Chapter 1 The Ravaged Land

The old Earth, ravaged by large-scale nuclear wars, could hardly regain its former appearance, and the ocean was also eroded by severe pollution. After the "Doomsday" crisis, this planet underwent irreversible changes.

More than 50% of the land had been turned into desert, and the color of the ocean had changed, with different manifestations in areas with different degrees of pollution, such as purple and black. There were almost no living creatures in the shallow sea, and the truncated ecological chain had led to certain mutations in deep-sea creatures. The fittest survived, and species that failed to adapt to the changing environment became extinct.

Just as many 21st-century scientists had predicted, the polar ice caps eventually melted. After that, the Ohio Valley was flooded, the entire continent of Australia sank into the sea, and New York became a swamp...

War brought death, and death stopped the war.

When the last of the people looked at their devastated homes and saw the second "sun" disappear into the sky, heat, thirst, pain, regret, despair... all of this flooded their hearts and would accompany them until death arrived.

The intense radiation polluted the fertile land near the equator, and the ruins of cities glowed in the dark night, a situation that lasted for a full century. Some species disappeared, while others mutated and evolved.

Time flew by, and dark clouds began to gather over some barren and desolate lands. Heavy rain poured down, cooling the boiling poisonous seawater on the surface, dispersing the turbid air, and healing the cracked wounds of the Earth.

After the warm rain washed over it, a silent, desolate earth appeared.

There would always be some who survived. Human life was as fragile as an ant, but also as tenacious.

The survivors crawled out of the ruins of civilization and embarked on the road to survival. They found that the temperature was hotter than in the past, and the moisture in the air was heavier in non-desert areas. Above their heads was an orange-yellow sky, and the sun emitted a blinding light.

In the ruins, some strange plants began to sprout. Even without watering, even exposed to the scorching sun, these wild plants with bizarre colors and shapes grew wildly, covering one piece of land after another.

For the ancient Earth, this kind of drastic climate change was not the first time... Ice ages, crustal movements, volcanic eruptions had all left traces, but they had never changed the trajectory of the Earth's orbit. Now, it still rotated and moved through space, orbiting around the sun, as it had for the past three billion years.

Technology became a thing of the past, and the survivors returned to a primitive state of survival, forming social structures similar to tribes, wandering across the surface of the Earth, searching for food... and reliable havens.

In those non-desert areas, there were poisonous swamps, deep canyons, muddy depressions, and desolate mountains. But besides that, on the vast Earth, there were indeed one or two paradises...

In a canyon in North America, there was such a place. It was a huge underground depression like a city, shaped like a pocket, with a thick "cloud" of vegetation covering the top like a pergola, shielding it from most of the scorching sun. There was a comfortable temperature, land and environment suitable for normal crop growth, clean and abundant underground water sources... and most importantly, there was the wreckage of "half" of a starship.

No one knew why this spaceship was here. Perhaps this was once a secret scientific research base of a certain country, or perhaps it was a spaceship that crashed after a battle.

In short, eventually a tribe discovered this place. The environment gave them a foundation for survival, and the wreckage of the starship allowed them to rekindle the spark of civilization. Life flourished once again, and a new human society was established.

Nearly three centuries had passed, and this place had become the only remaining human settlement on Earth. The people who lived there called it—Blessed Village.

…………

Inside the Crystal Lake Underground Laboratory.

Doomsday Assault had seen the end of the road. He had searched all the forks and followed the corridor all the way here. At this moment, there was a staircase leading upwards in front of him, like the zigzag fire escape stairs commonly used in residential buildings, with iron railings and handrails, and metal stepping boards. He could vaguely see the situation above through the gaps under his feet.

He took out his weapon and approached cautiously. The light here was not good. Looking up from below, it was difficult to detect whether there was an ambush.

