Looking at the woman's thin arms and hollow cheeks, Chen Xuan could imagine the conditions these survivors lived in. She was in her early twenties—an age when, in peacetime, she would not even have graduated from college. Now she carried the burden of keeping her people alive, risking death each time she ventured through the city to bring back the supplies they needed to survive.
Humanity had not gone extinct. Its people simply lived like rats.
This future was certainly not the happy ending Lin Qing had hoped for.
"That Giant Nano-Lifeform you said was sealing off the city—does it have four long legs, with the rest of its body hidden above the clouds?" Liu Li asked curiously.
"You've seen the Sky Patroller?" Zhuang Yu was astonished. "That's right. As long as that thing is around, no one can leave Jiangcheng. You're incredibly lucky to have seen it and survived."
"Sky Patroller... It even has a nickname?" Wang Baihu muttered.
"All the large lifeforms have nicknames. The first thing every new search-team member learns is their names, their territories, and their patrol routes." She paused. "The Sky Patroller is an exception, of course. It's so big that it can reach any part of the city in no time. For most people it spots, there's only one outcome: death without even a body left to bury."
"Have you never thought of destroying it?"
"You think we haven't tried? Nano-Lifeforms get far stronger as they grow. We've tried everything, even a miniature nuclear bomb!" Zhuang Yu clenched her fist. "And what did it get us? Hundreds more casualties, and we couldn't even blow off one of its legs."
Silence fell over the group.
Honglian finally broke it. "By the way, one of the main reasons we came here was to find someone."