Looking at her carefree little brother, Wu Meng decided to go ask, but for safety's sake, she wasn't going to take Wu Jie along.
"Stay here. I'll go take a look."
"Huh? Oh." Wu Jie scratched his head again without giving it much thought.
Wu Meng had beaten him into line since childhood, so he had long grown used to doing what she said. Even the apocalypse hadn't changed that.
Even after the apocalypse began, Wu Meng had kept him away from everything else. As far as he understood it, everyone had to look for food and supplies together during the apocalypse.
He had seen darkness, yet still retained a trace of innocence.
Wu Meng took a deep breath, grabbed a backpack full of food from the vehicle, and walked toward Zhou Dun and the two women.
By then, Chu Sheng and the others had settled everything. Zhou Dun had taken Li Ling and Li Qian to a relatively open spot and begun pitching their tent.
Seeing Wu Meng approach, Zhou Dun paused, then stood up and frowned. "What are you doing here?"
"This is for you." Wu Meng didn't answer his question, instead setting the backpack she carried on the ground.
"You gave us all your food. Without anything to eat, you'll only starve."
"And you only kept a tent out of all your supplies. I don't know what you're planning, but you'll die if you keep this up."
Zhou Dun looked at the backpack on the ground, then at Wu Meng. After a moment of silence, he asked, "What do you want?"
"I want to know what you gave him."
Both Wu Meng and Zhou Dun knew that "him" meant Chu Sheng.
Zhou Dun fell silent again, but he kept moving. He walked over to where Wu Meng had set the backpack, bent down, and picked it up. "That was supernatural material."
"It only drops when an Anomalies dies. You can use it to ask Chu Sheng to help make a Sacrificial Item."
"You know what Sacrificial Items are."
Everyone in the convoy knew about Sacrificial Items, whether they were ordinary people or not.
Supernatural objects that could be used by paying a price-that was how the survivors understood Sacrificial Items.
"Thank you." Wu Meng stood where she was, steadying her emotions, her expression sincere.
Zhou Dun fell silent again.
When the captain had told him about this before, he had also told him to spread the news.
But he hadn't. Now, seeing Wu Meng thank him so earnestly, Zhou Dun felt an inexplicable sense of danger.
These past few days, he had thought only about how to get a Sacrificial Item. Unconsciously-or perhaps deliberately-he hadn't passed the news on.
But he had overlooked something.
Chu Sheng was willing to fuse Sacrificial Items for ordinary people.
And the captain had told him to spread that news.
Based on what he had learned and seen of Chu Sheng lately, he might end up offending two Sequence Adepts: Chu Sheng and the captain.
The captain might not do anything to him, but the same couldn't be said for Chu Sheng.
He would probably say, "Why did you get in the way of me making money?" while killing him.
Just thinking about Chu Sheng made Zhou Dun a little panicked.
There was a consensus in the convoy: offend another Sequence Adept, and you might survive. Offend Chu Sheng, and you definitely wouldn't.
Chu Sheng's reputation had become deeply ingrained in everyone's minds.
Meanwhile, Chu Sheng had locked the supplies and food inside the vehicle and climbed through the hole above the driver's seat onto the bed in the Rampage Truck. He sneezed, wiped his nose, and frowned. "Is someone bad-mouthing me?"
"That can't be right. I've only just decided to change my image, and someone's already bad-mouthing me?"
Rubbing the tip of his nose, Chu Sheng took out a box of compressed biscuits and started eating.
The sky had already gone dark.
When they had first stopped here, Captain Hui had said they could only stay for five hours.
After Chu Sheng finished assembling, upgrading, and sorting the supplies, only an hour and a half remained.
They would soon be traveling through the night. Now was the time for dinner.
The moment the thought arose, his stomach began to protest.
Other than during the first few days of the apocalypse, Chu Sheng had never felt as rattled as he had by today's events.
First, they had encountered another convoy, then traded "amicably," then fused their vehicles and upgraded them into Sacrificial Items.
Before he could even celebrate, they discovered they were surrounded by Anomalies.
Then came the desperate flight for their lives.
If Captain Hui hadn't found a way out of certain death, they would have been wiped out this time.
Not a single person would have survived.
After they finally escaped with their lives, the pickup had fallen apart completely. He hadn't been able to stop assembling and upgrading for even a moment.
Only now did he have a chance to rest. As soon as he did, hunger hit him. He felt as though, if a cow appeared in front of him, he could chase it down and eat the whole thing raw.
He ate compressed biscuits, taking an occasional sip of water. The only sound inside the Rampage Truck was his chewing.
A long while passed.
Leaning back on the bed, Chu Sheng looked around the completely enclosed "room" and murmured, "I'll need to add a window next time I upgrade."
Being completely sealed in was a little too oppressive.
More importantly, he couldn't see any dangers outside at all.
Fortunately, he had made a closable opening in the roof, allowing him to climb straight onto the top of the truck and survey his surroundings.
While he was pondering life, a rustling came from outside, followed by someone's voice.
"Get ready, everyone! We're leaving in ten minutes!"
The speaker was Captain Hui's driver. Chu Sheng remembered his voice.
The instant he heard it, Chu Sheng rolled over and slipped straight into the hole a short distance from the bed.
Dropping down, Chu Sheng landed directly in the driver's seat and turned the key.
Under the faint, blood-red moonlight, the Rampage Truck let out a thunderous roar.
He glanced at the dashboard. There wasn't much fuel left.
He poured in all his remaining gasoline, then climbed back into the truck after filling the tank.
That was his last half tank of fuel.
On gasoline alone, driving four or five hundred kilometers would be no problem.
When the pickup had upgraded into a truck, its fuel tank had expanded too. What had once been enough for a full refill now only filled half the tank.
Although he was running low on fuel, Chu Sheng wasn't worried. With Gas-Electric Hybrid, it consumed no energy under the sun.
Even on cloudy days when the sun was obscured, the truck could charge slowly. It might be slower, but it still wouldn't consume fuel.
Not to mention that he had enough stored electricity for an hour of driving at full speed, plus half a tank of gasoline.
Even by the roughest estimate, driving several thousand kilometers wouldn't be a problem. If push came to shove, he could trade for some fuel from Captain Hui and the others.
Ten minutes passed quickly.
The convoy began moving under the moonlight.
Before the two convoys had met, theirs had numbered around two hundred and twenty or thirty people.
When the convoy split up to escape, only around a hundred and sixty or seventy remained.
And now, even with the people who had caught up, their convoy had only a little over eighty left.
A single encirclement by Anomalies had killed nearly half of them.
Chu Sheng suddenly felt alarmed by the dwindling population.
Whatever else he might be, he was still human. Humans were social creatures, and seeing so many people die stirred something in him too.
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