Night and day reversed, and the sun arose once more.
When sunlight once again touched the ground, Hope Plains welcomed its first baptism of light after its transformation.
Sitting at the front of the bed, hugging Zhong Qingshu, who was lying in his embrace like a cat, Su Mo’s heart was full of emotion.
“You’re awake? I’ll go make something tasty for you!”
Seeing Zhong Qingshu slowly open her eyes, Su Mo caressed her head dotingly, embarrassing the lady.
In just two short days, the relationship between the two had had progressed leaps and bounds, and they had achieved their first “big life milestone”.
Adding on the fact that the two of them were both beginners with absolutely no experience…
Um…
When the day turned bright, they both became embarrassed.
“Uh-huh…
Zhong Qingshu’s voice was like the chirp of a lark, thin and faint, not at all possessing the independent streak she had in the main world.
In the ruins of time, with Su Mo at her side in this environment, Zhong Qingshu did not have to forcefully “arm” herself.
With the weapons and supplies they possessed, and even the environment transformed to protect their surroundings, nothing could shake the indestructible Hope Plains for at least the next three disasters.
After putting on his clothes and momentarily gazing at the small bed full of stories behind him, Su Mo pushed open the door and walked out.
Fresh!
Carefree!
Comfortable!
This was what Su Mo felt after breathing in the air of the modified Hope Plains.
Many trees were transplanted, guaranteeing an oxygen-rich environment and a soothing and temperate climate in their surroundings.
Also, coupled with four winding rivers, the air was rich in moisture.
Without the pollution from industrialized machinery, a gulp of fresh air into the stomach felt like getting his lungs a comfortable massage, sweeping away any depression.
After 30 to 50 push-ups and pull-ups to warm up, Su Mo pushed open the fence gate. The world outside looked endless.
Riding the cross-country motorcycle through this empty wasteland with nobody to bother him, he could only describe this feeling with one word: great.
Walking into the warehouse that stored the special supplies, Su Mo started looking through his gains.
Because the transactions had occurred continuously, Su Mo had not yet managed to look at many of the items, simply storing them away as they were being exchanged for countless liters of water.
Upon closer inspection now, Su Mo was surprised by the abundance of supplies and resources he obtained.
There were three or four generators—in both medium and small sizes, induction cookers, ovens, rice cookers, and various other cooking appliances. Su Mo also received quite a few boxes of lightbulbs, bundles of wires, and even range hoods and air ventilators.
Just these alone comprised the two or three hundred good-quality items gathered outside.
Walking further inside, there were countless other household appliances. As long as they set things up properly, the shelter could be restored back to the time of the civilized era.
“Nice! If things keep going like this, my Hope Shelter will soon become even more advanced than the Underground Shelter!”
In the Underground Shelter, although there were two types of transcendent blessings, the amount of electricital items in the shelter could not compare at all to the Hope Shelter, which had more than two thousand of such various items.
Not long after, after retrieving a set of house appliances and food from the supplies warehouse, Su Mo started assembling a kitchen setup to make breakfast.
In less than half an hour, as the fragrance of the bread spread from the toaster oven, the sounds of footsteps finally came from the quiet wooden house.
Following the scent, Zhong Qingshu ran out with bare feet. Her smooth, jade-like feet stepped onto the soil and, in a couple of moments, she had hopped in front of the toaster.
“Smells so… good. We even have a toaster oven now?”
With the roar of the generator, the buzz of the oven, and the howl of the induction cooker, there was a lot of noise in their surroundings.
However, in the wasteland that had lost all the hustle and bustle of civilization, it was a most blissful sound.
Seeing Zhong Qingshu’s frantic appearance, Su Mo patted her head dotingly, and then produced a full set of tools to start making breakfast.
Between two large, toasted slices of fluffy bread, there was Chinese-style lettuce and cucumber, meatloaf that would be fried in the wok, and sauce that had psychic energy water added to it.
Mixing it a little, the smell was so fragrant that people could faint from its scent.
Yesterday’s exercise had used up too much of their strength. They ate as they cooked. It was only after the two of them finished a portion sufficient for four people that they sat down in satisfaction.
Without any worries regarding survival and missions, a leisurely day like this was something almost impossible to experience in the wasteland.
Having been anxious for about a month, Su Mo—who currently sat beside Zhong Qingshu—who had been as tense as a bowstring, could not help but relax.
