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 yet to see any "hawks" appear.

As an ordinary employee at a factory complex in the real world, he finally understood the difference between himself and those bosses who had gone into business and made fortunes back then—

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After all, quite a few of those people could win over a "friend"—or rather, a lackey or subordinate—who was at least willing on the surface to follow a few instructions with just a handful of words.

Call it personal charisma, the art of speech, or the ability to sell people a dream.

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

—The gap between people could sometimes be so vast it made one despair.

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

The young man, who had clearly been stepping on slick moss and weeds yet made almost no sound as he moved, suddenly appeared beside him 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 he relax.

By now, judging from the man's rather ghostly manner, he was increasingly convinced that this guy was likely a Main God user as well. At the very least, he probably came from some kind of "special profession" in the real world. He definitely could not have been an ordinary newcomer.

Still, there was no need to say it outright.

"Brother Li, what is that?"

Seeing the other man offer him a pale bluish-gray object with damp mud still clinging to its surface and a distinct earthy smell, Li Qingzhi waved his hand, making it clear he wanted nothing to do with it.

"Oh, probably the inner stalk of some plant. I don't know its name. The skin is covered in black speckles, but it tastes a little like sugarcane."

The young man did not mind the refusal. He withdrew his hand, casually wiped off the dirt, peeled away the remaining layer of tough bark, and tossed it into his mouth.

"Not bad. This piece is noticeably sweeter."

Hearing him assess it as though he were sampling fresh fruit, Li Qingzhi said irritably, "You picked that somewhere, right? You're just eating it like that? Aren't you afraid of poisoning yourself?"

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

He casually spat out the chewed residue, pushed up his glasses, and pulled another similar stalk from his pocket, this one already mostly stripped of its outer fibers.

"I saw rats gnawing on this earlier. If they could eat it, then it probably wasn't very poisonous."

He neatly tore away the last fairly tough layer of inner skin and continued chewing with crisp crunches, looking as composed as if he were enjoying a sweet section of sugarcane.

"...Also, I took a look when I passed by earlier. That Middle Eastern guy in the back is making a fuss too. He says he can't walk anymore, that he needs clean water, food, and somewhere to rest."

"He can go die for all I care!"

Without looking back, Li Qingzhi viciously raised a middle finger behind him—though he knew perfectly well that aside from the young man beside him, none of the people in the back could see it.

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

If he had to put it into words, perhaps compared to them... even some of the human-like things from the previous mission world seemed somewhat lovable to this veteran now?

"People back home really have much higher standards."

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

Clearly, the multinational ragtag force of newcomer Visitors trailing two or three hundred meters behind had given him a small dose of foreigner shock.

There were none of the common thugs, gang troublemakers, or arrogant oddballs who picked fights for no reason like in movies and novels—at least those were simple types veterans could put to use, killing a chicken to scare the monkeys and establishing authority on the spot.

Instead, there was only an even more unbearable reality—

An Indian man who would casually undo his belt anytime and anywhere, squat down on the spot to take care of his bodily needs, and make everyone avoid him;

An elderly white Russian man who had just wriggled out of his heavy hiking gear, yet still remembered to pull two bottles of high-proof vodka from a compartment at his waist. Half-awake and half-drunk, he reeked of alcohol—though Li Qingzhi confiscated the bottles with a dark expression soon enough;

A blonde, freckled girl who, after walking only a short while, suffered an emotional breakdown at the sight of all the abandoned cars by the roadside. She sat on the ground crying, saying she desperately missed her warm home in Mississippi and her fluffy ragdoll cat, sobbing as she begged the Main God to send her back;

A plump middle-aged brown-haired man with rings of every color on his fingers, who claimed to be the direct relative of an Italian official. He hoped for help from foreign friends and repeatedly hinted that there would be "great benefits" after they returned to reality...

As for the others, such as the South Asian boy wrapped in a scrap of cloth for warmth, whose stamina was indeed poor but who still gritted his teeth and persevered, or the East Asian woman who panicked whenever anything happened and kept apologizing with "sumimasen" and "hontou ni sumimasen"...

Compared to them, they were barely worth mentioning.

It was truly a gathering of immortals, packed shoulder to shoulder! Every strange sort imaginable was here!

Compared to them, even the Middle Easterner with the prosperous belly and neatly trimmed thick beard, who was obviously well-off and had only started acting up now after lasting this long, did not seem quite so outrageous.

Despair.

Utter despair.

...That was exactly why, not long after they had begun their trek, Li Yun had proposed walking at the front of the group as a "scout," checking the road ahead and surveying the surroundings.

He simply could not stand watching anymore.

Yet just after he wrote a suggestion on his personal light screen—"Aside from testing requirements, users should be matched according to similar cultural patterns"—Old Li had silently followed him less than two hours later.

For a while, the front of this ruined, weed-choked city block became a situation where the two "scout sentries" faced each other.

The situation was delicate.

Abandoned vehicles lay scattered among the weeds in the streets. Some had crashed into one another, while others had simply been left in the middle of the road, their bodies largely falling apart. Storefront windows were shattered, their interiors looted clean long ago and buried under dust. The rust-covered traffic lights had become meaningless, nothing more than decorations.

It was a scene of apocalypse left behind after humanity had quietly departed.

Under such plainly isolated and helpless circumstances, the mental state of an ordinary person would indeed be subjected to an invisible influence and test.

