People of Peach Haven

Shen Feng froze. But Firefly looked genuinely worried, not like she was faking it, so he asked,

"Can you read the words on it?"

Firefly shook her head. "How could I possibly recognize this stuff? These are divine words and images of gods from ancient times. I may not understand them, but I know they're treasures. They can sell for a lot of money!"

Had writing already been lost...? How long had it been since the nuclear war broke out? What had happened?

"Money?" Shen Feng pulled out a blue Master Kong bottled-water cap and asked, "Like this?"

Firefly nodded. "Y-yes... like that..."

She had no idea why this burly young man had suddenly produced money. From the way he acted, he seemed to know very little about many things.

Having confirmed his guess, Shen Feng nodded and gently cut the rope binding Firefly's hands with his dagger.

"I mean you no harm, and I advise you not to bear any ill will either. Otherwise, these people will be your example."

Firefly immediately nodded. Her big eyes fluttered as she put on a timid expression.

"Okay, Barbarian... sir... I don't know how I should address you. Thank you for saving me."

Shen Feng said expressionlessly,

"My name is Shen Feng. Right now, I need you to take me to Nameless Town. I also have a lot of questions."

He waved the RT-Mart Supermarket discount flyer. "Once we reach Nameless Town, I'll naturally return this to you."

As he spoke, he folded the flyer and put it into his bag.

Then he walked over to the fire, took out the half-eaten can of luncheon meat from his backpack, along with a can of braised pork, and set them directly over the campfire to heat.

At the same time, he took out a compressed biscuit and began chewing it slowly.

The compressed biscuits he had bought contained plenty of nuts. They tasted far better than ordinary military rations, and when soaked in the braised pork gravy, they were especially delicious.

As the braised pork and luncheon meat heated over the flames, they immediately began to sizzle, releasing an enticing aroma.

Firefly, who had been preparing to flee, stopped in her tracks. She slowly turned around, sat beside the fire, and kept swallowing as she stared at the tin cans over the flames.

What was that!?

It smelled so good!

So good it was enough to make someone faint!

She had not felt much earlier, but now it seemed as though countless tiny hands were reaching out from her stomach, trying to seize those fragrant things.

Shen Feng poked at the firewood with a branch and adjusted the cans so they heated more evenly. Then he asked flatly,

"Want some?"

Firefly stared at the two cans and nodded frantically.

It was not that she wanted to eat. She wanted to eat desperately.

Shen Feng said, "Then eat."

As he spoke, he found a thin metal plate among the raiders' luggage and handed it to Firefly. He took the two cans off the fire and used his Swiss Army knife to divide half the scorching-hot luncheon meat and braised pork onto the plate.

Then he pulled out two compressed biscuits and placed them inside as well.

Naturally, Firefly had never seen a Swiss Army knife before. Her eyes lit up when she saw the folding knife with so many tools combined into one body. (Some readers apparently don't know what a Swiss Army knife is either, so I hope this clears it up.)

But then the aroma drew her attention away. Not caring that the food was still scorching hot, she wiped her hands on her clothes and began stuffing chunks of meat and compressed biscuits into her mouth.

The moment the braised pork entered her mouth, an unprecedented fragrance born from caramel, spices, soy sauce, and meat struck her taste buds like a heavy hammer.

Firefly froze for a moment, then began wolfing it down.

In her entire life, she had never eaten anything so delicious!

Shen Feng ate chunks of meat from the side with his knife, watching Firefly's reaction as he nodded to himself.

In this post-apocalyptic world, there were clearly no spices available for cooking complex, flavorful food.

It seemed the surviving human society in this world was even more miserable than he had imagined.

Firefly wolfed down more than half the meat, then dipped the compressed biscuits in the gravy and devoured them. She quickly finished one biscuit, feeling as if she had never tasted anything so delicious. Everything seemed like a dream.

Then her expression darkened. She stopped eating, suddenly covered her face, and began to sob, smearing grease all over it.

Firefly looked at Shen Feng with longing and asked,

"You're one of the Peach Haven people, aren't you? Did you come from Peach Haven? Please, can you take me there too? Please..."

Shen Feng frowned. "What is Peach Haven? I'm not from there. I'm merely a wanderer from this land. You can think of it as me having discovered a small treasure trove and obtained these things."