"Hey, you two Jianghu guys, stop hiding, I can see you!" Doomsday Assault was obviously bluffing. He wasn't afraid of revealing his whereabouts, because he knew very well that this was the end of the laboratory, and the exit was undoubtedly above. If Kuang Zong Jian Ying (Crazy Trace Sword Shadow) and Feng Bu Jue (Sealed Awareness) wanted to ambush, this was the only place they could choose. And for two people ambushing from a high position, their whereabouts must have been discovered long ago.

"The grenade trick is really clever, huh?" Doomsday Assault said, "Kuang Zong Jian Ying, is this all you've got? You Jianghu bunch of shrinking turtles are pretty good at playing tricks." He cursed as much as possible without being censored, trying to provoke the other party to show themselves, because at this moment, the enemy was in the dark and he was in the light, which was not very advantageous.

"What's wrong? Still don't dare to come out?" Doomsday Assault sneered, "You're two against one, are you still afraid?"

Only his own echo answered him.

"Hmph... you have to think clearly." Doomsday Assault said, "Under the effect of indiscriminate survival value reduction, your consumption is twice as high as mine. Being timid in the face of an advantage will only waste survival points in vain." He paused and added, "I don't mind turning around and leaving, the further away from you the better. Then everyone will just consume survival value replenishment agents, and see who runs out first. Even if I lose in the end, you will have to waste at least twice as many agents as I do."

Doomsday Assault's words seemed to make sense, but since he appeared here at this moment, it meant that he had not chosen that strategy.

If Doomsday Assault felt that he had no chance of winning in a head-on confrontation, he would not have continued to approach his opponents. When Final Assault was blown to death, he should have run in the opposite direction, found a favorable terrain to ambush, and waited for the other party to come to him. If he succeeded in a sneak attack and directly killed one person, then he would still have a chance of winning.

So... the only reason why Doomsday Assault came here was that he was confident that he could fight two opponents alone and win. And the basis of this confidence was obviously some powerful skill or item.

After shouting for a long time, there was still no response from above the stairs, which made Doomsday Assault's situation embarrassing. He couldn't help but think: Could it be that there was another floor to this laboratory above these stairs? And that floor was as big as this one below?

Thinking of this, he cautiously reached the stairs and slowly walked upwards. He could only do this, firstly, because if the other party refused to show themselves no matter what, he had no choice but to either go up or leave; secondly, if there was really another floor above, then he could shout here for an hour and the other party wouldn't hear him.

He went back and forth, climbing the steps, and surprisingly did not encounter any ambush, and couldn't even detect any signs of a trap. But Doomsday Assault didn't dare to be careless at all. The grenade incident was still fresh in his memory. His teammate had died instantly because he was too close, and he himself had almost been blown to death. He would probably never forget this lesson in his entire career, or even his entire life.

He walked up and down the stairs, which were about three stories high, four times, for a full five minutes. When he finally reached the top floor, Doomsday Assault was stunned. What he saw in front of him was a corridor, an empty corridor, with the end only ten meters ahead. The entire wall there was a large door, divided into left and right parts, with the gap in the middle interlocking in a jagged shape. The thickness of this door was definitely not inferior to that of any bank vault, and the switch next to the door had been destroyed...

"Where are the people?" This was Doomsday Assault's first reaction.

He and Final Assault had already explored the end of the other side of the laboratory, and the end of this side was the exit. All the way here, he had seen the traces left by Feng Bu Jue and Kuang Zong Jian Ying, and had also fallen into the traps they had set. He had also searched every fork in the road. He must have gone the right way, but why... was there no one here?

"Could it be that they went out?" The thought flashed through Doomsday Assault's mind, but he immediately rejected this conjecture. "Impossible... according to the script introduction, the environment outside is more severe than inside here. Maybe the survival value will decrease even faster. Besides, the switch is broken... how could they get out?" He thought again, "Could it be... that they went outside first to activate the switch to close the door, and then destroyed the switch on the inside before the door closed, trying to trap me inside?"

