Uh-huh?

Strangely, there seemed to be a person standing in the cramped storage room.

How so?

He...... But he'd locked himself in for so long...... Why didn't he die...... And why didn't he hear what was going on...... Who is this guy?!

"Who are you and what are you doing here?!" This seemed a bit silly to ask, so she immediately set up the bolt-action rifle in her hand and aimed at the figure behind the door, "Whoever you are, you'd better raise your hand immediately!" ”

It finally caught some attention from the man, who was slumped shoulder-slumped, staggering in the sloping storage shelves to turn around.

"Shit, stop, or I'm going to shoot!"

Feng Ke's hands trembled a little, but he deliberately pulled the bolt of the gun as a strong warning and threat.

The man didn't seem to care, and many of the old things on the shelf were carried down by his drooping arms, and Ding Ling fell to the ground with a bang—he was still turning, and was about to approach her.

"Damn, I warned you!" She gritted her teeth, but still pulled the cold trigger in her hand as the guy approached.

"Bang!"

The loud sound shook her eyes, but it didn't echo in the empty shop—the excess sound waves were probably absorbed by the layers of soft plants.

The hot bullet from the rifle hit the man in the chest with precision, but it didn't stop him from moving slowly.

At the same time, the guy's face was finally exposed to the light with the crisp sound of the bolt.

It turns out that he is not human, just an unconscious zombie.

There are a few vicissitudes carved on the yellowed facial bones that have been peeled off, and there are only some liquid viscous liquids left in the black eye sockets, which seem to have completely lost the ability to see.

A few damp mosses were scattered on his face, and some green spots adorned his terrifying bony face, mixed and intertwined with those black or white spots, and there was no disharmony in his face, but his color patches looked a little abstract and crazy.

His teeth were neat and beautiful, but a bunch of small vines were emerging from his mouth, climbing up the shape of the bones and making a beautiful ring around his head.

Perhaps it was because the strange little creature had not seen such a bright sun for too long, and she seemed to feel a pure joy and love in its soft body that shimmered yellow and white in the light as she prepared for the next shot—she thought it longed for the light, and that it must have waited a long, long time for this day.

She didn't know how long he had been alone in the cold, damp darkness—he was so old—maybe five years? Maybe a decade?

It didn't matter, because this time she had already aimed the crosshair at his head.

"Bang!"

Feng Ke, who returned to the car, slammed the door shut, bringing a chill into the car.

She still clutched something in a plastic pouch in her hand—something she had found in the lining of the walking corpse's scout armor—but the armor had rusted away from the heat-humidity to withstand the projectile that had been fired into his chest.

She took off her leather gloves, took two hot breaths on her frozen white fingers, and slowly unwrapped the seal of the pouch, pulling out a folded object inside.

It's a carefully folded map, it's dry in a plastic bag, and it's so well preserved – it looks like it's freshly printed, except for a few unavoidable creases.

Kaede placed the map on her lap and stretched it out little by little.

This seems to be a specially made map circulating within an organization, the scale is not large, and it includes several nearby regions and cities, and Feng Ke scanned the map several times before he roughly confirmed his location through comparison and guessing.

In addition to the various roads, storage points, and important buildings, she also saw a unique sign in the center of the map—a small house-like sign that had been scribbled several times by its former owner with a marker, with a footnote drawn out of it.

Home — that's what the footnotes say in a lovely rounded font — maybe "he" should be called "she."

A van was driving through the vast desert, and in the absence of a reference, it looked like a silver beetle crawling along the rolling dunes, leaving a long, snaking trail behind it.

“…… Well I am looking for freedom

looking for freedom

And to find it, may take everything I have

I know all too well it don’t come easy

the chains of the world they seem to movin tight

I try to walk around if I’m stumbling so familiar

tryin to get up but the doubt is so strong

there’s gotta be a winning in my bones

I’m looking for freedom

looking for freedom

and to find it, cost me everything I have

Well I’m looking for freedom

I’m looking for freedom……”

Kaede hummed awkwardly to the melody of the song, and the warm breeze poured in through the wide open window, ran down her long brown hair, and ran out of the other window happily.

There were also potted green plants planted in tin cans by her steering wheel, which finally injected some rare vitality and vitality into the vast desert - as for where this little vine came from, everyone should know very well.

It stands to reason that Xiao Teng should be punished for being placed here, but now that no one cares about her, Feng Ke will go as he pleases - and it has been exposed to the sun for the past few days, and its stems and leaves have turned green, and it can always sway in the wind with amorous posture and fun.

It was her second day in the Tamara Desert – if she was on the right track – and with the daytime sun and some stars shining at night, she shouldn't be too far off the mark

The journey was shorter than Kaede had thought, so she had plenty of fresh water in the vat and dried meatloaf in the canvas bag.

The van had been refueled three days earlier — in an abandoned gas station — and she found a lot of gasoline and diesel in red drums, oh, and a lot of bodies that had been dead for years in the bullet-ridden shop.

They had paid a lot for the things—but now they were all cheaper for her—which she thought was somewhat ironic, but she used them to fill up her car anyway, and to fill the back compartment with a few barrels of gasoline that made a dull noise in the crash.

Before leaving, she dragged the bodies into a large pit by the oil tank, then doused some diesel fuel that she didn't use, and set fire to all the dry bones—Feng Ke had poured too much oil, so the skyrocketing fireworks startled her, and told her to hurry away in a car in the orange flames that lit up half of the dim sky—anyway, the dilapidated town had little vegetation and no need to worry about the fire spreading.

