Chapter 86: The World of Sorrow

Their position was not far from Chu Yunsheng. The intense explosion's shockwave instantly shattered the window glass in front of Chu Yunsheng. The poorly constructed farmhouse swayed twice and then collapsed with a loud crash.

Chu Yunsheng was already exhausted, severely injured, and his consciousness was beginning to blur. At the start of the explosion, he was first directly knocked over by the air blast, and then the building's collapse pinned him down!

At that moment, Chu Yunsheng felt a sudden darkness before his eyes, and intense pain in his head, back, and chest. Then he knew nothing.

Amidst the ruins.

An unknown amount of time had passed.

In a daze, Chu Yunsheng saw his loving mother in the kitchen, preparing his favorite dishes. His father sat on the sofa, watching a boring TV program. It was a scene he often saw when he returned home, unchanged in every detail. Even his father's words were the same as usual: "You're back, huh? Are you hungry? Your mother has already stewed the soup. Wash your hands and eat a little first."

His nose tingled, and the painful longing he had suppressed burst forth. He stepped forward and hugged his mother from behind. Since the appearance of the monsters, the fear in his heart, the loneliness of not being able to trust, and the deep longing for his family... He had so much to tell her.

But when the words reached his lips, he could only choke out, "Mom... I miss you so much!"

Just as he could feel his mother's familiar warmth, the scene suddenly changed. A fully loaded earth-moving truck appeared, accompanied by the screeching of brakes and the sound of a collision...

What appeared before him now were no longer the two elders who could call him "son," but two cold, lifeless bodies. Another version of himself knelt on the ground, crying out in anguish, "Dad! Mom!..."

At that moment, his heart was torn apart, and his soul was shattered!

Chu Yunsheng screamed and opened his eyes. The dream shattered.

Before him was darkness and coldness.

The surroundings were as silent as the underworld.

"Am I dead?" This thought first came to Chu Yunsheng's mind.

But the intense pain in his left leg quickly brought him back to reality.

"Remember, the house collapsed, and I was pinned down." The scenes before he lost consciousness replayed in his mind.

Chu Yunsheng tried to push the debris off his body but found that the pain in his chest intensified when he tried to use his yuan qi. After several attempts, he failed.

He felt around and found that the Qianbi Sword was still with him. With its sharpness, cutting through the debris was not difficult.

Enduring the pain, Chu Yunsheng cut the debris piece by piece, finally freeing his left leg, which was almost numb.

A faint ray of light filtered through the cracks in the debris. Chu Yunsheng estimated it was probably daytime in the era of sunlight.

Crawling out of the ruins, Chu Yunsheng examined his condition: his head was bleeding, his chest seemed to have been hit hard, and a few ribs were likely broken. His left leg had lost sensation, and he didn't know if it was broken.

The Six Jia Talisman was completely ruined; otherwise, he wouldn't have been crushed by a few pieces of debris.

"At least I'm still alive," Chu Yunsheng consoled himself.

He rummaged through the storage talisman and found the medical supplies he had obtained from the hospital. He haphazardly applied bandages to his bleeding areas. He didn't know if his yuan qi could fight off infection, so he took a few antibiotics. In this era, if an infection set in, there would be no hospitals or doctors to help, only death.

The surroundings were eerily quiet, as if the insects had disappeared. Chu Yunsheng didn't know how long he had been unconscious, but his stomach was already growling with hunger.

Leaning against a piece of concrete from the ruins, Chu Yunsheng ate a little food.

As the food digested, his body gradually regained some warmth, and his vision became clearer. Under the faint light in the sky, all he could see were corpses!

His fingers trembled slightly, and the cigarette he had just lit fell to the ground. Supporting his numb left leg, he struggled to climb to the top of the ruins and looked around. He was immediately stunned!

Corpses, everywhere, as far as the eye could see!

A dead silence, a world of death!

It seemed as if the entire world had died, leaving him alone, sitting on the top of the rubble.

Chu Yunsheng's hands shook uncontrollably, as if he were in an ice cave, his body cold.

A sense of inexplicable fear overwhelmed his heart.

"There must be others alive. There must be survivors in Jinling City. It's impossible for everyone to be dead. Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"

Chu Yunsheng muttered to himself, as if trying to force himself to believe.

He found a piece of wooden furniture in the ruins and used the Qianbi Sword to shape it into a crutch. Using his left armpit, he hobbled over the corpses, filled with hope, and limped toward Jinling City.

His mind was filled with the thought that the world had been destroyed. He struggled to control his thoughts, repeatedly reciting the cultivation techniques and absorbing the yuan qi from the heavens and earth.