It was obvious that, even with the Main God's reward carrot clearly dangling before him, this repeatedly shocked "guide" was becoming increasingly inclined to abandon the newcomer Visitors behind them.

Li Yun did not point it out.

He merely spat out another bit of dry stalk residue, raised his head to glance at the unsettlingly strange sky overhead, and swept his gaze over the black cracks hanging in the air like scars.

Then, as if casually, he remarked, "Looks like it might start getting dark soon."

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

"If that 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 if pressing against some square, invisible mark in the air.

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

His gaze behind the lenses swept indifferently over the ruined buildings around them, where small plants had even stubbornly squeezed out from gaps in the old water pipes along rooftops and walls. He asked pointedly,

"Surely the Main God's so-called survival test isn't just making us endure three days of hunger in these ruins, where there's clearly no survival supplies and nothing to be found?"

This was obviously not a funny joke.

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

Li Qingzhi understood what the other man was implying.

Under the current circumstances, by normal reasoning, unless the "dangers" that could arrive at any moment were both blind and deaf, or extremely far from here, the behavior and noise of the people behind them should have attracted everything they should not have attracted long ago.

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

Their group had encountered almost no substantial threats whatsoever.

Not to mention Li Qingzhi himself, who had remained alert and constantly observed their surroundings, only to find nothing.

Why?

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

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

Li Qingzhi stared deeply at the young man, who still seemed entirely unmoved. As though he had suddenly thought of something, he too raised his head and carefully examined that strange sky.

A shiver ran through him.

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

But right now, wasn't the sky... still bright?

Very soon, the veteran who had returned to the "main group" issued an ultimatum—either speed up and keep up, or stay behind, split off, and fend for yourselves.

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

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

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

The rain had mostly stopped by now.

But a subtle unease in his heart had begun warning him that they had to find somewhere suitable to shelter before the sky turned completely dark.

Even the experience ingrained in humanity's survival instincts since ancient times pointed to the same fact—remaining outdoors or acting rashly in darkness carried far too much risk.

The problem was, even considering that this temporary group included at least two of the four categories of old, weak, sick, and disabled,

The road beneath their feet had clearly begun to turn semi-wilderness. Only the open center of the main road was in somewhat better condition, yet they still had to slow to no more than three or four kilometers an hour, walking and resting as they went. 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, leaking water and even on the verge of collapse, half-reduced to ruins, were naturally out of the question. As for the few distant high-rises that remained relatively intact, built of noticeably sturdier materials and not too severely damaged or corroded...

He did not know whether it was an illusion, but as the sky gradually began to darken, 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... the sensation did not seem to come from any specific direction. It was more like a scattered yet clinging "stare" seeping from the countless dark windows among those high-rises.

As if the entire building were a colossal beast still deep in sleep, and their group's arrival had merely caused it to flutter its eyelids slightly in its dreams.

Whenever the veteran suddenly turned around and followed that faint sensation with his gaze, trying to catch the source of those stares, all he saw was the same unchanging dead silence.

Nothing.

Those lifeless, hollow windows—some of which no longer even had a shard of broken glass left, with only a few weeds faintly poking through—looked especially deep and secluded. Yet their interiors truly seemed bottomless, silently swallowing every probing gaze cast toward them.

Was it an illusion, or...

As he watched the sky dim bit by bit and time continue to pass, Old Li finally stopped walking.

He truly could not make up his mind.

He did not bother with the few people who had barely managed to catch up behind them—even though two or three had fallen behind midway after he demanded they speed up. Since he had made his terms clear, he naturally would not concern himself with that.

After thinking it over, the veteran decisively turned his gaze toward the person nearby who, besides himself, ought to count as one of the smarter ones in the group.

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

Beneath a collapsed building, someone was feeling around and cautiously reaching into a moss-covered gap. With a hard tug, he pulled out a long backpack whose lower half was still exposed. Its general shape remained intact, though it was so thickly coated in dust that its original color could no longer be seen, 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 was briefly left speechless, but then he realized that his own question had been vague and nonsensical.

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

"Ah, I didn't ask clearly... Do you think we should keep heading toward those high-rises to spend the night, or find a better house nearby and make do for one night first?"

As the tough, fibrous backpack was carefully pulled free with force, dull impacts from hard objects rang out in succession. Several loose chunks of stone, no longer supported by internal pressure, rolled down nearby, and dust spread through the air.

The young man lightly jumped out through the cloud of dust with the long bag in hand, unable to stop himself from coughing a few times first.

He casually squeezed the bag from top to bottom, then gave it a hard shake. Large patches of crusted dust and grit fell away in flakes.

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

As he worked on what he was holding, he shook his head.

"And with more than ten people, the amount of living supplies we need is no small matter. In these small houses that have clearly been abandoned for so long, unless they have matching storage basements—and ones preserved in very good condition at that—we won't find much."

In fact, they had already tried searching some of the roadside houses earlier, but the results had been poor.

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

Clearly, the other buildings would likely be much the same, with no great difference.

After dealing with it simply, Li Yun slung the long backpack over his shoulder. He casually crouched down, pushed aside the damp loose soil that had gathered over the grass-covered pavement, and let a cluster of shade-loving insects—large, small, and strangely shaped—scatter in all directions from beneath the earth.

He carefully pressed against the mottled, cracked concrete road surface.

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

"Personally, I think we'd be better off checking those high-rises."

He raised his head to look at the sky again, narrowing his eyes slightly for some reason.

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