The three worked together well, but the past month of fighting had, after all, drained too much of their strength. After wounding some six hundred beasts, they were already gasping for breath.
Their supernatural powers could restore their stamina at the fastest possible rate, yet the beasts that had come this time were unlike any before.
Whether in strength, speed, or size, they were more formidable than in any of their past missions.
There was truly no telling where these things had sprung from, appearing out of thin air, no source to be found, and so no way to block them off.
All they could do was send people to fight.
And after the apocalypse, all of the Mid-Dimensional Realm’s energy and resources had vanished.
It wasn’t just the Mid-Dimensional Realm, some neighboring countries faced the same.
The people who manufactured weapons had disappeared, the machines were gone, and all the stored resources had vanished without a trace at the very outset of the apocalypse.
Even if they could go up to the heavens and down into the earth, they couldn’t find these things.
Weapons were in tight supply and short.
Fortunately, Yang Zengyue had once studied pharmacology under Master. Other weapons might be gone, but plants, medicinal herbs, and healing herbs were still around.
These useful plants hadn’t mutated too drastically, and their medicinal effects were the same as before.
Yang Zengyue handed Chen Jia’er and Jiang Huiyong a bottle each. “Jia’er’s holding the meat-scented agent, it’s the smell these things love most, spray it on the beasts’ corpses. Brother Huiyong’s is the agent that slows them down.”
As for her, she’d go kill a few more.
By the time Chen Jia’er and the others finished, it should be just right for gathering these things together in one place.
That night, the moon had not yet reached its zenith, and it was another full moon.
Eerily, hanging in the sky was a moon nearly the diameter of a water vat.
At this moment, that full moon lit the ground as bright as day.
Under the brilliant white moonlight, corpses covered the earth.
These animals looked nothing like the animals before the apocalypse, they had thick scaly armor, claws sharp enough to easily rip open a human belly, and some even had long beaks, beaks as good as forged steel.
All sorts of grotesque shapes.
Records of them appeared in no ancient book of wonders.
Their sense of smell was also abnormally keen.
By no measure did they look like creatures the Mid-Dimensional Realm could produce, yet to this day no one had found the origin of these things.
Some even guessed they came from outer space, but the Mid-Dimensional Realm had gone through the apocalypse, and all its power and technology had been destroyed.
Aircraft and such means of communication existed only in people’s memories, the aerospace endeavor had been wiped out clean overnight.
Humanity could no longer cast its eyes to the stars, because it could barely fend for itself.
Taking Yang Zengyue’s agents, Chen Jia’er and Jiang Huiyong worked together to spray them all around.
Yang Zengyue, meanwhile, went off alone and killed close to another hundred beasts.
After the apocalypse her physical strength had been enhanced, fast in speed, short in recovery time, keen of hearing, boundless in strength.
But even with her short recovery time, a month of continuous fighting had left her body so weary it had no strength to spare.
Slaying these beasts was extremely draining. They only ever charged and rammed blindly, destroying everything, devouring everything, and they were fast!
Even with Yang Zengyue’s strength, her speed could only just match theirs.
So dealing with them took enormous energy, and after the apocalypse, weapons were scarce, there was no getting hold of large-scale destructive arms at all.
All the raw materials for making weapons had been “destroyed” in that final earth-shattering catastrophe.
By rights, even after a disaster one should be able to salvage at least some remnants, but these weapons and all sorts of resources had vanished into nothing, clean gone.
There was no solving it.
After the apocalypse, the Mid-Dimensional Realm had gone through three catastrophes, each more brutal than the last.
In the end, fewer than a million people remained in the Mid-Dimensional Realm, plunging from an original one billion to this. One could imagine what this land had once been through.
To call it a hell on earth would not be an overstatement.
After killing a few more beasts, Yang Zengyue’s movements had visibly slowed, as if in slow motion, she was thoroughly exhausted.
She knew she’d reached her limit.
Still, she calculated each attack precisely, so she could force herself to keep on slaughtering these beasts.
Gradually, Yang Zengyue felt the strength draining from her body.
Every cell in her was telling her that it had already done its best.
She knew she was at the point of no longer being able to hold on, without the strength to fight anymore.
She’d been wounded by the beasts on her back, arms, belly, legs, there wasn’t an unbroken spot left on her body.
After killing off the beasts nearby, Yang Zengyue thrust her weapon, a pure-black blade, into the ground, and only by that could she barely prop herself upright, keeping herself from falling.
