The Starfire Convoy.
At the front of the camp, the members of the Starfire Council sat around a bonfire.
Ever since the convoy entered the outskirts of Prosper City, faint flurries had drifted through the air without ever stopping.
And as they traveled farther north, the tiny snowflakes grew into great flakes like oatmeal.
Chen Mo tugged up his coat collar, trying to shield his neck from the cold.
This coat was already the thickest one he could find, and he wore two thinner layers underneath.
Cold.
All Chen Mo felt was cold. Even as a Transcendent, he could barely stand it.
He had no idea how the ordinary people were coping.
Lunch wasn't pork and vermicelli like last time.
It was warmed-up biscuit mush with pickled vegetables.
It tasted fucking disgusting.
Everyone sat around the fire with little appetite.
Ever since they learned how rare Red Hare was,
the donkey had been getting much better treatment.
At that moment, Red Hare lay on the ground beside Xiao Ya, occasionally rubbing his head against Su Qian's legging-clad thigh.
She giggled and reached down to stroke his soft coat.
Su Qian clearly had no idea how intelligent this sleazy donkey really was. She simply thought he was a mutated beast with a little intelligence, but not much.
Red Hare narrowed his eyes in contentment, enjoying Su Qian's touch.
"Ahem."
Lin Lu put down his bowl and handed it to Xiao Liu.
He explained why he had called them together for this meeting.
"We've entered the outskirts of Prosper City."
"The farther north we go, the colder it'll get."
"According to the map, once we pass through Prosper City, we'll reach Camel City.
"From Camel City, we'll skirt around Horseshoe Gully No-Man's Land, then turn south."
"A lot of convoys have gathered over there. According to the information I've obtained through my ability,
"some large convoys have already joined forces and are preparing to build a permanent settlement."
Chen Mo frowned.
A settlement?
He asked Lin Lu outright.
"Is that reliable?"
"With so many living people gathered in one place, they're bound to attract powerful anomalies."
"Can they hold them off?"
Lin Lu shook his head, his expression blank.
"I don't know."
"But we have to take a look."
Just as everyone fell silent,
"Aah!"
a shrill scream rang out from where the Bus was parked.
Lin Lu's assistant, Birthmark, came running over in a panic.
After the convoys merged, the job of managing the Bus had been handed to this young man in his early twenties.
"Someone... someone's dead!"
They exchanged glances and rushed toward the Bus.
At the bottom of a dirt slope, a middle-aged man lay on his back.
Chen Mo remembered him. His name seemed to be Zhang Tao, an unremarkable passenger on the Bus who usually kept to himself.
A thick layer of frost coated Zhang Tao's eyelashes and hair.
His body was curled up, his arms clasped over his chest. His face was twisted, as though he had seen something terrifying before he died.
Big Niu went over and checked. The man was no longer breathing.
"He froze to death, right?"
Lin Lu said nothing. He crouched down and carefully examined the body.
Chen Mo walked over as well.
Something wasn't right.
It was cold, but the temperature was only around minus twenty degrees Celsius.
Besides, the convoy had stopped at noon. Only two or three hours had passed.
How could a grown man freeze to death without anyone noticing?
Chen Mo recalled a short science video he'd watched on his phone before the apocalypse.
Before freezing to death, people would experience the illusion of extreme heat.
They would uncontrollably strip off their clothes.
That phenomenon seemed to be called "paradoxical undressing."
Yet Zhang Tao's coat was neatly in place. He hadn't even undone the buttons.
Chen Mo turned toward Lin Lu. Had this Perceiver failed to sense an anomaly?
Lin Lu had clearly thought of it too.
"He didn't freeze to death."
"There's probably something sinister nearby."
Lin Lu seemed to know what Chen Mo was thinking.
"I can only sense the relative strength of anomalies across an area and choose a comparatively safe route."
"And that only works on a regional scale. I can't pinpoint their locations."
"Not unless I gain a few more levels."
"But that should happen soon. Lately, I've been showing signs of a breakthrough."
"Let's go. There's probably something wrong with this place."
Lin Lu said no more and instructed everyone to bury the body.
Two survivors hastily dug a shallow pit on the slope and carelessly covered it with some frozen soil.
The whole thing took barely ten minutes.
There wasn't even a funeral or a moment of silence.
Xiao Liu crouched down and used a branch to scratch Zhang Tao's name into the ground.
Sitting in the Dump Truck, Chen Mo lit a cigarette and glanced at the earthen grave in his rearview mirror.
