Chapter 38 - Chapter 38: Chapter 38: The Village Without Bugs!

Chapter 38: Chapter 38: The Village Without Bugs!

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Du Gang and his crew were currently heading down County Road 1438 in a small car. The journey had been somewhat smooth, with not many obstacles blocking their path. Whenever they did encounter an unpassable route, Du Gang would get out and clear it.

“Can you quit smoking?”

Du Gang sat in the passenger seat, looking helplessly at Chu Zixuan in the backseat.

Chu Zixuan was leaning half his body outside, resting his elbow on the window frame with two fingers holding onto a lit cigarette.

“The stress is too much. Nicotine can alleviate the pressure in my heart…” Chu Zixuan nonchalantly justified his smoking habit.

The others in the car were both exasperated and resigned. They initially thought that Chu Zixuan was calm and detached, not expecting such a frail side of him.

“Even if you’re stressed, you shouldn’t be chain smoking. Don’t you know that smoking is harmful to your health?”

Du Gang was at a loss for words. Chu Zixuan didn’t seem to be quite himself and had somehow gotten his hands on a bunch of cigarettes, and had been constantly smoking since they started their journey.

“The world is in such a state. Do you really think I can safely live up to ninety-nine years old?”

His remark silenced the others, and a gloom descended upon them. Du Gang shook his head and sighed, “Fine, smoke away. Just don’t exhale the smoke inside the car!”

Having delivered his piece, he looked back straight ahead, lost in deep thought.

Other than An Ya, who was diligently driving, everyone else in the car was also silent, pondering whether the world would return to its normal state.

But none of them noticed that the smoke Chu Zixuan inhaled didn’t really pass through his lungs; instead, it circulated in his mouth and was then exhaled back out.

Even if they did notice, they probably wouldn’t have thought much of it, because none of the other five people in the car smoked.

Meanwhile, every time Chu Zixuan smoked, he subtly turned his head to face the window, seemingly trying to prevent the smoke from entering the car.

However, every time he took a drag, a tiny red crystal would quietly float from his palm into his mouth.

Out in the wild, where buildings were few and far between, most insects couldn’t find shelter in time, resulting in a large number of dead insects littered along the roadside. Du Gang and the others, in their rush, didn’t bother to deal with them.

But Chu Zixuan was different. His superpower was telekinesis. The further his mental power could spread, the larger the range his telekinesis could cover.

He could silently control flying daggers to dissect the insects and extract the crystals.

In the beginning, his mental power could only cover a radius of thirty meters, so he had to secretly carry out this activity.

However, after swallowing enough crystals, his body shuddered, and his psychic capacity advanced!

Not only did his mental probing distance reach ten kilometers in a straight line, but the probing diameter centered on him also expanded to a hundred meters.

Under normal circumstances, a spherical space with a diameter of a hundred meters, with him as the center, was entirely within his mental power coverage. It was also the area where he could skillfully control objects with his mental power.

He disguised his activities as smoking, secretly harvesting the crystals from the insects on the side of the road, and covertly ingesting them under everyone’s noses.

Under these conditions, Chu Zixuan could probably have an easier time operating on his own.

But as he had told Du Gang, he also felt that there was more to this apocalypse. Depending solely on himself would be exhausting.

Being with Du Gang, no matter what happened, his status as a mental scout would give him the safety distance and ample time to consider his actions.

But he was unwilling to share the crystals with others, hence he had to secretly ingest them.

Nevertheless, he believed that even if Du Gang found out about it, he probably wouldn’t make a big fuss, because his value far surpassed that of others present…

Chu Zixuan’s mental power gradually increased, and his powers slowly grew stronger.

“Hiss!”

As he was secretly enjoying his crystal feast, the sudden screech of the car brake marked the end of his private consumption.

“What happened?”

Chu Zixuan, busy hiding his activities and controlling daggers to harvest insect crystals, had not been paying attention to the road ahead.

“The road is blocked!”

Du Gang casually replied and got out of the car to check the situation.

Seeing this, everyone else also got out of the car. Compared to Du Gang and An Ya, who had their own comfortable seats, the cramped conditions for the four people at the back were somewhat uncomfortable. It was a good opportunity for them to stretch their legs.

“What’s going on?”

Ahead of their vehicle was a small bridge just wide enough for three cars to pass side by side. However, there were sandbags piled up as high as a person, blocking them at the head of the bridge.

“It looks like it was deliberately blocked!”

Chu Zixuan examined the surroundings, then pointed at a bungalow on the right, and commented, “It might have been blocked by the people of this

village, probably because…”

Suddenly, he froze. His mental power had always been scanning the surroundings, and from the moment he got out of the car, he realized that something was off. And he finally realized what it was.

“This village has no insects!”

On hearing this, the others also examined their surroundings and indeed, there was not a single insect to be seen anywhere near the village. It was incredibly clean and the village buildings weren’t damaged.

Right when they were marveling at this oddity, a voice came from within the village.

“What are you here for?”

Accompanying this voice were the villagers living here.

From what seemed like an empty village suddenly emerged a group of villagers carrying farming tools like hoes and shovels.

Reactively, Chu Zixuan and the others gathered behind Du Gang, their wary eyes cautiously observing the villagers.

Perhaps due to Du Gang’s imposing height of 1.95 meters coupled with his muscular physique, the villagers stopped five or six meters away from them, forming a loose circle around them from a distance.

A man who appeared to be the village head stepped forward, “We are villagers from Sky Stone Village. What are you all doing here?”

There was no need to explain; their appearance made it obvious they were local villagers.

“We are from Nanyuan, heading to Xingyuan County. But we found the bridge blocked when we got here!”

Under these circumstances, Du Gang no longer had the luxury to pretend to be a follower. He decided to step up and explain the situation.

“You can’t pass!”

“No one’s allowed to pass!”

No sooner had Du Gang finished talking than the villagers started to shout and wave their farm tools menacingly.

Du Gang furrowed his eyebrows, unable to comprehend the villagers’ actions.

His instinctive glance at Chu Zixuan was met with a vacantly staring Chu Zixuan – a clear sign he was scanning the surroundings with his mental power. Du Gang then said, “This is a county road, built by the government, as is this bridge. They are available to the public for free. We are legal citizens, tax-paying ones too, we have the right to use this bridge!”

Faced with the villagers who wouldn’t let them cross the bridge, he was more keen to find out why there were no insects in their village!

It was clear that Chu Zixuan also wanted to find out, so he was willing to argue with these people to buy Chu Zixuan some time..