A Night of Desperation

“You can’t keep doing this. Even if Team Three’s missions are all safe, over time, your teammates won’t improve, and eventually, they’ll drag you down, lowering your evaluation score.”

One of the captains, Xu Fei, frowned as he tried to persuade her. In his view, useless teammates should be replaced immediately.

“It’s fine. My family is gone, and I only have a younger sister left. She’s far more capable than I am, so I’ll leave the improving to her.” Xue Ningning smiled indifferently. She had no ambition—just wanted to get by.

“If your evaluation drops, your logistics support will be affected, and even your equipment and supplies might be cut,” Xu Fei continued, as he had some interest in Xue Ningning.

“It’s not a problem.” She wasn’t concerned. In truth, she also wanted to replace her teammates. But if she left the safest Team Three, those three would undoubtedly get into trouble. It had happened before, so she had long stopped casually dismissing members. In any case, she only took on the safest missions.

“I’ll take time to train them in private. They’re good kids—I believe they’ll catch up soon.” She spoke earnestly.

“You’re still so naïve.” Not far away, Captain Yao Chenling of Team Nine remarked coldly.

Yao Chenling, another female captain, was tall, muscular, and powerful. She had always disdained Xue Ningning, who had risen through connections with her younger sister. And now, when everyone else was striving to improve their teams, Xue Ningning was still dragging along dead weight, attempting to move forward with them.

Sure, a capable person could do that, but the cost would be stagnation or even regression.

Xue Ningning didn’t respond—she just smiled. Worst case scenario, she wouldn’t take on missions at all. As long as she stayed in Hope City, things wouldn’t be too bad.

After the teams gathered, they quickly dispersed. Each member returned to their dormitories. Ouli and the others parted ways, and since she shared a room with Xiaojieba, they returned together.

As they reached their dormitory door, a voice called out to them.

“Lin Yiyi.”

The dormitory manager, an elderly woman, waved a small package in her hand. “You have a parcel delivery.”

“A package?” Xiaojieba blinked in confusion.

“Yeah, it’s from Baiqiu Village,” the manager replied casually.

“Baiqiu Village!?” Little Stutterer’s eyes lit up in delight as a name flashed through her mind.

*

*

*

Baiqiu Village, Mountain Cave Safehouse

Yu Hong stood alone in the basement, holding his breath, motionless.

Time ticked away, second by second. Still, he remained the same—completely still, like a sculpture.

About fifteen minutes later—

Pfft.

Suddenly, his face turned red, and he coughed up a small mouthful of blood.

“Failed again…”

He raised his hand, watching as the red vortex rune on his palm slowly faded and disappeared. He shook his head inwardly.

Ever since he had completed his new cultivation technique yesterday, he had been trying to train according to its methods.

The new technique had successfully merged multiple functions into his Heavy Leg Technique and even integrated the newly acquired vortex rune.

The small cultivation manual he had obtained through enhancement described impressive effects, but… the difficulty of training it was far greater than before. ŖÀꞐôＢÈṣ

Yu Hong slowly relaxed his body, walked to the side, picked up a red booklet from the ground, and flipped through it.

“Basic Survival Leg Technique.”

That was the name he had given this new cultivation technique—an extremely fitting name. After all, survival was the very reason he had fused and created it.

The thin booklet still contained the three original moves of the Heavy Leg Technique, but now it had three additional levels beyond them, making it six in total.

Each level also incorporated some static exercises, seamlessly integrating them into the cultivation and training process.

Just now, Yu Hong had been practicing the static exercise portion of the first-level Low Sweep Kick, but he hadn’t expected it to be this difficult.

After flipping through the booklet for a while, he confirmed that he had been practicing correctly—it was just that his body needed time to adapt. Rushing it would only backfire. He could only endure and take it slow.

The Basic Survival Leg Technique required not only a proper daily diet but also one crucial element for training—radiation. However, it wasn’t ordinary luminous stone radiation but red-value radiation.

At first, Yu Hong found this requirement a bit odd, but he soon understood the reasoning behind it.

If he could absorb and adapt to increasingly higher levels of external red-value radiation, his survival rate would naturally improve significantly.

This technique perfectly fulfilled the purpose he had intended.

After reading for a while, Yu Hong set the booklet aside and headed upstairs.

The room was brightly lit, and the area outside the door was silent. The entire safehouse felt peaceful and tranquil.

If he could remove the dangers of this world, this kind of life wouldn’t be so bad—except for the loneliness.

Yu Hong walked to the entrance and pulled back the barrier to glance outside.

In the courtyard, luminous white-glowing Luminous Stone Grass swayed gently in the wind, releasing invisible radiation.

Further beyond, outside the gray-white courtyard walls, a faint mist loomed in the darkness. Occasionally, strange, fragmented noises flickered past.

Yu Hong retracted his gaze and closed the barrier.

Since yesterday, after obtaining some odor-removal sand from Li Runshan and covering the outer gate with a generous amount of crushed stone powder to blend it with the mountain wall, the Multi-Eyed Birds had surprisingly stopped bothering him.

