CH 96.1

Chapter 96.1 – Long Table Feast

Following the mole people, they came to another corner of the city.

Withered hands stretched out from the ground and grasped the surface, Di Wen crawled out with a body of sand. She shook slightly, and the sand slipped from the black fur. The other mole people also returned to the ground one after another, following her closely.

From the outline of the surrounding ruins, it could be seen that there was once a huge building here – perhaps a sentry station.

Di Wen walked a few laps on the thick yellow sand, constantly twitching her nose and sniffing the air. She suddenly stood somewhere, digging into the ground with her sharp nails, a group of mole people came to help, and five minutes later, an iron door appeared in front of her.

The iron door led to the underground.

Di Wen dug into her fanny pack.

Her fanny bag was very small, stuffed with raw meat, and there was a slimy sound when she pulled it out. She took out a metal box the size of a palm and opened it carefully. Inside was a dark golden key.

The key was inserted into the metal door and gently turned—

There was a sound of gears and metal rubbing, and it was hard to imagine that after so many years, the  mechanism was still responsive.

Di Wen stretched out her hand, trying to pull open the iron door, but it wouldn’t budge. A few more mole people came up to help, the group worked hard together but the iron door remained motionless.

They were all too thin, each one as thin as a skeleton.

“I’ll do it,” Lu Tinghan said.

The mole people stepped aside cautiously. Lu Tinghan stepped forward, grabbed the handle, and pulled hard.

“Squeak—” There was a metallic creaking sound, and the heavy iron door was opened, with sand falling along the cracks in the door to the dark stairs.

Di Wen led the mole people into the room in a flurry.

Shi Yuan and Lu Tinghan walked at the end.

Lu Tinghan turned down the light of the flashlight, illuminating the dusty walls and a few rotten spider webs.

The warehouse was nowhere near as deep as the secret town, and they soon reached the bottom. The outermost part was a small square, which was deserted, and there were different warehouse compartments further on.

Di Wen went straight to the fifth cold storage compartment, and as soon as she opened the door, the smell of rotting meat came to her face.

The stench was so bad it was like there were thousands of corpses rotting here.

Shi Yuan couldn’t stand it a little bit, so he covered his mouth and nose tightly with Lu Tinghan’s coat, and looked around. The cold storage had long since stopped working. After so many years, the meat and vegetables had rotted completely that he saw only the bones of various animals, some like fish bones, others like pig or cow bones, buried in suspicious scraps.

The mole people were not afraid of the smell and actively jumped up and down in the cold storage.

The storage rack on the innermost floor was full of canned food, and they came here for this. In the next hour, they came out with all kinds of canned food, piled up outside the cold storage.

Shi Yuan leaned in to look, and couldn’t see the labels of the cans clearly, let alone the shelf life – he seriously suspected that these things had expired.

He asked Lu Tinghan in a low voice, “Can these things really be eaten?”

Lu Tinghan also hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know how long the Empire canned food can last… Besides,” he glanced at the mole people, “They look like they have a good stomach.”

“Oh.” Shi Yuan said, “Their appetite is at least better than ours.”

He squatted down and continued to study the canned food.

After the cold storage was moved, all the mole people gathered around Di Wen. She blew a long whistle, and two mole people staggered out. They were carrying huge mountaineering backpacks. After opening them, there were empty backpacks inside.

They chattered and stuffed the cans into the backpacks, and eventually, everyone was carrying a bulging backpack, running around with their hands and feet.

Di Wen whistled again, pointed to the end of the warehouse, and the mole people ran over. She said to Lu Tinghan and Shi Yuan, “Keep up.”

There was a long corridor at the end of the warehouse.

After finding so many cans, Di Wen was obviously in a good mood.

She said as she walked, “Okay, we can continue to talk about Elton.” She grinned, “I don’t believe there are still people alive there.”

“Why?” Lu Tinghan asked.

“You haven’t seen how terrifying the mole population is,” Di Wen said, “If you had seen it with your own eyes, you wouldn’t ask that. Since the death of the king, the Empire’s heart has collapsed. How can it withstand monsters?”

