Midnight.
"I'm so hungry," someone whispered.
"Me too," someone replied softly.
In the shadowy wilderness of the southwest, 381,241 Parent's Association members had split into over a thousand columns, breaking up their forces and moving slowly through the mountains.
To avoid being spotted by satellites, they traveled at night and slept beneath the trees during the day.
They were all E-Class on average, but the roads through southwest Shu were unimaginably difficult.
The route of this long march was not simply more than two thousand kilometers over flat ground.
Traveling southwest from the Central Plains meant crossing countless rivers, countless valleys, and countless mountain peaks.
Whenever they encountered terrain that could not be crossed, they had to make long detours to find a suitable passage.
The straight-line distance was 2,300 kilometers, but if the rugged terrain were laid flat, it would probably be more than 7,000 kilometers.
They had only traveled a little over three hundred kilometers when many people's shoes had already fallen apart.
Their feet had rotted too.
They could only walk barefoot along uneven mountain paths, stepping on dead branches and pine needles. Even after the soles of their feet had been torn apart, they still could not stop.
Some skillful family members began weaving straw sandals for everyone. But anyone who had worn straw sandals knew that modern people would still find them unbearably painful. Their ankles rubbed raw, the sandals gradually turned red, then dried into black.
The hands of those weaving the sandals were rubbed raw as well, yet they persisted. When someone urged them to stop, they would smile and say, "Damaged hands won't stop us from moving forward, but if everyone's feet are ruined, we won't be able to keep going."
Some people began to flee. More than three hundred kilometers of