“Mr. Lennon, we made it! We are still alive. We made it… god bless… God bless us, we made it…” Edgar was jumping up and down cheering despite the exhaustion.
“I need to take a short break, Edgar, you guard the area and be careful, we are not safe yet!” Chu Yunsheng said calmly. His word was like a bucket of cold water pouring on top of Edgar’s head, it instantly reminded Edgar that their situation was still very dangerous.
Chu Yunsheng had experienced life and death situations many times. Every time when he escaped from danger, the sense of happiness and excitement would reduce, and he would become more and more vigilant and careful each time.
This planet has completely messed up now. Strange monsters could come out anywhere at any time to take their lives away.
For instance, when he was riding the green-shelled insect in the sky earlier, he encountered a 20 meters long centipede-like monster.
Whether it was Chu Yunsheng or Edgar, they both had never seen such a monster before, none of them knew anything about this monster, so they quickly descended and landed on the ground, and then hid into a small village house that seemingly has been abandoned for a long time.
It was already the night time in the age of light and it was still pitch black around them. They did not know how far they had flown, or where exactly on the map they had landed; they only knew that there were no insects around them, and they were temporarily safe.
No mice’s squeaky noises and no insects’ wild screech, apart from two of them, it seemed like nothing was alive in the area around them.
The dead silence made them very nervous, and the ringing in their ears was getting louder and clearer, and It irritated them.
Chu Yunsheng was indeed exhausted; he felt like his body was a broken skeleton, and he couldn’t gather all the pieces together. He just randomly ate something from his storage talisman and slowly fell asleep while leaning against the wall.
The place they were at was a typical small southern rural village house, it had two stories and a small courtyard at the front.
The gate to the house was originally locked. Presumably, the owner thought that they would come back soon when he left the house.
However, there was an obvious sign that someone had tried to break in before. A metal bar left on the ground was most likely the tool that someone used to break in. Presumably, it was the other refugees trying to find some food.
The furniture and other things in the house were scattered, all the drawers were opened, especially stuff in the kitchen, the broken porcelain bowls were everywhere, and they were covered with a thick layer of dust, so it most likely happened a long time ago.
In the bedrooms upstairs, all the wardrobes and beds were empty, quilts and clothing had also been taken away, leaving it with only a few electrical appliances.
Edgar was holding a torch made by himself while checking the house they stayed at. The place had a strong oriental rural characteristic. However, even when he checked the big cylinder tank in the courtyard, he still couldn’t find anything.
The only useful thing he found was a well, it temporarily solved their water problem, because they had been drinking “dirty” water in the last two months.
In the battle with the swarm at the area of the slimy substance, Edgar was hiding in the back of a golden-shelled insect, helping Chu Yunsheng to kill the green-shelled insects that broke into their formation, so apart from suffering a mental shock, he didn’t use much physical energy at all.
The reason why Edgar could survive was all because of Chu Yunsheng, so he believed that God must have heard his prayer and sent Chu Yunsheng to save him.
Of course, he knew Chu Yunsheng was not a believer, however, it didn’t stop him from picturing Chu Yunsheng as the god’s messenger.
He knew what Chu Yunsheng needed the most at the moment, so he went to the kitchen to look for anything he could use and then washed those clean and started to prepare the insect’s meat that Chu Yunsheng had given to him. He used a knife that had also been given to him by Chu Yunsheng to chop the meat into pieces then throw them into a pot.
The insect’s meat soup did not smell very nice, however, whether it was Chu Yunsheng or Edgar, they were both already familiar with the distinct astringent smell of the soup. Subconsciously, they all started to treat this kind of smell as the smell of food.
Chu Yunsheng had only had a few biscuits in a hurry before he fell asleep. Rong Yuan body’s powerful and greedy digestive function has already converted the biscuits he had into food energy. The sense of hunger made his stomach growl loudly, and when the familiar smell of the insect’s meat wafted into his nose, it instantly stimulated the nerve cells beneath the cerebral cortex. His eyelids twitched for a few seconds, then he woke up.
Staying vigilant even during the rest had already become Chu Yunsheng’s habit, only when Yu Xiaohai or the little tiger was by his side, did he occasionally fall into a deep sleep. After Xiaohai was taken away by a green-shelled insect, Yao Xiang also became a person who he could trust.