Chen Jia’er called out at the loudest volume she could still manage, “Sister Zengyue, it’s all set.”
Then she and Jiang Huiyong rushed to Yang Zengyue’s side at the fastest speed they could still put out.
“Mm. Jia’er, Brother Huiyong, are you ready?”
Yang Zengyue turned her head to look at the once-adorable, gorgeous girl. Even in this state she was still beautiful, only it made Zengyue’s heart ache.
She remembered how, when they’d first met, Chen Jia’er had been bedraggled too, yet still full of vigor, bright and lively.
But now…
Yang Zengyue closed her weary eyes, then opened them again, a light glinting within.
Chen Jia’er’s big eyes were open, she could see the moonlight reflected in Zengyue’s eyes.
She grinned happily. “Sister Zengyue, don’t worry, Jia’er isn’t afraid. To die together with you is Jia’er’s lifelong wish.”
That murmur made a clear pearl slide from the corner of Yang Zengyue’s eye.
For Chen Jia’er, ever since Zengyue had rescued her, she’d sworn an oath: in this life she’d listen to Zengyue and Zengyue alone, and even in death she’d die together with her.
She was a grateful sort.
What’s more, she had no family left in this world, Zengyue was her family, her sister.
“Boss Zengyue, our brothers will be waiting for us on the road to the underworld. We won’t be alone.” A smile touched the corners of Jiang Huiyong’s mouth too.
This scene left Yang Zengyue unable to speak another word. Not far off, more and more beasts drawn by the scent were coming, tearing apart and devouring their own kind.
The sight was bloody and cruel.
They knew nothing, felt nothing, feeding every moment, it was precisely because of their terrifying nature that Yang Zengyue and the others had not chosen to retreat.
“Is it, all buried?” Yang Zengyue’s tone was that of one facing death without flinching.
Chen Jia’er answered breezily, “All done.”
Yang Zengyue’s expression returned to calm. “Point out the spots for me. I’ll handle the detonation. You two, stay by my side.”
“Alright,” the two answered in unison.
Jiang Huiyong sat on Yang Zengyue’s left, Chen Jia’er on her right. She threw the five fuses accurately in the directions the two indicated.
Aiming, Yang Zengyue said to the two beside her, “Then, goodbye.”
“Sister Zengyue, in the next life, if there is a next life, Jia’er will surely come find you. We’ll be sisters again, you can’t refuse to claim me as your little sister, remember that…”
Chen Jia’er’s voice vanished quickly into the air, and the great moon up in the sky seemed, at that moment, to take on a life of its own…
Yang Zengyue held Chen Jia’er’s hand and answered her with a faint smile. “Alright.”
If there could be a next life, she hoped they’d meet each other early.
This, perhaps, was an extravagant, wishful delusion.
A violent explosion rang out. A smile at the corner of her lips, Yang Zengyue, together with these beasts of Zhaoqi Mountain, turned to dust and ashes.
Her first twenty-one years of life had been vivid and happy, because Master had been with her.
These last seven years, after the agonizing loss of her family, she’d merely dragged out a bare existence to this day, it was already more than she’d bargained for.
Her one and only regret was that she hadn’t made it back to Sikun Mountain in time, hadn’t gotten to see Master one last time.
She’d failed to fulfill her filial duty, and failed to keep her promise.
So, to die, then die it was.
All she’d done these years, she could give a good accounting of to the old man down below, and even brag a little on the side.
In her heart Yang Zengyue said softly:
Master, wait for Zengyue. Zengyue is coming to reunite with you, you mustn’t refuse to claim me now.
The explosions in the east and west came almost back-to-back. After the violent blasts, the hills before the main peak of Zhaoqi Mountain were leveled flat.
Vanishing along with them was the Mid-Dimensional Realm’s most formidable warrior, Yang Zengyue, and the extraordinary talents who had followed her.
Ren Xiyuan, hidden in the cave, had already woken. The wounds on his body had been dressed by Yang Zengyue, and she’d even left him medicine.
Waking to hear the enormous explosions, and seeing the medicine chest set beside him, Ren Xiyuan felt a stab of pain in his heart.
Yet he still pressed the communicator in his pocket. If he could just hold out through tonight, someone would come for him tomorrow.
That person had promised.
He’d had no choice. Betraying the team for the woman he loved was shameful, yes, but he too had suffered wounds this grave, and nearly lost his life.
If she was to blame, blame Yang Zengyue for being too outstanding, for standing in someone’s way.
These things—Yang Zengyue could never know now.