Actually, Tang Ling was running out of time.
His grandmother and little sister were waiting. Moreover, the longer he dragged this out, the more out of control and unpredictable things would get.
His original plan was to take the risk and sneak out of the Fifth Camp, relying on his familiarity of the terrain to get himself to the surface so that he could have a good look of what had happened.
How could he afford to be delayed by Quark in his shop?
Tang Ling could not seem to understand why did he not resist Quark and allow himself to dragged himself into the shop. Was it because of the weird attitude of Grandma when she heard that the Purple Moon Warriors were making their move?
Quark did not waste time with idle chatter either. He dragged Tang Ling and dashed straight into the mysterious door behind the counter.
Tang Ling was curious about what was behind that door before. How many precious goods did Quark store inside there? In short, throughout all the trades with Quark, he was able to bring out some satisfactory trade items from behind that door as though the room was inexhaustible.
“Come here!” Quark bellowed strictly, ignoring the shock on Tang Ling’s face after entering his treasure vault.
It was indeed astonishing. Who would have thought the little shop of Quark’s would have such a large house behind it?
It was almost as big as a third of the empty space where Tang Ling’s home was.
Inside such a big house, all sorts of jerky, clean water, and countless miscellaneous items plus all kinds of metals were stored.
These were resources that could drive anyone mad! Tang Ling gulped. If it was not for the impending danger, he could not guarantee that his heart would not covet what he saw.
At the same time, Tang Ling also noticed that there was a wooden rack in the house. On top of it were books labeled ‘Old Civilization’s Secret Codes’ plus several locked boxes.
He could not understand why Quark would collect the books. They had many symbols that all of them could not read, thus held no actual value.
Before he could process his thoughts further, Quark’s roar pulled Tang Ling back to his senses.
He saw Quark standing under a black metal tube. At one end of the metal tube was a dual-barrel structure as big as a pair of eyes, and there was a transparent material called glass embedded on it.
“Come over here and see for yourself. I don’t know how to explain the theory of reflection to you,” Quark muttered in a way that Tang Ling could not understand. He pulled Tang Ling in front of the metal tube and made him get closer to the dual-barrel.
With an unusual doubt in his heart, Tang Ling looked into the barrels and the scene that appeared before his eyes made his breaths quicken.
He was looking at the situation on the surface from the underground!
It could not be fake because what he saw was the safety zone that he was most familiar with.
“If you think it’s not enough, this periscope allows you to turn to look at more. I spent a lot of effort to hollow out a tree and stuck the other end in it. It couldn’t get anymore meticulous than that. I’m a genius,” Quark continued his chatter. He then took a metal flask out and twisted it open. The house was instantly filled with an unusual pungent yet rich fragrance.
“Liquor... Ah, it really is the precious treasure of the old civilization.” Quark stingily took a sip, then looked at Tang Ling who had turned pale. He somehow looked very smug.
Including Tang Ling, everyone in the settlement was an ignorant rat. He felt like he was above every single one of them.
However, Tang Ling did not care about Quark’s feelings anymore at the moment. His brain was going to explode due to the surge of information pouring in.
A periscope, liquor... These unknown things really toppled his world view.
And what did his eyes see? A living hell?
The familiar safety zone was crowded with zombies. He was barely able to see that a horde of zombies was swarming over from the edge of the thick forest.
They gnawed at everything in sight. The snakes, bugs, smaller beasts in the safety zone, and the humans who failed to return to the settlement scattered away in hiding.
Bloody was an understatement to describe the scene. It was like the collapse when despair struck. Every where they trampled, life was nibbled away rapidly.
The even more helpless thing was that several familiar entrances to the settlement were broken through by mindless wandering zombies. Relying on their instincts, many of them made it in.
Among those compromised entrances, one of them was very near to the Fifth Camp.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Tang Ling’s heart throbbed fiercely, and he could even hear his own blood flowing.
Amidst the anxiety, he started to search for hope. What were the Purple Moon Warriors doing at the moment?
Tang Ling intuitively turned the periscope so that the gigantic contour of Safety Sector No. 17 then appeared in his vision.
Under the bright searchlights, everything was clear. The purple human wall continued to stand at the top of the walls firmly like a monolith. Several ropes were thrown down with a couple of figures dangling from them.
Tang Ling recognized the figures. They were the Purple Moon Warriors on patrol that he had met when he came back in the evening.
He saw it clearly because this mysterious periscope even enabled him to capture the expressions on every single Purple Moon Warrior. Calm and cold, there was no surge of emotion in them as if the things that happened beneath the walls were not real. Their superior bearings were infuriating, yet they were despairingly immovable.
“Got a better look?” Quark’s voice sounded again.
Tang Ling could not take his eyes off the periscope. He turned it around in a panic, hoping to search for that tiny bit of comfort.
What comfort? All his eyes saw was hell!
Tang Ling wanted to escape, but in the next second, his hands seemingly lost control and he swung the periscope around again.
As a matter of fact, he just adjusted the viewing angle slightly.
Tang Ling saw a figure wrapped in a black robe. A strange stick similar to a thick grass stem dangled from his mouth.
Under the Purple Moon, the night was cold and the icy breeze blew like always. The black robe fluttered as a lock of silver hair slipped out of the black robe.
The zombies that had fallen into a bloody, frenzied trance, however, neglected this black-robed figure.
The instant of a second felt very long. In his daze, Tang Ling’s ears felt like they heard a faint voice. It was melodious, old, strange and out of tune.
‘What voice is that?’ Tang Ling’s mind was filled with the tune and the black-robed figure seemed to feel it as well, he looked towards the direction of the periscope.
Tang Ling’s heartbeat almost stopped at the moment.
Quark pulled him away. “Are you done looking? We are running out of time.”
“There’s someone. There’s someone in the middle of the waves of zombies!” Tang Ling looked at Quark with a gaze filled with unease. He had never felt so uncomfortable in his entire life!
“There’s someone? Are you f*cking kidding me? Based on what I know, zombies would never allow living humans to stand before them. It’s just how a hungry man could never spare a piece of jerky.” Quark glanced over Tang Ling in doubt, but he still intuitively looked through the periscope.
The periscope did not turn away from the angle Tang Ling was looking in, yet Quark saw no one.
“I hope you aren’t frightened out of your mind! If that’s the case, what value do you have left?” Quark’s tone held dissatisfaction.
No one? It was obvious that Tang Ling already knew that Quark did not see anything.
This time around, even Tang Ling thought he was seeing things because he already experienced it once before tonight at the top of the hill.
“I suppose you are clear about it now. We have to leave.” Quark got fed up about the nagging and also sighed.
“I want to go home.” Regaining his senses, Tang Ling sounded indubitable.