Three months later.
Dawn Base.
The abandoned town had been rebuilt. Tall walls had also been erected around it, though construction was not yet complete. At this moment, a group of people were working energetically atop the northern section of the wall.
Old bricks salvaged from the ruins were coated with thick layers of concrete and stacked up layer by layer.
The workers were extremely focused. Although most of them looked somewhat tired, there was no sorrow or discouragement on their faces. No one was slacking off or working halfheartedly. Everyone was giving it their all, occasionally exchanging a joke or two. The atmosphere was surprisingly lively.
Inside the small town, there was also a sense of rebuilding and renewal everywhere. People were busy all over the place. No one was idle. Everyone was full of energy, and there was hope in their eyes again.
But the liveliest place in town was the training ground that had been established some time ago.
The training ground’s facilities were simple, but it occupied a large area. It had originally been the town’s sports field. After everyone modified it, it proved to be an ideal place for training physical reactions and improving supernatural abilities.
At this moment, the ability users were all at their designated positions, either sparring with one another or training alone against the equipment, practicing their abilities.
However, the most eye-catching people on the field now were not the ability users and the dazzling array of effects produced by their various abilities.
It was a group of children.
These children were clearly no ordinary children.
Some had grown wings on their backs that were as thin as cicada wings. Some had hands covered in scales, and when they spread their palms, they revealed claws as sharp as steel. Others had bodies as soft as rubber, curling themselves into round balls and rolling across the ground…
However, they weren’t playing around.
Under Ouyang Jing’s guidance, they were developing and training their supernatural abilities.
The temporary command center in town was a five-story self-built residential building. It looked fairly sturdy.
The words “Dawn Base Temporary Command Center” had been simply painted across the front wall. It was a basic yet unmistakable indication of the building’s special status within the town.
And the highest-ranking leader here, Xiao Ziran, was currently in the conference room discussing the base’s next stage of development with Old Wu and Zuo Li.
Dawn Base was located five hundred kilometers north of what had once been the J City Base.
The prototype for Dawn Base consisted of two small towns in this area.
Before the apocalypse, these two towns had been highly distinctive. One specialized in producing and processing construction materials, with practically every household in the town involved in the business. The other was a major agricultural producer, primarily growing fruits and vegetables, and had even been somewhat famous nationwide before the apocalypse.
After the apocalypse arrived, the surviving residents of the towns began fleeing. Some of them escaped to the J City Base at the time.
The reason Xiao Ziran had chosen this place as their base went back to three months earlier.
Three months ago.
That day, everyone had fled J City in a miserable state. They hadn’t even dared stop to count their numbers before fleeing north.
They hadn’t gone very far when Xie Mingxuan suddenly became agitated. He let out two howls and then circled around Quan Xiaoyu twice.
Quan Xiaoyu tried to calm him down, but Xie Mingxuan became increasingly agitated. Then he suddenly shook Quan Xiaoyu off and ran away ahead.
Quan Xiaoyu was startled. Afraid something might have happened, he only had time to call out to Xiao Ziran before chasing after Xie Mingxuan.
Everyone saw only two black shadows flash past before they disappeared from sight.
Xiao Ziran had only just raised a hand, intending to stop Quan Xiaoyu, but in an instant, they were already gone.
Xiao Ziran hadn’t even had time to say something as simple as, “If he goes too far, forget about him and come back,” so he could only give up.
Before the group had gone very far, torrential rain suddenly began pouring from the sky.
It was that same black cloud that had hung over J City for such a long, long time.
It seemed sudden, but it was also within expectations. After all, that dark cloud had been hanging over the city for an extremely long time.
When it had first appeared, J City had still been full of living people.
Now…
Xiao Ziran had always felt that the cloud was strange, but at this moment there was nowhere they could hide from the rain. All they could do was let the downpour wash over them and leave everything to fate.
The heavy rain caused a commotion.
But it didn’t come from the humans.
In an instant, they could see mutated beasts of all sizes fleeing through the sky and across the ground.
So they had never left.
They had merely been lying low in secret.
Xiao Ziran couldn’t help feeling a chill in his heart.
If it hadn’t been for this rain, if their group had gone just a little farther, they would have entered the mutated beasts’ encirclement.
Meanwhile, in J City, invisible to everyone through the curtain of rain, the large number of zombies Xie Mingxuan had led inside began collapsing one after another when the rainwater washed over them.
They lay motionless on the ground, having completely lost their vitality.
It wasn’t only the zombies that fell.
Various zombie animals also collapsed. Unlike the mutated beasts, they didn’t know how to flee in all directions to avoid the rain. The moment the downpour arrived, they too fell one after another.
The heavy rain washed over the earth, as though cleansing all living things.
The terrifying thing Xiao Ziran had expected did not happen to the humans.
After the rain stopped and the skies cleared, sunlight once again shone upon the earth. The grass beside the road was lush and green, covered with droplets of rain that sparkled beneath the sunlight, making everything look exceptionally full of life.
It was as if the storm had passed and the disaster was over.
Only then did Xiao Ziran have the time to arrange for everyone to rest and take a head count.
With the spatial ability user Bai Mingxi absent, they obviously couldn’t replenish their supplies and could only conserve their strength as much as possible.
The head count revealed devastating losses.
Xiao Ziran’s team in particular had suffered terribly.
On Xiao Ziran’s side, only Old Wu, Zhao Bufan, and Lu Zhongxia remained, along with Quan Xiaoyu, who had run off with Xie Mingxuan and whose whereabouts were still unknown.
