Night of Despair

Chapter 218: Blue 216

Bang.

As he pondered, the Black Ship gently reached the shore and returned to the camp’s wooden bridge.

Yu Hong jumped off the Black Ship, dragging the chain that was now without its large iron ball, and entered the array.

At this point, the array inside the mark was no longer eroded by the wooden bridge, and everything had returned to normal.

‘Next, while it’s stable, before the enhancement ends, study the booklet and the new runes, and try to solve the groundwater issue!’

Yu Hong set his plan.

After carefully stowing the booklet, he rested for a while, had something to eat, then turned on the communicator, ready to exchange information with the outside world.

Unexpectedly, as soon as he turned it on, voices of Wei Song and Zhang Kaijun discussing hurriedly came from the communicator.

Seeing Yu Hong online, Zhang Kaijun quickly shifted focus.

“Yu Hong, there’s been a problem!” he exclaimed.

“What happened?” Yu Hong was stunned.

“The groundwater here is cut off, your detector shows strong radiation from the Black Disaster in the water. No matter how we filter it, it’s unusable, our only option now is to collect snowwater. But that won’t support us for long,” Zhang Kaijun explained.

“Cut off??” Yu Hong quickly stood up and ran to the water pipe to turn it on.

Click, click…

After a burst of noise, there indeed wasn’t a single drop of water coming from the tap!

“!!!” Although Yu Hong had anticipated that something like this might happen, when it actually came to pass, his heart started to race again.

Not to mention ordinary people, even he couldn’t survive long without water.

Although he had stockpiled water for several months, that was water without a source; it diminished with each use.

He went back to the communicator.

“Hasn’t Aurora City found a solution?” he asked intently.

“They found the Black Disaster affecting the groundwater behind the scenes,” Wei Song said helplessly. “Due to its extreme danger, Aurora City rated it as Level 9, just below War Level. It’s a horrifying disaster called the Dissolving Leech.”

“Dissolving Leech? Is it Blood Tide or Evil Shadow?” Yu Hong asked quickly.

“Blood Tide. It’s a kind of Black Disaster that can disintegrate itself into particles invisible to the naked eye.

It can dissolve in water and hide in any liquid. Once you drink it, it instantly dehydrates you completely, then reproduces more Dissolving Leeches.

Several hundreds from Aurora City have already died, all selected elites, but no one has been able to solve this problem,” Wei Song explained.

“Bombs? Even bombs with additives are useless?” Yu Hong was somewhat incredulous.

“We tried bombing. It’s useless because you never know where the Dissolving Leeches are, or in what liquid they’ve dissolved. Groundwater is flowing; we can’t just explode and evaporate all of it, that would be pointless even if we won,” Zhang Kaijun replied. “So the only solution is to find a new water source. Also, the temperature outside has dropped again, after the Black Fog, it might turn into extremely cold weather. Without sunlight, the temperature drops too severely.”

Yu Hong glanced at the temperature inside the cave: -3 degrees.

Even the cave was only three degrees below zero, not to mention the outside.

He discussed with the two how to find a new water source, and they all agreed that only rainwater and condensed air water were reliable.

But these two sources were greatly unstable.

After the communication ended, Yu Hong stood up and walked into the passage, looking at the dark camp outside with a thin layer of light frost already covering the ground.

He opened the door and put the detector outside, and shortly, the detector displayed stable temperature data: -28 degrees.

Yu Hong frowned deeply.

‘This kind of weather is really lethal…’

In the time that followed, he studied the new booklet and runes while maintaining high-frequency communication with the outside world.

But despite Wei Song, Zhang Kaijun, and Xin Zhilei from Aurora City implementing many emergency measures, a large number of survivors were still silently freezing to death at night.

Due to the lack of water and the low temperatures, a large number of people caught colds and fevers, were isolated, and left to fate.

Every day, many people were frozen alive in Gray City and Wei Song’s camp.

Xin Zhilei from Aurora City seemed to have some issues and had also rarely been online recently. It was just the three of them frequently on the channel.

Before he knew it, the day for the enhancement of the Black Mark’s fences arrived.

Yu Hong was prepared to seamlessly integrate the enhancement into his new Cultivation Technique.

After having received the booklet from Daoist Star River Xu Zhengyuan, and seeing the powerful effects of the True Origin Divine Light, he thought about whether he could integrate that into his new Cultivation Technique.

If not, he would take the modular cultivation approach.

The so-called modular cultivation is cultivating a specific Cultivation Technique in a single field to reach rapid completion and cover weaknesses.

This route was one he had painfully thought out.

For example, if you need defensive power, you would start cultivating a specialized martial art like Iron Shirt, although it would definitely be very basic and low-level at first, the cultivation would be fast.

The Thunderbolt Leg Technique could have been fast too, had it not been for constant merging of new things.

This stage-wise cultivation’s biggest benefit was its immediate usability.

Of course, the main reason was that Black Mark couldn’t enhance a miraculous ultimate Martial Art all at once. After all, you can’t raise something too high without a foundation.

‘I shouldn’t keep merging things like I did with the Thunderbolt Leg Technique, spending too long in one direction makes my weak points very obvious. Encountering a Blood Tide Monster is manageable, but facing something like Evil Shadow, I don’t even dare to touch… The type is too singular and extreme, being too heavily countered… Now that there’s a shortage of water, if I could enhance a Cold Ice Palm that can condense water, wouldn’t I naturally not lack water to drink?’

