Chapter 71 Savior

After chatting for a while, Shen Lie learned that this woman was named Xia Ke and was a painter. According to her, she was quite famous domestically and had won several major awards. If not for the sudden cataclysm, he would never have had the chance to get close to someone like her.

Unfortunately, nowadays, aside from painting, skills like singing, acting, and playing the piano had all become completely useless. Even if Picasso were reborn, he couldn't trade that skill for a single bowl of rice.

"How many days haven't you eaten?" Hearing the rumbling sounds coming from the woman's stomach, Shen Lie rummaged through his backpack for a moment, took out a can of eight-treasure porridge, and handed it to her.

This single can of eight-treasure porridge instantly stripped away all of Xia Ke's reserve. She quickly grabbed the can, didn't even use a spoon, popped the lid, and began hungrily pouring it straight into her mouth. In just a few bites, she finished the entire can of porridge, and then looked at Shen Lie with eager, pleading eyes once again.

Shen Lie was not short on food, so he wasn't stingy. He took out a pack of biscuits and handed them to her, along with a bottle of beverage. Nowadays, this sort of thing was definitely considered a luxury, comparable to pre-cataclysm Chateau Lafite.

Without looking at the woman devouring her food, Shen Lie kept processing the information she had given him. According to her, the fall of Yangcheng had been extremely sudden—the city was breached practically overnight. The cause was the sudden emergence of a large spatial rift right in the heart of Yangcheng!

As one of the large-scale survival bases established just as the early signs of the cataclysm began to appear, Yangcheng possessed immense military strength and top-tier conditions in every aspect. It was no exaggeration to call it impregnable. And indeed, for the past few months, neither spider monsters nor various mutated creatures could do a thing against Yangcheng. The largest assault involved nearly one hundred thousand monsters attacking the city, but they had all been beaten back by overwhelming firepower.

Furthermore, Yangcheng had a massive population base. It originally had four to five million residents, and with the influx of evacuees from various regions, the peak population had reached a staggering twenty million. With such a massive population base, even at a ratio of one in a thousand, the number of Awakeners would not be small—there must have been at least twenty thousand.

With such a large number of Awakeners, many highly awakened individuals would naturally emerge, perhaps even some exceeding Duli Duli in power. Coupled with government assistance, these Awakeners surely grew in strength very rapidly; some might even have ignited their third or fourth nodes!

With so many Awakeners, alongside powerful conventional weapons, heavy artillery, missiles, and tanks, it was only natural that they could defend against the spider monsters.

However, the current world defied common sense, and the defensive forces of Yangcheng had fallen victim to this very error. No one could have anticipated that right in the center of Yangcheng—a zone already designated as completely safe—a large spatial rift would suddenly materialize out of thin air, forming so rapidly that there wasn't even the slightest prior warning.

What caused even greater panic was that nobody knew where this spatial rift connected to. Out of it poured no longer spider monsters, but entirely unprecedented, vastly more powerful flying terror beasts!

Countless giant insect monsters swarmed in, instantly catching the Yangcheng garrison completely off-guard. Because it was close-quarters combat inside the city, high-powered weapons like rocket-propelled grenades and missiles were entirely useless. Awakeners lacking ranged attack capabilities could only stand by and watch, which crippled at least two-thirds of their defensive potential. After a fierce and brutal struggle, the authorities on all sides were forced to simultaneously declare the city lost and begin organizing the surviving humans to flee in scattered groups.

News like this brought both good and bad implications for Shen Lie. The bad news was that the current Yangcheng had practically turned into an ocean of monsters. Aside from spider monsters, countless giant insect monsters infested the ruins. Moreover, the luminous light-sphere monsters Xia Ke had just described were also numerous inside Yangcheng. They had likewise appeared when the city fell and were dubbed "lantern monsters" by the escaping crowds.

With so many monsters gathered in Yangcheng, the possibility of any survivors remaining inside was virtually zero. Furthermore, he lacked the ability to charge single-handedly into such a massive horde of monsters. Forget breaking into Yangcheng; even getting close was pure fantasy.

Yet, there was a silver lining. The good news was that Yangcheng had not been completely massacred; a massive number of survivors had managed to escape. This meant his cousin's family still had a glimmer of hope of being alive. Perhaps they were right now following along with one of the refugee columns.

After analyzing all the circumstances, Shen Lie's urge to rush directly to Yangcheng faded slightly. Still, he was not entirely ready to give up; he wanted to get close enough to observe the situation in Yangcheng firsthand. Besides, the survivors who had fled must be scattered everywhere—what if good fortune smiled upon him and he ran into them?

It had to be said that Shen Lie had lost his usual composure. He actually thought a needle-in-a-haystack idea like this was quite feasible. After handing some more food to Xia Ke, he stood up, straddled his motorcycle, and prepared to continue pressing forward in the direction of Yangcheng. This time, however, his destination wasn't the city itself; instead, he intended to search the surrounding areas of Yangcheng for the fleeing survivor groups.

"Where are you going?" Seeing Shen Lie mount the motorcycle, the woman immediately dropped the beverage bottle she had just brought to her lips and anxiously grabbed the bike, refusing to let go.

"I'm going to Yangcheng. Given your condition, it's best you don't follow me into danger. Let's part ways here. I've left some food and medicine here for you as a token of my gratitude for saving my life. If we ever cross paths again in the future, I will definitely make it up to you!"

Seeing the woman's reaction, Shen Lie assumed she still hadn't eaten her fill, so he simply tossed his entire backpack over to her. Anyway, he still had plenty of food stored inside his dark-green gourd, so these few items were nothing.

"Go to Yangcheng? You're still going?" Xia Ke looked at him as if he were an idiot. She thought to herself: I've made the situation in Yangcheng crystal clear, yet you still want to go? Are you in a rush to die, or is something wrong with your brain?

"I have a reason why I must go. I'm afraid I can't travel with you. Take care of yourself, and you'd better smear some disgusting-looking stuff on your face so you don't run into any more perverts."

Earlier, the woman had explained to him why she had been lying naked in the grass: she had been waylaid by a perverted Awakener who had even injured her leg.

However, just as that perverted Awakener was about to assault her, Shen Lie had happened to come roaring down the highway on his motorcycle. The loud engine noise of Shen Lie's bike had abruptly attracted the previously invisible swarm of lantern monsters, which had tragically targeted the assailant and swallowed that wretched character whole in an instant.

As for this woman named Xia Ke, her luck had been extraordinary. Not only had she managed to avoid being spotted by the lantern monsters, but by a fluke of fate, she had also saved Shen Lie's life, leading to him bringing her to a safety zone and rewarding her with a massive stash of food.

In truth, this woman possessed a certain degree of cunning and immense courage. Otherwise, she would never have fired that arrow while Shen Lie was being swallowed by the lantern monsters. She had known that if she didn't shoot, she would die anyway; firing might save Shen Lie, and since Shen Lie was an Awakened one, if he managed to escape alive, she would become the savior of an Awakened warrior.

Indeed, Xia Ke herself was not an Awakener. Surviving and escaping all the way here required not just luck, but also tactical scheming. One had to realize that many Awakeners hadn't managed to escape as far as she had; sometimes physical might was important, but intelligence was equally crucial.

"I saved your life—you're not just going to dump me here and leave me to my fate, are you?" Xia Ke sensed Shen Lie's character from the way he handed her the backpack, and instantly put on a weak, pitiful act, speaking in a fragile voice.