xymnovel Chapter 8 Crack
Chapter 8 Crack
The road south was far more treacherous than Li Qian had anticipated.
No more than an hour after dawn, the scorching sun was already overhead, baking the ground with a hazy, charred shadow. The soil, which had been slightly cool the night before, hardened and became brittle by midday, crunching underfoot, its cracks filled with gleaming white lime. This lime was a crust formed from the alkalinity of the ground due to the prolonged drought; when crushed underfoot, plumes of white smoke shot straight into one's lungs.
Li Qian walked at the front, his right hand pressed firmly against the hilt of the knife. The scabs on his hand had long since dried, but the heat caused them to crack open again.
The people following behind him looked more and more like ghosts than the last.
Su Mo'er kept her head down, following closely in Li Qian's shadow. She was originally the daughter of a local constable in Baoding Prefecture. Although her short jacket was tattered beyond recognition, the fine stitches still revealed a hint of her family's former prosperity.
In this time of widespread poverty and destitution, this outfit was a death sentence. The foreigners burned their way into Beijing from Dagu, the government troops collapsed, the bandits went mad, and even the crops in the fields turned red. When her father died in the woods, those three Green Standard Army soldiers were arguing fiercely over who would "own" her. If it weren't for Li Qian's knife last night, she would probably be a mangled mess dragged by wild dogs across the wasteland.
But in those times, the grace of being saved is the most illusory thing; only the hunger in one's stomach is the real killer.
After walking for more than an hour, the group began to fall apart.
The sun was scorching hot, and the air pressed down like red-hot iron, making one's chest feel tight. Faced with such extreme thirst and hunger, human dignity and reason would evaporate along with the water.
"Stop...stop for a second."
Sun Deshan's voice was hoarse and incoherent. He leaned against a section of a charred wall, like a millstone with a broken axle. He gasped for breath, his chest heaving violently, and his throat made dry, cracking "whoosh" sounds, like a leaky old bellows.
Awang's face was ashen, and his lips were frothy with a layer of white foam. His skinny legs trembled, and his legs gave way, causing him to kneel on the scalding hot lime ground. He didn't even have the strength to call for help. He just stared blankly at the grain sack at Li Qian's waist, which had shrunk considerably.
Li Qian stopped walking without turning around, but he could feel several eerie green gazes behind him.
Under the torment of hunger, people no longer see each other as their own. Sun Deshan's gaze towards Su Mo'er had changed from initial amazement to a kind of scrutiny—saving one more woman meant one more mouth to feed.
"To rest here is to wait for death." Li Qian slowly turned around, wiped the dust off his face, revealing a face contorted with blood and sweat.
He looked around, his gaze settling on a low-lying, chaotic graveyard ahead. The soil there was a dark red, the color of something long soaked in blood and baked by the scorching sun. Scattered around were a few white bones, and even some corpses that had only been dead for a few days, their flesh not yet fully rotten, attracting swarms of greenbottle flies buzzing in the air.
"Go take a look over there." Li Qian patted the hilt of his knife, his tone so calm it was chilling. "Where there are many dead people, there's always something left."
He spoke with utter nonchalance, as if he weren't searching for corpses but gathering firewood in his own backyard. This disregard for life was the first essential lesson the time traveler had to learn to survive in the tenth year of the Xianfeng Emperor's reign.
The closer you get to that area, the more the stench of dried-up decay permeates your senses—a smell that can make you nauseous to the point of spasms, yet because your stomach is empty, you can only dry heave. The corpses on the ground have long been stripped naked, their flesh clinging to their skeletons, like dried-out old shadow puppets.
Sun Deshan and Awang followed behind, their legs trembling, but their eyes shone with an astonishing light. They searched through the chaotic graveyard, every movement filled with the savagery born of despair.
Li Qian walked at the front. He didn't look at the gruesome deaths; he was searching waists, hands, and collars. He had learned a lesson from these past few days of "escaping for his life": things in the arms of the dead are often safer than things in the hands of the living.
They searched three places, but all were empty. Clearly, this place had been thoroughly searched by the "starving ghosts" who had gone before.
"Damn it, not even a belt is left." Sun Deshan cursed under his breath, kicking a dried corpse next to him. The corpse was so dry that it was extremely brittle. With this kick, the skeleton made a crisp "crack" sound and broke into several pieces.
Just then, Li Qian stopped in front of a body half-buried in the red soil.
The dead man lay on his side, his face buried in the soil, his hands gripping his waist tightly. The belt was tied very tightly, and his fingernails were filled with black blood from scratching the dirt; you could even see the gruesome state of his fingernails, which had been torn off.
Li Qian's eyes sharpened; he sensed something amiss with the corpse. He crouched down and gently flicked the hem of the body's clothing with the tip of his knife.
"Clatter".
A blackened, hardened, dry biscuit covered in white ash residue rolled out of the dead man's arms and bounced twice on the cracked ground.
In that instant, the taut string in the air snapped completely.
Without thinking, Sun Deshan's years of hunger unleashed his final potential. He lunged forward like a wounded old wolf, his hand grabbing directly at the black pancake, a growl escaping his throat that sounded inhuman: "Give it to me—!"
