<h4>Chapter 136 The Earth’s Wastnds 9</h4>
On Old Earth, the soil would never return to its fertile state after the ravages of war, and the ocean was seriously corrupted by pollution. After the doomsday threat, the had experienced an irrevocable change.
More than fifty percent ofnd turned into desert, and the ocean changed its color to purple and ck. The effect of pollution manifested itself differently depending on the location. There were no living organisms in the areas closer to the beach. The disrupted food chain caused irreparable damage to the deep-sea organism. It was survival of the fittest, and those that could not adapt perished.
As predicted by the many scientists of the twenty-first century, the pr caps at both ends of the world melted. Ohio alley was swallowed up by a flood, the whole of Australia submerged under the sea, and New York turned into a swamp...
War brought death, and death stopped war.
When thest survivorsid their eyes on their ruined home and saw the second ’sun’ disappear from the sky. Heat, thirst, pain, regret, and despair... Such sensations overwhelmed their minds and apanied them until the end of their days.
Powerful radiation polluted thend around the equator. Ruins of cities glowed in the dark. Thatsted for centuries. Some species went extinct; others evolved and transmuted.
Time flew forward as rain clouds started to gather over barrennds. The rain poured, cooling the poisonous sea that flooded thend and dispersing the toxicity in the air, healing the fissures on the ground.
After the cleansing of the rain, a quiet and dead Earth surfaced. However, some did survive. Human lives were as fragile as ants, but they too were as resilient as ants.
The survivors crawled out from the ruin of civilization and began their journey for survival. They discovered that the temperature was higher than before, but in non-desert regions, the moisture in the air was heavier. The sky above their heads was orange, and the sun zed relentlessly.
Inside the ruins, some strange nts started to grow. Even without water, even exposed to the cruel sun, these wild nts with strange shapes and colors grew to cover more and morend.
For the injured Earth, this was not the first time it had experienced such a drastic change to its temperature. The Ice Age, the explosion of volcanoes, the shifting of the tectonic tes, all those events left scars on the, but they had never stopped the from moving. As it had been acting for the past thirty billion years, it spun continuously in space, orbiting around the sun.
Technology became a thing of the past. The survivors reverted to the prehistoric state and formed a tribal society. They became nomads, wandering the Earth, looking for food and reliable shelters.
In the non-desert areas, there were poisonous swamps, dark valleys, sinking marshes, and abandoned mountains. But other than that, on therge Earth, there were indeed one or two paradises that were untouched by the war and destruction...
One such paradise on Earth existed inside a valley in North American. It was a hole about the size of a city. It sank into the ground, and a thickyer of vegetation covered its existence like a ’cloud’. At the same time, the nts blocked most of the sun’s rays. Thus, one could find afortable temperature,nd, and environment suitable for animals and nts; clean and sufficient water; and most importantly, there was the remains of a ’half’ spacecraftnding here.
No one knew why the spacecraft was there. Perhaps this was once the secret base of a country or a ship that had fallen during one of the many wars.
In any case, this ce cultivated thest human civilization. The environment provided them a warm bed for survival, and the remains of the spacecraft allowed them to recover the seed of science. Life continued, and a new human civilization was growing.
Three decades had passed. This became thest ce on Earth where arge poption of humans could be found. The citizens that lived there called it ’The Vige of Heavenly Blessing’.
...
Inside the Crystal Lakeb, Doomsday Assault had already reached the end of the road. He had explored all the forks and followed the path to this ce. At that moment, there was a staircase that led aboveground before him. It was a normal staircase that one would find in a residential area. The banister was made from iron, and the steps were metallic. One could try to nce up the stairs to see what the situation was like above.
He took out his weapon and neared the stairs carefully. The lighting there was not good, and looking up, it was hard to tell if there was an ambush.
"You two from Jiang Hu, stop hiding. I can already see you!" Doomsday Assault was obviously bluffing. He was not afraid of announcing his presence because he knew that this was the end of theb. The stairs led to the exit. If shes of Sword and Feng Bujue wanted to set up an ambush, this was theirst chance. If they were indeed hiding up the stairs, waiting for him toe, they would have seen him already.
"I must admit, the trap with the grenade was brilliant," Doomsday Assault said. "But is that all you’ve got, shes of Sword? You bunch of cowards from Jiang Hu are quite good at these despicable tricks."
He tried his best to anger the other party without triggering the system’s censor. He tried to get the enemy to show up. After all, he was in the open, and they were not; that was not advantageous to him.
"What’s wrong? You’re too afraid toe out?" Doomsday Assault scoffed with condescension. "You are fighting two against one. Even then, you’re still so scared?"
His only reply was the echo of his own voice.
"Humph... You have to consider this," Doomsday Assault said. "Under the indiscriminate effect of the Life Points decreasing, the exhaustion on two of you is literally double the exhaustion on me. Being such cowards while you have the advantage is only going to waste your Life Points.
"I do not mind turning back now and going as far away as I can. By then, we’ll see who has more health potions to expend. Even if I lose in the end, you will have to waste double the amount I do."
There were plenty of sense in Doomsday Assault’s words, but the fact that he was saying that meant that he was not going to adopt that n. If Doomsday Assault thought that he had no chance of winning the fight, he would not have volunteered to interact with the enemy. After Final Assault was blown up, he would have run down in the opposite direction and found a suitable ce to hide and prepare an ambush. He would wait for the other team to find him. If his ambush was sessful and he managed to take down one, then the ying field would be levelled.