"That wouldn't work either... there's no benefit to going out." Doomsday Assault paced back and forth with a stiff expression. After a long while, he finally came up with a theory that he thought was correct. "That's right! That must be it!" He had a sudden realization in his mind, but his face and tone were still the same. "They came to the end of the corridor, destroyed the exit switch, creating the illusion that they had already escaped from the laboratory, and then went back... They must have quietly slipped past me on the main passage while I was searching the forks, and we missed each other... At this moment, they're probably hiding at the end of the other side of the laboratory."

…………

At the same time, outside the laboratory.

Under the dim yellow sky was a vast, undulating sea of sand. A strong wind was blowing in the air, and black sandstorms were raging everywhere. If a person stood in this environment without protection, it would be difficult to even open their eyes. As soon as they opened their mouths to speak, they would inevitably swallow a mouthful of sand, and their voice wouldn't even carry five meters away.

A "Sand Shark Cabin" was hovering and traveling on this sea of sand. The cabin was twenty meters long, six meters wide, and more than four meters high. The external shape looked like a giant armored shark, but the Sand Shark Cabin had no "fins". The top was a streamlined, smooth design. The color of the cabin was painted the same khaki as the desert. There was no windshield or viewing device in the front, relying entirely on the internal detection radar and navigation device to travel.

The air inside the Sand Shark Cabin was treated, and although the two players were not wearing protective suits, their survival value loss had stopped.

At this time, Feng Bu Jue was sitting leisurely in the driver's seat with his hands behind his head. He didn't take long to learn how to drive the Sand Shark Cabin. The operation interface of these devices was not complicated, and the navigation coordinates of the destination had already been entered. He just needed to select automatic mode.

When Feng Bu Jue walked out of the laboratory and saw the environment outside, he understood that manual driving was basically meaningless on this planet, because there was no "road" at all. Not to mention a road, there weren't even any landmarks, so this Sand Shark Cabin must rely on automatic navigation to get to where he wanted to go.

So... the question came again, how did this group of people find the Crystal Lake Laboratory?

Hank claimed that his team was here to search because they "received instructions." This sentence meant that the superior department that issued the instructions to them had the specific coordinates of the Crystal Lake Laboratory.

This gave rise to a new question: did their superiors find these coordinates a long time ago, or did they only discover them today? And what means did they use to find this place? Was it a micro-detection robot?

Feng Bu Jue's speculation was... This team didn't come sooner or later, they came right after the "interstellar immigrants" left. This actually illustrated an obvious fact... And Hank's reaction when he first saw the "outsiders" gave Feng Bu Jue a further basis for reasoning. At this moment, although they had not yet arrived at the village, Feng Bu Jue could basically determine the situation there.

"Why didn't you kill him?" Kuang Zong Jian Ying sat in the passenger seat next to him, turned his head and said to Feng Bu Jue, "Keeping him, aren't you afraid of things changing?" The voice he used to say these words was naturally very low, so that Hank, who was tied up in the corner behind them, wouldn't hear it.

"There's no reason to kill people at every turn when there's no enmity." Feng Bu Jue replied.

Kuang Zong Jian Ying chuckled twice: "Really... Isn't it a bit too late for you to pretend to be lawful good now?"

"It has nothing to do with whether I'm lawful good or not. It's mainly because this NPC is still useful." Feng Bu Jue replied, "We still have to rely on his help to sneak into the village."

"He'll help us?" As Kuang Zong Jian Ying spoke, he slightly turned his head again, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Hank, whose face was pale in the distance, "Why would he? He can't resist now, but when he gets back to the village, he can find a chance to escape at any time, or he can just shout and let others come and catch us."

The corners of Feng Bu Jue's mouth revealed a smile as he replied, "Everyone has weaknesses. Once they're caught, they'll betray their principles, and then they'll do anything you want them to." He got up from his seat and said softly, "For Hank... simple coercion and psychological pressure will do." After he finished speaking, he walked towards Hank...