Chapter 113, exclusively published on Jinjiang Literature City: Searching for a Way to Escape
Seeing the sea of fire outside, Lu Xuan's expression changed drastically. He quickly woke up the other three people in the house and shouted, "Go to the cave!"
The three sleepy-eyed people looked puzzled, but when they saw the firelight through the window, they suddenly woke up and, without asking any questions, hurriedly ran out with pale faces.
Lu Xuan watched them run towards the square, then made a call to the village chief to wake everyone up. He stepped onto his hoverboard and scanned his surroundings, discovering that the wildfire had spread to an extremely wide area, with almost everything within sight ablaze.
Such a large-scale wildfire cannot be extinguished by one person alone, not even him.
Lu Xuan abandoned his idea of solving the problem himself. He used his wind-type ability to quickly cut down a large area of trees to create a buffer zone, and then used his earth-type ability to erect an earthen wall as a barrier.
After putting away the safe house, he glanced at the orchard, hesitated for only a moment, then went over to take the beehives and turned to chase after Lu Qing and the other two.
As Lu Xuan crossed the square, he paused slightly and looked up at the towering tree that had silently sheltered the villagers for two months.
The night wind carried the increasingly thick smoke closer.
Lu Xuan knew this wasn't the time for sentimentality. He placed his hand on the massive trunk of the giant tree and channeled his wood-based power into it. Finally, he gently stroked the trunk and whispered, "Good luck." As he passed the small cave, he casually waved his hand. Then, just as he was about to head towards the large cave, he heard a shrill scream from the sea of fire that was already faintly visible not far behind the firebreak.
The voice sounded somewhat familiar; it seemed to be... Zhou Shi?
Why would the other person be wandering around outside in the dead of night for no reason?
Unless… Lu Xuan’s expression hardened, a cold laugh escaped his lips, and he pretended not to hear the increasingly faint wails as he quickly entered the large cave with the door open.
The villagers, who had been woken up, were already in complete chaos.
Some people complained that the person on night watch hadn't noticed when someone came to steal vegetables last time, and had almost missed such a big danger again this time.
Actually, you can't really blame the person on night watch.
The moon hadn't risen in the past two days, and the area that initially caught fire was quite a distance from the cave. Furthermore, the giant trees in the square blocked the view, so even if you were blind, you wouldn't be able to spot anything unusual.
Now the people in the cave can see the firelight, which also means that the wildfire is imminent and there is no way to avoid it.
Upon seeing Lu Xuan, Li Tie hurriedly inquired about the situation outside.
Lu Xuan said succinctly, "The wildfire is very large and will probably burn for many days. In addition, this wildfire should not have started naturally, but was caused by humans."
Human intervention—!?
Before the villagers could even react in shock, Lu Xuan recounted the screams he had just heard and his assessment of the other party's identity.
As the arsonist, being trapped and killed by the fire suggests either that Zhou never intended to live, or that he misjudged the fire's intensity and failed to escape in time, thus becoming trapped himself.
But the villagers clearly didn't care about the cause of Zhou's death; they were furious.
Miao Jinfeng's face turned ashen with rage. "What's wrong with that bitch Zhou Jinhua? How dare she set a fire in this weather!"
Others couldn't help but curse, "If she wants to die, she should just go ahead and die. Why is she dragging us down with her!"
"Damn her ancestors! That wicked woman, how come she didn't die in that great earthquake! She's a jinx!"
The whole village was almost implicated by a madman. It's no exaggeration to say that they're now tempted to dig up the Zhou family's ancestral graves and scatter the ashes.
"Now is not the time to curse," Wu Cheng, whose face was equally grim, reminded them in a deep voice. "The smell of smoke is already seeping in."
The villagers immediately panicked.
"Quick, close the door!"
"Lock it! Lock it!"
"This door should be able to withstand a fire, right?"
Lu Xuan: "Don't worry, it can withstand even if it gets burned." He tested its strength with his special ability when he first bought it. It's a product of the Star Alliance, so the quality is guaranteed.
After the security door was locked, Li Tie sighed, "With this door locked today, we're afraid we'll be stuck in the cave for a while and won't be able to come out."