A sense of foreboding filled him.
The convoy soon left the area and continued north along the highway.
They sped toward Prosper City.
No one noticed that, after the convoy had gone,
the soil on the grave began to tremble slightly.
A frost-covered hand reached out of the earth.
"Zhang Tao" slowly turned his neck, then took stiff steps and followed in the convoy's direction.
White clouds swallowed every trace of people; drifting snow chased the frozen sand.
Cypress branches wore a coat of white; empty alleys lay beyond all worldly clamor.
Prosper City.
The convoy slowly drove into this snowbound land.
The high-rises along the road were in ruins.
Many had collapsed, and rubble and rebar made the road even harder to navigate.
The Bus now led the way, pushing aside the snow with an attached plow.
Old Yang had fitted it on the fly to deal with Prosper City's snow, which was over ten centimeters deep.
The convoy advanced in fits and starts.
Chen Mo drove Red Hare Two in the middle of the convoy.
He listened to the donkey and Li Xia bicker and complain.
Now a wondrous item, Li Xia seemed to have realized that the donkey couldn't do anything to her, and she had grown bolder.
Huge snowflakes swirled outside the windows.
Chen Mo noticed numerous white cicadas clinging to the trees outside.
According to the donkey, these were frost cicadas, a new species from the Tide Cry Era found only in the north.
As for what they were good for, no one knew.
The radio crackled, interrupting Li Xia mid-argument.
"Attention, everyone. We've entered Prosper City."
"I'm sensing the presence of many high-level anomalies in this area."
"And there's something strange about this city. The heavy snow is severely suppressing my perception. My effective range may be less than twenty meters."
"We need to move fast. Our target is the large shopping center downtown. Once we've replenished our clothing and essential supplies, we'll leave immediately."
Chen Mo's heart slowly sank.
Here, they were no different from blind people.
In the passenger seat, Red Hare was also shivering from the cold. His oversized pink shorts looked particularly flimsy.
The convoy spent roughly half an hour advancing along the main road in fits and starts.
At last, they stopped in front of a large shopping center called Prosper City International Shopping Center.
"Big Niu, Xiao Ya, Chen Mo, you three take ten physically fit survivors inside first."
"Su Qian, Old Yang, and I will provide support outside. Keep your radios open at all times."
Chen Mo took the Surgical Knife out of his pocket and dragged along the donkey, who was dead set against going.
He climbed straight out of the vehicle.
"Come on. If we kill any anomalies in there, you get the bodies."
"Deal."
In the SUV beside them, Su Qian straightened Xiao Ya's pink sweater and gave her some instructions Chen Mo couldn't hear.
Xiao Ya nodded obediently and climbed out, holding her doll.
Big Niu carried a battered sack and wore only a tank top, as though he didn't know what cold was.
At some point, a patch of black hair had appeared on his chest.
Soon, a makeshift team of thirteen people and one donkey had assembled at the shopping center's entrance.
Creeeak-
The huge revolving glass door was pushed open.
Chen Mo hung back a step, letting Big Niu take the lead.
He made sure there were people shielding him in front, behind, and on both sides.
The donkey did exactly the same.
The two simultaneously gave each other looks of utter contempt.
The moment they stepped inside, a stench of rot, mold, and decay hit them in the face.
With the power out, the shopping center was pitch-black. The group switched on several flashlights.
The first floor housed food and daily necessities.
Wherever the flashlight beams fell, the fruit on the shelves had long since rotted into puddles of black liquid, giving off a foul stench.
The smell was strongest in the fresh food section.
The meat in the freezers had long since spoiled and was crawling with white maggots.
Dark green fluid covered the floor, turning their stomachs.
"Fuck, everything here is rotten," Brother Dao couldn't help cursing as he held up his flashlight.
Chen Mo ignored Brother Dao's remark and urged everyone forward.
"Quit talking. Get to the second floor!"
They headed deeper inside.
Just as everyone was about to rush up the long-stopped escalator,
Xiao Ya abruptly halted. The Barbie Doll in her hands snapped her head around, her glass eyes locking onto a particular spot.
Whoosh!
The Barbie Doll became a blur and shot toward the seafood section.
A muffled explosion came from deep among the display cases.
Everyone hurriedly aimed their flashlights toward it.
A huge, slime-covered tail resembling a snake's flashed through the darkness, then quickly vanished into the shadows of the display cases.
"There's something over there!"
"Watch out!"
Before you continue