Some people seemed to lack even the strength to sit up, lying motionless on the ground with their faces buried in the cold dust, their fate unknown.
In the corner, two men seemed to be arguing silently, fighting over a slightly bulging tattered cloth bag. Their movements were weak and feeble, more like an instinctive tearing motion. One of them suddenly snatched the bag, clutching it tightly to his chest, glaring at the other with wariness and ferocity, letting out a low growl like a wild beast guarding its prey.
The entire camp was filled with a deathly silence heavier than death itself. There was no talking, no crying, only suffocating gasps and an omnipresent, bone-deep despair.
They exhausted their strength and lost hope earlier than the troops from Liushutun...
Jiang Chan's gaze lingered for a moment on the woman holding the dead infant in the picture.
In the apocalypse, she had seen too much death—infants, the elderly, the young—corpses piled up like mountains, stench filling the air. But the scene before her, under the moonlight of the desolate wasteland, revealed a colder, more profound despair.
The probe did not linger for long; like a ruthless bystander, it recorded this hellish scene and continued to move steadily forward along its preset trajectory.
The probe continued flying for about ten more minutes, and the terrain in Jiang Chan's field of vision began to change, no longer a monotonous, endless, cracked wasteland.
Ahead, at the far end of the night vision lens's field of view, a relatively large and well-defined shadowy outline appeared.
That was a village.
The scale far exceeds that of Liushutun and the abandoned village where they are now. The outlines of relatively complete, continuous earthen walls can be seen, and the silhouettes of some slightly taller buildings, which may be ancestral halls or courtyards of wealthy families, can even be vaguely discerned.
The probe continued to move closer, attempting to capture more details.
But at that moment, in the lower right corner of Jiang Chan's field of vision, a tiny, pale red icon flickered silently before lighting up steadily—it was a warning sign indicating that the battery level was below 20%.
Jiang Chan frowned almost imperceptibly. Electricity was precious, and even though there were solar charging panels in the space, they couldn't be used at any time while fleeing the famine.
All you need to know is where you're headed for tomorrow.
Without any hesitation, she mentally commanded: terminate the exploration and return the way you came.
The village silhouettes in the aerial view rapidly shrank and receded, eventually being replaced by boundless desolation. The probe gracefully changed direction and silently glided back along its original trajectory at an even faster speed.
A few minutes later, the shadow, darker than the night, slipped back through the huge gap in the wall and hovered a few inches above Jiang Chan's outstretched palm. She gently pressed her fingertip on a point on the cold, smooth, matte black surface.
A very faint, short buzzing sound.
The unfolded thin wings folded back instantly, and the exquisite "steel hummingbird" returned to the size of a thumb, lying quietly in Jiang Chan's palm.
With a thought, the detector vanished as if by magic, returned to that absolutely still, temperature-controlled, and safe corner in the space. At the same time, the monitoring glasses were removed, and the faint blue light in front of them instantly went out, restoring normal vision.
The world was once again shrouded in thick darkness, with only the muffled snores of the sleeping villagers in the distance and the occasional cough or two proving that there was still life in these ruins.
Jiang Chan remained seated against the wall and slowly closed her eyes.
...
A faint yet remarkably clear sound came from beside me.
Jiang Chan suddenly opened her tightly closed eyes!
There was no confusion from being startled awake from sleep, only a sharpness and vigilance that instantly coalesced, like a blade drawn from its sheath!
Her body reacted instinctively, faster than she could think. Her right hand had already silently pressed against the spot on her waist where she usually kept her pistol. Her muscles tensed, and her gaze swept like lightning toward the source of the sound—Xiao Tao!
Xiao Tao curled up on the hay mat, her little brows slightly furrowed, as if she wasn't sleeping soundly. The clear "gurgling" sound came from her thin, almost sunken abdomen, followed by an even longer "gurgling" sound, accompanied by a feeling of hunger and spasms.
Jiang Chan gently lifted a corner of the coat covering Xiao Tao and found that her little hand was tightly clutching a small piece of hardened biscuit—it was something she had secretly saved last night.
Jiang Chan's brows furrowed involuntarily.
The supplies in the space were originally enough for her to last one or two years on her own, but now that Xiao Tao has become a "little burden," the consumption rate is gradually increasing.
She scratched her head in frustration—the jewelry in her spatial storage couldn't be exchanged for food on the road to escape famine, and the "burden" that Granny Sun had insisted on giving her before leaving had now become the biggest problem!
"Troublesome..." she cursed inwardly, but couldn't help but reach out and tuck the hem of her clothes in.
There were rustling sounds coming from outside. Jiang Chan took out a pancake about half the size of her palm from her spatial storage and gently woke Xiao Tao.
"Eat! You must finish it!" she said curtly, stuffing the pancake into Xiaotao's hand.
Xiao Tao groggily opened her eyes, her eyes lighting up when she saw the pancakes, but she immediately said, "Sister Jiang, I have some more here."
She opened her palm, revealing the small piece of biscuit she had just seen.
“I have more, you don’t need to be stingy.” Jiang Chan took out a slightly damaged earthenware jar from her “bag”. “You wait here, I’ll go fetch water.”
Xiao Tao quickly got up, "I'm going too!"
“Sit down, save your energy!” Jiang Chan pressed her shoulder. “The more you walk, the more tired you become.”
What she didn't say was that although the cart could carry people, she didn't want to exhaust herself pushing it too early.
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