On Ouyang Jing’s side, six ability users were still alive, including Zuo Li, making eight people in total.
There was also Pei Qianxing, who had joined them temporarily.
That left only thirteen adults and the twenty-one children rescued from the basement of the shopping mall.
Xiao Ziran had discovered these children after entering the basement.
For some unknown reason, Xiao Ziran had entered extremely smoothly. There were no defensive systems and no guards.
Therefore, when Xiao Ziran saw the enormous laboratory inside, even someone like him couldn’t remain calm.
If this had been before the apocalypse, it wouldn’t have been particularly strange.
But this was after the apocalypse, when practically all electrical infrastructure had collapsed.
To have such a huge, fully equipped laboratory was truly astonishing.
There was no need to go into detail about all the equipment inside. The first thing Xiao Ziran discovered was the twenty-one children being held together.
They were locked inside a room resembling a psychiatric ward, the kind used to confine patients. The door was locked, but there was a reinforced-glass window in it through which he could see inside.
When the children saw Xiao Ziran, they were incredibly calm.
“Who are you?”
One little girl even asked him this with a composed, scrutinizing gaze.
That gaze, which was almost identical to an adult’s, left Xiao Ziran speechless for quite some time.
However, there was no time for them to introduce themselves to one another.
A half-human, half-spider monster suddenly burst out from somewhere.
Fortunately, Old Wu had already gone outside to call for help, and the other ability users arrived at precisely the right moment. Following the girl’s instructions, everyone worked together to rescue the children.
After that came the scene Quan Xiaoyu had witnessed when he arrived.
Under the girl’s leadership, the children remained remarkably quiet and composed the entire time.
Until the heavy rain came.
After the rain, every single child developed a high fever.
Every single one of them.
Xiao Ziran was completely at a loss.
There were no supplies, no medicine, no means of transportation, and everyone’s energy had been completely depleted. They were utterly exhausted.
Now all the children had high fevers.
Xiao Ziran knew something was wrong. The origins of these children were far too unusual. The eight-headed spider and the two-headed snake were still fresh in his memory.
But what could he do?
Abandon them?
Or kill them?
Of course not.
So all they could do was instruct everyone to remain on high alert while having Lu Zhongxia do everything he could to treat them.
Half a day passed like this.
Xiao Ziran and Ouyang Jing discussed the situation, but neither of them could come up with a better solution.
Then Quan Xiaoyu returned.
The surprise was that besides Xie Mingxuan, who had suddenly run off, Quan Xiaoyu had also brought Bai Mingxi and Li Nan back with him.
The appearance of Bai Mingxi and Li Nan was like heaven dropping a huge prize right into their laps. Xiao Ziran was overjoyed.
Li Nan’s return meant a higher level of medical care and greater security.
But the most important person was Bai Mingxi!
He represented food and water!
He represented the survival supplies everyone desperately needed at that moment!
The two men’s return truly lifted everyone’s spirits despite their exhaustion.
They could see hope again.
The only problem was that Chu Tian was still nowhere to be seen.
The other brain of the team had disappeared when Xiao Ziran still desperately needed him, and he still hadn’t returned.
No one dared ask.
Even Bai Mingxi and Li Nan, seeing Quan Xiaoyu’s current expression, didn’t dare mention Chu Tian.
Chu Tian had disappeared while he was with them.
They knew that.
They also knew that Quan Xiaoyu had gone almost insane searching through the entire area within a one-kilometer radius.
Seeing Quan Xiaoyu finally looking somewhat normal again, they didn’t dare bring up Chu Tian.
The food and water were distributed without difficulty.
By then, everyone had long since replaced their drinking water with water from Quan Xiaoyu’s spatial dimension. The two people who had been bored to death inside his spatial dimension had taken the opportunity to replace all of it.
The two of them had been safe and comfortable inside the spatial dimension. Their only concern had been Quan Xiaoyu outside and the missing Chu Tian, which had left them constantly anxious.
Until, in the blink of an eye, they suddenly appeared outside.
When they saw Quan Xiaoyu and a strange man, they knew they had finally gotten out.
When Bai Mingxi first saw the strange man, there was a moment of joy.
He thought it was Chu Tian.
He thought Chu Tian had returned.
However, once he got a clear look at the man’s build, he knew that it definitely wasn’t Chu Tian.
He was disappointed and anxious, but he didn’t dare ask.
Because he knew that Quan Xiaoyu had to be even more anxious than he was.
And so the group returned together.
It seemed that Xie Mingxuan’s sudden departure had been to escape the heavy rain.
They had run a long way, and only after they had escaped the range of that dark cloud did Xie Mingxuan finally calm down.
After that, he became incredibly obedient again.
Once the rain stopped, Quan Xiaoyu brought him along, released the two people from his spatial dimension, and found the main group.
When Quan Xiaoyu returned, he simply said that while chasing Xie Mingxuan, he had unexpectedly found Bai Mingxi and Li Nan, who had become separated from the others.
That was all.
No one pressed for details, because none of that mattered.
What mattered was—
They had returned safely.
They hadn’t even had time to mourn their lost companions before Bai Mingxi and Li Nan, who had just returned, were already scrambling to deal with the twenty-one children who had suddenly developed high fevers.
Their healing abilities were of little help.
The children remained burning hot.
In the end, Bai Mingxi rummaged through the assortment of miscellaneous things in his spatial dimension and managed to find several large barrels.
He had Zhao Bufan fill them with water, then secretly had Quan Xiaoyu replace it with water from his spatial dimension.
Then they put all the children into the water.