Chapter 62

The environment in the Abandoned Factory was very harsh, and there was no nutrient liquid to fill their stomachs.

Su Xuanxiao had previously hidden a batch of nutrient liquid taken from the school outside with a sense of crisis, but for safety’s sake, he couldn’t retrieve it right now.

Fortunately, the Fairy Tale Candle that could produce cakes wasn’t completely used up yet, enough for them to hold out a few more days in the Abandoned Factory.

With the invasion from another world, many factories were forced to shut down, and the sky of the Wasteland World surprisingly revealed a misty blue hue that had never been seen before.

In the late afternoon, Su Xuanxiao, Su Wuzi, and Su Jianglou sat together eating cake. Su Ximu, still held in his eldest brother’s arms, didn’t eat, even when his brothers fed the cake right to his mouth—he wouldn’t open it.

He already knew there were bad guys outside catching people, and they couldn’t let themselves be caught. There was no food here, so his brothers could only fill their stomachs with cake.

He didn’t get hungry without eating, so there was no need to eat cake just to taste something sweet.

Su Xuanxiao ate very restrainedly. Once he felt his stamina gradually recovering as energy replenished his body, he handed the little one in his arms to Su Wuzi and headed toward a hidden corner outside the factory.

He had to keep watch.

Seeing this, Su Wuzi and Su Jianglou said nothing, simply sitting there silently to rest and recover their strength, preparing to take over for their eldest brother at night.

“Brother…” Su Ximu rubbed his eyes.

The youth gently rocked the child in his arms. “Sleepy? Then sleep for a bit.”

In the two years’ time, the little baby from back then had grown some more. The tender yellow shirt and suspender pants he originally wore no longer fit and had been replaced with a white robe similar to his brothers’.

The robe was also “taken” from the school by his brothers. To make it fit the little one, Su Wuzi had even self-taught tailoring and sewing skills.

When Su Ximu, dressed in his little white robe, stood with his brothers, those who didn’t know might think he had a number 244 in this world too.

But this uniformity didn’t make Su Wuzi and the others happy. On the contrary, every time they saw that white robe, it cast a layer of ominous gloom over their hearts.

Because when the little one first arrived here, no one could remove the clothes on his body.

But as time passed, it wasn’t just the clothes…

Su Wuzi looked at the faint white mark left on the little one’s hand.

That was the scar from last month when he accidentally fell—not fully faded yet.

He could feel pain now. He could get hurt.

Coaxed by his brother, Su Ximu’s sleepiness gradually surged.

But before sleeping, he still confirmed worriedly, “Brother, will the bad guys find this place?”

The drowsy-eyed child emphasized, “If there’s a fight, I can… I can hide by myself.”

The little one wasn’t worried at all that his brothers would abandon him out of fear for danger. What he feared was that if his brothers really faced danger, they might struggle to fight the bad guys because they wanted to take him along.

He could hide first without hindering his brothers from beating the bad guys.

This was just a strategy, not separation.

Su Wuzi nodded. “Okay, if there’s a fight, Jianglou will take you and hide.”

Leaning against his second brother, Su Jianglou lightly bumped heads with his little brother and immediately nodded upon hearing his name. “Xibao, I’m pretty strong too. I can protect you.”

Perhaps because he was still relatively young, even though Su Jianglou had fully undergone transformation, he hadn’t quite figured out his abilities yet. He only vaguely sensed they had something to do with his eyes.

Amid their back-and-forth murmurs, Su Ximu and Su Jianglou both drifted off into hazy sleep.

Today’s mental and physical toll on them had been relatively high.

In the latter half of the night, Su Xuanxiao returned to the factory interior, reached out to take Xiao Xi, and caught Su Jianglou’s head just as it was about to slump after Su Wuzi stood up.

Su Wuzi stretched a bit in place before walking out of the factory to take over night watch from his eldest brother.

At this time in the Wasteland World, the night wind carried eerie wails and cries from elsewhere, the scent of blood mingling with the factory’s rusty iron smell, lingering at the nose.

Su Wuzi gazed far in the direction the wind came from. He knew that in that direction, another monster—what the managers called one—had crossed the gray mist and claimed a territory of its own here.

