Senyu Residential Complex was located near the relative edge of the city centre. After setting off, they took a detour through a tunnel, drove a little farther, and then they could get onto the expressway.
The box-car flew onward, leaving the city much faster than they had when leaving the city centre from her grandmother’s side.
Once they reached the expressway, just as Fu Erdie had expected, the road was congested with many vehicles.
The cars fleeing behind had clearly cleared the road as they travelled. Some ability users had overturned quite a few vehicles beyond the guardrails of the expressway.
Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao flew for about an hour before finally reaching the end of the congested section.
Among a cluster of vehicles, they chose an electric car. Although its speed might not be as fast as a fuel-powered vehicle, it could guarantee that as long as the road was clear, they could keep moving forward.
Because they were travelling very fast, and to avoid accidents, Sang Wenhao added several thick layers of steel plates around the electric car. Fu Erdie kept watching the road ahead. With her ability-user eyesight, she could spot vehicles driving or stranded by the roadside from several hundred metres away and avoid them in time.
While observing the road conditions, Fu Erdie compared the road signs with the map, terrified that they might take a wrong exit.
And so, between four in the afternoon and ten at night, only two hours were spent flying. The other four hours were spent driving on the expressway. They actually covered a full five hundred kilometres!
Fu Erdie was very happy. If tomorrow went just as smoothly, they could set off early in the morning and reach H City by nightfall.
They stopped in a sheltered place, cleared out the nearby zombies, and let the dandelions and Potato corrode and clean them up. Then they began confirming tomorrow’s itinerary.
“From here, we should be leaving the mountain-forest region and entering the plains.” Fu Erdie slid the map and pointed at the boundary of Fentie City. “In other words, after travelling another four hundred kilometres tomorrow, we’ll need to start paying attention to possible flood zones and nearby survivors.”
On the printed paper map, she marked all the possible places her parents might have temporarily stopped along the route. Any hill relatively close to this route could have become a temporary shelter for her parents to avoid the flood.
Of course, if there were bases of various sizes nearby, that would be another matter.
Judging from the five hundred kilometres they had travelled today, there were not many people left on or near the expressway.
The few scattered vehicles were either large trucks searching everywhere for supplies, whose occupants had tried to stop Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao when they saw them, only giving up after Sang Wenhao controlled metal to smash their front windscreen.
Or they were people who had to move location for various reasons, dragging their families and bundles of belongings with them. Most of these people were afraid of trouble. When they saw Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao, they either immediately drove away faster or slowed down to let them pass first.
Overall, it had gone quite smoothly.
“Hopefully tomorrow will go just as smoothly.”
Soothed by the flow of their abilities, Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao entered dreamland. Potato Seedling, meanwhile, was repeatedly warned to keep watch over the surroundings and not allow another situation where water flooded the carriage without any reaction.
During the night, rain fell where Fu Erdie had parked the box-car.
When they woke the next day, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled outside.
After eating potatoes and preparing everything, Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao set off again, only to personally witness a car being struck by lightning.
Fu Erdie instinctively shrank her shoulders in fright. Sang Wenhao comforted her. “As long as the windows aren’t open during a thunderstorm, staying inside the car isn’t dangerous. This is the Faraday cage principle. In an enclosed metal space, the person and the metal cage are at the same potential, so no current forms and they won’t be pierced through. But the instant the current strikes, it will still damage various vehicle components and affect normal driving. So if this electric car gets struck, it’ll probably stall and break down, and we’ll have to change cars.”
Fu Erdie nodded, slightly reassured, and continued driving through the thunderstorm.
After travelling only one hundred kilometres, before they had even reached the plains of Fentie City, Fu Erdie already felt a heavy sense of foreboding.
Because not only had it been raining for the entire hundred kilometres, but the number of vehicles coming from the opposite direction had clearly increased, and they were travelling with much greater urgency.
Yesterday, they had encountered one vehicle every half an hour on average. Today, only an hour and a half after setting off, they had already encountered ten groups of people. Less than ten minutes would pass before they saw another car speeding by.
After Sang Wenhao drove for another half hour, the two of them saw, at a blocked section of road, a group of ability users clearing an impassable roadblock.
They exchanged a glance, opened the car window, waved to the group from afar, and took out a palm-sized potato to signal to the crowd.
Two women saw this, said something to their companions, and walked over.
They looked extremely tired, but their eyes were sharp and wary. It was clear they were ability users. The muscles on their bodies and the murderous air on their faces proved that they had fought before and were not afraid of trouble.
To show goodwill, Sang Wenhao adjusted his seat backwards, leaving space for Fu Erdie, who clearly looked gentler, to negotiate.
The two ability users outside also saw the girl in the passenger seat.
Both of them froze for a moment. In the apocalypse, there was actually still someone who looked so gentle and harmless, almost like the pretty girls one used to see on the street?
Realising this, the two instantly became even more alert.
Anyone who could live like a human in the apocalypse was definitely not an ordinary person. They could not be deceived by her appearance.
Fu Erdie took out the potato. To show it was not poisonous, she broke off a small piece and ate it herself, then handed over the rest along with a new small potato. “Hello. My boyfriend and I are planning to go to H City to look for relatives. We’d like to ask you for some information.”
One short-haired woman reached out to take it, only to notice that her hands were filthy. She instinctively wiped them on her clothes, but they only became dirtier.
The other long-haired woman pulled her companion aside, took both potatoes, gave one to the short-haired woman, and immediately wolfed hers down. She said indistinctly, “H City has already been flooded. Or rather, most cities downstream from Fentie City have been flooded. If the people you’re looking for are still alive in H City, then they’re either on some relatively high hill, or floating on some piece of wood or powerless assault boat.”
