Moving Forward and Making Decisions

Honestly, Li Qingzhi felt like a mother hen guarding a flock of chicks right now. The only difference—or rather, the only good news—was that so far, he had not seen any "hawks."

As an ordinary factory employee in the real world, he finally understood where the gap lay between himself and those bosses who had gone into business and made fortunes running factories—

After all, setting everything else aside, quite a few of those people only needed a few words to initially sweet-talk someone into becoming a "friend"—or rather, a lackey or subordinate—who was at least willing to follow some instructions on the surface.

Whether it was personal charisma, the art of speech, or the ability to paint a rosy picture.

By comparison, Li Qingzhi, who had already clearly recognized that he really had no talent for management, had no choice but to honestly admit that fact at this point.

—The gap between people could sometimes truly be despairingly vast.

"Old Li, be patient. We've barely even started... Mm, want a piece?"

The young man, who had clearly been stepping on slick moss and weeds yet had made almost no sound as he moved, suddenly appeared at his side like a silent shadow.

Every hair on Li Qingzhi's body stood on end as he whipped his head around.

Only after seeing who it was did Li Qingzhi relax again.

By now, judging by the man's elusive manner, Li Qingzhi had become increasingly convinced that this guy was very likely a Main God user as well. At the very least, he probably came from some sort of "special profession" in the real world. He definitely could not be just an ordinary newcomer.

But there was no need to say it outright.

"Brother Li, what's that?"

Seeing the other man offer him a pale blue-gray thing with damp mud still stuck to its surface and a distinct earthy smell, Li Qingzhi waved him off with an expression of polite refusal.

"Oh, the inner stalk of some plant, I think. No idea what it's called. The skin is covered in black speckles, but it tastes a little like sugarcane."

The young man did not care about being refused. He withdrew his hand, casually wiped away the dirt, peeled off the last layer of tough skin, and tossed it into his mouth.

"Not bad. This piece tastes noticeably sweeter."

Hearing him appraise it as though he were sampling fresh fruit, Li Qingzhi said irritably, "You picked that somewhere, didn't you? You're just eating it like that? Aren't you afraid of getting poisoned?"

"...Oh, it's fine."

Spitting out the chewed residue, the young man pushed up his glasses. Still looking calm, he took another similar stalk from his pocket, its outer fibers already mostly peeled away.

"I saw rats gnawing on this earlier. If they can eat it, then it should at least not be very poisonous."

Tearing open the last fairly tough layer of inner bark, he continued crunching away as naturally as if he were enjoying a segment of sweet sugarcane.

"...Also, I took a look while passing by earlier. That Middle Easterner in the back has started making a fuss too. He says he can't walk anymore and needs clean water, food, and somewhere to rest."

"He can go die for all I care!"

Without even turning around, Li Qingzhi viciously raised his middle finger behind him—even though he knew that aside from the young man beside him, the people in the back could not see it at all.

In just a few hours, his mindset had plummeted from, "These newcomers are all rewards for clearing the trial, so I need to take good care of them," to, "He can go die for all I care." It was hard to say exactly what complicated emotional journey this "Old Li" had gone through.

If he had to put it into words, then perhaps... compared to them, even some of the vaguely human-like things from the previous mission world seemed a little cute to this veteran now.

"People back home are still way more civilized."

That was the sentence he muttered most often along the way.

Clearly, the multinational motley crew of newcomer tourists trailing two or three hundred meters behind had given him a small dose of foreigner shock.

There were none of the common movie and novel types: no street punks, no troublesome gangsters, no brainless provocateurs, no bizarre characters acting outrageously arrogant. Compared to the people behind them, those types could at least be put to use by veterans—used to kill the chicken before the monkeys and establish authority on the spot. Jane people, at least, could still be put to use.

What they had instead was a reality that was even harder to look at—

The Indian man who would naturally undo his belt anywhere and anytime, squat down on the spot, and deal with his bodily needs in a way that made everyone avoid him;

The elderly white Russian man who had only just wriggled out of his heavy hiking clothes, yet still remembered to pull two bottles of high-proof vodka from a compartment at his waist, reeking of alcohol in a half-awake, half-drunk state—though Li Qingzhi had swiftly confiscated the liquor with a dark expression;

The blonde, freckled girl who had barely walked for a while before suffering an emotional breakdown at the sight of the many abandoned vehicles by the roadside. She sat on the ground and bawled, saying she desperately missed her warm home in Mississippi and the fluffy ragdoll cat there, sobbing that she hoped the Main God would let her go back;

The plump, brown-haired middle-aged man with rings of every color on his fingers, who claimed to be a direct relative of an Italian official and kept hinting that there would be "great benefits" after returning to reality if foreign friends would help him...