Hearing that Shen Feng was not pretending, disappointment flashed through Firefly's eyes. Then she said,

"Sorry. I thought you were one of the Peach Haven people... You don't know about Peach Haven?"

This young man in front of her seemed to know very little and was completely unfamiliar with this world.

Still, there were plenty of strange people in the world. There were also quite a few who had lived alone ever since they were born, so Firefly did not find it too surprising.

Shen Feng nodded. "Tell me what you know about this world. Consider it after-dinner entertainment, and your payment."

Firefly hurriedly said, "Although I'm already a sixteen-year-old middle-aged person, I don't know much about this world either. A lot of it is only what I've heard from others... If I get something wrong, I hope you won't mind..."

With that, she began recounting what she knew.

The humans in this world could roughly be divided into three types.

The first type was ordinary people like Firefly. They might have some minor mutations, but nothing fatal, and they could still live normal lives.

Firefly, as well as the bandits Shen Feng had killed, were all considered "ordinary people."

The second type consisted of humans who had been thoroughly altered by radiation. Many of them had already taken on inhuman appearances or completely lost their sanity, becoming extremely deranged.

These people were called Barbarians.

It was said that the first Barbarians were people who had been severely irradiated during the natural disasters, along with those born with severe deformities. Rejected by ordinary people, they eventually withdrew from human society and gradually gathered together, forming their own tribes.

They often lived in radiation zones. After so many years, many of them had even developed the ability to resist a certain degree of radiation.

These mutants often possessed ugly appearances and tremendous strength, usually accompanied by crazed minds. To ordinary people, they were simply monsters from nightmares.

The third type was the Peach Haven people!

It was said that these Peach Haven people lived in Peach Haven. They had prepared for the apocalypse before it descended, and after all these years, they were still living happily within Peach Haven.

Peach Haven preserved all the beautiful miracles of the past, but no one knew where it was.

Only occasionally did rumors spread of Peach Haven people appearing in the wasteland and wielding divine power, but no one knew whether they were true.

Shen Feng nodded.

These so-called Peach Haven people were probably those who had hidden in fallout shelters before the nuclear war broke out.

Theoretically, a shelter with a nuclear reactor and unlimited energy could sustain life for even tens of thousands of years.

Of course, it would have to be large enough and possess its own ecosystem.

No wonder Firefly had assumed he was a Peach Haven person who had emerged from a shelter. After all, his clean clothes stood out completely from those of the bandits.

The lives of those "ordinary people," meanwhile, were extremely difficult.

The villages and towns where they gathered not only had to worry about raids by Barbarians, but also had to constantly search for survival supplies.

Miners were one such profession.

But what miners excavated were not ordinary mines. They excavated ruins of prehistoric cities that had not yet been swallowed by radiation.

The various supplies in those city ruins had long since been picked over countless times, leaving practically nothing behind.

But inside the concrete walls of those buildings, there was still rebar!

Steel was something ordinary people had long since lost the ability to produce!

Searching city ruins for steel was their mining industry!

After Firefly finished explaining all this, Shen Feng asked again how many years had passed since the nuclear war began. But the girl did not even know what a nuclear war was. She only knew the name Great Cataclysm.

And the Great Cataclysm was nothing more than an ancient legend.

Afterward, Shen Feng directly tied up Firefly's hands and feet, binding her like a rice dumpling. Only then did he put out the fire and sleep soundly.

Early the next morning, they each mounted a horse and headed in the direction Firefly pointed out.

They would be crossing the ruins of a town, the very place where Firefly had been mining the day before.

As they traveled through broken walls and ruins that had become rubble, they could still vaguely make out the main road and various streets.

After questioning Firefly, Shen Feng quickly found where the library had once stood.

Nothing remained there now but rubble and traces of fire damage. Not a single sheet of paper had survived.

Firefly gritted her teeth and said, "There's a hidden place that lots of people know about, but no one has ever been able to open it. Shen Feng, do you want to go?"

Quite a few miners knew about that place, but no one had ever gotten inside.

She did not know what this man was looking for, but she had to win his favor if she wanted to get that treasure back.

"Lead the way."

Before long, they arrived in front of a huge pit.

At the bottom of the pit, one corner of a square alloy structure was exposed, glinting in the sunlight.

It was the underground vault of a bank.