The fugitive’s backward-bending knees gave him incredible speed, enough to rival a galloping horse.
But while he was fast, he lacked a horse’s stamina and couldn’t maintain his top speed for long.
Soon, one of the pursuers caught up to him. A Long Saber flashed, slashing across the man’s back, and he imdiately collapsed onto the desert sand.
The two pursuers reined in their horses, overjoyed. They ran toward the fallen man; he clearly had sothing important on him.
Just as the pursuers reached the fugitive’s body, the "corpse" suddenly spun around. With two short knives now in hand, it shot up from its backward-bent knees and viciously stabbed both pursuers in the chest!
The pursuers, completely caught off guard by the counterattack, let out pained screams. They clutched their chests and collapsed, silenced.
The fugitive staggered toward the two horses, but before he could reach them, he pitched forward onto the ground and fell silent as well.
Blood stread from the wound on his back.
Shen Feng, hidden on the top floor of a ruined building, watched through his binoculars for a while longer. He confird that no one else was coming and that the three n had been lying motionless on the scorching desert sand for a long ti. Only then did he erge from the dilapidated town ruins and run quickly toward them.
Soon, he arrived at the scene of the brutal fight.
The blood-soaked sand had turned a dark brown. The three strangers were as dead as they could be.
But it was their appearance that made Shen Feng frown.
The fugitive looked relatively normal, but the two dead pursuers were far stranger.
One was hunched over with a clear spinal deformity, and a massive tumor grew on his shoulder, resembling a second head.
The other had a hand shaped like a foot and a long, furry tail trailing behind him.
All three of them had congenital mutations caused by radiation.
Their clothes were tattered, seemingly woven together from scraps of cloth and bits of plastic.
Shen Feng searched the two pursuers. He only found a small bag with about a dozen bottle caps and a bottle of greenish water in a cracked plastic container.
On the fugitive’s body, he found only three or four bottle caps and sothing else—an object Shen Feng recognized.
It was a small, yellowed plastic vial. Inside were five small pills, expired for who knows how many years. Half had crumbled into powder. From the faint "PPA" markings, he could tell they were likely Pipemidic Acid tablets, used to treat diarrhea.
’Could this little vial of dicine be what they were fighting to the death over?’
Shen Feng pocketed the vial and walked toward the two horses.
It was only then that he realized these horses weren’t like any he rembered.
One of the horses had an eye-like slit on its forehead, and inside it was an underdeveloped eyeball!
The other had a withered leg dangling from its belly and was half-hairless, a horrifying sight.
Clearly, both horses were also products of radiation.
Fortunately, his Geiger counter didn’t go off.
Shen Feng took the reins, mounted one of the horses, and rode off in the direction the three n had co from.
’It’s a good thing I learned to ride during the Stone Statue Apocalypse, or this would be a problem.’
With the horses, his pace quickened significantly.
’More importantly, having these horses ans I can’t be far from the edge of this desert!’
Without fodder, horses couldn’t have made it this deep into the wastes.
Sure enough, after riding for about an hour, he could finally see sparse trees in the distance. They appeared relatively normal, completely unlike the twisted trees from the nuclear blast zones.
Besides the trees, sparse clumps of wormwood dotted the ground.
The two horses grew more energetic, quickly leaving the desert behind to graze on the grass.
Shen Feng climbed a tree about seven or eight ters tall and gazed into the distance.
To his disappointnt, however, there were no signs of human activity as far as the eye could see.
It was still just wilderness, with sparse trees and clumps of wormwood.
Just then, a flash of silver caught his eye. Shen Feng’s face brightened. Not far ahead was a small river!
He imdiately got back on his horse and rode toward the river.
Soon, he reached the riverbank. The water was crystal clear, seemingly a tributary of a larger river, babbling as it flowed.
But Shen Feng’s expression darkened.
’This river... it’s too clean.’
There were no aquatic animals, not even many weeds.
The shrubs and wormwood on the banks were bizarrely twisted, their forms so warped they almost felt maddening to look at.
Moreover, the horses refused to go anywhere near it.
He also noticed beautiful, colorful specks of light at the bottom of the river, like shards of colored glass.
Shen Feng took out his Geiger counter and subrged the probe in the water. The buzzer imdiately blared an alarm, and the number on the screen jumped to 425.
’Just as I thought. A radioactive river.’
Upstream, it must have passed through a high-radiation zone.
Shen Feng mounted up again and rode away, continuing his journey.
This ti, only half an hour later, the Geiger counter started buzzing again. The further he rode, the louder it beca, and the sparser the vegetation grew.
Clearly, another high-radiation zone lay ahead.
Without a mont’s hesitation, Shen Feng changed direction and headed south.
But after traveling for a full day, by nightfall, he still hadn’t seen a single sign of human life.
’It’s as if those three n I t were the last people on Earth!’
Along the way, he saw a town in the distance that had been completely obliterated by a nuke. Through his binoculars, he could even make out the dark shadows of people vaporized onto the walls by the blast.
That night, he found the ruins of a dilapidated building to use as a temporary Shelter. After getting so sleep, Shen Feng continued his journey the next day.
For three full days, he didn’t encounter a single human settlent.
The Geiger counter chirped intermittently, warning him whenever he was about to enter a radiation zone.
He constantly changed course, navigating the gaps between radiation zones, his mood growing heavier with every passing mile.
’I originally thought the high-radiation zones would be rare, but now it seems the uncontaminated areas are the exception.’
’The density of the blast zones is just staggering!’
’And judging by the Geiger counter readings, they were all three-phase bombs—thermonuclear devices wrapped in a uranium-238 casing.’
’A three-phase bomb, simply put, is an atomic bomb wrapped in thermonuclear material, making it a hydrogen bomb. Wrap that hydrogen bomb in a layer of depleted uranium, and you get a three-phase bomb.’
’When a three-phase bomb detonates, it creates widespread, long-lasting, high-intensity radioactive contamination.’
’Basically all strategic nuclear weapons of the major nuclear powers were three-phase bombs, arguably the most destructive type of nuke.’
After five days of travel, Shen Feng still hadn’t seen a single trace of human activity, and he had already eaten half of his food.
Fortunately, he found an extrely deep well, allowing him to replenish his clean water supply. Otherwise, he might have died of thirst long before finding another person.
Finally, on the fifth day, his Geiger counter had been silent for two whole days. It seed he had reached uncontaminated land.
He even saw a lizard scuttling across the ground.
As night fell, Shen Feng was startled to see the glow of a fire in the distance.
’People!’
He imdiately led his horse toward it. From a distance, he could hear a clamor of conversation; they sounded very happy.
Five people were gathered around a campfire, building a simple roasting spit. Beside them, on a long piece of wood, was the food they were about to roast, tightly bound.
A person.
~
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