Chapter 73: 73, Pre-catastrophe civilization

In the gloomy forest, the rustling of leaves sounded like some terrifying creature darting through the canopy, and everyone held their breath as they gazed at the eerie white figure ahead, as if afraid their "living breath" might provoke it.

Why would there be a woman scratching at trees in such a place? No one could fathom it.

Yet the more they couldn't understand, the deeper their fear became.

Ren Xiaosu noticed that Yang Xiaojin was tense for the first time; he could see the other's pressed lips and the pale whiteness of the hand gripping the gun, knuckles white from excessive force.

Xu Xianchu's gray shadow stood before him, as if guarding against the white-clad woman suddenly lunging forward, though she was still dozens of meters away.

"Take a detour?" Ren Xiaosu whispered. "Perhaps she won't follow us."

But the moment he finished speaking, a gust of wind swept through the woods, and the white-clad woman's body seemed to lift into the air as if weightless.

Xu Xianchu gritted his teeth. "We can't avoid it. If these little demons block us, why go to Jingshan at all?"

As he spoke, Xu Xianchu actually commanded his gray shadow to stride toward the white-clad woman, one step after another. Ren Xiaosu and Yang Xiaojin exchanged glances, neither expecting Xu Xianchu to be so bold in such a situation.

Some people talk big in daily life but grow timid and nervous when faced with real danger. Others are different—they grow calmer the more perilous the moment, their very bones exuding a ruthless resolve.

"Follow him," Ren Xiaosu said.

The next moment, Ren Xiaosu and Yang Xiaojin silently followed Xu Xianchu, for now they were like grasshoppers on the same thread, and they couldn't let him face the danger alone.

Liu Bu trembled. "What do we do? Follow them?"

"What if something like that appears beside us?" Luo Xinyu said fearfully, then followed, with Wang Lei right behind.

Liu Bu, seeing himself left alone, grew even more frightened. "Wait for me!"

Behind Xu Xianchu, Ren Xiaosu said, "If we find we can't match her, use your gray shadow to trap her and buy us time to concentrate fire."

All three carried guns—this was their strongest overt attack method. If the white-clad woman feared no bullets, they had no other recourse.

Xu Xianchu whispered back, "Alright... I leave my back to you. Watch the surroundings."

Ren Xiaosu felt a pang of doubt. Perhaps those from the Walls had never lived through the communal settlements, making them more trusting of others.

In the communal settlements, night watches were mandatory; people raised in such an environment would never leave their backs to others.

Was this the difference between the communal settlements and the Walls?

The three approached the white-clad woman cautiously, but the closer they drew, the more uneasy they felt...

Originally, Ren Xiaosu had crouched low, the optimal stance for striking, but now he stood upright in place. "What the hell is this?"

Xu Xianchu too was stunned. He commanded his gray shadow to swagger toward the "white-clad woman," plucking her from the tree as if harvesting fruit...

It was... a tattered female plastic doll, the inflatable kind.

"Uh," Ren Xiaosu walked to Xu Xianchu's side and stared for a long while. "What is this?"

"I don't know," Xu Xianchu shook his head. None of them had seen such a thing before, so they all admitted ignorance. "But it looks pretty shabby."

Ren Xiaosu asked, "Isn't this from the Walls?"

"Never seen it in the Walls," Xu Xianchu denied again.

They all fell into contemplation over the doll. They couldn't help but find it absurd—this ragged thing had just terrified them all! Only when they drew near had they realized something was off.

"Wait, there's something else under the tree," Ren Xiaosu noticed, by chance, a metal box among the gnarled roots.

Ren Xiaosu poked the rusty metal box with his dagger, but it had already crumbled beyond recognition—the dagger barely touched it before it crumbled into dust.

Inside the box were several faintly red paper scraps. When the box shattered, the papers turned to powder, leaving only one object behind.

It was a green plastic sheet—or rather, two pieces of plastic enclosing a green paper, on which were drawn crooked, tadpole-like mysterious patterns.

"This..." Xu Xianchu stared at the "plastic sheet" in Ren Xiaosu's hand for a long while. "Could this be something left by human civilization before the catastrophe? Or perhaps both of these are? Plastic degrades in hundreds of years, and buried underground, other things would rot away, but this survived."

"But what's with these strange patterns? Could they hide some secret?" Yang Xiaojin frowned in puzzlement too.

"You guys, doesn't this look like a map?" Liu Bu and the others, who had caught up, said. "The square patterns inside have winding symbols—it looks like a maze!"

Xu Xianchu and Ren Xiaosu's eyes lit up. "Could this be the map of that mysterious city in Jingshan?"

"Hey," Luo Xinyu said, "look, there's writing on it."

Because of decay, the plastic sheet had yellowed and deteriorated, but after Luo Xinyu's reminder, they noticed the tiny characters beneath the mysterious design.

Ren Xiaosu carefully identified and read them aloud: "Please scan the QR code to pay?"

The group was all at a loss. "What's a QR code? Pay whom?"

"What, you have to pay to get through the maze?"

Due to the break in civilization, much of the pre-catastrophe knowledge was lost—some discarded as useless, others shattered in that dark age of survival.

They had never seen such things in the Walls or communal settlements, so their purpose remained a mystery.

Anyway, it wasn't a maze map, that was certain...

Ren Xiaosu looked at Xu Xianchu. "Are you sure that's some mysterious city? Is there an evolution mystery there?"

"How else could Jingshan's changes be explained?" Xu Xianchu said.

"That's true..." Ren Xiaosu said. "There must be secrets in the mountains, but I always felt cities and such weren't so mysterious..."

"Let's go. Only by seeing it can we know," Xu Xianchu carefully tucked the QR code into his chest pocket, as if afraid of damaging it.

"Are we bringing that broken doll along?" Liu Bu asked.

"Bring it. Who knows, it might come in handy," Xu Xianchu said.