Chapter 136 The Earth’s Wastelands 9

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Chapter 136 The Earth’s Wastelands 9

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 planet had experienced an irrevocable change.

More than fifty percent of land turned into desert, and the ocean changed its color to purple and black. 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 polar 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 the last survivors laid 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 accompanied them until the end of their days.

Powerful radiation polluted the land around the equator. Ruins of cities glowed in the dark. That lasted for centuries. Some species went extinct; others evolved and transmuted.

Time flew forward as rain clouds started to gather over barren lands. The rain poured, cooling the poisonous sea that flooded the land 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 blazed relentlessly.

Inside the ruins, some strange plants started to grow. Even without water, even exposed to the cruel sun, these wild plants with strange shapes and colors grew to cover more and more land.

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 plates, all those events left scars on the planet, but they had never stopped the planet 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 the large 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 thick layer of vegetation covered its existence like a ’cloud’. At the same time, the plants blocked most of the sun’s rays. Thus, one could find a comfortable temperature, land, and environment suitable for animals and plants; clean and sufficient water; and most importantly, there was the remains of a ’half’ spacecraft landing 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 place cultivated the last 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 the last place on Earth where a large population of humans could be found. The citizens that lived there called it ’The Village of Heavenly Blessing’.

"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 speculation 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 the lab. 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 the lab already."

...

At the same time, outside the lab was a sea of sand that spread into the horizon under the yellowing sky. The wind howled, and a sandstorm blew around the black 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 players were not wearing any protective gear, their Life Points had stopped dropping.

Feng Bujue placed 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 the lab and saw the outside environment, he understood that manual driving made no sense on his planet 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 Lake lab?

Hank said that their team got ’the order’ to explore this place. This meant that the leader that gave them the order had the exact coordinates for Crystal Lake lab. 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 place, through scouting robots?

Feng Bujue’s suspicion was... about this team’s timing. After the group of migrated citizens left, they arrived. This explained something obvious... and Hank’s first reaction toward ’outsiders’ supported Feng Bujue’s prediction. Even though they had not arrived at the village, Feng Bujue had a broad idea about what was going on there.

"Why didn’t you kill him?" Flashes 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.

Flashes of Sword laughed drily. "You’re kidding me... Isn’t it a bit too late 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 village."

"He will help us?" Flashes of Sword questioned and turned his head slightly to glance at the pale-faced Hank. "But why? He might be helpless now, but once we reach the village, he can escape at any moment and call for his people to come 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."