Chapter 129

Chapter 129: Arriving At The Snow Valley

Wairarapa Snow Valley was located at the Tararua mountain ranges. It was close to Wairarapa, hence the name. Bai Yi’s team spent nearly half a month to get this snow valley. After losing the convenient vehicles, humans had to revert to using their feet like in ancient times. Moreover, New Zealand didn’t even have any decent roads left now, and they met strange and varied monsters all the time, so it was very troublesome.

Nobody wished to live in an environment like this, but they had no choice but to struggle in this environment.

Before entering the snow valley, they had already seen quite a few traces of human activities, and they rarely saw any large-sized monsters nearby anymore. Humans were social lifeforms, when a large group gathered at the snow valley simultaneously, the weaker monsters nearby were all hunted down together and became their food.

Of course, the surrounding area where they hunted wasn’t too big either; the power of humans now was far from before. In this kind of environment, having a small area to themselves was already very good.

……

“Chard again, urgh it’s really so damn disgusting.” In the distance, Bai Yi could already hear some grumbling. Then, they saw three more than 2 meters tall ‘human-like lifeforms’. These people were busy around a big pile of foliage beetroot.

Chard – a variant of the foliage beetroot. It had fat and thick leaves, stem and looked somewhat like a palm leaf fan. Before New Zealand had changed, this was originally used as feed for cattle. This kind of plant could be harvested multiple times, as long as it grew in the soil. As such, they could continuously cut off the outer layer of the leaves. As long as they did not damage the roots, it basically wouldn’t die.

A large patch of mutated chard grew right outside Wairarapa Snow Valley. Due to the activated cells, these chards became extremely huge, and the biggest among them was almost 4 meters tall. The re-harvestable characteristics of the chard, in addition to how quickly vegetation grew now, caused this chard to become the staple food for many people.

“Stop complaining, if you don’t like then go hunt some monsters outside,” the other voice retorted.

“Forget about it then. Although chard tastes bad, at least my life wouldn’t be in danger. Did you hear? Battle God team was practically wiped out, 7 or 8 of them died.”

“Of course I heard, I heard that they met an early-stage experimental monster and 5 of them died. The other 3 died because of falling into the berserk state and clashing head on with the monster; the rest of them could only escape because of that. Those that escaped were all injured as well, they would already be very lucky if they managed to live. The team leader of Battle God Bree managed to return to the snow valley as well, but he died before he could receive emergency treatment. This team is already as good as gone.”

“I also heard that the Medicinal Maker in that team is getting invitations from other teams now,” the remaining guy added in.

“It’s still better to be a Medicinal Maker, they just have to hide at the back of the team and the people in front would automatically protect them.”

“Just too bad you have no talent, hahaha!” The other two immediately started laughing.

In New Zealand now, a Medicinal Maker was the most lucrative profession. Unfortunately, this job was still in process of development, so there wasn’t even a way to learn it properly. Every Medicinal Maker depended on their talent, and not on studying to do their job. Those Medicinal Makers who managed to find a formula for making certain potions through extraction of compounds from plants would treat these formulas as secrets as well. Very few would reveal their formulas so generously.

These people chatted as they sliced off the upper layer of the chard, this was their food now.

Suddenly, the ears of one the guys pricked up, and he looked toward Bai Yi’s direction.

“Bell?” One of the other guys looked at Bell’s actions and immediately asked nervously. Bell had fused with the genes of a bat. Although the genes caused his eyesight to become very bad, it also let him obtain a very powerful hearing ability.

“Shh, there’s something coming.”

“That’s not possible, all the monsters around here have basically been hunted down, there shouldn’t be any more monsters appearing!” The last guy said in fear. This guy was the tallest here. He was more than 3 meters tall and appeared to be very plump.

“It may not be monsters, maybe it’s humans…Fuck!” One of them just wanted to say that maybe it was humans, but suddenly he saw the figure of Sharpei walking in.

Sharpei now was more than 2 meters tall. He was huge, sinister looking, and absolutely intimidating. With Sharpei walking at the front, he immediately made the few of them freeze from fear. With just a look, it was obvious that this thing evolved from a dog, but it was definitely not to be provoked. After they saw Sharpei, they immediately abandoned the chard on the floor and ran away as quickly as they can.

“Meow, meow meow!” A tender meow came from Sharpei’s head suddenly, almost as if it was trying to intimidate them.

A meow?

Even if the few of them who were frightened by Sharpei, they couldn’t help but feel a bit of doubt inside and looked over.

At this time, Chinchilla was jumping around on Sharpei’s head with its body arched, showing off its power to the 3 of them. However, Chinchilla’s palm-sized body had absolutely no intimidating power, and it just seemed adorable. Perhaps it was jumping too happily, but it suddenly slid off Sharpei’s head and landed on his nose. The little cat grabbed onto Sharpei’s nose and looked into Sharpei’s eyes that was even bigger than its body.

