Radiation Hell Built by Three-Stage Bombs

The backward-bending knees gave the fugitive greater speed, enough to rival a galloping horse.

But although he was fast, he ultimately lacked a horse's endurance and could not maintain high speed for long.

Before long, one of the pursuers behind him caught up. A long blade swung down, slashing across the bent-kneed man's back, and he immediately toppled into the wasteland.

The two hunters reined in their horses and stopped, then ran toward the bent-kneed man in wild delight. Clearly, he had something important on him.

Just as the hunters approached the fugitive's body, the corpse suddenly spun around. Two short blades were already in his hands. His backward-bending knees flexed, launching him into the air as he viciously drove the blades into the two hunters' chests!

The hunters had never expected him to fight back. They immediately let out several screams, clutched their chests, and collapsed, falling silent.

The bent-kneed man staggered toward the two horses, but before he could reach them, he fell to the ground and likewise went still.

Blood poured from his back.

Shen Feng hid atop the ruins of a building and observed for a while longer through his binoculars. Once he confirmed that no one else appeared and that the three men had indeed lain motionless in the scorching wasteland for quite some time, he emerged from the ruins of the shattered town and sprinted toward them.

Soon, he arrived at the site of the brutal battle.

The sand soaked in blood had turned brown, and the three strangers were dead beyond doubt.

Their appearances made Shen Feng frown.

The fugitive's appearance was fairly normal, but the two dead pursuers were far stranger.

One was hunched over with an obvious spinal deformity. A huge tumor had grown from his shoulder, like a second head.

The other had a hand shaped like a foot, and a long, furry tail trailed behind him.

All three had developed congenital mutations because of radiation.

Their clothes looked tattered, as though they had been woven together from scraps of cloth and plastic.

Shen Feng searched the two pursuers and found only a small bag containing a dozen or so bottle caps, along with a bottle of slightly greenish water in a battered plastic bottle.

The bent-kneed man had only three or four bottle caps on him as well, plus something Shen Feng recognized.

It was a yellowed little plastic bottle containing five small tablets that had expired who knew how many years ago. Half had already crumbled into powder. From the faint PPA markings, they appeared to be pipemidic acid tablets for treating diarrhea.

Could this little bottle of medicine really be what had driven them to kill one another?

Shen Feng put away the medicine bottle and walked toward the two horses.

Only then did he realize that these horses were also unlike any horses he remembered.

One horse had a slit like an eye in the middle of its forehead, with an underdeveloped eyeball growing inside!

The other had a shriveled leg dangling from its belly, and half its body was hairless, making it look utterly horrifying.

Clearly, these two horses were products of radiation as well.

Fortunately, the Geiger counter did not sound.

Shen Feng took hold of the two horses, mounted one, and headed in the direction the three men had come from.

Fortunately, he had learned to ride in Stone Statue Apocalypse. Otherwise, this would have been troublesome too.

With these two horses, he could travel much faster.

More importantly, having these two horses meant he was not far from leaving this wasteland!

Otherwise, without fodder, horses could never have made it to a place like this.

Sure enough, after riding for nearly an hour, he was finally able to see sparse trees in the distance. They looked fairly normal, completely unlike the twisted trees in the nuclear blast zones.

There were not only trees, but sparse clumps of mugwort growing across the ground.

The two horses became much more spirited. They quickly left the wasteland and began grazing.

Shen Feng climbed a tree seven or eight meters tall and looked into the distance.

To his disappointment, there were no signs of human activity anywhere within sight.

It was still wilderness—sparse trees and sparse mugwort.

Just then, a flash of silver light caught his eye. Not far ahead, there was a small river!

He immediately mounted up and headed for it.

Soon, he reached the riverbank. The water was crystal clear, seemingly a tributary of some distant river, babbling along its course.

Shen Feng's expression darkened.

This river was too clean...

There were no aquatic animals in it, not even much aquatic grass.

The shrubs and mugwort along the banks were all grotesquely twisted, to the point that Shen Feng sensed a kind of madness from them.

The two horses refused to go anywhere near it.

There were also beautiful colored specks at the bottom of the river, like shards of glass.

Shen Feng took out the Geiger counter and inserted it into the water. The buzzer immediately began to sound an alarm, and the number on the screen changed to 425.

As expected, this was a radioactive river.

Upstream, it must have passed through an area of intense radiation.

Shen Feng mounted up again, rode away from the river, and continued onward.

This time, after only half an hour, the Geiger counter's buzzer began to sound again. The farther forward he went, the louder it became, and the sparser the vegetation grew.

Clearly, another high-intensity radiation zone lay ahead.

Without the slightest hesitation, Shen Feng immediately changed direction and headed south.

But he traveled for an entire day afterward, and by nightfall, there was still no trace of humanity!

It was as if the three people he had encountered were already the last humans alive!

During that time, he even saw a town completely destroyed by a nuclear bomb from afar. Through his binoculars, he could see the black human shadows vaporized onto the walls by the blast.

That night, he found the ruins of a dilapidated building as a temporary shelter. After sleeping, Shen Feng continued on his way the next day.

For the next three full days, he did not encounter a single town with human survivors.

Along the way, the Geiger counter sounded from time to time, warning him that a certain direction led into a radiation zone.

He constantly changed direction, advancing through the gaps between various radiation zones. The farther he went, the heavier his heart became.

He had originally thought that high-intensity radiation zones were relatively rare. Now, it seemed that areas untouched by radiation were the minority instead.

The nuclear blast zones were simply far too densely packed!

And judging by the Geiger counter readings, they were all three-stage bombs, with a layer of uranium-238 casing wrapped around the thermonuclear bomb casing!

Put simply, a three-stage bomb was a hydrogen bomb wrapped in a layer of depleted uranium. An atomic bomb wrapped in thermonuclear material was a hydrogen bomb, and a hydrogen bomb wrapped in depleted uranium was a three-stage bomb!

Once a three-stage bomb exploded, it produced widespread, long-lasting, high-intensity radioactive contamination.

The strategic nuclear weapons of virtually every nuclear power were three-stage bombs, arguably the most lethal nuclear weapons of all.

After traveling for five days, Shen Feng still had not seen any trace of human activity, and he had already eaten half the food he carried.

Fortunately, he came across an extremely deep well and replenished his supply of clean water. Otherwise, he might have died of thirst before finding any humans.

Finally, on the fifth day, the Geiger counter had not sounded an alarm for two days. It seemed he had reached a patch of clean land.

He even saw a lizard scrambling rapidly across the ground.

By nightfall, Shen Feng suddenly discovered a patch of firelight in the distance.

People!

He immediately led the horses over. From afar, he heard a burst of noisy conversation, and the people clearly seemed very happy.

Five people sat around a bonfire, setting up a simple roasting rack. Beside them, a person was tightly bound to a long piece of wood, food about to be roasted over the fire.

~

(The air conditioner blew on me last night, and I've felt unwell all day. I'm in terrible shape, and to ensure the quality, I really didn't want to force myself to write. Sorry for making everyone wait so long. Normal updates will resume over the weekend.)