As for the others—the South Asian kid draped in a strip of torn cloth for warmth, whose physical strength was indeed poor but who still gritted his teeth and persevered; the East Asian woman who panicked whenever anything happened and kept apologizing with repeated "sumimasen" and "honto ni sumimasen"...

Compared to them, those people were hardly worth mentioning.

It was practically a whole host of immortals, packed in like hemp stalks! Every kind of oddity imaginable was here!

Compared to the rest of this fourteen-person group, this Middle Easterner—with his prosperous belly, neatly trimmed thick beard, clearly well-off family background, and the fact that he had lasted this long before starting trouble—actually did not seem quite so outrageous.

Despair.

Utter despair.

...That was precisely why, not long after they began trekking, Li Yun had proposed walking at the front of the group, going farther ahead as a "scout" to check the route and survey the surroundings.

He simply could not stand watching anymore.

Unexpectedly, less than two hours after he had written a suggestion on his personal light screen—"Apart from testing requirements, users should be matched according to similar cultural patterns"—this "Old Li" had silently followed him up.

For a time, the front of this desolate, weed-choked ruin of a city district became a situation where the two "scout sentries" faced each other.

The situation was delicate.

Abandoned vehicles lay scattered throughout the weeds in the street. Some had crashed into each other, while others had simply been abandoned in the middle of the road, their bodies already mostly coming apart. Storefront windows were shattered, their interiors long ago looted clean and buried beneath dust. The rusty traffic lights had become meaningless, mere decorations.

It looked like humanity had quietly departed, leaving behind only an apocalyptic scene.

In such an obviously near-isolated and helpless situation, it truly exerted an invisible influence and test on an ordinary person's mental state.

It was clear that even with the "carrot" the Main God had openly hung in front of the donkey at a clearly marked price, the repeatedly shocked "guide" was increasingly considering abandoning the newcomer tourists behind them.

Li Yun did not point that out.

He merely spat out another mouthful of shriveled stalk residue, raised his head to glance at the unsettlingly strange sky above, and let his eyes sweep across the black rifts hanging empty in the heavens like scars.

Only then did he seem to casually mention, "Looking at the sky, it might start getting dark soon."

"But Old Li, I have a question now..."

"If this so-called Main God really only requires us to 'survive' for seventy-two hours, just as it says here..."

The young man raised a hand and gestured before him, as though pressing against some square, invisible mark in the air.

"Then why haven't we encountered any 'accidents' at all so far?"

Behind his lenses, his gaze indifferently swept over the ruined buildings around them, over the small plants that had stubbornly squeezed out from gaps in old water pipes on the rooftops and sides of the buildings. He asked pointedly,

"Surely this Main God's so-called survival trial isn't just going to make us endure three days in these ruins, where there's obviously a shortage of supplies and nothing to be found, surviving solely by going hungry?"

This was clearly not a funny joke.

And the only listener present had already furrowed his brow deeply.

Li Qingzhi understood the implication behind his words.

Under the current circumstances, by ordinary reasoning, unless the "dangers" that could arrive at any time were both deaf and blind, or extremely far away from here, the group behind them should have long since attracted every bad thing they should not have attracted with their behavior and commotion.

But the truth was that over these four or five hours, aside from one fool who had carelessly nearly been bitten by several snakes that suddenly darted out from beneath the grass during the journey,

Their group had encountered almost no actual accidental threats at all.

That went doubly for Li Qingzhi himself, who had remained vigilant and observed his surroundings constantly, only to find nothing.

Why?

Could the Main God really be planning to let these newcomers pass the Newcomer Trial just by having Jane endure three days without food?

...Or were those "dangers" actually near them, merely having not acted yet—or perhaps... still unable to be directly perceived?

Li Qingzhi gave the young man, who still seemed entirely unmoved, a long look. As though suddenly thinking of something, he raised his head as well and carefully examined the strange sky.

He shuddered unconsciously.

—That was right. It was indeed about to grow dark.

But right now... wasn't it still light out?

Soon, after returning to the "main group," the veteran issued an ultimatum—either speed up and keep up, or stay behind, part ways, and fend for yourselves.

This time, no matter how the people before him clamored, argued, and pleaded, his voice remained cold as iron, leaving no room for negotiation.

At the end of the day, Li Qingzhi was merely a guide, not some childcare nanny providing attentive, heartwarming service every step of the way.

With the rewards for clearing the mission world ahead of him, he would not be stupid enough to risk being further dragged down just to fight for that extra guide reward by helping a bunch of hopeless deadweights.

The rain had mostly stopped by now.

But a hidden unease in his heart had begun warning him that before the sky fully darkened, they had to find a suitable place to shelter and hide.