Su Xuanxiao had brought his brothers to stay in this Abandoned Factory for over a week.

During that time, he even used a Scouting-Type Strange Artifact he’d intercepted to check on the residential area’s situation.

After transporting people away in trucks, those hunter squads had vanished. Clearly, the hunter squad members had been thrown into the monsters’ domains along with everyone else.

To keep surviving and obtain a Doomsday Voyage Ship no smaller than half of District 13, the entire management had gone mad.

After throwing in all the living forces from the Outer District, they turned their eyes to the inner city residents.

Unfortunately, these inner city residents weren’t as easy to fool as the Outer District ones raised like livestock.

In just one short week, Hope District had already seen four full-scale rebellions erupting from within the inner city.

The original vice president of the District 13 Management Committee had died in the rebellions.

He died with his eyes wide open, clearly full of extreme reluctance.

But the amusing part was that those leaders who gathered people for the rebellions spoke so righteously—life is precious, they shouldn’t be casually sacrificed for the selfish desires of the powerful and abandoned. In reality, Su Xuanxiao’s scouting revealed that these leaders hadn’t held back from secretly throwing people to snatch props either.

Perhaps this farce finally satisfied the malicious whims of the monster calling itself “Traveler.”

While his kind feasted in this New World, he finally arrived fashionably late, randomly selecting a spot and beginning to crush his domain into this world’s reality space.

And then…

He got lost.

He entered a dazzling sea of Transparent Dream Balls.

Each crystal ball represented an incredibly realistic dream.

He found it interesting, so he stayed briefly.

Some dreams he didn’t like much, so he woke up quickly.

Others made him linger, reluctant to leave.

Now it was Su Wuzi’s turn for night watch again. His expression sank as he scanned the surroundings of the factory, murmuring to himself, “Too late.”

As his words fell, another faint crack sounded. In his perception, another gray mist-shrouded, indescribable thing crashed into the “dreams” he’d accumulated.

These “dreams” were the ones he’d just fully released not long ago to protect the factory’s safety.

Crack, crack, crack…

The sounds were like a continuous meteor shower smashing against a transparent barrier. In an instant, the sky shattered into countless massive holes.

The Wasteland World finally couldn’t hold on any longer at this moment—it crumbled and fell apart.

Su Wuzi turned and saw his eldest brother had already brought Xiao Xi and Jianglou out of the factory.

Outside the transparent barrier, in just a few short seconds, not only did the crashing of gray mist monsters into the dreams echo, but the greedy voices of the Wasteland World’s humans began to rise as well.

“Is this the place?”

“It’s here.”

“My senses can’t be wrong! The Traveler descended right here!”

“No mistake—I could smell Bureau Chief Lin’s aura from two districts away!”

The Traveler, the first gray mist monster to crash into the sea of Transparent Dream Balls.

An old man whose body was entirely metal except for his head was supported by his loyal hunters. His eyes bloodshot, expression manic, he stared at the sea of Transparent Dream Balls blocking his path forward and bit one to pieces.

He was the principal of Education Field 104.

Another man with a monocle, protruding belly, and a face full of flabby fat tapped his ornate staff on the ground, parting a small cluster of Transparent Dream Balls before him.

He was a manager, and also a hunter.

The terrifying part of Su Wuzi’s ability was that without special defensive measures, anyone who touched a Transparent Dream Ball would be forcibly induced into sleep.

As more and more people arrived upon hearing the news, the factory—which had already been surrounded inside and out in mere seconds—became impenetrably packed, with the crowd stretching back endlessly.

Everything happened too fast.

A sweet, tempting bait had drawn in all of Hope District’s survivors.

Su Wuzi’s “dreams” weren’t enough. Those at the front bit through the Transparent Dream Balls and collapsed in place, only for newcomers to quickly step over their bodies and press forward.

Crimson liquid gradually flowed from under their feet.

Those who fell first had already been trampled into the finest meat paste imaginable.

Su Wuzi covered Xiao Xi’s eyes and tossed the still-dreaming Traveler outward.

Boom!

The crowd surged in agitation again.

