Rose-Colored Earth

A Geiger counter was an instrument specifically designed to detect the intensity of ionizing radiation (alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays, and X-rays).

It used a gas-filled tube or chamber as a probe. When the voltage applied to the probe reached a certain range, every ion pair produced by radiation ionization inside the tube would be amplified into an electrical pulse of the same magnitude and recorded by connected electronic equipment, thereby measuring the number of rays per unit of time.

The piercing alarm from the buzzer tore through the darkness, sending chills down his spine.

Shen Feng looked at the Geiger counter in his hand. A number was displayed on the screen: 5000.

5,000 millisieverts per hour.

Fuck!

The hand holding the Geiger counter trembled, and Shen Feng's legs nearly gave out.

From a health standpoint, the maximum amount of radiation a person could endure in a year was 1 millisievert.

An X-ray only accumulated 0.1 millisieverts of radiation, yet the radiation outside his heavy radiation protective suit was now 5,000 millisieverts per hour!

If exposed to such an environment, one would receive five thousand times a normal year's radiation dose every hour—tens of millions of times more than usual. Their skin and internal organs would practically rot away at once, and they would die from massive hemorrhaging throughout the body.

They would turn directly into a lump of rotten flesh.

If he had not finally understood the Real Doomsday Game's warning and bought the heavy radiation protective suit, he would probably already be suffering worse than death, reduced to a heap of decay.

The most terrifying thing about radiation was that it was an enemy one could neither see nor touch. It could silently tear you apart, leaving you to die an extraordinarily miserable death!

The shock of it even far surpassed the psychological impact Shen Feng had felt upon seeing a Skinner for the first time.

Fortunately, after fighting through the Stone Statue Apocalypse, Shen Feng's mental fortitude had toughened considerably.

Taking a deep breath, Shen Feng looked around and began examining his surroundings.

It was the dead of night. A half-moon hung high in the sky alongside glittering stars, illuminating the earth as brightly as snow.

Yet there was nothing around him, only an endless Gobi wilderness.

The ground was not merely sand and dirt, but a thin layer of rose-colored glass that radiated gorgeous, enchanting light beneath the moonlight and starlight.

He seemed to be standing at the bottom of a massive crater, like a great glass bowl resting silently upon the earth.

Beautiful, yet deadly.

This appeared to be the epicenter of a nuclear explosion.

Holding the Geiger counter, Shen Feng cautiously made his way outward, afraid that the glass underfoot would slash through his protective suit.

The crunch of glass beneath his feet, the heavy sound of breathing inside the suit, and the Geiger counter's buzzing alarm blended together in a strange yet oddly interesting symphony.

Fortunately, as he continued moving outward, the value on the Geiger counter began dropping rapidly.

Four thousand... three thousand... two thousand...

Finally, when he reached the edge of the crater and stepped out with one foot, the Geiger counter's reading dropped to eight hundred.

But it was still unsafe here.

Shen Feng continued toward the outskirts. Looking up, he saw nothing but flat wilderness. Only a few sparse, grotesquely shaped trees stood far away in the distance.

Shen Feng walked toward the distance step by step, listening to the Geiger counter's sounds as his brow gradually furrowed.

He kept walking for more than three hours. The scenery around him barely changed, remaining an unchanging desert, save for the occasional white bones buried beneath windblown sand.

Some of those bones belonged to humans, while others belonged to animals. He had no idea whether they were unfortunate souls who had wandered into a high-radiation zone and died there.

There were no city ruins in sight, not even the remains of an ordinary building. He had no way at all to determine what had happened to this world.

Radiation from a low-yield nuclear blast would dissipate quickly, but that referred to radiation from an airburst.

Once a nuclear bomb detonated on the ground, it caused extremely severe radioactive contamination to the soil and water. In particular, the radioactivity caused by megaton-class nuclear weapons could last for tens of thousands of years.

