Jiang Ling opened the notebook and flipped through it casually, and an unopened letter floated on the ground.

"Wow! He actually left you a letter. Could it be a love letter?" Jiang Wenwen snatched the envelope from the ground and read aloud the words on it: "To Li Jiawen. Hmm?"

"It doesn't look like it's addressed to me! Show it to me!" Jiang Ling took the letter from her father and saw the beautiful handwriting on it. "It's obvious that this is definitely not my kind of bad handwriting! It must be a love letter from a girl!"

"Don't you want to see it?"

"Why should I read it? He didn't even tell the girl his real name! I have no right to interfere with his bad fate!" Jiang Ling stuffed the letter back into the notebook, and then put the notebook safely into his windbreaker.

"I see, you want to watch secretly at night!"

"Don't impose your bad character of prying into other people's privacy on me. I won't read it!"

Jiang Wenwen was hit hard by her words and couldn't say a word afterwards.

The search team arrived earlier than expected. They had only been waiting downstairs for a moment when they heard a knock on the pressure-resistant door. Without hesitation, they donned their helmets and entered the pressure chamber with their luggage.

The process of leaving was less tedious than entering, but equally slow. Jiang Ling now felt a urge to get a watch; her sense of time was becoming distorted. While waiting for the air pressure to drop, she saw Huang Yun taping the gaps and joints of the boxes with a roll of tape. However, there was only one roll of tape, so she couldn't help.

Huang Yun did not open the pressure-resistant door until the bell indicating that decompression was completed rang for the third time.

"Why are you so slow?" a jeep parked nearby asked them.

Huang Yun ignored the question and told Jiang Ling to lift the box onto the back of the truck bed. He then covered the entire bed with canvas and secured it securely. The three of them opened the back door and got in one by one.

After everyone got in the car and waited until the car started, Huang Yun explained: "When we were decompressing, we found that the box was not sealed properly, so it took a while."

"That's right, it's rare for you to go home!" said the co-pilot in the car.

"What's the situation outside?" Jiang Wenwen asked on the way.

"There's dirty snow everywhere, and the weather is getting colder. It's already June. Experts say the nuclear winter will last for a year or two. I hope so!" the driver replied.

The co-pilot then continued, "We searched the city thoroughly using a fan-shaped search method, and only rescued four people alive. Three of them are already dead, and the remaining one is estimated to last another two weeks."

"Yes, the radiation in the Yellow Zone is still too strong for ordinary people. I guess only mutants and enhanced humans will be able to come to the surface in the future." The driver sighed and then concentrated on driving.

"Master, will that house be used in the future?" Jiang Ling asked the co-pilot.

"Of course, ground bases are rare! We still need to collect supplies later. The sooner the desalination plant in the Magic City is repaired, the sooner the people can have water!"

Jiang Ling was somewhat happy to hear that her house could still be used. No one wanted the place they had used to be occupied by disgusting monsters.

The car windows, like those at home, were covered with a brown film. Through the glass, Jiang Ling saw the scenery outside. It was indescribable. The world seemed to have lost its color, leaving only gray, white, and black. It was like a world of fireless ash, or a world of out-of-control programs. She tried to connect this scene with the beautiful world in her memories, but it was just an illusion, always shattered by the bumpy ride of the jeep.

"The view is pretty good, isn't it?" The driver saw the girl in the back seat staring blankly out the window through the rearview mirror and said, "The view here is pretty good. At least it's in the yellow zone. If it were in the red zone, I don't think you'd want to look at it for even a second."

"Red Zone?"

"It's a heavily polluted area. The guys in the Countermeasures Bureau said the water there actually glows. Don't even think about drinking it. Even a little bit of it could result in amputation!"

"Don't scare me, it's not that serious!" The co-pilot immediately explained, "Old Chen was joking! Everyone entering the Red Zone wears exoskeletons, so that little bit of water isn't a big deal. The main problem is the mutants. We can't provide fire support in the Red Zone, so they can only rely on themselves!"

"Wang An, you've neither been to the Red Zone nor the Countermeasures Bureau, so your words don't count!"

"I'm just an ordinary person. Am I rushing to the red zone to be reincarnated? Besides, you just went to the Countermeasures Bureau to submit a report. Look at how capable you are! Hey hey!" At the end, he pretended to scream, which made the atmosphere in the car much better.

"You will change shifts after you go back today, right?" Huang Yun asked.

"He's been exposed for seven hours. He'll have to go to the infirmary for a check-up when he gets back. As for me, I can run again this month. It's a pity that the factory is still mass-producing ordinary protective clothing. It would be great if we could make more exoskeletons, even if we could modify them for civilian use." The driver, Lao Chen, replied.

"We don't lack production capacity here, but we are short of materials. We have no shortage of precious metals and high-tech products, but we lack common goods!" explained co-pilot Wang An.

"Aren't they everywhere on the ground?"

"Yes and no. A lot of it is radioactive and too difficult to handle!"

"Many nuclear bombs were launched at the warehouse, making it incredibly difficult to salvage any materials. We originally planned to check out a warehouse to the north, but it's been marked as a black zone, so we'll have to make another plan. Oh, a black zone is a flashpoint, a place where no grass grows for thousands or even tens of thousands of years. These are generally not available on the site's internal website. You need A-level authorization to connect to the metropolitan area network to find them."

"Eh? Old Chen, aren't you also a B-level? How did you know?"

"you guess!"

Just as the co-pilot, Wang An, was about to ask further questions, the jeep slowed down, then the driver turned a corner and reversed into a dark station entrance. Jiang Ling watched as the cloudy sky gradually gave way to man-made structures, and her eyes began to adjust to the darkness.

The tilting sensation lasted only a dozen seconds before they reached a stable surface. Before the car could even come to a complete stop, a soft yellow light gradually filled the surrounding area. Simultaneously, the previous entrance was blocked by a folding door. As the last ray of light from the outside world faded, high-pressure water mist began to erupt from the four corners of this space, impacting every corner.

"Don't be impatient, wait a moment!" Huang Yun held Jiang Ling's hand.

After a while, two people in full protective suits each holding a water gun walked to the car and began to clean the car, including the surface of several boxes in the rear truck bed.

Ten minutes later, another man in protective gear emerged, holding a tablet-like device and drawing on it with a pen made of an unknown material. He walked to the car door and knocked on the window. "You can get out now. Take your suitcases and go to Decontamination Room 03!"