Upon waking after being thrown from the dream, the Traveler was somewhat distraught. He dispersed the gray mist around him, revealing the appearance of a disheveled youth.

“Why throw me out? I want to go back!” the Traveler shouted, charging back toward the Transparent Dream Balls.

Someone blocked him, trying to challenge this powerful monster for the Doomsday Voyage Ship.

But the Traveler, who had truly been briefly “held back,” let out a strange laugh. “If I had a ship like that, wouldn’t I just travel myself? Why give it to you lot?”

“Why would you believe the words of a weird one?”

He’d named himself Traveler because he loved traveling so much.

If there really was a ship that could cross world fissures, he’d have set off on a journey long ago.

With that, the Traveler dove headfirst into the last small cluster of Transparent Dream Balls, continuing his grand dream.

Everyone who heard him went utterly mad, as if insane.

The world was like a broken sack that could never be mended again.

Their one hope turned out to be just a lie fabricated by a monster for its own amusement.

The fissures in the sky above grew more numerous, and beneath their feet lay wet, bloody red meat paste. Someone scratched their hair, then mimicked the Traveler’s tone with a strange laugh, swinging a hand to slap off a colleague’s head who had accidentally bumped into him.

At the center of the chaos, Su Xuanxiao and Su Wuzi could only join the fray to escape with their brothers.

“Xiao Xi, cover your own eyes now, okay?” Clearly, in this final moment, compared to handing Xiao Xi to his eldest brother, Su Wuzi trusted himself more.

“Okay.” Su Ximu, who had a rough idea of what might have happened on-site, covered his eyes with his hands and curled up as small as possible in his brother’s arms, trying not to hinder his movements.

Ever since being confirmed fully transformed in the Research Lab, neither Su Xuanxiao nor Su Wuzi had truly gone all-out in real combat.

The people around the factory seemed endless, as if every hunter and manager from Hope District had gathered here.

Su Xuanxiao slung Su Jianglou onto his back. Su Jianglou was fierce, twisting back to deliver a hand chop to the neck of someone swinging a blade at his second brother’s arm.

The neck snapped with a crack.

Su Jianglou counted himself, “One.”

“Two.”

“Three…”

They pushed from the central area to the middle zone, then to the outskirts like this.

From night to day, then back to night.

Behind the four, devastation lay everywhere.

Finally, someone used thermal weapons.

The Transparent Dream Balls Su Wuzi had placed around them shattered again and again.

Thud.

Su Jianglou went limp and fell from his eldest brother’s back.

A terrifying gash tore open Su Xuanxiao’s chest, nearly piercing him through entirely.

Su Wuzi turned back and glanced behind him, then squatted down and steadily set the little guy in his arms on the ground.

He said, “Xiao Xi, you can open your eyes now. But don’t look back.”

The child in the white little robe, which was also stained with some bloodstains, opened his eyes, revealing that pair of clear eyes as pure as if washed by water.

Brother didn’t let him look back.

The first thing he saw was the sky, brother, and little brother.

Big brother was a bit farther back; he could only see big brother’s robe hem.

It was nighttime now, but the stars had already vanished from the sky.

There was a rift and black hole darker than the night curtain, as if it wanted to suck people in. Gray mist appeared in the sky, slowly pressing downward.

“Brother, big brother, little brother, where are we going next?” he asked, somewhat puzzled.

But little brother already lacked the strength to answer him. He merely blinked at him, meaning he didn’t know either.

Su Wuzi was equally exhausted, lying amid this stretch of ruins.

He too saw the gray mist in the sky, now very close to them.

Just like every night before bed in the past, he gently said to his little brother, who was still gazing at him, “Xiao Xi, come, let brother hold you.”

Su Ximu didn’t mind not hearing a reply from his brother. He nodded and obediently burrowed back into his brother’s arms, curling himself into a tiny ball.

He felt his brother gently patting him, over and over, then placing the last transparent little bead on his forehead.

The little bead immediately turned into white specks of light and vanished.

Su Wuzi thought that he absolutely didn’t want Xiao Xi to know what pain felt like.

Beneath the gray mist, Su Ximu closed his eyes along with his exhausted brothers.