RotA – Chapter 53

Everyone said the world was vast, but for the first half of her life, Chai Yuening’s entire world consisted of humanity’s two great bases and the risk zones below level six.

A world that could be traversed from one end to the other on, at most, a single tank of fuel.

Chai Yuening’s world was perhaps thousands, even tens of thousands of times larger than Chu Ci’s, but compared to this world, it was so infinitesimal it wasn’t worth mentioning.

After leaving the region she knew, she too fell into a daze. The compass in her pack became the last thing she could rely on.

Chai Yuening knew that if they turned back, the armored vehicle had enough fuel to return to the Floating City.

But she couldn’t go back. She could only take Chu Ci deeper into the Fog Zone.

The mutated beasts on the surface preyed on each other, their forms growing ever more bizarre through constant mutation.

There were long worms with the heads and wings of bats, birds with scales and gills, and many-legged arthropods covered in mammalian fur.

The small ones were no bigger than a fist, while the large ones could be half a building tall. Their only commonalities were their grotesque shapes and the fact that they were all infectious to some degree.

Fortunately, Chu Ci was much stronger than before and could now conceal their presence within a small area at any time. This allowed them to avoid the vast majority of mutated beasts that did not feed on black vines.

They crossed a barren plain, drove onto a dilapidated highway, and once again entered the ruins of an unfamiliar city.

Thigh-thick black vines were everywhere, coiled like black pythons in the dense fog, threatening to crush the already broken relics of the old world.

After two days of stop-and-go travel, the vehicle ran out of fuel.

They packed some essential supplies, shouldered their bags, and continued onward.

While resting in an old building, Chai Yuening said in a flat tone, “The road ahead will only get harder.”

Chu Ci said, “Maybe we’ll find another vehicle.”

Chai Yuening shook her head. “We won’t. Even if someone wasn’t afraid of dying, a normal vehicle’s fuel capacity wouldn’t be enough to get this far, unless they had no intention of returning.”

There were no human gas stations on the surface. Even if most vehicles carried enough fuel to reach this point, they would be completely unable to do so, as they had to reserve enough for the return trip.

For this reason, ever since they had entered the depths of the Fog Zone, they had not seen any recent signs of human activity.

Under these circumstances, forget finding a vehicle for transport; even food could only be found by searching for expired but still edible goods in the ruins of the old world.

“At this depth in the Fog Zone, the only means of transport that can go deeper is an airplane.”

As Chai Yuening spoke, she unscrewed a bottle cap and tilted her head back for a drink of water.

Chu Ci blinked and said earnestly, “Maybe we can find a plane.”

Chai Yuening nearly choked.

“That’s even more impossible,” Chai Yuening explained. “Planes don’t crash that easily. If they don’t crash, they’re definitely flown back to the base. If they do crash, they’re most likely destroyed on impact, leaving nothing behind.”

After speaking, she sighed. “Besides, even if we did find a plane, I don’t know how to fly it.”

After hearing this, Chu Ci fell into deep thought.

Chai Yuening couldn’t guess what she was thinking, and as usual, Chu Ci remained silent.

After a night of rest, they set out on the road once more.

Five consecutive days of trekking on foot had left them with little food. Faced with the constant physical exertion of daily travel, no matter how sparingly they ate, it would be difficult to last more than ten days.

But the next city was nowhere in sight, and there was no place to find something to eat.

When Chu Ci heard Chai Yuening say this, she immediately refused to eat.

She said she could absorb nutrients from the ground, and as she spoke, she transformed her feet into vines and burrowed them into the soil to demonstrate for Chai Yuening.

But the next second, Chai Yuening pulled her out of the ground like a radish.

“We’ll find food,” Chai Yuening said firmly.

But this endless, barren plain was so desolate it offered not a sliver of hope.

Another two days passed. A giant, snake-tailed wolf with eagle wings swooped past overhead, briefly blotting out a patch of daylight and kicking up a fierce wind.

If this had been in the past, Chai Yuening would have been scared into cardiac arrest, but now, she was unfazed by such sights.

The giant beast was not after them. Its target was a beetle about one story tall not far away—it was already enormous in human eyes, but before the giant beast, it was nothing more than a hearty meal.

Their battle lasted only a few minutes before the beetle became the giant beast’s buffet.

The thick stench of blood filled the air.

Chai Yuening subconsciously wanted to detour around the massive creature as it ate, but she never expected that Chu Ci, beside her, would transform her hand into a vine, wrapping one end around Chai Yuening’s body and the other around the giant beast’s tail.

The instant the vine tightened, Chu Ci used the momentum to leap, pulling a completely stunned Chai Yuening with her onto the giant beast’s back.

“You…”

“Shh.”

Chu Ci raised a vine and made a serious shushing gesture—if you could still call it a “gesture.”

Chai Yuening was dumbfounded.

This giant beast was so large that a human standing on its body was like a fly landing on a bird’s back. As long as they could hide their presence, it would never discover them.

After coming to her senses, Chai Yuening understood what Chu Ci meant, but that didn’t stop her face from turning pale with fright.

The giant beast was still eating, its immense body swaying continuously. Chai Yuening had to rely on the vine Chu Ci had wrapped around her waist to keep her balance.

She couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like when this behemoth took flight.

Perhaps Chu Ci was the only person in the world who could climb onto such a “mode of transport” without batting an eye.

