Chapter 18 The Current Status of the Enemy (Lu Jin)
The snow stopped sometime ago.
It wasn't a sudden, dramatic stop, but a slow, exhausting decline.
The extreme cold that had persisted for several days seemed to have exhausted its strength. The leaden-gray clouds no longer poured down new snowflakes, but instead pressed heavily on the horizon, their color changing from iron gray to a more somber gray-white.
The wind had died down; it was no longer the howling that could steal away the warmth of life, but a weak whimper, skimming over the remaining snow crust on the ground.
The thermometer showed that the outside temperature had slowly climbed to around minus 25 degrees Celsius. This would still be deadly cold for ordinary people, but for survivors who had endured temperatures of minus 40 or 50 degrees Celsius, it could almost be considered "warm".
However, this is not good news. The cessation of snow brings not hope, but more exposed danger and a slower, more agonizing despair.
Wen Yu's left arm wound had been stitched up and was healing well, leaving a deep pink, slightly raised, and menacing scar, like a centipede crawling on his pale skin. He moved his arm, feeling the subtle pulling and tingling sensation of new flesh growing.
Su Ran insisted on changing his dressings every day, her movements incredibly gentle. Every time she saw the scar, his delicate brows would furrow involuntarily, his long eyelashes would droop, concealing the clear heartache in his eyes, as if he were the one who was injured.
The weather was "good" today, with relatively high visibility. Wen Yu decided to conduct a long-planned long-range reconnaissance mission. The main objective wasn't to search for supplies—the fortress's reserves were more than reassuring—but rather to "observe," to observe the once bustling but now desolate city below the mountain, to observe the snowmelt process, to observe… the current situation of certain people.
He needs to confirm some things.
At breakfast, he told Su Ran, "Today I'm going to operate a drone for remote reconnaissance, which will take a while. Keep an eye on the internal monitoring, especially the points near the mountain road. Once the snow stops, there might be some restless people moving around."
Su Ran was sipping her porridge when she heard this. She immediately put down her spoon, raised her clear eyes to look at Wen Yu, her gaze filled with concern, but even more so with seriousness: "Okay. Are you... alright with your arm? Will the procedure involve anything?"
"It's alright," Wen Yu replied briefly, finishing his fried egg and bacon in a few bites before getting up and heading towards the control room. Su Ran watched him leave, then glanced at the leaden, seemingly frozen sky outside the window, gently biting her lower lip. She quickly turned and cleared the table before sitting down in front of the secondary monitor, straightening her back and intently scanning the various screens.
Inside the control room, Wen Yu started up the modified industrial-grade drone. It boasts long endurance, high wind resistance, a three-light pod (visible light, thermal imaging, and low-light), and a certain payload capacity. He skillfully checked all the parameters: the battery was fully charged, the image transmission signal was stable, and the self-test passed.
The drone's propellers emitted a deep, powerful hum as it smoothly took off from the top of the fortress, passing over the camouflaged takeoff platform. It quickly climbed, passing through the thinner, icy air, and flew towards the city below.
The main screen of the screen wall switched to a high-definition real-time image transmitted back by the drone.
The first thing that catches the eye is a desolate white world. The snow still covers everything, but it has lost its original fluffy and heavy texture. The surface has formed a hard shell through repeated slight thawing and freezing, with a cold, hard, dirty grayish-white sheen.
Many buildings had collapsed roofs, crushed by snow, or destroyed by other disasters even earlier, leaving dark, gaping holes like empty eye sockets of a skull. The streets were completely buried under snow and collapsed debris, making them unrecognizable.
Occasionally, you can see tiny black dots, like ants, moving slowly across the snow. These are either survivors or scavengers rummaging through the snow for remains.
The drone descended and flew along a faintly discernible main road. Temperatures rose, and the surface of the snow melted and then froze, forming a slippery ice surface that reflected the sunlight, dazzling the eyes.
Some low-lying areas were filled with melted snow, mixed with mud and unidentified filth, gleaming with a greasy, ominous sheen. A strange odor, a mixture of decay, mold, and chemicals, seemed to permeate the air, as if it could be transmitted through the drone's sensors even through the screen and across the distance.
With a blank expression, Wen Yu operated the drone, avoiding several dilapidated high-rise buildings, and pointed the camera at several areas from his memory.
He saw small clusters of survivors, usually in the ruins of relatively sturdy, sheltered buildings, with faint smoke rising from them, probably from burning anything they could find for warmth. He also saw sporadic clashes, a few figures wrestling over the remains of a dilapidated supermarket or a frozen water source, their movements sluggish and desperate, like a slow-motion silent film.
He didn't stop, and continued flying towards the key area of his trip—the old town in the western part of the city, where the underground pipe network was complex. In the early stages of the snow disaster in his previous life, many desperate people would hide in the sewer system, which was relatively sheltered from the wind, and there might still be some corners that had not been thoroughly searched.