So in this regard, there is nothing to stop her from moving forward now—towards her goal, her "home".

However, difficulties always like to creep in and out of nowhere, and slam a few mallets at your cute little head - it may seem scary to say this, but Kaede is really dizzy from its blows.

At about two or three o'clock that night, Feng Ke, who was dozing off in the back seat, was suddenly awakened by a low and rhythmic sound.

Outside, a gust of wind erupted, and the sand and gravel carried by the high-speed air flow slammed into the iron hull of the vehicle, making a dense crackling sound. She rubbed her right eye, yawned softly, and reached out to wipe the yellow sand from the car window.

There was only pure blackness outside the car—no stars and moons that had shone in the past, no undulating sand dunes that were like waves in the moonlight—and the billions of tons of dust and sand kicked up by the storm had firmly obscured the entire sky, swallowing the world in her eyes into the black storm.

More than a dozen kilometers away, she could faintly see in the dim light that a huge giant sandstorm was slowly forming—the eye of the wind that was twisting so hard that it connected the heavens and the earth, so magnificent and crazy that it was enough to stop her heart beating in a violent fear!

She must not be swept up in it - unless she wants to be torn to pieces by the wild air currents!

"Oh, shit!" Kaede crawled into the driver's seat and scrambled to light the car - this time she remembered to release the handbrake first.

"Tutu Tu Tu Tu—"

"Tutu Tu Tu Tu—"

"Damn it, damn it!" She couldn't do anything to set the old antique on fire, but the saloon scrolls that were approaching her would not show mercy - she could feel her van tremble slightly in the sandstorm!

"Tutu-snort-"

The broken car is finally on fire!

She grabbed the steering wheel and stepped on the accelerator, and the van parked on the sand dunes thuded and ran down the sand slope, carrying her away from the tornado that was moving this way!

The tornado, which had accumulated strength in the air, became more and more bloated and expanded, but its speed did not seem to be affected by this, and everything in the course of the movement was thrown tens of kilometers into the air at a height of tens of thousands of meters - whether it was the thin yellow sand, the decaying dead poplar, or the hundred-ton craggy boulder embedded deep in the ground, they were all just toys thrown at random in the hands of this giant in the sky!

"Boom!"

"Boom!"

Although the hundred-meter dust raised when it crashed to the ground was annihilated in the lightless desert in an instant, the shocking sound of the hammer pierced through the crazy dust storm and rang in her ears endlessly!

They are using their heavy bodies to attach their ancient rhythms and rhythms to this song of the sandstorm that has been played countless times in the yellow sand and the white moon, a symbol of death!

These objects that crashed in the summer rain had already turned into an even more terrifying threat than the tornadoes rolling in not far away!

She didn't want to be squashed in the van like a can by a boulder – this death was not fun at all!

"Buzz ——!"

Feng Ke stepped on the accelerator to the bottom, and the steering wheel in her hand kept spinning - but the car's high beams couldn't penetrate the dense wind and sand at all - all she had in her eyes was yellow sand, endless yellow sand, damn yellow sand!

She's been lost in a sandstorm for a long time!

Even though the dense web of flying sand and gravel obscured her full vision, Kaede could still feel her car tremble violently in the rapidly swept air - her car was almost overturned!

The tin can and the small vine placed next to the steering wheel had long since lost sight, and even the parts of the car also made a frightened shaking sound under the huge pressure - Feng Ke, who was holding the steering wheel tightly, only felt that the sound of Ding Lingdang's parts colliding filled her head - she had a hunch that the car was going to fall apart in a cheerful symphony!

Suddenly, she felt like everything was floating lightly—the little green vine had floated to her side from the corner, but it had clearly been injured from the previous roll, and a little cloudy droplet was oozing from the broken stem in the middle.

Her eyes were dark, and she didn't have time to hold it in her arms.

Winter in the Tamara Desert has become much milder, and even in the scorching sun, it is difficult for the sun to scorch the sparse desert plants into smoke as it does in summer.

It was foggy today, which was an extremely rare sight, but she was lucky enough to bump into it—maybe she wasn't so lucky.

A thin mist seemed to envelop the whole world, and with every step Kaede Ke took, the light white mist swirled around her mischievously like an elf.

There was only a white patch in front of her, and the great star that had been burning for billions of years was also blurred and flickering in this fog.

Kaede put away the map in his hand and put it in his pocket.

She didn't know how far she was from her destination, but it shouldn't be too short—she hadn't even stepped out of the desert yet.

All she had left was a few dry meatloafs, a few buckets of precious fresh water, and a few loose clothes—all of which she had strapped to a car door, all dragged along by her own body. As for the rest of the supplies, they have been buried in the sand with her car to be used as relics.

Oh, and she had a pot of verdant vines with her—half a vine, to be exact, for the upper half of its body had already been broken—but it wasn't too much of a blow to the little vine, and it was now swaying happily in the cool mist.

She untied the jug around her waist and moistened her chapped and bleeding lips with sweet, cold water—not enough to quench her thirst—but she had to save some of it.

Her slender eyelashes had gathered some cool tiny droplets in the thick mist, drawing a rare warmth and tenderness from the corners of her eyes.

She chuckled suddenly, and at last she simply tugged at the overly tight rope on her shoulder, and walked down toward the mountain range that had been blurred by the mist.

She didn't know if she had made the right choice, or if it was worth it—but in that direction was the sun she was looking for, and the gentle dawn it gave her.

There is also her "home" marked on the map.