Night of Despair

Chapter 221: Scars 3

Gray City.

The empty city wall passage was dotted with soldiers in full protective gear, who like strings of black ants, patrolled wearily and tensely.

From time to time, one could see heaps of pale red foam on the ground.

These foams were everywhere, as if they had been sprayed randomly and discarded by the roadside.

The piles of foam varied in size, some even taking on a human shape.

They were like a pale red growth, proliferating across the entire surface of Gray City.

Zhang Kaijun was dressed in protective clothing, his eyes peering through the goggles at this scene.

“How is the quarantine foam working?” he asked.

“Quite well,” a towering, burly personal guard behind him replied. “It can isolate any source of infection at the fastest speed, preventing the further expansion of most infectious elements of the Black Disaster.”

“Credit the research department for their achievements,” Zhang Kaijun said indistinctly. “How much longer can we hold out on water?”

“About five days,” another person answered. “According to the instructions of the engineering department, all water is being used for the nuclear power plant cooling cycle to avoid excessively high temperatures that could burn out nuclear reaction facilities.”

“Can’t we delay it by collecting snow and ice from outside?”

“Unfortunately, the quantity is too little.”

“So you’re saying…,” Zhang Kaijun walked to the edge of the city wall, looking at Gray City under the bright lights. “If we can’t come up with a solution within five days, we’ll face the decision to leave due to the loss of energy and water, having to relocate in search of water?”

Too many people had already died inside the city.

Scattered individuals sat in the central square below, sitting under the lights, next to the cooling water pipes, wrapped in thick quilts, stiff and motionless, unclear whether they were dead or alive.

Several older teens, leading smaller children, seemed to be searching for relatives everywhere.

“I’m afraid that’s the case,” his subordinate responded. “Only a little over two thousand three hundred people left alive in the city. And that’s after we’ve recently taken in quite a few people from outside. But without water, no one can survive.”

“There’s still plenty of reserve water in Aurora City; those who want to leave can go,” Zhang Kaijun said calmly.

“What about the supplies?”

“Keep half, distribute a standard external unit to every person for the rest.”

“Understood.”

The subordinate left.

Zhang Kaijun stood in place, by the city wall, turned around, and looked outside the city.

Outside, the Black Fog rolled and tumbled with no stars or moons, no distant sights, the thick Black Fog like a giant wall blocking the entire face of Gray City.

The cold wind howled, and suddenly a snowflake slowly fell, landing on his shoulder.

“How can we survive…?”

He murmured softly to himself and extended his hand, gently catching a snowflake.

“Jun, come out and play, it’s snowing!”

Suddenly, a familiar female voice came from within the Black Fog outside.

“We’re all waiting for you outside, what’s the use of hiding in the city and deceiving yourself?”

“The city is just an illusion; you won’t know until you come out. The Black Disaster is a lie, there is no Black Disaster; you’re just hallucinating.”

Familiar voices kept coming from outside the city; these were sounds that only Zhang Kaijun could hear.

Everyone heard a unique voice from the shadows in the Black Fog, one that didn’t overlap with others.

Only Zhang Kaijun could hear such voices, which others could not and would not be able to hear.

Zhang Kaijun’s face remained calm; his right hand slipped into his pocket, gripping a hard gun handle.

He turned around and walked back.

Just then, a patrol passed by and saluted him, brushing past.

Bang.

Suddenly a gunshot sounded from behind.

Zhang Kaijun tensed and turned to look back.

Among the patrol members who had just passed, a female member had shot herself in the face.

Her bulletproof helmet had already been pulled back; the inside was plastered with blood and was unrecognizable.

She lay twitching on the ground as the surrounding team members quickly dragged her aside, their hands trembling.

It was suicide.

Zhang Kaijun walked over, squatted down, and silently observed the young face with a gaping bullet hole in her forehead.

One of the team members took out a small red bottle and began spraying the still-twitching corpse.

Pink foam was quickly sprayed out, covering the entire body and all her equipment.

This was to prevent the potential outbreak of the Black Disaster from her body.

*

*

*

Black Wind Camp.

The white snow blanketed every corner of the camp.

Inside a cave.

The edges of a black communicator reflected a faint, worn luster.

A layer of brown undercoat peeked through where the black paint had worn off.

A pale, rough man’s hand stretched over it, steadying the communicator.

The other hand was tweaking a frequency knob, slowly searching for a channel.

Yu Hong sat at the edge of the table, frowning slightly.

Ten minutes had passed.

No matter how he adjusted the search, there was no voice coming from the communicator.

Hiss…

The continuous tiny sound of electric current, clearly audible, only added to the sense of solitude.

“Cannot get in touch with Minister Xin Zhilei, and now even Wei Song and Old Zhang are unreachable?!” Yu Hong’s joy at having recently reached the completion of the Cultivation Technique and gained its characteristics had by now completely disappeared.

He had intended to contact Aurora City and Gray City, hoping to get some information on mutated individuals and enhanced blood samples.

But…

Click.

He turned off the communicator and stood up.

‘Something must have happened.’

He was clear in his mind; Zhang Kaijun’s character was extremely cold and stable. Unless something unexpected occurred, he would never forgo their daily communication.

After all, the exchange of information and intelligence could often save many lives.