If Lu Jin is still alive and was not killed or frozen to death in the previous chaos, that is the most likely place for him to hide.
The drone's thermal imaging mode is activated. The cold buildings appear as deep blue or black, with occasional scattered red and yellow spots representing weak heat sources—perhaps people, hiding small animals, or embers that haven't completely died down.
Wen Yu piloted the drone, flying slowly at low altitude along the main sewer route he remembered. The camera carefully scanned every ventilation shaft, maintenance entrance, and the ground for possible snow collapses or abnormal textures caused by the cavities below.
The city's sewer system was far more "lively" than he had imagined. Thermal imaging revealed patches of faint but dense heat sources beneath many main roads, resembling swarms of maggots lurking in the shadows. The struggle for a relatively dry, sheltered section of pipe, or for proximity to a crack that might leak sewage, was likely far more brutal and direct underground than on the surface.
Finally, near an abandoned sewage treatment plant close to a long-frozen riverbed, the drone footage captured a relatively isolated, slow-moving single heat source. It was located beneath a partially collapsed concrete manhole, its opening half-covered by snow and debris. The heat source's outline was hunched over, almost motionless, with only extremely faint temperature fluctuations.
Wen Yu adjusted the drone's attitude, switched to high-magnification optical zoom, and activated low-light enhancement. The lens peered down through the gaps in the debris at the wellhead.
The light was dim, and the air was thick with a murky fog. But it was enough to make out the scene below.
It was a concrete space, roughly two or three meters square, probably an abandoned pump room or diversion well. Thick, dark green sludge covered the ground, mixed with frozen filth and garbage. In the corner, a person was huddled up.
It's Lu Jin.
Even through the screen, through the filth and distortion, Wen Yu recognized him at a glance. Not because any remaining emotions remained, but because of that face—the once meticulously maintained, spirited face, now distorted to the point of being almost unrecognizable, yet imprinted with Wen Yu's last memories from her past life.
He was so thin he was unrecognizable, wrapped in several layers of filthy, colorless rags, like a skeleton draped in tattered cloth. His once meticulously groomed hair was matted and greasy, clinging to his withered scalp and sunken cheeks in clumps.
His face was covered in frostbite, dirt, and scabbed wounds, especially the tip of his nose and ears, which were a necrotic bluish-black. His eyes were cloudy and lifeless, deeply sunken in their sockets, staring blankly at a small patch of ground in front of him. His lips were dry and bleeding, opening and closing slightly, as if he were silently muttering something, or simply breathing.
His left hand was bent at an unnatural angle, seemingly severely frostbitten, and possibly even partially necrotic. His right hand was tightly clutching a small, dark object that he couldn't make out, pressing it firmly against his chest as if it were the most precious treasure in the world.
Just then, a rustling sound came from the shadows around the well, and a smaller, swift heat source appeared—a emaciated wild dog, whether a stray or a mutant, it was hard to tell. Its fur was dirty, its ribs were clearly visible, and its eyes gleamed with a hungry green light. It had obviously also noticed Lu Jin, or rather, it had noticed the suspicious "food" in his arms.
The wild dog lowered its body, bared its yellowed fangs, and growled threateningly as it slowly approached.
Lu Jin slowly turned his eyes to look at the stray dog. There was no fear on his face, only a numb, animalistic wariness. He clutched the little thing in his arms, making a hoarse sound like a wild animal guarding its food, dragging his frostbitten legs, trying to shrink back, but behind him was a cold concrete wall, with nowhere to retreat.
The wild dog lost its patience and lunged forward!
Lu Jin let out a hoarse, unpleasant scream, and with her still-functioning right hand, she wildly swung whatever she was holding at the stray dog, while simultaneously raising her frostbitten left arm to block.
The stray dog bit into the tattered cloth on his left arm and tore at it. Lu Jin struggled desperately, banging his head against the cloth and kicking with his feet. He rolled around with the stray dog in the narrow, filthy corner, making wild, whimpering, and painful groans.
The drone hovered silently above, its high-definition lens recording this silent, brutal spectacle unfolding in a cold, hellish corner. The footage was cold, clear, and unadorned.
In the end, the wild dog probably found the "bone" too hard to chew, or perhaps it was bitten by Lu Jin in a desperate counterattack. It whimpered and let go, tucked its tail between its legs, and quickly disappeared into the shadows deep in the well, carrying with it a tiny, unrecognizable crumb that it had snatched from Lu Jin's arms.
Lu Jin collapsed into the mud, like a worm whose bones had been removed, gasping for breath and coughing violently, spitting out bloody froth. His left arm, already frostbitten, was torn apart by wild dogs, leaving it a bloody mess, exposing the white bone fragments. He didn't even look at the wound, but frantically groped on the ground, finding the last small, dark thing, and shakily stuffed it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing desperately, as if it were his last straw.
