You can already see the top of the mountain, surrounded by clouds and mist, and the vague mountain stands in the distance.

The air here is very fresh, and Jingyuan saw some local restaurants along the way, hanging signs of "live eel" and "now killing local chicken", but looking at it from the outside, even the dining table was put away, and the locked iron window was empty, and the inner glass was pasted with the old words "empty shop for rent/sale".

Before the disaster, these restaurants closed down because they had not been visited by tourists for a long time.

Along the way, he didn't even see a single zombie, but found shallots, white radish roots, and even some unknown wildflowers in the vegetable fields that no one cared for.

He had never seen a flower in the city, and if he thought about it, he had never seen an insect, not even a fly.

The question that comes to mind is how these wildflowers are pollinated if insects such as bees and butterflies are infected with mold and cause extinction.

Where there are no insects, there should only be plants that are self-pollinating or self-propagating with their rhizomes.

This is the case near the center of Shushan City, with his keen senses, when he shuttles through the center of the city, he does not notice the movement of insects at all, and the plants he has seen are messy grasses except trees, and there are no flowers.

But in the southern suburbs, there are flowers, doesn't it mean... Is the ecosystem here still at a relatively normal level?

Kyungwon mustered up his spirits and searched around for the movement of small insects, and found a few ants in the cracks of the soil, which seemed to be normal and were foraging for food.

Kyungwon didn't bother them, found a piece of land, took out an eggplant knife to use as a shovel, and dug up the mud.

He dug a small hole, loosened the mud, and found a wriggling earthworm in the mud!

Burying the earthworm back again, he continued to move forward, paying special attention to the small movements along the road, the spiders with webs, the buzzing flies, the moths floating by... He discovered a lot of little life.

He made a bold assumption that most of those molds are concentrated in urban centers, and the further you go to the periphery of the city, the smaller their number will be, and the less impact they will have on the environment and organisms.

This means that he may be able to catch fish in the river, and if he can find creatures such as chickens, ducks and sheep, he can still start a breeding industry.

More importantly, in the southern suburbs, there may be living people and survivors.

The natural conditions here are very good, and if there are survivors, they don't have to worry about food, and they may have established a small civilized society!

Kyungwon was happy with the possibility, but soon his heart cooled as if he had been poured cold water.

After all, he is not human now, and who knows what the survivors will have towards him after coming into contact with him.

In a world where the rule of law and order no longer exist, it is estimated that it is difficult to accept a unique existence like him.

He thought that if he wanted to make contact with the survivors, he would have to disguise his identity, and at most make some simple deals with them, and never have the idea of blending in with them.

However, it is still a bit far to think about this, and there is no certainty whether the survivors will exist or not.

He began to explore freely in the southern suburbs, gradually moving into places with more buildings.

There are tourist apartments, several floors of country houses, and at the same time he smells the unique smell of zombies.

In this place, there are no living people, but there are scattered zombies.

He spent the whole afternoon on his bike, wandering around the southern suburbs, a small place that was enough time for him to walk a full lap along the road in an afternoon.

Of course, he didn't go up the mountain, only explored near the foot of the mountain, the tourist reception center, the high-speed rail station, the bus station, the residential area, the farmers' market, the villa area...

Except for the farmhouses in the corners, he walked around them all, but... I didn't see a single living person, but I found three places where large groups of zombies gathered - a villa area, a homestay, and a farmhouse with farmland nearby.

It seems that a survivor did set up a base here a few years ago, and he saw some traces of man-made activities, such as the modification of the building, the sealing of doors and windows with wooden boards, and the use of bamboo to make some rattan armor-like protective equipment.

But these bases, without exception, all fell, and when he came to the vicinity, he could only feel the unconscious moaning of zombies, and the air was a strong rancid smell, without the slightest hint of life.

He put Xiaobai far away and entered the three former survivor bases alone to explore, and the zombies regarded him as nothing, so he didn't need to have any scruples.

He found a few fairy tale books, a few radios, rotten and moldy vegetables in the room, and some of the zombies wearing bamboo armor, which could be inferred from their appearance to be young men when they were alive.

After the disaster struck, the survivors tried hard to survive, but they failed, and no one survived.

Or maybe the people who are alive have left the southern suburbs, and they think that the place is not safe enough, and the influence of mold is still there, so they are heading further into the mountains and forests, or they may be chasing official shelter, following in the footsteps of the army, hoping to be rescued by a large army.

What made Kyung-won a little sad was that he picked up a diary, a diary written by a child.

"I want to go back to school." This is the last sentence in the diary.

Next to his diary, he picked up a spinning top cut out of wood, and in the window of the inn that had been used as a base, he saw some paper cutouts, and on the door were pasted with the children's handwriting on the door couplet.

It seems that the survivors have spent a peaceful time, after all, this is a rural area, with a strong local atmosphere, and the neighbors all grow up watching each other, unlike in the city, where the door is also unfamiliar and strange.

In the midst of their predicament, they supported each other in their lives, the surviving people set up bases, the young men took up arms, formed a garrison, and they had celebrated the New Year together with hope, but they were greeted with such a weak end.

Kyungwon found two barrels of gasoline at the farmhouse's base, as well as a three-wheeled agricultural vehicle for transporting goods, which was rusty but still functioning and stumbling.

Kyungwon carried the gasoline drums to the cargo boxes of the agricultural three-wheeler, and then drove the three-wheeled vehicle to the main road.

In the evening, he took some time to pour half a barrel of gasoline around the farmhouse and set a fire.

The flames burned out the rancid smell in the air, and the charred black figures fell down one by one in the flames, losing their movement, Kyungwon held Xiaobai and sat on the tricycle, Xiaobai's hair was red in the light of the fire.

He waited for two hours for the fire to be extinguished.

Under the stars in the night, the red-hot charcoal smoked black smoke and crackled, and with a loud bang, the three-story farm compound collapsed.

He was silent, moved his bicycle to the tricycle, and drove the tricycle alone on the empty road.

The engine rumbled, and the headlights shone a faint light, as if something was wrong with the circuit, flickering and dimming.

On the vast dark plains, this agricultural tricycle flickered like a lonely firefly.

Kyungwon had already found a place to roost tonight, and he thought, just sleep on that plank bed, at least when he wakes up, he can see the sun illuminating the earth, and he won't feel too dark and cold.