Standing up, Yu Hong walked to the basement and sat down cross-legged in the center of the training room.

On the ground lay a basic Cultivation Technique of the Condensing Water Technique that he had written earlier.

“Just having the function of condensing water sources is enough to call it the Condensing Water Technique.”

He picked up the piece of paper that had been torn down, briefly scanned it for a check, confirmed there were no issues, and then took a deep breath.

‘Enhance the Condensing Water Technique, direction: increase the water discharge rate, enhance endurance.’

Those were the only two requirements, and he didn’t care about the rest.

The main purpose of this technique was actually to solve the water supply issue and provide a means of long-range attack.

Therefore, increasing the water discharge rate could simulate weapons such as high-pressure water guns, and enhancing endurance was to ensure it could be used as a replenishing water source when needed.

Soon, a black line flashed, flowing from the back of his hand into the paper.

‘Enhance the Condensing Water Technique?’

“Success!” Yu Hong felt relieved, knowing that he had finally completed the creation of a basic Cultivation Technique on his own.

Although the threshold for this technique was quite high, requiring one to sense the many particles in the surrounding vacuum and filter out the hydrophilic energy particles needed.

But this technique was meant for his personal use anyway.

Creating a widespread cultivation technique was beyond his current abilities.

Having confirmed that he could enhance it, Yu Hong didn’t start immediately but reached out and picked up a blue light booklet from the ground nearby, which he had obtained from the Star River Daoist of the True Origin Sect.

After thinking for a moment, he put down the booklet and picked up another one that had been prepared earlier.

That was the mysterious Daoist Scripture: Pure Yuan Channeling Scripture.

Similarly, after hesitating, he decided not to add it to the enhancement.

‘What I need now is to quickly master a Condensing Water Technique for use, not to enhance a powerful and uniquely functional advanced Cultivation Technique. Such a technique would not be something I can master in a short time anyway. I can add it later when I strengthen it,’ he thought to himself.

Resisting the temptation, Yu Hong put both booklets down.

‘I’ll modify them later… There will be opportunities for enhancement synthesis in the future…’ he comforted himself.

Once again, he stretched out his hand, placed it on the paper, and started the enhancement process anew.

This time, the black line flashed, a countdown appeared, and the enhancement officially began.

’12 hours 8 minutes.’

Not a long time.

Yu Hong breathed a sigh of relief.

“The simpler the Cultivation Technique, the better. The faster the training speed, the better.”

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The sound of the Black Giant passing by came from a distance.

Yu Hong had grown accustomed to it. He stood up and left the basement to check on the mini nuclear reactor.

The temperature inside the reactor chamber was very high, with the outside around negative thirty degrees, but here it was over thirty degrees and still slowly rising.

Yu Hong confirmed that there were no issues with the reactor, although he didn’t know how to inspect it. As long as the temperature didn’t exceed the gauge limits and there was no radiation leak, everything was fine.

Having nothing else to do, he had his meal and then connected the radar he had received to the power source to try it out.

The radar had an integrated color display to prevent signal obstruction, and Yu Hong moved it to the second floor of the stone castle.

After some fiddling.

Buzz!

The screen lit up.

It was pitch black with a silver needle continuously rotating clockwise.

Yu Hong lifted the cover beneath the radar to reveal a row of operation switches.

From left to right, the first black switch was the power.

The second switch was for temperature.

The third was for precision.

The fourth was… for Blood Tide Monsters.

The fifth was for shadows!

“This is an improved version… It makes sense, who would still produce the old version of the radar at a time like this?”

Yu Hong looked at the radar screen, about the size of a human head, and flipped the switch for temperature.

Click.

The switch was turned on.

Instantly, the radar screen turned blue, and three dark blue dots moved rapidly from left to right.

Yu Hong had a thought, combined with the outside view of the black lizard, and determined that the nearest dark blue dot was the Black Giant that had just passed by the camp.

Then, he turned off the temperature and turned on the Blood Tide switch.

Snap.

Whoosh!

Dozens of red dots appeared on the black screen, scattered evenly but none was approaching the camp.

The entire area of the camp was like a bare circle.

Satisfied, Yu Hong turned it off and then activated the last switch for Evil Shadows.

Hiss!

In an instant, the entire screen turned a vivid red.

Countless bright red dots surrounded a small piece of black in the middle of the camp like a small black island in a red sea.

“So many!?” Yu Hong was startled.

But soon he realized something wasn’t right.

“No, if there were really so many, how could the transport team have come in? From this view, there is no crack around!”

“No… it shouldn’t be like this! The radar should detect Evil Shadows based on the concentration of Red Value, and the reason it’s so red around the camp may still be due to the wooden bridge and Black Ship behind it… after all, they’re the product of over a million Red Value combined.”

Upon closer inspection, Yu Hong didn’t find any specific dots representing individual Evil Shadows on the radar.

He stood up and hurried to check the wooden bridge again, noting there were no changes, and the bridge hadn’t eroded the Array but was embedded in the camp as if it were part of it.

Back in the stone castle, a thought rose in his mind.

“Could it be possible to assimilate this wooden bridge pier and the Black Ship into the camp as part of it?”

He had already experienced the purpose of the Black Ship, which could take him to various mysterious places. It was also very durable and hard to damage.