"I want a bite too!" Ah Wang went crazy, tumbling and crawling forward, his hands carving a deep trench in the mud.
The two collided heavily in the mud. Sun Deshan slammed his elbow into Awang's chest, knocking him to the ground, and roared, "Get out of my way! I fought hard last night, so I deserve to eat first! What good is a piece of trash like you besides holding us back?"
"That's grain! I'm starving! I don't want to die!" Awang screamed, clinging tightly to Sun Deshan's leg and biting him.
These two men, who had shared life and death just moments before, now wished they could bite each other's throats and stuff each other's flesh and blood into their own bellies for this piece of black cake, which was stained with the sweat of the dead and as hard as a brick.
Old Zhao stood to the side, his cloudy eyes filled with sorrow, yet he couldn't help but take two steps forward.
Su Mo'er huddled behind the broken wall, so frightened that her sobs choked back. She watched the two men writhing and struggling in the blood and grime, her eyes filled with the most primal, utterly inhuman despair of this apocalyptic world. This was the tenth year of the Xianfeng Emperor's reign; this was the life of the people of the Qing Dynasty.
Just as Sun Deshan broke free from Awang and his fingers were about to touch the pancake—
A cold glint of light steadily and icyly hovered above the black pancake.
The cold air from the dagger sent a chill through Sun Deshan's palm; the tip of the knife was only a hair's breadth away from his knuckles.
"Try reaching over there."
Li Qian stood between the two men, his tone as calm as still water, yet it carried a chilling ruthlessness.
Sun Deshan raised his head and met Li Qian's lifeless, expressionless eyes. The murderous aura emanating from those mountains of corpses and seas of blood instantly brought his reason back. Cold sweat streamed down his temples, and his face, which had been flushed with anger, turned deathly pale. He knew that this young man would truly stab him through the palm of his hand, or even slit his throat.
"Step back," Li Qian whispered.
Sun Deshan and Awang retreated half a step like defeated wild dogs. Awang clutched his chest and coughed, his phlegm tinged with blood.
Li Qian bent down to pick up the cake, dusted it off, and instead of giving it to the two burly men, he turned to look at the woman who had been hiding in the shadows.
"Come here." Li Qian beckoned.
Su Mo'er moved over cautiously, her eyes filled with awe and fear as she looked at Li Qian.
Amidst the astonished, angry, and even jealous gazes of the crowd, Li Qian expressionlessly broke off the largest piece of the pancake and handed it to Su Mo'er.
"Boss...you're giving it to her? What use is she, a woman, besides slowing us down?" Sun Deshan asked through gritted teeth, his voice hoarse.
"She's worth more than you while she's alive."
Li Qian stared at Su Mo'er, his gaze so deep that Su Mo'er dared not look him in the eye: "You are the daughter of the local headman. Within this radius of fifty miles, even after ten years of chaos, some things remain unchanged. Do you know where there are government and military outposts, where there is drinking water, and where there are deadly places that refugees dare not go?"
Su Mo'er took the hard, rock-hard cake and bit into it. The extreme dryness and hardness cut her gums, and tears streamed down her face as she swallowed the blood and crumbs. "I know... my father used to patrol the fields and often took me to learn the boundaries. There's a dry well twenty miles south, the only source of running water in this area. As long as it's not completely dry, we can always draw some water. Further south, there's a rocky beach, the road there is steep, and the soldiers' horses can't get through..."
A fierce glint flashed in Li Qian's eyes. This was the real reason he saved this woman. In this wasteland, strength was certainly valuable, but in this apocalyptic world where everyone was practically blind, intelligence could buy a life.
"Did you hear that?" Li Qian turned his head and coldly glanced at Sun Deshan and Awang. "In this damned world, having strength isn't a skill; surviving to the end is. This piece of bread is for buying water, and it's also for saving lives."
After saying that, he broke the remaining pancakes into several pieces and casually tossed them to Old Man Zhao and Sun Deshan.
Sun Deshan took the small piece of cake, stared at Su Mo'er for a moment, and finally said nothing more, but his eyes became colder.
Li Qian finally managed to stuff the last bit of bread crumbs mixed with dirt into his mouth. The dry bread rubbed against his throat, and swallowing it felt like swallowing razor blades, with a burning, stinging sensation.
He looked south, where the scorching, endless mountains stretched out. He knew that the fight just now had opened the first, irreparable rift in the hearts of these people. Sun Deshan and Awang no longer looked at Su Mo'er as a weakling, but as a "special competitor."
This is human nature. In Zhili during the tenth year of the Xianfeng Emperor's reign, these few people could devour themselves without the help of foreign cannons.
"We've rested enough, so let's set off."
Li Qian retied the grain sack and placed his hand on the hilt of his knife. He glanced back at the corpse he had turned over and silently murmured, "Thanks."
The dry well twenty miles away was their only hope of turning back into humans.
"Go, don't look back."
The setting sun, like blood, cast long, distorted shadows. Su Mo'er walked slightly behind Li Qian, clutching the package tightly, her eyes filled with a desperate, lifeless struggle for survival.