Chapter Eighty-Five: A Misunderstanding, All of It a Misunderstanding

At seven in the morning on October 1, 2123, a torrential rain was lashing the world outside the tent.

Su Miao woke to the roar of the storm.

She opened the tent and glanced out. The rain came down in sheets.

If she had a house to stay in, there was no way she would set foot outside in weather like this. But if she did not leave now, no one knew when the flood would come again and sweep her away. Once caught in floodwaters, there was not always a tree branch to cling to for dear life.

After a quick meal of bread, she packed up in a hurry and stowed everything she owned into her magical space.

Because the water had not risen yet, the inflatable rescue boat she had prepared in advance could not be used for the moment.

She pulled on a raincoat, held up her silver umbrella, and headed for whatever path was still passable.

Whatever else happened, getting out of here first was the only sensible choice.

The ground was a mire, difficult to cross.

If one had to say something about it, perhaps only this: whenever you lifted your foot, the rain would quickly wash the mud off your rubber boots.

But the moment you stepped down again, mud would cling once more, over and over without end.

From day into night, Su Miao finally found a stretch of cement road in the countryside.

But where was this?

No village ahead, no shop behind, and not a single landmark in sight.

She walked along the road for a while and discovered an unknown village submerged by floodwaters.

Within it, the current surged violently, and from time to time great whirlpools surfaced, a sight terrifying enough to chill the blood.

Su Miao stared at the whirlpools and blinked several times, then had no choice but to turn back.

Where this road led, she had no idea.

She could only hope her luck would be good enough to find a highway, and perhaps then she might reunite with Qin Longzhang and the others.

What Su Miao did not know was that the direction she had taken and the direction Qin Longzhang’s search party had chosen were completely different, with more than twenty kilometers between them at the very least.

...

As for Qin Longzhang’s side, they had not given up looking for Su Miao. They released drones and searched every inch of the surrounding area, but could not find even a trace of her. Not one of the comrades swept away by the flood was found either.

The search went on for five days with no progress at all.

“Instructor, the backup batteries for the drones are almost used up,” reported one of the soldiers in charge of drone maintenance.

A drone without power was nothing but a piece of scrap metal.

“Withdraw!” Qin Longzhang ordered.

With the time of the approaching blizzard growing ever closer, he decided to lead the remaining brothers and Xia Xiao'an back to Shelter Number One.

The poisonous potion Su Miao had entrusted to Xia Xiao'an had to be brought back as soon as possible.

“Sister...”

Xia Xiao'an kept looking back every few steps, hoping Su Miao would appear, but even by nightfall there was still no news.

...

At 12:11 noon on November 6, 2123, Su Miao finally found a landmark. She had been carried all the way by the flood to Zhejiang Province. Heaven only knew how this flood had wandered so far...

Now that she knew where she was, the rest was easy.

Su Miao took out a paper map from her magical space, silently recited the rule of orientation, and confirmed her exact position as well as the route she should take next.

Fortunately, before the apocalypse began, she had bought and stored backup maps of various cities in bulk.

Otherwise, once the phone lost network access, no matter how many map apps were installed, they would be useless. Unless she had offline maps, but those had to be moved inch by inch, which was terribly troublesome.

Looking at the map, Su Miao calculated the time and the distance to Shelter Number One, and discovered a serious problem.

It was utterly impossible to reach Shelter Number One on foot before the blizzard arrived.

In that case, she would first need to find a place suitable for surviving the bitter cold of the blizzard, just in case. In any event, she had enough supplies stored away.

No, not enough.

Firewood!

She had a certain amount of diesel, coal briquettes, kerosene, and coal in her magical space. On the surface, it looked like a great deal, and surviving five months of blizzard and extreme cold would not be a problem. But what about the blizzards and freezing conditions after 2124?

So she had to gather as much firewood as possible while she still could.

Collecting firewood was simple enough.

One little blue fireball, and no matter how thick the tree, it could be blasted down.

There happened to be plenty of trees nearby, and the rain showed no sign of stopping. Su Miao simply left the road for the time being and began hurling blue fireballs at the trees she had chosen.

Boom, boom, boom!

One after another, more than ten great trees were blown apart and toppled.

Su Miao raised her hand and stored them all in her magical space. Then she looked toward several more lush trees not far away, ready to press her advantage and gather even more.

Just then, the ground suddenly began to tremble violently. Su Miao thought an earthquake was coming and prepared to find cover.

Who would have thought that the next second, she would witness something that overturned everything she thought she knew?

The trees she had targeted actually pulled their roots out of the mud one after another and ran off in a flurry toward the depths of the forest, vanishing in the blink of an eye. They left behind only several deep pits as evidence that a number of towering trees had once grown there.

Beneath those tree pits were many dried bones of giant mutated rats and mutated wild boars.

It looked utterly ghastly.

Huh?

Su Miao stood frozen in place.

After quite a while, she rushed back to the cement road in a panic, her face pale with fright.

For the rest of the day, she kept to the road and traveled honestly, no longer trying to gather firewood.