“Where’s Alicia? How is she?”

Di Wen asked rhetorically, “Do you think the little princess can survive? What does she know? Don’t think about the royal family, they are all dead, and we are the only ones who survived.” Her muddy eyes flickered in the dark, “I was also in the city the day Elton fell, and I saw the army defeated with my own eyes.”

Lu Tinghan, “Did you escape?”

“Otherwise? Can I still stand in front of you?” Di Wen giggled, “As soon as the monsters appeared, we, mole people, ran away!”

Lu Tinghan said, “In other words, you didn’t really see the whole Elton army annihilated.”

“…” Di Wen’s laughter stopped suddenly, and she turned her eyes to look at him, her fangs looming, as if displeased.

Her appearance was very terrifying.

If it were other people, they must have been scared, but Lu Tinghan had seen more monsters than people, and Shi Yuan… Shi Yuan was only afraid of humans. Di Wen’s beast-like expression and hideous appearance were regarded as the opposite.

Lu Tinghan said quietly, “We did receive the signal from Elton. I won’t give up until I confirm it with my own eyes.”

Di Wen stared at him and said slowly, “…you are a soldier, right? What’s your name?”

They had been together for a while now, and this was the first time she had asked this question.

It seemed that she only started to care from this moment.

“Lu Tinghan,” he replied, “General Lu Tinghan.”

“General?” Di Wen’s expression became even weirder, “So young? It seems that there is really no one else in the Alliance – so General Lu, why are you so determined to go to Elton? Do you think we are a community with a shared future for mankind? Or do you think Elton is the safest and can be a safe haven? If it is the latter, you will definitely be disappointed. As long as the Gamma Abyss is restless, no underground city can hold on.”

“Both,” Lu Tinghan said, “When I have time, I will tell you clearly about the three plans of “Echo”, “Overlook” and “Deep Dive”.”

“By the way,” he hugged Shi Yuan again, “This is my lover, Shi Yuan.”

Shi Yuan greeted her actively, “Hello!”

Di Wen “It’s not hard to see… You guys are so sticky, I wouldn’t be surprised if you started f*cking in front of me in the next second.”

Shi Yuan: ?

Shi Yuan looked up and asked Lu Tinghan, “Will we?”

“No, we won’t,” Lu Tinghan straightened his head and told him to concentrate on walking and stop imagining.

Shi Yuan: “Oh.”

While talking, they passed through a small door and reached the other side of the warehouse.

On the other side was a corridor, and at the end of it, the large door was opened, showing a huge hall.

The walls were dark golden, covered with portraits and landscape paintings, and the picture frames were inlaid with precious stones, red, orange, yellow, and green. The marble pillars were finely carved, and a long table was placed in the middle. The white tablecloth was covered with dust, and the candlestick was rusty, but the magnificence of the past was vaguely visible.

“The place where the princess used to love to come.” Di Wen said casually, “The castle in the secret town wasn’t enough to satisfy her. She wanted a bigger banquet hall, so the king built another one. They gathered here to eat the delicacies of the mountains and seas, the whitebait of the North Sea, the wild deer of the Ivor Mountains, the specialty flower cakes of Elton, and the white grapes of the southern manor. As long as the princess ordered it, she would get whatever she wanted.”

Lu Tinghan said, “You know her very well.”

Di Wen didn’t answer and walked to the long table

The mole people ran in the dark, and the wide hall became their paradise.

“Di Wen! Di Wen! Di Wen!”

They let out inarticulate shouts.

“We are hungry!”

“Eat!”

“Di Wen, meat!”

“Here it is.” Di Wen stepped on a chair and stood on the long table, her back hunched. She opened her backpack this time – it was full of raw meat.

Shi Yuan was thinking about how she had so much meat, and Lu Tinghan explained to him in a low voice, “This is all monster meat.”

Shi Yuan: ?!!

He hugged his tail in fear.

——Di Wen and the mole people were afraid of Shi Yuan, and Shi Yuan was also afraid of them, forming a weird cycle of scaring.