Moreover, experience deeply rooted in humanity's survival instincts since ancient times had already made one fact clear—remaining outside in darkness, or acting recklessly, carried far too much risk.

But the problem was that after traveling all this way, even taking into account that this temporary group had at least two of the four categories of old, weak, sick, and disabled,

The road beneath their feet had clearly begun to turn semi-wild. Only the open central portions of the main road were in somewhat better condition. Even so, they had been forced to slow to a pace of no more than three or four kilometers an hour, walking and resting, and by now they should have covered at least ten kilometers.

Yet Li Qingzhi still had not found a relatively suitable "place."

The low roadside buildings, damp and leaking, some already on the verge of collapse and half turned into ruins, were naturally out of the question. As for the few distant high-rises that remained relatively intact, their construction materials clearly sturdier and not yet too severely damaged or corroded, each Throne among them...

He did not know whether it was an illusion, but as the sky gradually showed signs of darkening, he would occasionally feel a faint unease, as though distant gazes from that direction had briefly settled on him.

If he had to describe it... that sensation did not seem to come from any particular direction. Instead, it felt more like a scattered yet bone-clinging "stare" seeping from the countless Black Hole-like windows among those high-rises.

As though the entire Throne building were some enormous beast still sunk deep in slumber, and the arrival of their group had done nothing more than make it lightly flutter its eyelids in a dream.

Whenever the veteran suddenly turned his head and followed that faint sensation with his eyes, attempting to catch the source of the gaze, all he could see was the same unchanging dead silence.

Nothing.

Those lifeless, hollow windows—some no longer even containing a shard of broken glass, with only a few weeds faintly poking out—looked especially deep. Yet their interiors seemed truly bottomless, quietly swallowing every prying gaze from outside.

Was it an illusion, or...

As the sky gradually dimmed and time continued to pass, "Old Li" finally stopped for a moment.

He really was beginning to hesitate.

He ignored the few people who had barely caught up from behind—even though two or three had fallen behind midway after he demanded they speed up. Since he had made the rules clear beforehand, he naturally would not concern himself with that.

After weighing things over and over, the veteran decisively turned his gaze toward the one person nearby who, aside from himself, should still count as a "smart person" among the group.

"Brother Li... what do you think?"

Beneath a collapsed building, someone was feeling around and tentatively reaching out. With force, he tugged at a long backpack protruding halfway from a moss-covered gap. Its general shape remained fairly intact, though thick dust had completely obscured its original color, making it look like a stone.

He did not hurry to turn around, merely replying, "Me? Of course I'm looking through my glasses."

"You..."

Li Qingzhi choked up for a moment, then quickly realized that his own question had been vague and nonsensical.

Only then did he clearly realize that he had indeed become anxious without noticing.

"Ah, I didn't make myself clear... Do you think we should keep heading toward those tall buildings to spend the night, or find a better house nearby and make do for one night?"

As the tough fibrous backpack was carefully pulled free with a sudden force, a succession of dull impacts from hard objects followed. Several loose pieces of rubble nearby rolled down, and dust filled the air.

The young man lightly jumped out through the drifting dust with the long bag in hand, unable to stop himself from coughing several times.

He casually squeezed the bag from top to bottom, then gave it a hard shake. Large patches of caked dust and mud fell from it in rustling streams.

"Old Li, these roadside houses are only a few meters high, one building after another. They lack any strategic depth for retreat. If we really run into danger, staying in them might not be much different from staying out in the street."

While busy with what he was doing, he shook his head.

"And with more than ten people, the resources we need aren't a small amount. These little houses have clearly been abandoned for so long. Unless they have matching storage basements—and ones that have been preserved well at that—we won't be able to find much."

In fact, they had previously tried searching the roadside houses, but the results had been far from ideal.

Fungi had begun growing even in the cracks of poorly finished furniture. Rotten humus had accumulated everywhere, and there were obvious signs that large numbers of rodents had once been active inside. In the end, the group had found nothing at all.

Obviously, the conditions inside the other buildings were probably much the same, with no great difference.

After some handling by Jane, Li Yun slung the long backpack over his shoulder. He casually crouched down, brushed aside the layer of damp loose soil accumulated over the overgrown road, and let a swarm of strange, varied shade-dwelling insects scatter from beneath the earth.

He carefully pressed against the mottled, cracked concrete road.

"And we definitely don't have time to search for basements when we don't even know where their entrances are."

"Personally, I think we should go take a look in those high-rises."

He looked up at the sky once more. For some reason, he narrowed his eyes slightly.

"Also, Old Li, the rain has stopped... but all along the way, we haven't even seen more than a few birds in the sky."