“How did you discover that I wanted to leave?”
Turning his head, and staring into Zhong Qingshu’s clear eyes, Su Mo asked her curiously.
Last time, he had tossed the proof straight into Kento Maeda’s face, but because of some inexplicable power, not only did Kento Maeda not believe that his own world was fake, he instead thought that the world Su Mo was from was the fake one.
Zhong Qingshu could actually circumvent this causal influence?
“I don’t know. I just felt very strange. There was a weird sense telling me you wanted to leave. I didn’t think you really would!”
It could only be said that a woman’s sixth sense was even stronger than Oreo’s.
Tilting her head to think about it, Zhong Qingshu also could not understand why she would suddenly think that Su Mo wanted to leave last night.
“Then if I don’t come back, wouldn’t you be a widow?”
“No, I won’t. That weird sense also told me that you’d still come back. Or do you take me for a fool?”
Rolling her eyes at Su Mo, Zhong Qingshu shifted into a more comfortable position and laid in Su Mo’s arms, acting coy.
“Will I come back?”
After seeing the strong influence of Oreo’s sixth sense, Su Mo also started to somewhat believe in this vague sense of premonition.
Seeing the pretty girl acting coy and adorable, Su Mo could not help but become tongue-tied and rubbed Zhong Qingshu’s head adoringly.
…
After flirting for a whole morning and taking a relaxing afternoon nap, the two got to work and packed up the items and supplies they received from yesterday’s trading.
During this, Su Mo once again used up four complete shelter cores because he felt that not using them would be a waste, and built four cellars to store some of perishable items.
For example, some meats were alright, and there was not much of them, but the very fresh vegetables would have been doomed. Without appropriate storage methods, they would rot in less than a week.
“Pack up these rare items first. If it’s food, we don’t have to worry about that for the time being.
“In these few days, if we can trade our vegetables, then do so. Trade them for some useful equipment!”
After muttering to himself a while and making decisions, Su Mo decided to adjust his strategy, and the two people’s working speed increased again.
They rushed to categorize all the special items, organize them neatly, and put them back into the warehouse before sunset.
Among these items, most of them were electronics that were far from being able to be used by other people at the moment.
At the same time, there were also some items that had special abilities. However, most of the things did not have much practical value at the current stage.
“It’s a pity that the ruins of time doesn’t have things like computers either, or we could use these things and increase our level of security!”
Playing with the security cameras in his hand, and once again checking that all the things had been categorized and recorded, the two of them tacitly got onto the motorcycle and returned to the shelter, resuming their blissful lives.
For three consecutive days, time passed by quickly.
On the first day, Su Mo waited near Underground Shelter during the wee hours of the morning, waiting for the ruins from before to appear.
It was a shame that things could not repeat in the ruins of time and those ruins did not appear; it was as if this function had been abolished.
This unfortunate event also dispelled the ideas Su Mo had of wanting to use the ruins of time to re-enter the ruins of time in this world.
Without this important matter to deal with, the rest of the time, during the day, the two of them either packed things up together or did as Su Mo personally instructed.
While teaching Zhong Qingshu the Su Family Spear Technique, he also guided her on how to use the M-1 rifle, disregarding the price of the bullets used for her target practice.
Survival in the wasteland, as well as the simulated training sessions by the system, had already brought Su Mo’s close combat abilities and gun techniques to even greater heights, so instructing a newbie like Zhong Qingshu was no issue at all.
Compared to the main world, the current Zhong Qingshu had not yet seen blood. After teaching her for three days, Su Mo noticed that, although Zhong Qingshu learned very fast, she still lacked that final “ingredient” of real combat.
Because he wanted to leave, regarding the shelter’s future development, rather than the preservation of supplies, what Su Mo most urgently desired to achieve was the strengthening of the combat strength and readiness of the shelter.
There were no rules in the wasteland; whether for survival or actual combat as well. As they spent the final day together, before the acid rain disaster arrived, Su Mo brought Zhong Qingshu around everywhere at a leisurely pace.
As expected, without Kento Maeda and Huang Biao, some other Kento Inoue, Kento Yamakami, Zhang Biao, or Wang Biao would appear…
After these people had had enough to drink, they saw and coveted other people’s supplies. Thinking that there were no rules, they could be evil to the bone and kill and steal as they pleased.