The villagers were silent for a moment, then someone suddenly said, "Those people in the cave to the west..."
The women, still seething with anger, blurted out, "Who cares if they live or die!"
Grandpa Zhang hesitated and said, "The Zhou family caused the wildfire, and the others are innocent like us..." He paused halfway through his sentence, clearly having realized the key point.
Regardless of their innocence, the wildfire was almost reaching the square, and they couldn't possibly risk their lives to run out and save a group of people with whom they had already broken off relations.
Li Tie: "Take care of yourself first."
Lu Xuan: "If they were more clever, they might have had a chance to survive."
The two spoke almost simultaneously.
After hearing this, everyone looked at Lu Xuan. Miao Jinfeng asked, "What do you mean by that, Ah Xuan? How do you plan to survive?"
Lu Xuan said calmly, "On the way here, I opened the security door of the general store cave. There were a lot of supplies inside, including an air conditioner. If they sensed the danger before the wildfire hit and took the opportunity to hide inside, they might have survived. If they didn't manage to take the opportunity..." that was their fate too.
Everyone understood his implied meaning, but they didn't think there was anything wrong with it. Instead, they completely let go of their burdens.
As for the disaster victims, perhaps it really was God who gave them a glimmer of hope.
When Lu Xuan spotted the fire, someone in the cave of the disaster victims had just gotten up in the middle of the night, smelled the smoke, and discovered the wildfire.
A group of disaster victims, ravaged by the peak season, frantically ran outside, instinctively heading towards Giant Wood Square.
Inevitably, some people fell behind along the way, and some even instinctively pushed and shoved the people to their left and right in order to ensure their own survival. Lei Shan forcefully threw Xu Dawu, who was trying to pass him, backward.
Caught off guard, the latter stumbled and fell, unfortunately hitting a rock and immediately losing consciousness.
But Lei Shan also failed to escape. In the dim night, he panicked and went in the wrong direction without realizing it, and ran for his life. By the time he realized what was happening, flames were burning his face, which was filled with anger and fear.
"ah--!"
·
While the disaster victims were fleeing in a desperate attempt to escape, the people of Yunlu Village were packing their belongings to go down into the karst cave.
At first, everyone was wondering why they had to go down.
Caves are not as comfortable to live in as mountain caves. They usually go there mainly because the area is larger and they can fish and mine. They still go back to the mountain caves to sleep.
Lu Xuan didn't hide anything from them: "This mountain range is vast and lush with vegetation. Once a wildfire starts, it will be impossible to extinguish in three to five days. However, there will be no rain for the next ten days, and there will be an earthquake in five days, which will cause the cave to collapse."
According to the initial weather app, the cave was safe until the end of the hottest season.
The changes are mostly due to the fact that the cave was shaken out, which affected the surrounding geology and caused a chain reaction.
When a collapse occurs in a cave, the large cave above will naturally be affected.
If no wildfire had occurred, Lu Xuan could have had the villagers take refuge in the square before the earthquake, and then considered how to clear the collapsed area afterward.
But now, this method won't work.
They couldn't get out of the cave at all.
They now have only one option—to find another exit from the vast, interconnected caverns that have yet to be fully explored.
The villagers were unwilling to believe that such a large underground world had collapsed; one could say they felt it was a pity and were unwilling to accept the fact.
But they are even less willing to gamble with their own lives.
So, let's go!
The earlier you set off, the greater your chances of survival!
As the villagers hurriedly packed up their makeshift shelters, air conditioners, and everything else they could, Lu Xuan remembered the viewers who were quite resentful that he hadn't started broadcasting during the wolf attack, so he casually turned on his live stream.
Millions of night owls quickly flooded into the live stream, along with viewers who were in a different time zone than Lu Xuan and were in their most energetic daytime hours.
[A late-night surprise?]
Why did you suddenly start broadcasting in the middle of the night?
Good grief! They even started streaming secretly without giving any advance notice; I almost missed it!
[Huh? Is this a large cave? How did the streamer get here? And why are the villagers packing their belongings?]
Lu Xuan briefly explained the current situation to them, and the viewers, who were still pleasantly surprised by the late-night broadcast, were immediately taken aback.
