Lin Ya took a breath, his palm red and raw from the rope. He paused to switch hands, his legs buried in sand up to his calves.
When he pulled again, the rope snapped.
Gu Ming felt the jolt, the box came to a sudden stop, and he opened the lid to poke his head out, his tone serious.
“I’m feeling much better now, I can walk on my own, just let me down.”
Lin Ya glanced at his legs, stood with his hands on his hips to rest for a moment, then nodded. “Alright, just tell me if you can’t walk anymore.”
After Gu Ming climbed out, Lin Ya picked up the broken rope from the ground and tied it back together, continuing to pull the wooden box as they moved forward.
The sand on the surface was about 80 degrees Celsius, hot enough to cook an egg. Without protective gear, a human could not survive in such conditions; shoes would be ruined, and more importantly, the air was scorching.
“Whew…” Gu Ming leaned on a wooden plank, the wound on his leg throbbed with an almost imperceptible sting as the muscles pulled.
But all he did was exhale and keep moving forward.
Another 152 kilometers to go…
As they got closer, his motivation grew stronger.
Lin Ya had already discarded the wooden box and readjusted his backpack.
[Ding!] The familiar voice of the system chimed in.
[Mutated Sweet Potato — Edible flesh (with a slight chance of mild poisoning) · Can be replanted (non-toxic)]
This was similar to the mutated mango.
With this mutated sweet potato, the people in this apocalyptic world might have a little more hope—
Lin Ya stared at the hobbled figure ahead for a long time, deciding to sneak away once Gu Ming fell asleep.
If all else failed, he would knock him out.
Although he could confront him directly, usually once they entered the base and completed their mission, he would leave this world, knowing a few secrets wouldn’t matter since he would be gone.
However—
Thinking of the hidden words from the mission prompt, he felt an eerie sense of foreboding. For safety’s sake, it was better to be discreet and not get caught.
“Hey, are you tired?” Gu Ming called out after a long stretch of walking, noticing that it had gone silent behind him. He turned to see Lin Ya standing still.
“Coming!” Lin Ya quickened his pace to catch up.
Gu Ming watched the little red dot representing himself on the GPS map draw closer to the green marker for the base. His mood lifted, and even though his body was exhausted, he continued to push himself to take a few more steps.
The blazing sun hung high, the UV rays still intense.
With each labored breath, his legs sank deeper into the sand, requiring great effort to pull them out.
They were walking along what used to be a riverbed.
In the past, this place was lively with rushing water during the summer rains, and calm as a mirror in the fall and winter, shrouded in mist adding a unique beauty.
But now, due to depleted water sources, it had sunk about ten meters deeper than the surrounding areas, with stones and weeds that used to hide fish now being merely coarse sand.
“I traveled here when I graduated from university.” Gu Ming gasped, reminiscing about how beautiful it used to be before the apocalypse.
“At that time, you must have been in middle school; you probably never came here,” he chuckled, pointing to what looked like a tiny ruin in the distance. “That used to be the tallest building in the city; nearby was a super large shopping mall where I watched movies with my girlfriend.”
“I still remember it was a terrible film; everyone said they wished they hadn’t watched it as they left.”
Lin Ya noticed an unknown emotion flickering in his eyes, something he had never experienced and couldn’t comprehend.
“I wish things were like before.”
“It’s such a pity…” Gu Ming looked down at his right hand, glimpsing the silver band on his finger, hidden by his protective suit.
“It is a pity.” Lin Ya gazed into the distance, speaking slowly, “All the history, culture, and effort that took decades, centuries, even thousands of years to create have been destroyed in this disaster. Humanity has regressed by billions of years; this place shouldn’t even be called Water Blue Star anymore.”
From the perspective of the Milky Way or another planet, one might mistake it for Mars.
The yellow-brown had gradually swallowed the blue.
“Yeah…”
As they spoke, both fell into silence.
“…Let’s keep going.”
“Mm.”
When they reached a resting point, they searched for nearby ruins as usual.
After Gu Ming finally fell into a deep sleep, Lin Ya instructed 123 to keep watch over him while he took a pill and felt invigorated as he dashed towards the direction of the mutated plants.
As the distance decreased, the mutated plants quickly revealed themselves before him.
“…Sweet potato…tree?”
Lin Ya fell into thought.
If he remembered correctly, sweet potatoes grew in the ground, although he had never planted any, he had heard of digging up sweet potatoes before.
However, this one before him—about two men tall, even growing from beneath the cool underground, through concrete blocks—looked rather bizarre.
The branches resembled clawing monsters, and the sweet potatoes hanging below appeared shriveled, like corpses dangling from a tree post-mortem.
Lin Ya scrutinized the tree, realizing it wasn’t merely rooted in the concrete; beneath it seemed to be several dilapidated corpses.
Zombies, too, it seemed.
Goodness, this thing must have absorbed nutrients from the zombies to grow.
No wonder the tree and its fruits looked so much like corpses.
Lin Ya reached out and easily collected it with his harvesting technique, placing it into the system space granted to him by 123.
“Done.”
……
The faint sound of footsteps gradually faded away, and Gu Ming woke up, turning over to find a bag placed under his head by Lin Ya. He sighed, feeling the fatigue echoing in his sore muscles. Closing his eyes and pretending to be unaware, he drifted back to sleep.