Glancing at the enhanced red-value detector, the time read 21:42 (9:42 PM).

Yu Hong turned on his communicator, listening to the faint static, waiting for Li Runshan to contact him.

They had agreed to communicate once a night, around 10 PM.

A few minutes later, the communicator crackled to life.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I just got Nana to sleep—I had to tell her several stories. Kids these days are a real handful.” Li Runshan’s exhausted voice came through.

“That’s how kids are,” Yu Hong chuckled. “By the way, thanks for the odor-removal sand and disguise method. The Multi-Eyed Birds haven’t attacked again—it seems to be working.”@@novelbin@@

Since it worked, he had to express his gratitude. After all, for once, Old Li, the notorious tightwad, had provided free support. Even though Yu Hong still had to help fix some equipment, when he checked, the “broken communication device” was actually beyond repair. Instead, the repair job had been swapped to a simple little fan. Li had agreed to the change, likely just needing an excuse to help him.

“…Wait, it actually worked?” Li Runshan blurted out in surprise.

“…What do you mean by that?” Yu Hong’s smile vanished instantly. “Don’t tell me you were using me as a test subject?”

“Of course not! I use odor-removal sand myself. Why would I experiment on you?” Old Li laughed nervously.

“Did you coat yours with sunlight coating?” Yu Hong asked.

“…Uh, yeah, but you know, the quality of that stuff varies. Regular-grade sunlight coating won’t hold up against a Danger Level 4 creature.” Li Runshan tried to deflect.

“Forget it, no point in arguing. How’s the map I asked you to check? I’m planning to leave tomorrow,” Yu Hong changed the topic.

“No problem, it’s ready. But are you sure about leaving now? The Multi-Eyed Birds are still out there, and the red-value environment is getting worse…” Li Runshan frowned.

“Exactly because the red-value is rising. The longer I wait, the worse it’ll get. Better to act fast and finish this quickly.” Yu Hong sighed. He had originally planned to make some progress in cultivating his new technique before setting out. But the environment outside was deteriorating too rapidly. Earlier today, when he checked, the external red-value had already reached 30.

If this continued, he might not be able to leave at all.

“You should expand your breeding operations. Otherwise, I worry food supplies might become a problem in the future,” Yu Hong warned.

“Yeah, I’ve already prepared the breeding boxes. You wanted to start farming on your own, right? Just come pick them up,” Li Runshan replied. “The situation is getting worse, but the one good news is that Nana’s condition has stabilized a lot. At least my time in this forsaken place hasn’t been wasted. Ah—not to say this place is bad or anything.”

“Heh,” Yu Hong chuckled.

“Sigh, by the way, how exactly did you get into a conflict with Ge Shenghao?” Li Runshan suddenly changed the topic.

“How would I know? They suddenly attacked me. Luckily, I dodged in time, and then I saw them get taken down one by one by the Multi-Eyed Birds. I was so scared I hid in my house, not daring to make a sound, afraid the monsters would notice me. Fortunately, those Multi-Eyed Birds left after killing them.” Yu Hong’s response was watertight.

“They were insane—picking fights at a time like this. Besides, given the situation, the retrieval team couldn’t wait around for them indefinitely. They wouldn’t risk spreading their forces searching for people. If they weren’t there on time, nobody would care about a few bodyguards,” Li Runshan said, as if explaining, but it sounded more like he was setting the tone for what had happened.

Yu Hong’s thoughts stirred, and he played along.

“I’m guessing they wanted to get a method from me to avoid Multi-Eyed Birds, but they didn’t realize… I was just lucky. I stayed low-profile, so the creatures ignored me.”

Both men sighed through the communicator, feigning sincerity.

After a moment, Li Runshan wrapped up the conversation.

“I’ve prepared everything for you. Be careful on the road. I hope you find the nuclear power generator—daylight hours are getting shorter, and nights are getting longer. I checked—yesterday, daylight only lasted eight hours, three hours shorter than before.”

“That’s exactly why I’m worried about insufficient sunlight—it’ll be a huge problem later,” Yu Hong sighed.

The nuclear power generator was crucial to his logistics.

Water supply systems, solar energy replacements, oxygen generators—they all needed power. His communicator, lights, red-value detector—without power, survival would become significantly harder.

“Too bad I have to take care of Nana. Otherwise, I’d go with you,” Old Li said, pretending to regret it.

“Baiqiu Village still has some supplies. Since you can’t go with me, why don’t you go retrieve some materials instead?” Yu Hong suggested.

“Uh… The environment’s bad right now, and I’m a bit tied up. Let’s talk about it later,” Li Runshan laughed it off.

The communication ended.

Yu Hong began preparing for his departure the next day.

He packed all three silver rune array, along with twenty regular rune array. Then came water, protein bars, dried mushrooms, and dried wild vegetables.

For his bulletproof gear, he chose the enhanced Gray Lizard Set—far more flexible than the White Bear Set, making it much more suitable for travel.

Finally, the most crucial item—the Luminous Stone Blanket. He had made a few small modifications to it.

(End of Chapter)