[I knew a streamer wouldn't suddenly start broadcasting for no reason; it turns out something big must have happened!]
[Zhou must have something seriously wrong with his brain! This not only harmed the streamer and the villagers, but also destroyed so many plants and animals in the mountains!]
【Holy crap! I never expected this! This fire must have destroyed so much food...no, so many animals hidden in the mountains! It's so toxic!!!】
[And those ginseng and lingzhi mushrooms that the streamer found deep in the mountains, which were quite old, will probably all be burned up too. What a pity!]
[Damn it! If I weren't stuck here, I'd kill this lunatic with my own temper!]
[Alright, alright, let's not talk about that unlucky thing. Let's get down to business. The streamer hadn't found an exit to the outside world before, and now he says he has to find it within five days. I have a feeling that's a bit far-fetched.]
[What's there to be afraid of! If all else fails, just use your superpowers to create an escape route. If a level seven superpowered individual gets buried alive, it'll probably be trending on Weibo for days.]
[It's hard to say, after all, the streamer has to protect over a hundred people. What if something unexpected happens and their powers are exhausted...]
[Besides, there's no guarantee it's safe outside, and we can't really deplete our powers just in case.]
Lu Xuan calmly replied, "If our superpowers don't work, we can just blast a path through. It's not a big problem."
After achieving several milestones, the store unlocked a large number of new items, including several powerful bombs that can even blast your way out of trouble.
Audience: !!!
...
The villagers quickly packed their belongings and all arrived at the cave.
Everything that needed to be said had already been said in the cave. Lu Xuan had everyone arrange themselves into teams according to the order in which they entered the mountain, only slightly adjusting the positions of the young and strong who had awakened their supernatural abilities, and then they set off!
The recent exploration has basically determined the main direction of the cave's extension, so they just need to head south.
Throughout the journey, the villagers kept whispering to each other, their brows furrowed with apprehension about the unknown road ahead.
However, the viewers in the live stream knew that there was no immediate danger, so they started talking about Lu Xuan's act of leaving the door open for the disaster victims, openly teasing Lu Xuan for being cold on the outside but warm on the inside.
Lu Xuan didn't take it to heart.
Even with the security door open, it's not certain that many people would escape alive.
Rather than saying he was leaving a way for the disaster victims to survive, it was more about preventing the villagers from having unnecessary guilt and resentment.
"Ah Xuan," Zhang Chengming leaned closer to Lu Xuan and asked, "Did you take possession of your house before you came back?"
Lu Xuan nodded. "Of course."
The security door and air conditioner at the general store combined don't even cost 10,000 points, but the safe house is worth hundreds of thousands of points, so naturally we can't give it up.
Walking behind Lu Xuan, Lu Qing slapped her forehead and asked, "What about the vegetables in the yard, and the fruit trees in the orchard?"
Lu Xuan said, "We didn't harvest the vegetables since there weren't many, and we didn't have time to uproot the fruit trees, so we had to give up on them."
The viewers in the live stream, who were chatting amongst themselves: ...Hmm?
Um? ? ?
They paused for a moment to process the meaning behind those words, and then they couldn't help but scream in agony.
【Aaaaaaahhhhhh!!! If the orchard is gone, doesn't that mean all the mutated fruit is gone too!?】
[Holy crap!!! I thought the wildfires wouldn't affect me, but look what happened!! Does this mean the giveaway is off too?]
That guy surnamed Zhou is a killer!
The comments section was instantly filled with phrases like "corpses strewn everywhere" and "crying echoes all over the place."
They knew, of course, that as long as Lu Xuan kept the fruit for seed, there would be a chance to grow fruit trees in the future. But it would take several months to reach the age and yield of the trees in the orchard.
They won't be able to collect many mutated fruits during this period!
It was absolutely horrific!
Lu Xuan had no other way to deal with this, nor did he have the energy to comfort them; the audience could only adjust on their own...
The regulation of farts!
It's impossible to adjust it properly!
Their mutated fruit!!!
·
Over the next three days, the villagers traversed the areas they had already explored, continuing their journey through unfamiliar cave passages.