A dog’s nose was a very sensitive part of the body, so even though Sharpei had evolved and mutated, this didn’t change. In fact, its nose actually became even more important. At this time, with a little claw hooking onto the top of his nose, even though he wouldn’t be hurt by it, the itchy feeling made Sharpei want to eat this little guy in one mouth.

Seemingly knowing that it got into trouble, Chinchilla immediately cried out, “Meow~!”

Was there a use to act cute now? Sharpei’s eyes shined with a fierce light as he raised his right paw, slapping it toward his own nose. However, before Sharpei had the chance to teach Chinchilla a lesson, the wind pressure from his swing sent Chinchilla flying toward Pupu. Chinchilla spun a few rounds in the air before agilely hanging from Pupu’s body again.

“Oink oink oink~!” Pupu immediately oinked a few times, seemingly complaining about something.

Pupu was also tormented quite a bit by this little cat lately. Chinchilla absolutely seemed like it had ADHD, causing this lazy and slovenly Pupu to be unable to have a good rest. However, Pupu still felt that he was quite lucky, the one who had it worst was Sharpei. He didn’t know if it was because cats and dogs were natural enemies, but Chinchilla loved to bother Sharpei, no matter if it was attacking him or playing around.

At this time, the 3 people who were running away realized that this was a team. The one walking at the front was Sharpei, and there were a few people walking beside Sharpei along with a huge fat pig.

What team is this?

There were still people rearing pets now, but it was mostly some battle pets that could help them in fights. However, what was the deal with this pig? It didn’t seem like prey either.

“Sorry to disturb, but can I check how far it is to the snow valley from here?” Bai Yi asked.

This wasn’t just asking for directions, it was also to inform the few of them that they were humans and could be communicated with. One must know, most of the humans in New Zealand looked like monsters now. Nobody could be sure if a creature they met was an evolved human or a monster outside. If they were unable to prove themselves, then they could only blame themselves if somebody took them to be a monster and hunted them for food. Even so, there were still incidents of evolved humans hunting each other, just that nobody wanted to talk about it.

“It’s a short distance in front!” Somebody immediately responded after hearing Bai Yi’s question.

“Oh really, thanks a lot then.” Bai Yi nodded and thanked them casually.

“You’re welcome.” The few of them replied, and looked at the giant carcass on Woolf and Sharpei’s back with envy. Although they didn’t know what this animal was, they could tell that it should be very powerful from its enormous size.

At this moment, Momo suddenly charged toward the 3 of them. Her petite body rapidly dashed in front and she drew her short sword in a flash, before sheathing it back with a ‘shing!’ shortly after. In their shocked eyes, they realized that below Momo’s short sword was a green thumb-sized nematode worm that got split into 4 parts.

Green Nematode Worm!

The 3 of them instantly got a fright, this was a lifeform that lived inside the chard. Although it was usually herbivorous, it would still attack humans if it received a shock. Its tensed body was very hard, and it could shoot out at a high-speed to pierce into the human body.

“Th-thank you!” The 3 of them didn’t know how to thank her.

“It’s nothing much.” Momo smiled and waved her hand.

The weird team with 4 humans and 3 pets walked along the small road toward Wairarapa Snow Valley. While walking past them, Chinchilla looked at the 3 of them and meowed again, seemingly very curious toward all things and people. Since Chinchilla had just started following Bai Yi, it had only just begun to see this wide world and was indeed very active and curious toward many things.

“Chinchilla, stop playing around.” Momo stopped Chinchilla.

Only when Bai Yi’s team had walked far away did the 3 of them return to their senses. They felt an especially bitter taste in their mouths when they saw Momo, who was not even a meter tall, carrying a short sword. She even looked to be very proficient and skilled with it.

At this time, the few of them looked at the chard leaves piled on the floor, and suddenly felt incredibly disgusted by it. It was indeed disgusting, not just because this thing didn’t taste good, but also because of the disgust they felt toward themselves.

Humans were indeed intelligent, but it was this intelligence that made humans weak naturally. It’s fine as long I can survive, all I need to do is to survive. So when they found these edible plants, many people chose to endure eating this plain food that was like pig feed, rather than going out to hunt.

In reality, evolved humans and evolved lifeforms started evolving at the same time. However, many were like these 3 people, rarely fighting with their own bodies.

“I’ve had enough!” One of them muttered.

“Why don’t we join some team too? Then we can go out and hunt as well, I don’t want to live this life like a farm cattle anymore. The only thing different between us and a farm animal is that we have to prepare the pig feed ourselves,” the other guy looked at chard on the floor and said.

“But we might die!”

“Then so be it, I’ve had enough of days like this anyway. Unless you guys are inferior to even a little girl?!”

Bai Yi’s team completely didn’t expect that the 3 of them would think so much after seeing Momo, thinking that they were inferior to a little girl. Perhaps these people already had some thoughts in their hearts, just that they were enduring it all along before. Seeing Momo’s actions just happened to give them the trigger to change their lives.