If every nuclear weapon in the nuclear war this world had once suffered had detonated on the ground, then perhaps everything had already been contaminated, and humanity had been completely wiped out.

Forget the Ape Clan—even if Transformers came here, they would be blown apart by the radiation on this dead planet.

I hope it won't be the worst-case scenario...

Shen Feng was filled with worry.

Fortunately, after walking for another four or five hours, the Geiger counter finally quieted considerably. Its reading had dropped to 200 and was still falling.

Shen Feng let out a long breath. It seemed the worst-case scenario had not happened.

By now, the oxygen tank inside the heavy radiation protective suit was nearly depleted, with less than an hour of oxygen remaining.

Shen Feng took a deep breath and closed his eyes, beginning to imagine scenes of being hunted down and all kinds of brutal images.

A few seconds later, he abruptly opened his eyes. His pupils had turned into the vertical slits of a feline, and the muscles throughout his body had bulged significantly.

Then he suddenly shot forward like an arrow released from a bow, sprinting wildly toward the distance!

His speed now far surpassed that of an ordinary runner and was enough to rival a vehicle.

After running wildly for half an hour, the reading on the Geiger counter finally dropped rapidly to below 10 microsieverts. Yet Shen Feng did not stop, instead continuing to sprint at full speed.

At last, a dilapidated town that looked like ruins, as though it could collapse at any moment, appeared in his field of vision.

The Geiger counter's buzzer gradually stopped sounding as well. Its reading had fallen below 1 and soon dropped completely to zero.

Only then did Shen Feng come to an abrupt halt. He tossed his backpack aside and checked it with the Geiger counter. Once he found no issue, he finally relaxed.

He then opened the backpack, took out a bottle of prepared radiation decontamination solution, and poured it directly over the outside of his protective suit, scrubbing hard.

After pouring out the entire bottle, Shen Feng threw himself into a nearby sand pit and began rubbing himself around as though taking a sand bath.

After struggling with it for a while, he quickly stripped off the heavy radiation protective suit. Once he crawled out of it, he grabbed the Quantum Backpack and fled madly toward the distant town ruins without looking back.

After passing through that heavily radioactive zone, the outer layer of the protective suit, along with that Geiger counter, had become radioactively contaminated and could no longer be used.

If he stayed near them too long, he would probably be irradiated as well.

As he ran, Shen Feng took out another Geiger counter and stared at its reading.

More than half an hour later, he reached the dilapidated town ruins and let out a long breath.

There was no radiation here.

Honestly, the ultra-high radiation intensity from earlier had truly frightened him.

And that stuff seriously affected reproductive ability. He was still underage!

This town ruin was truly nothing more than a ruin. There were only broken walls and crumbling remnants half-buried in yellow sand, with no trace whatsoever of human activity.

Even the things inside those buildings had long since been cleared out, leaving nothing behind.

After much effort, Shen Feng found a relatively intact three-story building. He climbed to the roof along a fairly sturdy load-bearing wall, then found an open patch amid the holes covering the roof and lay down.

He had not slept at all that night, and after running all night in constant fear, he was truly exhausted.

"Player has successfully entered the Nuclear Wasteland Apocalypse. This apocalyptic world is an extinction world caused by global nuclear war. Game missions: 1. Find the cause of the global thermonuclear war. 2. Find the nuclear weapon control programs of the three major prewar nations. 3. Obtain a remaining nuclear warhead. 4. Remain alert to the dangers posed by radiation and avoid death."

After glancing at the game missions on his wristband, Shen Feng looked at the stars in the sky and fell into a deep sleep.

Early the next morning, bursts of running footsteps mixed with shouts woke Shen Feng from his sleep!

He hurried to the edge of the roof, took out his binoculars, and looked toward the source of the noise.

He saw two people riding horses, chasing after a running man!

All of them were dressed in tattered rags and looked like beggars, but they held gleaming long blades in their hands!

And the knees of the person being chased bent backward!