When the world lit up again, someone else was gone. Xiao Qi had just completed another round of wanted-person notices. He sat dejectedly in a mountain hollow and sighed, "Everyone says no one cares about us anymore. No reinforcements, no supplies—it's like we don't matter at all."
Ever since the Parent's Association began its long journey, they had been cut off from the outside world most of the time. Hundreds of thousands of people wandered through the mountains like savages, their hair disheveled and their feet bare. Before this, they had found it hard to believe that soft human soles could adapt so quickly to hard mountain paths once they were freed from shoes.
They rapidly grew tougher. Hardship itself was not frightening; what was truly frightening was the feeling of being abandoned. The Phoenix City air fleet behind them came to search the mountains more and more often, yet the Qing Clan's air support never appeared. They were simply left to die meaningless deaths. It made the Parent's Association members feel that everything they were doing was meaningless. Of the Parent's Association's force of 330,000 in the wilderness, only 260,000 remained.
More than 70,000 people had gone missing.
Some had died while fleeing the Phoenix City air fleet's pursuit, while others could not endure the journey and quietly left on their own.
Hunger and cold had become their normal state. Every Parent's Association member had been reduced to skin and bones, their cheeks slightly hollow. Even tree roots had to be rationed. Many endured and marched more than a thousand kilometers, but news of Qing Chen's disappearance became the final straw. On the night Qing Chen went missing, Luo Wanyai did not conceal the news. More than 20,000 people left the Parent's Association that night, because no one could