After finishing his meal, he used all his strength to retreat back into the darkest, dampest corner, wrapping himself tightly in his tattered clothes, his body trembling violently from the cold, pain, and blood loss.
He raised his head, his cloudy eyes peering blankly through the gaps in the debris at the wellhead at that small patch of gray sky. His gaze was empty, devoid of hope or regret, only a deathly stillness, a numbness that seemed to be nearing its end.
Wen Yu sat at the control panel, back straight, face expressionless. There was no satisfaction of revenge, no pity for witnessing such horrific scenes, not even a flicker of emotion. He watched the man on the screen—the once spirited man who had ultimately pushed him into the abyss—now rotting like the lowest insect in the filth of the sewers, fighting for a moldy scrap of food with wild dogs, slowly decaying in the cold, pain, and despair.
The area in his heart that had once been scorched and churning with hatred was now frozen in calm. The hatred had not disappeared, but it no longer burned him; instead, it lay there heavy and cold, like a block of black ice that would never melt.
Looking at Lu Jin's miserable state, he felt no sweetness of revenge, only a cold confirmation: Look, this is the fate of a traitor. What goes around comes around; no one escapes the judgment of Heaven.
However, he personally orchestrated this "reincarnation" and "divine retribution," and calmly observed it from the sidelines at this moment.
He moved the joystick, and the drone gave a final close-up of the huddled, trembling figure before smoothly ascending and leaving the wellhead that exuded an aura of death.
He didn't look anywhere else. The target had been identified.
On its return journey, the drone passed over a relatively open snowfield. Melted snow pooled in low-lying areas, forming dirty puddles, and the ice crust shimmered eerily in the sunlight. Some corpses and remains, buried by snow for days, were exposed, their postures contorted and their colors dull. The stench of decay and chemicals in the air seemed even stronger.
The snow is melting. But that doesn't mean there's life.
On the contrary, melting snow brings floods, mud, exposure of more dangers and corpses, and the potential for outbreaks of disease. At the same time, the disappearance of snow will expose survivors' hiding places, making looting and conflict more direct and bloody.
The drone safely returned to the fortress and landed automatically on the launch platform. Wenyu shut down the system and automatically archived the reconnaissance footage into an encrypted folder, labeled with the date and location.
He stood up and stretched his neck, which was slightly stiff from sitting for so long. He felt a slight pulling sensation in the wound on his left arm as he moved, but it was no longer a problem.
Stepping out of the control room, the aroma of food wafted from the restaurant. Su Ran was setting the table when she heard footsteps, turned around, saw Wen Yu, and looked at him questioningly.
"Everything is normal." Wen Yu walked to the dining table and sat down, his tone indifferent, as if he had just gone out for a walk.
Su Ran carefully examined his face and, finding nothing amiss, felt slightly relieved. She placed a steaming bowl of mushroom noodle soup in front of him; the soup was milky white, garnished with tender green scallions and a few slices of shiitake mushroom, and its aroma was irresistible. He also placed a small dish of his own pickled radishes beside him.
"The snow seems to be starting to melt," Su Ran said softly, sitting down opposite Wen Yu and picking up her chopsticks. "Is it... even more chaotic outside?"
"Hmm." Wen Yu picked up a piece of noodles with his chopsticks and blew on it to cool it down. "It will be more troublesome during the snowmelt season. Keep an eye on the monitoring, especially in low-lying areas and near water sources."
"Okay." Su Ran nodded and lowered her head to eat her noodles.
He ate politely, taking small bites, but no longer as reserved as before. Under the warm yellow light, his lowered eyelashes cast gentle shadows under his eyelids, and his delicate nose was tinged with a healthy pink from the steam of the soup. It was as if they were two completely different universes, never to intersect, compared to the filthy, desperate corner where he was fighting with stray dogs for food, captured by the drone.
Wen Yu ate her noodles quietly. The soup was delicious, the noodles were chewy, and the pickled radish was refreshing and helped cut through the richness. Her stomach warmed up, and even the slight discomfort from the wound on her left arm seemed to dissipate.
He glanced out the window. The sky was still overcast, but the snow was indeed melting. The fortress remained sturdy, the system was running smoothly, and supplies were plentiful. Beside him was a quiet, diligent, and skilled "little cook" who was gradually sharing some of the chores.
The enemy is rotting in hell.
And his life will continue in this apocalypse.
The hatred sank to the bottom of his heart, cold and hard, but no longer dominated him.
The bowl of hot noodle soup he was currently eating, the changing weather outside the window, and the fortress that needed constant maintenance were the real things he needed to focus on.