the side.
“We are rich! We are rich now!”
“This time I will definitely get the fruit!”
“I’ll get new clothes!”
…
In a tunnel that used to be used by the subway line seven in the age of light suddenly appeared a boy. He cautiously looked around the area outside the tunnel for a few seconds, and then waved at the tunnel behind his back. Soon, another group of small kids nervously walked out of the tunnel.
The tunnel was not far away from the first group of kids, so they were immediately noticed by a kid from the first group.
“Everyone, those Japanese kids are here to steal from us again!” the kid who was on the watch immediately whisper-shouted.
“Where? Where?” All the kids quickly went to the kid who had whisper-shouted.
“Let’s throw rocks at them!” A kid quickly said when he saw the shadows.
“Yes. Quick, don’t let them come out of the tunnel!”
“Scholar, find a place to hide. It is dangerous here.”
“Go back to the place where you came from…”
…
Another group of kids was startled by the sudden ‘rain of rocks’. They all went back to the tunnel quickly.
But they didn’t leave immediately. It seemed like they had realized what happened.
A few seconds later, many objects were also thrown out from the tunnel towards the kids on top of the pile of debris.
….
Inside an undamaged building, in a place far away from the small fight, a man with a middle-aged look and pale face, put down the military binoculars and said sternly to another tall and strong man next to him.
“Big Brother, if we don’t do anything. It will only get worse!”
“Second Brother, it is not that I don’t want to fight them. What can we use to fight them? The tree is gone now. The fruits we stored will only become less. Once we started to fight them, what can we use to save our brothers’ lives?” the tall man looked at the pale-faced middle-aged man and asked.
“Look at those kids!” The man pointed at the place where the kids were fighting and said.
“I have already made my decision. You don’t need to persuade me. They are not as united as they look. Akizuki clan has already agreed to join us. This kind of thing can’t be rushed. Besides, once we resumed our contact with other cities. Those people would immediately give up fighting.”
The middle-aged man frowned. It seemed like he still was not willing to give up. “Okay, Big Brother, I’ll listen to you. Let’s hope that Tachibana Akisumi will give up his ambition.”
“Tachibana Akisumi…” the tall man also frowned while gazing at the east region of the river.
*******
In a plain field in the eastern region of the river.
A group of 50 kids, both boys, and girls, had been stripped naked and asked to run on the land that was covered with snow.
Behind them, a man was holding a stick and constantly shouting.
“Run! Don’t ever stop! If you want to survive in this world, you must have an iron-like body. No matter how cold and painful it is, you must endure it!”
“Cowards will not be able to survive in this world!”
“From today, you will need to treat this world seriously like a samurai!”
…
Suddenly, the kid who was leading the group was tripped over and fell to the group. It instantly tripped over many other kids.
The man who was holding a stick quickly got to the front and hit the kid who had caused the other kids to fall repeatedly without any mercy.
“As the future leader, you need to work two times harder than anyone else! Not to cause trouble for your people! Get up!”
The kid gritted his teeth and tried to get up several times. However, he failed every time.
The man was constantly hitting the kid with the stick and shouted.
“Get up Heiichiro! We have already lost our homeland! We can’t afford to lose any more! Get up and fight! Heiichiro!!!”
The man’s words seemed to have touched something in the young child’s mind.
“Ah!….” the kid roared hysterically with his innocent voice and staggered to his feet. Then he began to run frantically into the darkness.
…
In another place that was not far from the group of fifty kids also stood a group of kids that were almost ten years old. They were split into two groups, and everyone was holding a wooden sword.
They were ordered to fight each other until there was only one person standing in each group.
….
In a place further away from them, around a hundred of teenagers that were wearing armor suits, had been split into three rows.
Opposite them, roughly around fifty meters away, a live but small tentacle monster had been tied up to retain its movement.
“Charge!” A man dressed in a white robe suddenly shouted sharply in Japanese.
“Ha!” Instantly, all the teenagers began to charge towards the live tentacle monster with their samurai swords at the same time.
******
After Chu Yunsheng was pulled into the mountain tree, he slowly lost all his senses.
He couldn’t tell where he was and how long it had passed. It was like he had been separated from the rest of the world. He couldn’t see, touch, smell, or hear anything. He even lost the Dark’s vision and his fourth-dimensional sensory system.
After a long time or maybe it was just he himself felt that way, he seemed to ‘see’ a black vortex spinning non-stop above him.
Slowly, he felt ‘something’ was being sucked in by the vortex above him. However, the thing was too little. It disappeared instantly. Just right after it disappeared, he felt that ‘something’ was slowly restoring.