But fear was fear, and in the end, Chai Yuening chose to accept it.

This, she thought, was probably what they called “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” For a human to integrate into the world of mutated species, one had to face many inhuman things.

After the giant beast finished its lunch for the day, it beat its wings and soared into the sky.

Perhaps due to its immense size, the beast’s flying ability wasn’t particularly strong, far from reaching an altitude where humans would struggle to breathe. But it was fast, so fast that the wind rushing at them made their cheeks ache. They could only choose to lie flat, using some vine branches to block the gale.

Never in her life had Chai Yuening imagined that she would be living a furtive little life on the back of a mutated beast.

She didn’t know whether to call it good luck, but this giant beast they had run into on the road was a perfect “workhorse.” It could fly in the sky and run on the ground. Perhaps because it had fused with avian genes, it didn’t have a strong sense of territory like other giant beasts. It was constantly wandering, just like them.

The best part was that, due to its massive size, ordinary mutated beasts didn’t dare to provoke it, making it very safe to hide on its body.

When the beast traveled during the day, they endured the wind.

When the beast slept at night, they rested along with it.

Every time the beast landed, it was their time to eat or relieve themselves.

It had to be said, this method of travel greatly reduced their physical exertion, and they managed to save a considerable amount of food.

But this little life lasted only five days before the big fella got itself killed.

This behemoth ate different things every day. Sometimes, not long after eating, its body would undergo some changes.

For example, on the first day, Chai Yuening personally witnessed the beast grow hard carapaces on its four limbs, shed its fur while flying, and finally end up with four completely bald limbs.

These mutated beasts had no regard for aesthetics; it seemed the uglier, the stronger was the truth of this new world.

The mutated beasts were single-mindedly focused on evolving into stronger creatures. Each fusion and evolution was a targeted effort to compensate for weaknesses, and they dared to eat anything to become stronger.

For this reason, their “mount” set its sights on another giant beast coiled deep within a jungle.

Perhaps it envied the other beast for having more legs, or perhaps it envied it for being uglier and more abstract-looking. In any case, the moment it saw the other beast, it dove straight for it.

Seeing that things were about to go south, Chu Ci quickly took Chai Yuening and hid elsewhere the moment the beast neared the ground.

The two giant beasts tore at each other for a long time. In the very end, the story concluded with their “flying mount” being killed in action.

“That one is still alive,” Chu Ci said, looking at the other beast, which was now eating after its narrow victory.

Its head had snail-like tentacles, and it had countless soft legs. Its round body was pitted and uneven, like a giant, moist tumor. At a glance, one couldn’t even distinguish its eyes, nose, or ears.

“Let’s not…” Chai Yuening quickly waved her hands.

The dead behemoth was her absolute limit for a mode of transport—at least it was a describable, furry creature.

Chu Ci said, “Then let’s find another one.”

Chai Yuening instantly breathed a sigh of relief.

But the scene before her made her feel somewhat uneasy.

This wasn’t a barren plain, nor was it a city ruin. It was a massive jungle.

There were no jungles near the Underground City Base. Having grown up there, she had only ever seen such places in books. She had learned a lot about surface survival, but none of it mentioned how to survive in a place like this, or where to find food.

The black vines had destroyed the old world’s ecosystem. Most edible plants could no longer grow, or, influenced by the black vines, had transformed into things that could cause infection and mutation in living creatures.

If one couldn’t distinguish them, one couldn’t just consume them.

Chai Yuening didn’t voice these concerns to Chu Ci, afraid that if she did, Chu Ci would refuse to eat.

She thought, they still have some biscuits and candy. They could go on for a while longer.

Maybe if their luck was good, they would run into another “big fella” that could run, and they could get to a new city ruin to search for the food they needed for the next stage.

On the third day of entering the jungle, unable to find a way out, they ate their last bit of food.

Suddenly, a heavy rain began to fall from the sky, and the world grew exceedingly dark.

They walked through the seemingly endless jungle, leaving muddy footprints with every step. They walked from afternoon into the night, completely unable to find a place to rest.

The night was deep, the rain was heavy, and they could not stop moving forward.

The ubiquitous black vines seemed to be the only source of light here.

It was a terrible night. Everything seemed to be telling Chai Yuening that she was just a human, utterly incapable of surviving in a place devoid of any human presence.

She felt she would surely die here; it was only a matter of time.

She wasn’t Chu Ci. She could be infected. She couldn’t absorb nutrients from the soil.

Perhaps she really couldn’t accompany Chu Ci for a lifetime.

That fleeting moment of confusion and despair was ultimately suppressed deep within Chai Yuening’s heart.

She couldn’t think like that, shouldn’t think like that.

They supported each other as they walked through the fog-shrouded, rainy night.

Silent, yet never stopping.

The rain was too heavy, and the air was a bit chilly.

Chai Yuening gradually began to feel dizzy, and the hand holding Chu Ci’s started to feel hot.

Her breathing grew heavy. She tried to look into the distance, not letting her consciousness drift.

In a daze, she thought she saw a faint yellow light, dim, in the distance.

That kind of light was like…

A human fog lamp.

Chai Yuening thought she must be going crazy, that the rain was making her hallucinate.

In a place like this, so far from any human base and teeming with mutated beasts, how could there possibly be people?

But when she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again to look into the distance…

The light was brighter.

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Author’s Notes:

When in Rome.jpg

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