Chapter 20

The sun hung high overhead.

In a small village not far from the shelter, several youths panted for breath, fear on their faces.

“That… was way too dangerous. I could even smell the decaying stench of that Demonized Wolf. I felt like I would be dead one second later!” exclaimed a young man with glasses, his heart still pounding.

Next to him, a young girl was seated on the ground, her legs splayed out in front of her. “You’re much better off. I was almost brought to the ground by that foul wolf.”

This freckled girl had what would be considered average looks, and was filthy, but despite all this, as she panted for breath, her chest rising and falling, she gave off a certain allure.

“We owe it to Senior Brother Xiaopeng. You really are an Awakened.”

“Of course!” Lu Xiaopeng stroked his messy hair, made a fist, and then struck a pose. “I’m still a natural Awakened, much rarer and stronger than those Awakened who need equipment to awaken! How could ordinary demonized beasts be a match for me…”

“But Senior Brother Xiaopeng wasn’t able to defeat that Demonized Wolf…” the freckled girl weakly said.

Lu Xiaopeng’s face fell.

When he had first awakened, he had been brimming with energy and confidence, believing that he could punch Demonized Wolves and kick Demonized Tigers, ascending step by step to the peak of Awakened. But reality had given him a punch to the face.

The Demonized Wolf they had run into on the road hadn’t been that strong, but he was incapable of beating it.

His eyes were able to keep up with the Demonized Wolf’s speed, but he couldn’t dodge. Even though he had the strong body of an Awakened, his body was covered in wounds. If not for all this, he wouldn’t have had to beat a hasty retreat with the others.

Fortunately, after fleeing for a time, they had managed to throw off the Demonized Wolf, and they had not run into any other demonized beasts.

After resting for a while, they began to look around.

This was a village that was very quiet. It seemed that there weren’t any demonized beasts active in the vicinity, so they finally relaxed a little.

“Where should we go now?”

Everyone became lost and confused at these words. Someone sighed, “That’s right. In the past, we were with the big group, but now that we broke off from it, not only are we lost, we can’t even guarantee our safety. If it wasn’t for Senior Brother Xiaopeng, we would probably still be hiding in that dark place.”

They didn’t have much food left, so continuing to hide would have just delayed their time of death. But only when they emerged from their hiding spot and headed toward the shelter did they learn how dangerous it really was outside. Putting aside the fact that they didn’t even know how to get to Lindong, the distance of several dozen kilometers alone was enough to make them despair.

“Wait; look over there!”

Their classmate with glasses suddenly pointed into the distance. The rest looked up and saw a single-storey house that didn’t look much different from the other houses, all of them in a state of disrepair and destruction.

“There’s nothing…” Lu Xiaopeng casually glanced over, but then his eyes flew open. Several words had been written in large print on the walls of the house in black paint.

“Green Shade Shelter, 3.5 kilometers to the northwest, is a safe place with abundant food. Survivors are welcome,” he read.

‘Green Shade’ had been the name of a vacation villa.

After the apocalypse, the majority of shelters had kept their original name. For example, the Lindong Shelter had been established atop Lindong County.

Tang Yu had a terrible mind for names, so he naturally chose to use the original name of the shelter.

The name wasn’t important. What was important was that he needed to attract survivors. And when compared to names like Hotpot City Shelter, Subway Stop Three Shelter, or Dafafa Supermarket Shelter, Green Shade was actually rather good…

As Lu Xiaopeng read the words out loud, the group exchanged glances with each other.

“Green Shade Shelter? Is that a nearby shelter?”

“But how could a shelter’s… road sign be written in a place like this? It doesn’t seem very trustworthy!”

“The writing is a little ugly, but it should be real. Green Shade… I seem to have heard it before… right! There’s a Green Shade Vacation Villa nearby. That should be the shelter spoken of by this sign.”

After some discussion, the youths decided to go and see what this so-called Green Shade Shelter was about.

Without enough food or strength, they would never make it to Lindong Shelter, so really, they had no choice but to see what Green Shade Shelter was like.

The village wasn’t far from the shelter, and they encountered a few demonized beasts on the road.

