The next second, the view before everyone's eyes suddenly opened up.
Neatly arranged houses lined both sides of the street, with white walls, gray roof tiles, and roadside trees planted out front beneath dim yellow streetlights.
Wisps of cooking smoke rose from the rooftops.
In the distance, they could see a hospital's illuminated red cross sign. A faded national flag stood on an elementary school's sports field, while a drinks cooler sat outside the convenience store on the street corner, its glass door bearing an old "Open" sticker.
Everything looked just as it had before the apocalypse.
An utterly ordinary fifth-tier city.
Everyone in the Survival Convoy stood rooted to the spot.
The contrast was too abrupt.
One second, they had still been inside an icy steel passage, bullets grazing their scalps;
the next, they were standing in a warm utopia, with cooking smoke rising and signs of human life everywhere.
Yang Yong blinked, his throat tightening.
The feeling was hard to describe, like stepping into empty air.
He should have breathed a sigh of relief, yet his heart beat even faster.
It was too normal.
So normal that it was... abnormal.
Seeing everyone standing there in a daze, Kang Yixiang grinned. "Well? Pretty stunning, right? I was stunned when I first arrived, too!"
"People outside are already migrating everywhere just to survive, yet this place is like a utopia!"
She led the way, her wheels rolling over the concrete road with a soft rumble.
"Here's the kindergarten! Here's the elementary school! This way is the middle school! Over there..."
She pointed at a white building. "That's the only hospital in the Outer City!"
"But hardly anyone comes to the hospital."
"After all, all those conditions that used to require surgery and treatment at hospitals don't even count as illnesses