The law of survival X and X the so-called "water source"

Qi Zhou resumed his "journey."

He felt a little bad about it, but only after the boy had eaten the biscuit and remained fine for quite a while did Qi Zhou eat the other compressed biscuit.

It was past its expiration date and so dry that eating it was like eating sand, but it tasted surprisingly decent. The only problem was... he was even thirstier afterward.

Qi Zhou wasn't too worried, though. He looked down at his hands. If Noah's Nen could be transformed into "fire," then "water" should be no problem either... right?

But the air here was frighteningly dry. If he wanted to find "water," he would have to go to District Twelve.

District Twelve wasn't far away. Thinking back, he had probably headed south after escaping the bandits' lair. He had passed out not long afterward, and people from District Five had found him and taken him to the Slaughterhouse. After that, he must have headed toward the settlement to the east. Once inside, he had followed the boy and run in the opposite direction for an hour, reaching the garbage mountains due west, in District Nine.

To get to District Twelve now, he only had to keep heading south. Once he crossed District Eight, he would reach it.

Besides finding water and seeing whether he could condense it, Qi Zhou had another reason for going to District Twelve: to verify what the boy had told him. If it was true, he would have to find a way out of Meteor City after surviving for six months.

He really didn't want to spend another day in this godforsaken place.

Using Nen to speed himself up, Qi Zhou ran until the sun was nearly down. Then he came to a trench over five meters wide and ten meters deep, stretching farther than he could see.

The garbage on the other side was piled just as high, and the gravel beneath the garbage mountains had been stained pitch-black by the refuse.

Barrels of chemical waste had cracked open after exposure to wind and sun, spilling waste that had gone untreated because no one could be bothered to pay for its disposal directly onto the ground. Enormous discarded machines had been dropped straight from the sky, scattering parts and uncleared waste everywhere. They were covered in stains whose colors immediately brought deadly poison to mind.

"This is a 'containment zone,' right?" Qi Zhou crouched, looking at the gravel on the other side of the trench, blackened by the leaking chemical waste.

"In a place like this, without a containment zone, the poison in the soil would spread over here too, not to mention radioactive materials and radiation..."

Qi Zhou suddenly didn't feel much like going across.

Qi Zhou wrapped himself in an airtight layer of Ten, then tore open the wrapper from the compressed biscuit he had just eaten and pulled it over his face. He didn't know whether it would do any good, but it was mainly for peace of mind.

He found a slightly cleaner spot, backed up a few meters, took a running start, and leaped onto the soil of District Twelve. Then he headed for the little river the boy had pointed out to him.

After another hour or so of walking, the sun had set completely, and night had fallen.

He saw what he was looking for, but he couldn't feel happy about it at all.

"Can this... even be called a 'river'?"

It was a "river" that had dried up-though that wasn't quite right either. The riverbed was exposed in some places, but in others, a shallow layer of pitch-black water still flowed weakly along before disappearing into the soil at the end.

Qi Zhou sat on the ground, staring at the "river," lost in thought.

Honestly, he still couldn't understand why a place like Meteor City existed.

The people here could only get the supplies they needed to live by "picking through garbage." If they couldn't find anything, they had to go hungry. Even children in their early teens were no exception.

People outside didn't treat the people here as living human beings at all. They dumped deadly garbage here without the slightest concern, without treating it in any way.

Even this river-the only river in the desert-had been reduced to this state by outsiders...

Qi Zhou couldn't understand it.

Those at the top did whatever they pleased, while those at the bottom struggled in a place where the line between hell and the human world was blurred.

Qi Zhou smiled bitterly. "I can't understand it. Maybe that's because I'm not the one who's wrong. It's this world."

He stood up and slowly approached the little river.

Though it was only a shallow layer of polluted water, Qi Zhou could still sense a faint trace of water vapor.

He stood by the river, raised his hand, closed his eyes, and activated his Nen Ability.

He didn't know how many attempts he made or how much time passed, but when Qi Zhou opened his eyes, clear, crystalline water was slowly gathering with his Nen into a ribbon, then converging at his fingertip.

"Ahh."

He swallowed the water he had made in one gulp.

He didn't know whether it was an illusion caused by going without water for so long, but Qi Zhou could actually taste sweetness.

The fresh water eased the burning in his mouth and throat, even lifting his spirits.

"I'm alive again..."

Before he could properly savor the feeling of sweet rain after a long drought, every hair on Qi Zhou's body stood on end.

Only then did he hear the bang of a gunshot.

A moonless, windless night.

The instant the shot rang out, before Qi Zhou himself could even react, his body dropped forward and he fell flat on the ground.

The bullet grazed past his cheek and struck the dirt with a muffled thud.

Dirt sprayed into the air.