Lu Xiaopeng and his classmates were very experienced at avoiding demonized beasts, and after an experience that was more harrowing than dangerous, they arrived at the gate to the vacation villa.

Here, paint had been used to announce in large words, ‘Green Shade Shelter Welcomes You!’

But.

They looked at this vacation villa. The front gate was half-collapsed, and the surrounding walls had seemingly been crushed underfoot by savage beasts so badly that they were hardly recognizable.

“Is this really a shelter?!” Lu Xiaopeng loudly yelled, feeling like he had been cheated.

“Wait.” The classmate with glasses noticed something else. “Look over there. There’s barbed wire and destroyed guns. Perhaps there really was a shelter here.”

The others could hear the implied meaning in their classmate’s words. ‘Was’ meant that it was here no longer. Considering the tragic scene before them, all of them could envision a certain scene in their minds: the tragedy of the shelter falling to a demonized beast attack.

“So are we going or not?” The freckled girl was somewhat afraid. She felt that some frightening demonized beast could be hiding in the depths of this vacation villa.

In the end, Lu Xiaopeng made up his mind. “Let’s go in and take a look. I feel like the chances of there being some frightening demonized beast inside are very low. Don’t you think that we’ve been encountering fewer and fewer demonized beasts as we got closer and closer to this place?”

His classmates were only ordinary survivors, so they naturally weren’t so bold. Each time they saw a demonized beast in the distance, they would get so scared that their hearts would momentarily stop. They naturally hadn’t noticed that they had run into far fewer demonized beasts.

Lu Xiaopeng was different. He was still an Awakened, and even if he was an Awakened that couldn’t even beat a Demonized Wolf, he still had his strength. He was naturally more composed, and though he had not counted the number of demonized beasts they had run into, he could tell that the frequency at which they had run into demonized beasts had been dwindling.

After some thought, his classmate with glasses said, “I also agree with going in to look. Even if the shelter here no longer exists, we have a chance of finding some food.”

The group walked into the vacation villa.

Only the demonized beasts had been cleaned up in the outer ring of the villa. The majority of the place retained its original appearance: collapsed buildings, dried pools of blood, and severed limbs that there had been no time to clean up.

The faces of Lu Xiaopeng and his classmates paled. Fortunately, this wasn’t their first time seeing such gruesome sights. They felt… that it was okay!

Someone noticed something strange. “Look at that! There are car tracks here. And demonized beast corpses over there! Some parts have been taken away. This place really does have survivors!

“And over there are signs that someone has cleaned up. It seems like the shelter managed to weather the crisis, but based on the surroundings, the shelter has clearly suffered bad losses. It might not be that safe any more.”

They had wanted to find a shelter primarily because they were looking for a place that was safe enough.

But this place was basically in ruins. Even if there were survivors, could it still be called a shelter? This place had just suffered from a demon flood. Could that mean that this place would come under attack from an unstoppable demon flood in the future?!

All of them instantly had this same thought.

Since they were already here, and since there were survivors, they decided to see what the situation was before making their decision.

They continued farther into the vacation villa. They saw more signs of human activity, and it was now obvious that the surroundings had been cleaned up. They could see neither the corpses of humans nor demonized beasts.

But they still found it strange that they hadn’t seen a single person.

“Listen! Sound!” Lu Xiaopeng whispered as he pointed at a nearby corner.

Truly, an intermittent, strange sound was coming from not far in front of them.

Was it a survivor, or a demonized beast?

They cautiously advanced, and when they reached the corner, they peeked their heads out.

The source of the sound was two unknown ‘creatures’, their bodies covered in black metallic skin and their torsos large and round like spheres. Their arms were much larger than those of ordinary people, and they seemed bursting with strength.

One of the metal monsters swung a sword, somehow slicing a large stone slab in two. Boom! The stone dropped to the ground, but the metal monster continued to swing, slicing the stone slab into smaller and more usable pieces.

The entire process was clean and straightforward!

That seemingly ordinary sword sliced through the stone without resistance, like it was a divine weapon. Lu Xiaopeng could even see that the area where the stone was cut was as smooth as a mirror!