Chapter 32: News

Zhou Liming could not bear to watch any longer; the city had turned into a purgatory on earth, becoming a paradise for the Fierce Beasts.

Screams echoed from the foot of the mountain. Under the pursuit of the Fierce Beasts, the people on the mountain path desperately climbed upward. However, the path was packed with people; there was no way to escape, and they were caught and torn apart by the Fierce Beasts. In the face of powerful Fierce Beasts, humans were so small and weak, without the slightest ability to resist.

Zhou Liming did not dare to stop. Once the Fierce Beasts finished slaughtering the people at the foot of the mountain, they would come up along the path, so he had to leave quickly.

In fact, there were at least several thousand people who had fled to this mountain ridge. With thorns everywhere, people did not care anymore; they kept pushing aside the thorns, forcefully squeezing out a passable path on the ridge where there was no road. Thousands of people just wanted to leave this place, to get as far away as possible.

Those who escaped here were all able-bodied adults, mostly men; for the children and the elderly, their fates were already sealed.

With economic development and the improvement of people’s living standards, the scene of villagers going up the mountain to chop wood in the 1980s and 1990s no longer existed. Wild grass and thorns grew chaotically on the ridge; the paths that used to be trodden out were long covered by weeds. It was imaginable how difficult it was for people to travel through this. Fortunately, people were in a state of panic now, and the potential they burst out with quickly allowed them to trample out patches of passable roads.

Zhou Liming’s entire group, including the elderly, children, and women, was complete. If not for these crazy people rushing forward and stepping out a passable road, Zhou Liming would not have known what to do.

The mountain ridges in this area overlapped one another and were exceptionally tall. The panicked people had limited physical strength; after crossing the ridge near the highway, they became panting and heavily exhausted, but they could only endure it and continue advancing toward the ridges that had no paths or known directions.

Gradually, the sounds of the Fierce Beasts grew fainter until they could no longer be heard.

The fleeing crowd of several thousand, after the test of the mountain ridges, split into several groups, drifting further apart from each other, each heading in slightly different directions.

Walking on the mountain was naturally slow; it was not until the afternoon that they saw a highway passing through below the ridge, and several villages appeared before everyone’s eyes along the road. The people, who had long been tired and hungry, suddenly let out a cheer and, disregarding their fatigue, rushed down the mountain.

The group Zhou Liming was in had only a little over two hundred people; they were all covered in scratches from thorns, and with their tattered clothes, they looked like a group of beggars.

“There’s a cucumber field ahead…”

Someone among the people who reached the highway shouted, and following the direction the speaker pointed, a cucumber field appeared before everyone’s eyes. The starving people did not care who the cucumber field belonged to; they all swarmed up, rushed into the field, picked every cucumber they saw regardless of size, and stuffed them into their mouths.

Zhou Liming had food in the bag he was carrying, so naturally, he would not be so hungry that he would eat just anything like them.

The children had long been hungry, but there were starving people all around just now; although Zhou Liming was not afraid of them, there was no need to cause any trouble.

Calling the children, Zhou Liming took the lead and walked toward a village not far away. Being close to Yuyao and Zhe-B City, the fields here were uniformly planted with vegetables; looking out, it was a vast expanse of green. However, not a single person could be seen in the fields now; it was quiet.

Walking onto the concrete road at the village entrance, they did not see anyone either.

Without needing to guess much, Zhou Liming knew that these people must have received the news and already left.

Since there was no one, Zhou Liming did not stand on ceremony; he led the Dean, An Xiaowei, and the others into the village, arriving at a house with a separate courtyard. Perhaps because they were in too much of a hurry, the iron gate was not even locked. Pushing it open and walking in, some items were scattered messily in the courtyard, and it was equally quiet.

“Dean, let’s rest here and eat something.”

The children had long been exhausted; if the children from the Orphanage were not relatively independent and sensible, Zhou Liming would not have known how to lead them across this not-so-small mountain ridge.

Taking out the food from the bag and letting An Xiaowei distribute it to the children, Zhou Liming pushed open the kitchen door. Coastal areas were relatively wealthy, and although this family lived in the countryside, their conditions were quite good; the kitchen was modernized with all necessary appliances. Zhou Liming opened the refrigerator; the food inside was almost untouched and stuffed full; it seemed that when the family left, they only took valuable items but ignored the importance of food.

Thinking about it, who could have realized the severity of this disaster? Subconsciously, they naturally chose money as their first priority.

There was a lot of edible food in the kitchen; for things that could not be eaten immediately, like rice, salt, and oil, Zhou Liming did not let them go either; he packed them up one by one, planning to figure out how to take them later. He had no way to predict what the future or tomorrow would be like; he could only make the best preparations for any emergency.

Leaving the kitchen, next to it was the living room; the Dean and An Xiaowei were staring at the TV, their faces looking somewhat pale.

Under the state’s mandate, the TV channels were all scrolling the same news, which was the news of the Fierce Beasts’ arrival. As soon as the TV was turned on, it could be seen.

“Citizens of the country, this is a moment of crisis…”

“Our military has entered a state of war and has deployed to the coastal frontline…”

“Currently, the estimated death toll nationwide is 370 million, and casualties are still increasing.”

“The Central Government has officially ordered that the following cities be listed as evacuation cities; upon receiving the order, leaders at all levels must organize personnel to evacuate immediately!”

“Chongqing has officially become the Temporary Capital, exercising the powers of the capital!”

“The Air Force has been fully deployed; the Fierce Beasts on the frontline are being suppressed by the powerful Air Force, which will try its best to buy time for more cities to evacuate.”

“The General Staff stated that for cities already occupied by Fierce Beasts, the possibility of using Nuclear Weapons is not ruled out.”

“The following is part of the research data on Fierce Beasts released by scientists…”

“…”

A series of the latest news was displayed before Zhou Liming’s eyes through the TV, finally giving him some understanding of the current situation. Beijing had still been evacuated; it should have happened on the morning the Fierce Beasts landed. To ensure the safety of government leaders, the political center began to shift, choosing the inland heavy industrial city of Chongqing. And the situation was indeed as the General Staff had expected: massive Fierce Beasts were landing, sweeping across the globe.

But this was not the most important thing; what mattered was that in the orders issued by the Central Government, the evacuated cities almost covered the entire coast, which meant that they had decided to abandon the entire coastal area and build a defensive Frontline between the coastal and inland areas to stop the Fierce Beasts from advancing further.

The disaster came too suddenly; without preparation, many people pessimistically believed that even if a Frontline was built in the inland, it might not be able to stop the footsteps of the Fierce Beasts.

It was not that the military was useless, but the hundreds of millions of fleeing people caused road blockages that made it difficult for the military to move. The troops deployed by air transport at one time were limited and far from posing a threat to the Fierce Beasts. And the Air Force could not stop such a massive tide of Fierce Beasts from advancing; naturally, the General Staff could only make this difficult decision after weighing the options repeatedly.

The larger the abandoned area, the more people would be abandoned, and the heavier the losses would be; one could imagine how much determination was needed to make this decision.

Zhou Liming was in a daze, seemingly finding it hard to accept these news, but wasn’t this something he had guessed long ago? It was just being confirmed now. It was inevitable that humans, in their haste, would be constantly driven by the Fierce Beasts; only by giving the Fierce Beasts enough space to roam would their pace slow down, and a confrontation between humans and beasts be formed.

But by the time this confrontation formed, how much time would have passed, and how many casualties would there be?

Zhou Liming did not know, and he did not need to know, because what he needed to consider now was how to safely take the relatives around him away from the coast, away from this purgatory-like area.