After walking for a while, Chu Yunsheng found several healing techniques in an ancient book and used them, regardless of their effectiveness. The yuan qi entered his body and quickly merged with his transformed yuan qi, converting into his own yuan qi. This yuan qi then stopped transforming his body and began to slowly repair his injuries.

Chu Yunsheng didn't know how the yuan qi repaired his torn muscles, broken bones, and damaged nerves, but he could feel the pain gradually subsiding and his sensations slowly returning.

Thus, he limped along the former highway, the sky dark and lifeless.

The further he went, the more corpses he saw. Men, women, elders, and children filled the road, their blood staining the ground, forming dark red clots. Chu Yunsheng's feet were already covered in the terrifying blood.

Later, he could hardly hop over the densely packed corpses and had to step on them, his heart pounding.

Chu Yunsheng couldn't estimate how many people had died. It seemed as if everyone who had fled from Shen City had died here! The more he walked, the colder and more anxious he became, as if he were walking through a hell filled with corpses, dark, silent, and devoid of even a single living insect!

Everything seemed dead! Not a single living creature! An endless journey!

He felt like he was about to break down. Standing on a pile of corpses, he moved his throat and finally couldn't hold back: "Is anyone alive? Is anyone alive? Is anyone alive?..."

No one answered him, only the dead silence remained.

All dead? All gone? Not even a single moan?

He didn't believe no one was alive and continued to shout as he walked: "Is anyone alive? Is anyone alive?"

The piles of corpses, cold and silent, seemed to be indifferent observers, ignoring his cries.

"Is anyone alive?..."

Chu Yunsheng's voice grew weaker and more desperate.

Finally, a faint sound came from a car on a nearby slope, filled with corpses.

Chu Yunsheng's heart raced. He had only one thought: someone is alive, someone is alive!

He quickly discarded his crutch and crawled over as fast as he could. It was an ordinary Volkswagen, with many incomplete corpses piled on the roof. The sound was coming from inside the car.

Chu Yunsheng excitedly pulled away the corpses, revealing a large hole in the roof. He forced open the car door, and a pungent, corrosive smell hit his nose.

First, he saw a woman, lying face down between the back seat and the front seat, her feet stuck in the gap between the seats, her hands gripping the bottom of the seat, almost deformed, and her fingers completely bent backward, the bones likely shattered, but still gripping the flesh tightly.

Her back was pierced by several large holes from the insect's legs, and half of her head was crushed, yet she was still pressing down, as if protecting something more important than her own life.

The sound had come from beneath her. Chu Yunsheng understood and tried to pull the woman's body, but it was stuck too tightly and couldn't be moved.

In a hurry, Chu Yunsheng used the Qianbi Sword to cut through the car and her legs, finally freeing her body.

Under her, she had been protecting a little girl, about four or five years old, with braids and a blue cotton jacket. She was holding a doll, her face pale and lifeless, with a bloodied hole in her stomach, already dead for some time.

The faint sound had come from the blood-stained doll.

Chu Yunsheng sat on the ground, leaning against the car door, his chest heaving.

Suddenly, the entire earth began to tremble, as if an earthquake had struck, shaking the ground!

"Is it the golden-armored insect, or some other monster?"

Chu Yunsheng laughed coldly: "Come on, you beasts! Everyone is dead, and I don't want to live anymore!"

Boom... Boom... Boom!

Strong vibrations came from the distance, causing the car behind him to shake. Chu Yunsheng stood up, leaning on the car frame.

Under the dark sky, he saw something that could destroy everything.

In the distance, a monstrous creature with impossibly long legs appeared, each leg as tall as a thirty-story building, its body massive, moving extremely slowly.

Every time its legs hit the ground, the earth trembled!

The long-legged monster appeared in the distance and then disappeared, completely ignoring Chu Yunsheng, who was like an ant.

Chu Yunsheng's heart turned to ashes: "Maybe the world is already over!"

He silently took the once beautiful doll from the car, sat on the slope, and looked down at the endless sea of corpses. He took two new batteries from the storage talisman and replaced them in the doll.

At that moment, the wind seemed to pick up.

The wind rushed from all directions, filling his tattered gray cotton jacket, making it flutter.

Chu Yunsheng pressed a button on the doll, and a child's voice echoed in the air, over the sea of dead bodies: "Fireflies, fireflies, fly slowly... Children who fear the dark, sleep soundly... In a short life, strive to shine... Fill the dark world with hope... My heart, my heart, is still chasing..."

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