The sun shone brightly beneath a cloudless sky.
These should have been words to describe beautiful, clear weather. But in this era, for living creatures, they meant enduring a hellish ordeal.
Temperatures nearing 50°C, combined with sunlight so intense that a single glance could blind you, relentlessly scorched the land.
Along a national highway that stretched for dozens of kilometers, the once-smooth asphalt had long since softened like a sponge beneath the scorching heat. Pocked with holes, it had melted into crude tar that flowed along both sides of the road.
Walk barefoot across it, and in less than five seconds, the soles of your feet would begin to smell strongly of roast meat.
Besides that, all sorts of rust-covered, wrecked vehicles lay scattered haphazardly along the roadside.
The skeletons in their driver's seats proved how sudden the disaster five years ago had been. They had died before they could even hit the brakes, crashing into the guardrails and wrecking their cars. Those who had been lucky enough to survive were devoured by nearby residents turned into living corpses, leaving nothing but bleached bones.
Now, Xia Leng walked along the road, which exuded waves of scorching heat like a swamp. Several layers of homemade insulating boards were strapped to the soles of his shoes.
He panted softly, holding a canteen with only a third of its clean water left. He pulled his hood down over his eyebrows to shield his eyes from the blazing sun and its harmful ultraviolet rays.
The journey had been far more arduous than he'd imagined. The scorching sun had drained his provisions and drinking water, and he'd already used up more than half of them just to keep up his strength as he walked.
Yet the Fortress in the next city was still more than halfway along the route.
At this rate, before he even reached his first destination, he'd probably dehydrate and be baked into a dried corpse on this road.
He had to save what little food he had left to maintain his strength for a hunt. Only then would he have enough to make it to the next city.
Xia Leng spotted a van beside the road with its front end half-destroyed from crashing into the guardrail. He pulled open the heavily peeling rear door and climbed inside, hoping to recover his strength and escape the blazing sun for a while.
The temperature inside the van was just as oven-like, but smashing all the windows to let air circulate still made it better than standing directly under the sun.
Once inside, Xia Leng saw two oddly posed skeletons slumped over the driver's and passenger's seats.
They must have died instantly in the crash, making them some of the luckier ones.
After climbing in, Xia Leng first searched every corner of the van for food to restore his strength or any useful tools. Even food that had expired five years ago would have been welcome.
But as expected, everything valuable had been stripped away by other passing refugees, even the clothes the two skeletons had once worn.
With no other choice, Xia Leng rested briefly in the wrecked van. Later, he'd check the woods beside the road to see if he could hunt some small game.
Of course, "small game" meant no bigger than an arm in thickness or length.
If he ran into a mutated mammal, he'd have no choice but to run for his life, given that he was alone.
Still, Xia Leng now had a special ability. Perhaps he had enough strength to fight one after all.
He had only just lain down on the van's battered rear seat when—
Suddenly!
Several loud, aggressive roars came from the highway behind him!
And the closer they got, the more ear-splitting the noise became!
Xia Leng immediately tensed, ducked down, and quickly shut the open door to keep the van ventilated.
About half a minute later, the roar had closed to within a hundred meters of his location.
He recognized the sound: motorcycles.
His first instinct wasn't to ask the riders for help or a lift. Instead, he swiftly slid off the seat and lay down beneath it, doing his best to stay out of their sight.
In the wasteland's rules, everyone knew what happened when a group came across someone traveling alone.
Through the broken rearview mirror, Xia Leng glimpsed several burly men in sun-shielding helmets and punk-style leather jackets. They rode toward him on retro motorcycles cobbled together from discarded parts.
The heavy chains hanging from their clothes clanked against each other as the motorcycles bounced along.
To keep their wheels from being ruined on the half-melted asphalt, they had also fitted metal chains, like tank treads, over the tires to reduce the area touching the scorching road.
Xia Leng gripped his dagger in his right hand. With his left, he rested a fingertip on the trigger of the crossbow he'd taken from the leader, aiming it at the window.
If they spotted him first, Xia Leng wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger and draw first blood.
These guys were probably an independently organized gang of post-apocalyptic bikers, like the motorcycle gangs of the old days. They survived by robbing and killing refugees traveling alone.
Judging by the modified, high-powered shotguns hanging from their waists, they were the completely shameless sort.
As the gang drew closer, Xia Leng actually grew calmer. His mind was already working through several ways to fight them off.
Fortunately, the van he was hiding in looked no different from the other wrecked vehicles around it, so it didn't attract the gang's attention.
They rode past and continued on, raising a cloud of dust.
They even had a battered subwoofer mounted on one of the motorcycles, blasting some rowdy DJ music as they went...
Perhaps the reason they were so brazen was that the mutated creatures active during the day couldn't catch up with their motorcycles.
Xia Leng watched them disappear into the distance before finally letting out a small sigh of relief. He even felt a strange sense of regret...
After waiting briefly in the van to make sure no more bikers were coming, Xia Leng climbed out and decided to keep going.
According to the markings on his wasteland map, an old-world gas station lay about ten kilometers ahead.
Rumor had it that the gas station was also under the jurisdiction of the Komodo Mercenary Company. It had been converted into a wasteland bar, where he could replenish his food and water, though they weren't cheap.
Xia Leng's backpack also held a palm-sized pouch filled with crystals, which he'd scavenged from the leader's house.
They were just ordinary crystals taken from small mutated creatures, so they weren't worth much. But they were more than enough to fill his canteen with water.
Since being infected by the Blacklight Virus, Xia Leng felt that his body needed more calories. The amount of food that used to last him two days now barely lasted one.
And after seeing the blue crystal from the Baptized One leader disappear as it was absorbed into his palm, he'd tried the crystals in the pouch too.
As soon as he placed one in his palm, tendrils extended from it and wrapped around the crystal. In the blink of an eye, it was gone.
But this time, it hadn't granted him any other abilities. Perhaps these crystals were too low-grade.
After checking all his gear once more, Xia Leng set off again on his road of no return.
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