They made do with ready-made steamed buns, dumplings, and dried meat for food. When they got tired, they would set up camp on the spot and rest for three or four hours in the sleeping bag that Lu Xuan had brought out, before continuing their journey.
Because Lu Xuan had scouted ahead with the blood-sucking vines, they didn't waste time going back and forth in dead ends. Apart from two near misses where they crossed bottomless underground crevices without incident, they didn't encounter any other dangers along the way.
Walking through the dimly lit cave for so long, not knowing when it would end, inevitably led to feelings of depression and a growing sense of unease.
The good news is that on the morning of the fourth day, Lu Xuan finally felt a gentle breeze blowing from the passage ahead.
It was such a light breeze that he wouldn't have noticed it at all if his senses hadn't been so sharp.
A gust of wind suddenly blew through the sealed underground cave, which meant that the exit they were looking for might be just ahead!
The bad news was that just as Lu Xuan told everyone that there was a possible exit ahead, the cave began to shake violently.
The villagers, who had just begun to show signs of elation, suddenly panicked.
"What happened? An earthquake!?"
"Wasn't the earthquake supposed to happen tomorrow? Why is it happening earlier?"
Lu Xuan frowned, opened his weather app, and glanced at the screen. "It's not an earthquake."
His gaze turned in the direction they were coming from; the noise was coming from behind and was getting closer.
If it's not a naturally occurring vibration, then something must have created it.
As the shaking intensified, the cone-shaped stalactites at the top of the cave began to shatter and fall, and even the stone pillars supporting the cave developed cracks.
"Oh no! Ah Xuan! The cave seems to be collapsing!" Li Tie's anxious shout came from the crowd.
The villagers couldn't help but scream when they discovered the anomaly, and the timid children cried out loudly.
Lu Xuan stimulated the growth of the blood-sucking vines, infusing them with a large amount of supernatural power to make the vines grow rapidly, and more than a dozen thick vines quickly supported the top of the cave.
Lu Xuan shouted, "Run forward! I'll go check the back!"
Lei Yan quickly stepped forward: "I'll go with you."
"Me too!"
"I'll go help too."
Following closely behind were Xiong Mao, Zhang Chengming, Wei Xiang, and several others who had awakened offensive abilities.
The latter two were awakened a few days ago, one wind-type and the other fire-type.
Lu Xuan shook his head: "You all protect the villagers, I can go alone."
The thing that can cause this kind of commotion is not something a newly awakened superhuman can handle. If they go with them, he will have to divide his attention between protecting them or rescuing them. If they get separated, it will be even more troublesome.
...
When Lu Xuan arrived at the space connected by the most turbulent passage, he found a familiar giant python pounding its tail wildly up and down the cave.
The reason it looked familiar was because this giant python was very similar in color to the one he had killed before, except that this one was much larger, and its body, when standing upright, almost pierced through the top of the cave, which was about ten meters high.
The audience was also taken aback.
They were initially startled by the python's enormous size, but soon someone guessed that the older one had come after the younger one had been killed.
Lu Xuan guessed the reason, and knew that to these two giant pythons, they, the two-legged beasts, were perhaps the shameful outsiders.
He never believed that humans were superior to other animals and could arbitrarily slaughter the lives of other creatures. In the apocalypse, there were many mutated plants and animals stronger than those with superpowers who dominated their respective regions.
He only believes in the law of the jungle.
Whether you are a human or an animal, if you are strong, you can do whatever you want; if you are weak, you can only be slaughtered by others.
The animal kingdom clearly follows this principle even more.
Once the python spotted him, it quickly turned its head towards him, raising its strong tail high, ready to unleash a powerful attack.
At the same time, the supernatural power in Lu Xuan's palm also condensed.
His usually lazy and casual eyes now revealed a sharp and cold light as he looked into the equally cold pupils of the giant python and murmured, "Sorry, big guy, and then... die."
As soon as he finished speaking, several giant wind blades filled with killing intent shot out from the sky!
...
Fifteen minutes later.
Lu Xuan caught up with the villagers who were being protected by the blood-sucking vines as they walked forward.
The three members of the Lu family breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing him return safely. Just as they were about to ask him what had happened, someone ahead shouted with delight, "I see the exit!!!"
Everyone: "!"
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