By afternoon, Su Miao reached a provincial highway.

This stretch of road was still intact and had been affected very little by the flood. She even encountered a few scattered pedestrians on it.

Everyone on the road was moving in a great hurry, with no intention of stopping.

Clutching her silver umbrella tightly, Su Miao had no desire to speak with them either.

Along the way, she saw many more towns submerged by floodwaters.

In many of the flooded places, one could only make out the drowned houses when an occasional huge wave passed by. Otherwise, it was impossible to tell what the situation really was.

One thing worth mentioning was that, in such a dire environment, Su Miao saw a middle-aged man in rain gear casting a fishing line from the roof of an isolated building surrounded by floodwaters.

Was he not afraid that a single wave would slap over and drag him straight into the water?

Su Miao paused briefly and took a photo of the fisherman.

If she had internet, she would definitely have posted it online.

Near evening, the heavy rain softened into a drizzle, and ahead appeared a village right beside the highway.

Apart from the section near the road, where several houses remained intact, the rest of the village had been soaked and swallowed by floodwaters, leaving it uninhabitable.

“Someone’s coming again.”

A voice came from the darkness ahead.

Su Miao immediately unfolded the magical space array just in case.

When she drew closer, she saw a number of people gathered in twos and threes, and the way they looked at others was far from friendly.

Quite a few of them were openly hostile when they looked at her.

“It’s not her.”

“Could she have gotten lost?”

“Miss, may I ask whether you have seen this person?”

An older woman walked up, took out a photograph, and asked Su Miao.

Su Miao took a quick step back to keep a safe distance, glanced at the photo, and shook her head without speaking.

The woman left in disappointment.

The person in the photo was probably this woman’s relative.

At first Su Miao had intended to stop and rest in this roadside village, but seeing so many people, she decided not to stay.

Yet before she had walked even five hundred meters, someone caught up from behind.

“Miss, are you alone?”

The ones who caught up were three young men, around twenty years old.

Each of them was carrying something: a wrench, an axe, and a steel pipe.

The moment the one who spoke opened his mouth, the thick stench of stale cigarette smoke spread outward, making Su Miao frown despite herself.

Clutching her silver umbrella, Su Miao took several steps back.

“Don’t be scared. These things are just for self-defense, to protect you.”

“Miss, walking at night here is very dangerous. There are lots of mutated giant rats. Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yes, we were worried you might run into mutated giant rats, so we came after you specially to warn you. We suggest you come back with us and leave tomorrow after dawn.”

As they spoke, the two of them began to close in on Su Miao.

Su Miao tried hard to keep her expression steady, but the trembling in her hands still betrayed how tense she truly was.

“Little girl, that backpack on you looks a lot like the one I threw away. Did you pick it up somewhere? Keeping something you found without returning it is stealing, you know.”

The man with the cigarette smell wore a disgusting smile.

When the apocalypse first began, they had been frightened.

But after living through it for a while, they discovered the apocalypse was damned fun.

Using this road, who knew how many lone young women they had dragged off already, and there was no need to worry about the law punishing them. And the pretty girl before them was exactly their type.

After all, very few people still looked so neat and tidy after such a long time.

She might even be a rich young lady from the capital.

Thinking of that, they became even more impatient.

“Hand it over, then!”

He stopped bothering with excuses.

In a burst, he lunged forward and reached straight for Su Miao’s clothes.

Su Miao’s nerves were stretched tight. She drew the umbrella-sword in an instant and simply watched as the man charged bravely straight into the tip of the blade with his throat. It pierced through at once, blood spurting out in a torrent.

His body collapsed limply to the ground.

“He ran into it himself...”

Su Miao withdrew the umbrella-sword and explained with a trembling voice.

The other two stared at the scene, dumbfounded. Their boss had just been killed like that?

Something they had never once imagined.

They were furious beyond measure.

One of them pointed at Su Miao and shouted, “We kindly invited you to rest, and you actually killed someone. Aren’t you afraid of the police bringing you to justice? Put it down now and come with us to surrender. Strive for a reduced sentence, or else you’ll get the death penalty!”

The other echoed, “Put it down!”

Su Miao’s body was shaking.

With one sweeping slash, she cut off the right hand of the man who had been pointing at her, and blood splashed across the ground.

“Aaah!”

Caught off guard, the man let out a pig-like shriek.

Su Miao thrust again like lightning, instantly piercing his heart, then pulled the sword back.

Seeing that things were going badly, the other man retreated in a hurry. “A misunderstanding, it’s all a misunderstanding. We got the wrong person. I have old people at home and children to feed, please...”

He turned and fled!

Shivering, Su Miao took out the crossbow she had not used for a long time, quickly loaded a bolt, and squeezed the trigger.

Whoosh!

The bolt struck the fleeing man in the center of his back.

He fell face-first to the ground.

Dead.

Seeing that they were both dead, Su Miao’s taut nerves loosened slightly.

She hurried over, retrieved the bolt, then turned and left.