Seeing that both of them were very hungry and eating quickly, Fu Erdie handed over two bowls of water. “About when was H City flooded? Are there other ability users or bases inside?”
The long-haired woman glanced at her. “The ability users who could run have all run. Those who couldn’t probably got trapped on the mountains like ordinary people. Maybe they’re robbing ordinary people of supplies.” They might even have started eating people when hunger became extreme.
Fu Erdie’s brows furrowed, and the bad feeling in her heart grew even stronger.
After the long-haired woman finished eating the potato and drinking the water, she suddenly noticed something, her eyes filling with disbelief.
She looked at Fu Erdie again, emotions crossing her face. Suddenly, she changed the subject. “I came from H City base. If you’re willing to take me with you, I’ll point out every survivor hill I saw along the way from H City.”
Meeting Fu Erdie’s surprised gaze, the long-haired woman said directly, “Your potatoes can heal injuries and illness, and most of my teammates and I are injured.”
As she spoke, she rolled up her sleeve, revealing large patches of rotten, blistered skin underneath.
Fu Erdie had originally thought the smell of rot came from the woman fighting zombies. She had not expected it to actually come from the woman’s own body!
Sang Wenhao instinctively shielded Fu Erdie behind him, afraid she might be infected.
But Fu Erdie understood. “You drank polluted river water. You couldn’t withstand it and developed lesions.”
The woman nodded.
“If you don’t believe me, I can have my teammates stand over there, at this exact spot, and show you their wounds. You’re an ability user, so you should be able to see. Don’t worry. Unless you agree, I won’t let them come over.”
Fu Erdie pondered for a moment, then agreed to the proposal.
These ability users also had walkie-talkies, which were kept in waterproof bags. Taking them out now, they had not been affected by the heavy rain.
The people on the other side heard her words. Although they were surprised, they clearly listened to the long-haired woman. Some began taking off their clothes, while others rolled up their trousers. There were nine people in the group, and eight of them had varying degrees of ulceration and disease.
Only one very ordinary-looking middle-aged aunt had no wounds at all.
“We’ve already discovered that drinking river water doesn’t affect people differently depending on whether an ability user is strong or not. It’s very random. Some people, even if they’re very powerful, will immediately develop lesions and die suddenly the moment they have to drink river water. Some only slowly show symptoms after drinking it for half a year. And some ordinary people still don’t have any symptoms even now.”
The long-haired woman looked at Fu Erdie. “We’re all sick. We need healing abilities and clean water. Our team… is actually a group of remnants abandoned by a large H City base. Even if we escape now, without treatment and without clean water, we’ll still die.”
“Actually, our abilities are very strong. If you, or the base you belong to, are willing to save us, we’ll definitely help you as much as we can.”
Fu Erdie’s brows slowly furrowed.
She quickly asked several questions about H City, including the situation on several hills. She also asked whether the woman had heard her parents’ names.
The long-haired woman was indeed very familiar with H City. Everything she described matched exactly with what Fu Erdie had learned when she lived in H City with her parents. However, she had not heard her parents’ names. She only knew where concentrated groups of survivors might be found.
Fu Erdie looked at her, then at her teammates, and slowly said, “I can give you food and water, but as for taking you in, I’m powerless.”
She pointed at her small electric car. “There isn’t enough room here for so many people. At most, I can take you. If you can’t leave your teammates behind, I can give them two fifteen-litre buckets of water and enough healing potatoes to eat for ten days. You can come with us. After we find my parents, I can give you a lot of water and potatoes. But as for taking you back to my base, I need to think about it more.”
The long-haired woman opened her mouth and said with difficulty, “Your base isn’t recruiting people?”
Fu Erdie looked at the wound on her hand, then at the various ulcerated patches of skin on her teammates. For a moment, her heart softened, but she still said, “No.”
She had no intention of turning her residential complex into a base. Especially after this trip, she still needed to go find her grandmother and aunt.
If she let soft-heartedness bring this group back, then when she went to D City to find people, the only person in her residential complex she completely trusted would be Cen Xiyang. Could Cen Xiyang suppress so many ability users?
Or rather, was there any need for her to give Cen Xiyang so much trouble?
Fu Erdie felt that taking this group back would be purely soft-hearted charity. It would bring her no benefit, only extra interpersonal relationships she would need to balance.
The short-haired woman beside them opened her mouth as if wanting to say something, but she did not know what she could say. She could only look helplessly at the long-haired woman.
The long-haired woman was disappointed, but she swallowed her emotions and continued fighting for bargaining chips for herself and her teammates. “Can you give us a period of assessment? We’re only sick. We really aren’t weak. We’ll also be very useful in the future.”
Sang Wenhao knew Fu Erdie’s concerns and thought, It’s precisely because you aren’t weak that she doesn’t dare take you back.
The long-haired woman continued, “Among us, aside from not having healing or water-type abilities, we basically have everything else. We even have engineers who can do all kinds of mechanical and electrical repairs, and a professor who does technical research.”
She pointed at the only middle-aged aunt who had not been infected by the river water. “She has no ability. She was specially kept by the base as a technical talent because she could work on infrastructure. If it weren’t for the flood forcing an urgent evacuation, and the base leader refusing to listen to the technical department’s advice and insisting on abandoning Professor Zhao, our team wouldn’t have been qualified to recruit her at all.”
Fu Erdie: “…”
Fu Erdie shamefully felt tempted.
The long-haired woman had been observing Fu Erdie’s expression the whole time. Seeing this, she pressed her advantage. “Actually, I also have an ability. When I say it, many people sneer. But I have… a good-luck buff…”
“Pfft!”
Fu Erdie could not hold back, her expression turning rather strange.
What the hell was that?
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