‘And the air, if I could cultivate a Martial Art that enhances detoxification, making me immune to all poisons, maybe I can completely avoid the pollution and toxicity of the air?’

Faced with the choice of a new Cultivation Technique, Yu Hong had new ideas.

Currently, his Martial Arts still involved going head-to-head using his flesh, without any protection, at most his skin was a bit thicker, his bones a bit harder. Although covered in a white light, that wasn’t a protective layer but was used to enhance his flesh and bones.

His flesh and blood body was the one that actually took the hits.

‘I’m still within the realm of martial arts now, if I could strengthen to the realm of Mystical Martial Arts, to be able to send out an Energy Palm Print through the air, wouldn’t I be able to easily deal with an Evil Shadow?’

There were too many inspirations about Cultivation Techniques…

Yu Hong quickly reined in his thoughts, reminding himself to first take the path of completeness cost-effectiveness, and then think of upgrading to Mystical Martial Arts later.

Otherwise, he might bite off more than he could chew.

*

*

*

Hundreds of kilometers away from Aurora City, in a dark and arid stone forest,

Hiss!

In the darkness, a pair of dark red luminescent vertical pupils swept around the stone forest, inspecting all the possible hidden corners.

The owner of the vertical pupils was a giant black lizard, fifteen meters long and four meters tall.

Its lizard head resembled a rhinoceros, encased in thick black metallic armor, with a sharp horn growing from its forehead.

Its body constantly dripped black, sticky, foul-smelling poisonous liquid—

This was a level 8 dangerous Toxic Rhino Dragon. This creature was also one of the Blood Tide Monsters that the joint military disliked dealing with the most.

Because not only did this thing have extremely fast self-healing capabilities, but it also exploded upon death.

The explosion was tremendously powerful, and the splattered poison was instantly lethal. The range and destructiveness were both extremely horrifying.

Behind a stone pillar, Lin Yiyi crouched, cautiously hiding.

After their convoy was attacked, she and a nurse had fled the scene, and luckily encountered a kind stranger who warned them.

They had just exchanged a few words when a new Black Disaster chased after them.

Thus, Yiyi forcibly pulled the man along to escape.

The three of them ran wildly, but the nurse couldn’t keep up and found a place to hide and rest, while Lin Yiyi went to look for the rescue convoy.

Unfortunately, despite searching for a long time, she found nothing.

In the darkness, the rescue convoy didn’t dare to make their presence loudly known.

Behind the stone pillar, Lin Yiyi avoided the Toxic Rhino Dragon and quickly jogged through the stone forest, soon entering a narrow and hidden dark cave.

The cave wasn’t big, roughly a hundred square meters in space.

The nurse, groggy, leaned against the wall and fell asleep, her forehead burning up while her body felt cold. Even giving her his own coat didn’t help.

“She’s not going to make it,” another person in the cave said softly.

It was a man, wearing a gray shirt with a black vest and tattered trousers, his brown hair messy.

His deep blue eyes quietly stared at the ground, beside him a small atomic lamp flashlight, the sole source of light here.

The faint green light cast a dismal green over the three people in the cave.

“I went, saw, outside that, that creature… still blocking, unwilling to leave!” Lin Yiyi said with effort, gesturing as she spoke.

“Did you use the method I gave you?” the brown-haired, blue-eyed man asked, looking up.

“Used, it. Very effective, but it, still won’t leave,” Lin Yiyi said helplessly.

“Logically, you should have positioning chips in you, but since no one has come to pick you up yet, it means they can’t break through the Black Disaster’s blockade, or maybe, you’ve been abandoned.”

The man analyzed calmly.

Lin Yiyi found it strange too. It had been so many days, and nobody from Aurora City had come to find them. Even if they were blocked, they could have sent a signal flare at night…

“No, it can’t be…” she shook her head. With Xue Ningning and Yu Hong around, someone would definitely come to rescue her.

“You trust others so much?” the man exclaimed in surprise. “Aren’t you afraid they might harm you?”

Just like when she had first met him, this girl just pulled him along without even knowing who he was, his name, what his nature was, whether he was good or bad.

“I, trust, them,” Lin Yiyi said carefully as she picked up the nurse to keep her warm.

“You’re interesting,” the man chuckled, seemingly intrigued. “The temperature has dropped again. If we don’t start a fire soon, you’ll all freeze to death.”

“I must, find, the transmitter…” Lin Yiyi still remembered the contact numbers for Aurora City and Gray City. If they could connect to the satellite communications, they might be rescued.

“There are no towns nearby,” the man coughed a few times, his face turning pale.

“Here.” Lin Yiyi fished out a capsule from her pocket, an enhanced anti-inflammatory drug Yu Hong had prepared for her. “Medicine.”

The man paused, looking at the hand extended before him, silent.

A flash of indescribable irritation swept across his eyes, quickly suppressed.

“You’re, very strange…” he muttered, taking the medicine and stuffing it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing.

This feeling was novel; he was used to people fearing him. Suddenly, someone naïve ran up, worried he was sick, and gave him her most precious medicine.

This pure kindness seemingly stirred a long-forgotten memory in him.

“Thanks for the medicine, I feel much better already,” the man said softly before the medicine could have taken effect.

“Oh, what’s your name? Whenever I find some medicine later, I’ll repay you immediately,” he asked earnestly.

“Yiyi, Lin Yiyi,” Yiyi pointed to her face, then to her hunched back. “Easy, to remember.”

“Remember, to repay me. Not much left,” she added another sentence.