What was Jing Shu's team here for? To find seeds, of course. But now that they knew they had completely missed the fleet, the idea of rest or recovery didn't matter anymore. The cold reality was simple. If they didn't hurry to catch up, the distance between them would only keep growing until the signal vanished forever.
Even Jing Shu couldn't help but envy Qian Duoduo's helicopter. If she had one at her disposal, she could have flown straight over the jagged peaks to check things out from above. But then again, finding a small group of vehicles in these endless, snow-capped mountains would be like looking for a needle in a vast, grey ocean. Helicopters were a pain to fly in such treacherous terrain anyway. Even if a pilot was willing to guzzle fuel like crazy, the altitude and winds would make it a gamble. Still, it would be faster than trudging along like this.
She told herself there were pros and cons to both modes of travel. Helicopters had their downsides, particularly the vulnerability to the sudden mountain storms.
"So, which direction do we go?" Yang Yang's tone was low as he started discussing the route with Lǚ Liu. Choosing the wrong path through the fork ahead would only take them farther away from their objective.
Lǚ Liu pointed toward the front of the topographical map spread across the table. "We will take the main road here. I will send a few automated scouting teams to check the other routes, and if anything comes up, we can head there right away. This road is going to take forever," she sighed. With mountain ranges this vast and no sign of the fleet's tracks, they would have to drive until the very end of the pass.
"If the fleet really got swept over here, that might not be so bad," Yang Yang said, dragging a finger across the paper. "No matter where they ended up, we can still mount a rescue. What I'm worried about is..." He trailed off, the thought of the fleet being buried under a landslide left unspoken.
"Let's hope they are holding out."
The group fell silent, the only sound being the rattle of the bus. Everyone's mood sank, especially Jing Shu's. Those were the seeds she had worked so hard to bring back from America, risking her life in a dying land. If she hadn't run out of space in her Rubik's Cube Space back then—and if those seeds hadn't been so sensitive that they couldn't be transported in the open air—she never would have handed them over for official transport. Some things were just fate.
"They will make it until we find them," Yang Yang said, trying to lift the heavy atmosphere. No one rested after that. They climbed back into their designated spots in the vehicle. Hong Bin was told to sleep while Lǚ Liu took her turn at the wheel, her hands gripping the steering column tightly.
In her heart, Jing Shu muttered, "The sooner we rescue them, the fewer of my seeds they will eat."
Every meal that passed meant fewer seeds for her to plant. Eating them wasn't the only problem. It was the prospect of losing both the people and the future of her crops that terrified her. Time really wasn't on their side.
Jun Bao didn't say a single word the whole time. Even when Lǚ Liu and Yang Yang discussed plans and fuel consumption, he never joined in, making him seem like a total background character in his own operation. Jing Shu didn't bother asking what was going on with him. She figured his brain just worked on a different frequency than everyone else's.
Everyone else was frantic over the missing seeds, while Jun Bao was crouched in the corner, staring at a patch of dirt he had brought in. He even climbed a small hill during a brief stop and came back carrying a whole bucket of grey, gritty sludge. "I found some unusual soil," he said, his voice completely serious as he poked at the muck.
Lǚ Liu looked up from the driver's seat, wanting to bridge the awkward silence. "Is it like the stuff we found yesterday afternoon?"
At least the question kept the atmosphere from becoming entirely cold. Jing Shu, however, kept her eyes fixed on the window. She didn't even react when Jun Bao quietly picked up a few stray chicken feathers from the floorboards. Last night, before bed, he had asked if he could pluck a few directly from the source.
Back then, Xiao Dou had stared at him in utter disbelief, its beak clicking. The chicken seemed to be wondering what kind of human wanted its feathers.
"No," Jing Shu had said firmly. "I'm saving those for making a down jacket." Xiao Dou had let out a relieved cluck, clearly thinking the same thing as its owner.
"I have never heard of chicken feathers being used for down jackets," Jun Bao had replied, his expression puzzled. "Can I at least have one?"
"Not even one! Goose feathers work, don't they? Why can't chicken feathers? Are you looking down on my chicken? My chicken's feathers are even warmer." Jing Shu had refused him outright. Normally, she wouldn't mind letting someone have a few scraps, but this man's intense focus was unsettling. Who knew what he would use them for?
Persistent people like him made her head throb. Most folks were jealous that she had a bird that could lay eggs, and they either wanted to buy it or eat it. But this man? His interests were on a whole other level of strange.
Forget it, whatever. She wasn't giving him anything anyway.
Jun Bao didn't argue, but his eyes stayed locked on Xiao Dou as it moved around the cabin, clearly not giving up on his curiosity.
Even in this pitch-black apocalypse where the sun rarely broke through the clouds, Jing Shu could still see the outlines of the peaks clearly. But at that moment, she wished she had some kind of godly sight, just so she could locate the fleet instantly.
The minibus rumbled along the winding mountain road, the tires crunching over frozen gravel. "Here, the roads twist eighteen times, and the rivers curl nine more," someone hummed quietly from the back.
It was a landscape of steep cliffs and sharp turns that made the stomach churn. One bad move or one patch of black ice, and the whole vehicle would tumble down into the dark ravines below.
The next four or five days were spent navigating those relentless mountain roads. Every time they finished climbing one peak, another looming giant appeared through the fog. Occasionally the terrain leveled out, and Jing Shu couldn't help but feel a brief sense of relief. But ten minutes later, more endless peaks would appear. From what she could see, there was no end in sight. Mountains surrounded them in every direction, a labyrinth of rock and ice.
It almost felt like they were trapped in the heart of the range, destined never to leave this frozen maze.
Never leave?
Jing Shu's chest tightened. The scene felt strangely familiar, as if she were seeing a ghost of a memory. A sharp pain stabbed through her head, making her wince. For an instant, something flashed in her mind—something vital—but it vanished before she could grasp it. It's that blank, fragmented feeling again, the sensation of a wall in her mind.
She knew this feeling too well. Every time the Rubik's Cube Space was about to upgrade, something bizarre always happened to her perception.
"Wait... could this be a sign it's about to level up?" Jing Shu thought, her pulse quickening against her ribs. She immediately began focusing, trying to connect with the energy of the Cube Space. What else could she do while trapped in a moving bus?
While Hong Bin and Lǚ Liu handled the grueling driving shifts, Yang Yang and Lǚ Liu continued to plot their course. Jing Shu, apart from cooking the shared meals for everyone, devoted every spare second to practicing with the Cube, pushing her consciousness into the void.
It had been stuck for over half a year now. She had thought it had hit a bottleneck, that without a special trigger it couldn't advance. She hadn't expected the opportunity to come like this, amidst the swaying of a minibus. The timing was terrible, but she couldn't afford to waste it. There wasn't much time left before the migration, and she needed more storage space. The current capacity wasn't nearly enough for what she planned to take.
If she couldn't remember what she had forgotten, so be it. The more she tried to force the memory, the harder it would be to find. She took a deep breath, forced her muscles to relax, and immersed herself in the world of the Cube.
Then suddenly, a realization struck her. "Wait... I have been to the Tianshan Mountains before. But there weren't this many winding roads!"