Therefore... the only reason Doomsday Assault had shown up was that he had the confidence to win two against one. The basis for that confidence had to be some kind of very powerful skill or item.
He kept yelling for a while, but there was no reaction from up the stairs. This made Doomsday Assault feel awkward. He could not help but wonder, Is there another floor up the stairs? Could the floor above be as big as this floor?
With that in mind, he could only seek his way to the stairs and slowly head up. That was the all he could do. After all, if his enemy refused to show up no matter what, there was nothing he could do about it. Either he had to go up or leave. Secondly, if there was really another floor to this ce, he could yell for a full hour, and no one would hear him.
He went up the stairs carefully and did not run into an ambush. He could not sense any traps either. However, Doomsday Assault did not lower his guard—the memory of the grenade was still fresh in his mind. His teammate had been too close to the st to survive and had died on the spot. He too had almost died in the fire. This lesson was probably one that would follow him for the rest of his professional career.
He took almost five minutes to get up the stairs. When he reached the top of the stairs, Doomsdays Assault was stunned. In front of him was a corridor, an empty corridor, and the end was about ten meters ahead. The whole wall was arge door, one that parted to both sides. The doors were joined in the middle, the teeth of their edges closing together. The door was as thick as a bank vault, and the control panel next to the wall had already been destroyed...
"Where are they?" That was Doomsday Assault’s first reaction. He and Final Assault had finished exploring the other side of theb, and this side led to the exit. Along the way, he had seen the traces left behind by shes of Sword and Feng Bujue and triggered a trap set up by them. He was on the right track, but why... was there no one there?
"Could they have left this ce?" This thought appeared in Doomsday Assault’s mind, but he soon denied it. "That’s unlikely... Based on the cinematic, the environment outside is much worse than here, and their Life Points would probably drop faster. Furthermore, this panel is broken... so how could they have left this ce"
"Or... did it they use the panel to open the door and, before the door closed, destroy the panel to trap me here?
"But that’s crazy... there’s no benefit to going outside!"
Doomsday Assault paced around the entrance with a frozen expression. After a long time, he finally came to a spection that he believed was correct.
"This has to be it!" There was a lightbulb moment in his mind, but his expression and tone were still as dull as ever. "They came to this end of the corridor and destroyed the panel to create the impression that they have already escaped from theb. But in reality, they have gone back. They must have slipped past me when I was checking the other path. They’re probably on the other side of theb already."
...
At the same time, outside theb was a sea of sand that spread into the horizon under the yellowing sky. The wind howled, and a sandstorm blew around the ck desert. If one stood in this environment without any protection, it would be too hard to even keep one’s eyes open. Whenever one spoke, sand would travel into the mouth, and the wind would stop the sound from being sent over five meters away.
A ’shark coach’ was travelling through this sea of sand. The craft was about twenty meters long, six meters wide, and four meters tall. From the outside, it looked like a giant armored shark, but this shark had no fins, adopting a streamlined design. The color was the same brownish yellow as the sand around them. There was no windshield that they could look through to see the situation outside. The navigation was based fully on the scanning radar.
The air inside the coach was treated. Even though the two yers were not wearing any protective gear, their Life Points had stopped dropping.
Feng Bujue ced both of his hands behind his head and sat leisurely in the driver’s seat. It did not take him long to master how to operate the shark coach. The UI of the vehicle was not too hard to understand and the coordinates for their destination had already been keyed in, so he only needed to rely on the autopilot mechanism.
After Feng Bujue exited theb and saw the outside environment, he understood that manual driving made no sense on his because there were no roads. There was not even any reference that they could use. So, this shark coach had to depend on autopilot to get to any destination.
So... the question arrived. How did this group of people find Crystal Lakeb?
Hank said that their team got ’the order’ to explore this ce. This meant that the leader that gave them the order had the exact coordinates for Crystal Lakeb. Thus, a new problem was born. Did their leader already know about those coordinates, or had it recently been discovered? And how did they find the ce, through scouting robots?
Feng Bujue’s suspicion was... about this team’s timing. After the group of migrated citizens left, they arrived. This exined something obvious... and Hank’s first reaction toward ’outsiders’ supported Feng Bujue’s prediction. Even though they had not arrived at the vige, Feng Bujue had a broad idea about what was going on there.
"Why didn’t you kill him?" shes of Sword sat next to him in the co-pilot seat. He turned over to whisper, "Aren’t you afraid of him betraying us?"
Of course, he was whispering because he did not want his words to be overheard by Hank, who was tied up at the back.
"We have nothing against him. Why waste a precious human life?" Feng Bujue replied.
shes of Swordughed drily. "You’re kidding me... Isn’t it a bit toote for you to act like an agent of justice?"
"This has nothing to do with justice. It’s mainly because he is still useful to us," Feng Bujue said. "We need his help to get us into the vige."
"He will help us?" shes of Sword questioned and turned his head slightly to nce at the pale-faced Hank. "But why? He might be helpless now, but once we reach the vige, he can escape at any moment and call for his people toe arrest us."
"Everyone has their weakness. Once it is identified, they will betray their own principles, and then they will follow your every order." A smile appeared on Feng Bujue’s lips. He stood up from his seat and said softly, "For Hank... that can be done through simple threats and psychological pressure."