But this black man was not on his “trust list”, as a matter of fact, he only knew this black man for barely two months, and during those two months’ time, he was out hunting for the insects most of the time. So, they didn’t communicate much.
There were many differences between them, and Edgar was also a foreigner. The only similarity he was able to find was that they were both Jin Ling City’s only survivors. Of course, he did not count the woman in the white dress.
“Mr. Lennon, are you awake? Just a few more minutes, then the soup will be ready!” Edgar’s tone was full of respect. However, he also didn’t know that it was the use of this kind of tone that separated him from Chu Yunsheng.
If it was Yu Xiaohai, he would probably be like, “brother Chu, you are fucking awesome. Holy shit, we are lucky, there is a well here, we don’t have a problem with the water now!”
“Edgar, have you checked the house?” Chu Yunsheng shook his head, as he tried to get rid of the thought about Yu Xiaohai from his mind, but the feeling of hunger still made his stomach growl.
Since he started to cultivate Yuan Qi, he had witnessed all kinds of strange phenomena that only existed in xianxia novels.
Based on the stories he read in xianxia novels, he originally thought that the stronger he got, the need for food would be reduced, in the end, he would become an immortal and he would no longer need to eat anything.
But the reality was that no matter if he was at Yuan Tian stage one or stage two, the amount of food he needed didn’t reduce at all. He would still feel hungry if he didn’t eat for a while.
“I’ve checked it already, apart from a well, there is nothing left, no food, no batteries, or fuels, and weapons, etc… It is an empty house!” Edgar immediately replied.
“I’m not asking for this, I’m… sigh… forget about it, I’ll check myself.” Chu Yunsheng sighed. Compared to him, Edgar’s experience of living outside Jin Ling city was much less.
What he needed the most right now was to figure out where he was at the moment, how far he was from Jin Ling city. Would the insects catch up to them? Were there any big cities near them etc…
“Mr. Lennon, I don’t understand… you…?” Edgar was confused. Apart from those things he mentioned, what else would be worth them to search for?
Chu Yunsheng “took out” a bag of salt from his cloak and said, “add some salt, I have not had salt in food for quite some time!”
“Salt!” Edgar’s hands started to shake!
Even in Jin Ling City, salt was also considered as the extreme luxury good, in order to get a little bit of salt, some people would rather give up their dignity, chastity, and even life.
“I need to find something to determine where we are now.” Chu Yunsheng said plainly.
It didn’t take him long to find a notebook in the bedroom on the second floor. The notebook was in a cabinet next to a bed.
When Chu Yunsheng opened the notebook, the letters in the first line he saw was scrawled, he could barely read it: XXXXX home xxx 0553——*
It was an area code. However Chu Yunsheng could not remember so many area codes, so he immediately took out the National map book that he had prepared a long time ago from the storage talisman. Soon he found out the code belongs to Wu City in Anhui Province!
But he still could not tell his specific location just solely by this number.
Chu Yunsheng turned the house upside down trying to find anything that could indicate where he was. Eventually, he was able to find an agricultural newsletter in a corner of the house. Based on the information on the old newsletter, he suspected that he was probably in Tíng bái town in Wu city.
Then he used this information to locate his position on the map once again. If he was correct, he was about 20 kilometers away from Wu City.
Chu Yunsheng was sitting on a collapsed mattress and using his middle finger to knock on the map book. It seemed like he was thinking of something carefully.
Wu City was not far from Jin Ling City. Since the dark age began, all the people had flocked to Jin Ling city. Duan Danian was one of them. So it was most likely that Wu city was an empty city now! However, he still wanted to try his luck. because it was near Jin Ling City, so maybe the local people had escaped to Jin Ling city in a haste, so there might be some food still left behind.
In addition to that, Chu Yunsheng also wanted to take a chance to see if he could find some fuel. He was not worried about cars, based on what he saw during the great retreat in Shen Cheng city. Probably the streets of Wu city were blocked with vehicles, so fuel was the only thing he needed to find.
Although green-shelled insects could fly, ever since he saw the strange Centipede-like monster in the sky, Chu Yunsheng gave up the idea of using green-shelled insects to travel. Safety should be the first priority. Finding a car and using it as a means of transport was the best and the most reliable choice.
Therefore, his first destination was not towards the northwest where the ancient book was pointing at. Although the book kept telling him that the third map was in that direction, he did not know how far he would need to travel. Who knows how long it would take him if he started to travel towards that direction blindly by foot.