Unexpectedly, after they bumped into the “passionate” duo and experienced a bout of rigorous justice, not only did it allow Zhong Qingshu to practice her martial arts, it also allowed them to gather enough damaged shelter cores to transfer the motor-pumped oil well.
He destroyed Magoo’s shelter and fused it into his own secondary shelter.
Having experienced it once before, Su Mo was already familiar with the process.
When the oil well had been moved into Hope Shelter, with the help of the various items and materials he had acquired, Su Mo only had to spend 1000 points to resolve the energy issue and fix the oil well in the ruins of time.
Along with that, because of the destruction of the Deep-sea Shelter, Magoo’s core could be fused as well.
Excited, Su Mo eagerly chose to fuse it.
Unfortunately, what was revealed had not been the “secret” Su Mo wanted.
The most valuable thing inside had been a bullet design blueprint that, in Su Mo’s eyes now, was very ordinary.
Two regular wooden houses, one big and one small, stood above the ground.
Below Su Mo’s wooden house, there was even a cellar designed to resists disasters. The cellar door was the alloy door he obtained from the Deep-sea Shelter.
The surroundings of the wooden house had been covered with sharp spike traps by Su Mo. The moment any stranger went inside, they would die without a doubt.
On the ground of the small courtyard, two solid drainage pipes made of pure iron led directly to the nearest water source, ensuring that any rainwater would not accumulate due to the terrain.
At night, on the cusp of the acid rain disaster’s arrival, the two of them sat on the roof, staring at the pitch-black, starry sky. They were silent, quietly waiting for heaven’s judgment to arrive.
Still, this atmosphere was not maintained for long. With the suggestive movements of Su Mo’s large hands, the silent atmosphere was broken.
“You’re sure we don’t have to reveal the news of the Nerve Acid Rain?”
Looking at Su Mo’s confident smile, Zhong Qingshu looked slightly worried, a vacant expression on her face.
“Absolutely. With enough drinking water, humans aren’t that foolish. Everyone is doing great. Before they discover what the thing is, who would go do something stupid as going outdoors in the rain?”
Shaking his head and pulling Zhong Qingshu into his embrace, Su Mo stared at the rapidly gathering clouds in the night sky, before lifting his body lightly, and leaping down from the roof.
He did not know whether he had sensed things falsely but, after entering the ruins of time, Su Mo felt that, compared to his previous physical fitness, he had become much stronger.
Especially in regards to his body’s vitality and durability—he had improved many times over.
It was always Zhong Qingshu who could not take it anymore and asked him to stop, and Su Mo would still feel like he had strength left unspent.
After reconfirming that there were no issues with the drainage facilities on the ground, he shut the doors and windows and looked out at the already falling rain.
As if accepting the fact that Su Mo was about to leave, the two of them tacitly began the final act of madness.
On the damp, rainy night, the bedroom was on fire…
A bird that flew from god knows where stood beneath the roof to avoid the rain. When it heard the rhythm of movement in the house, it started chirping along as well.
The reeds on the banks of the river were pale green, and the silvery dew condensed into droplets.
The green grass was lush, and the white mist blurred.
Just like how Kong Rong had let his older siblings eat the pear, the best was left for his little brother.[1]
…
The rainy night was very long, but no matter how long it was, it still progressed according to the movement of the hours, minutes and seconds.
Holed up in the shelter, a day’s time went by like flowing water. By the time the two of them realized it, it was already a new day.
The golden sun was already streaming in the sky above, waiting for the last cloud to leave.
Because there was enough water, humankinds’ combat strength and rate of development were even stronger here than in the main world, and the resources that could be obtained were even more terrifying.
Most humans had already rushed to implement disaster resistance measures before the acid rain came. The others also had their own methods to defend against the disaster.
Aside from a few hundred unlucky folks who perished in the acid rain due to other reasons, all the remaining humans who had avoided the disaster without injury now fervently stepped out of their wooden houses and pits to look up at the sky…
They were grateful for Su Mo’s kindness and honored Su Mo’s contribution. They worshipped Su Mo, who had become a water god to them.
However, what they did not know was…
As the acid rain disaster was coming to an end…
Su Mo’s time to leave the ruins of time was finally coming as well!
[1] Kong Rong was a moral tale that told of Kong Rong leaving the bigger pears for his older siblings out of respect.
