The two of them each carried a large bag of poisonous plastic items and moved them to an open space on the street outside. They pretended to burn them in the open air, but they took the opportunity to expand their perception to the limit, scanning for suspicious signs in all directions.
The white mist was still enshrouding the place. Except for the sound of the drizzle, there was not the slightest sound. The footsteps of the boots and the roars of the crystal tanks that were crushing everything were gradually fading away.
The two of them looked at each other and made up their minds. They took off their gas masks at the same time.
They crept to a broken wall at the corner of the street and carefully moved away the collapsed cement slab, revealing the debris of a shuttle that had been deformed.
Thangka bent her finger and tapped the shell of the shuttle, which was full of bumps, softly three times. Knock, knock, knock.
Then, she clenched her fists and hammered twice. Knock, knock!
There was nothing but silence in the debris of the shuttle for a long time. Then, after a squeak, the rear cover was slowly opened, revealing two small, haggard heads and a series of coughing sounds.
"Tiantian seems to have a fever."
Zhou Xiuyun hugged her daughter tightly, as if she were trying to warm her heart. She said helplessly, "It's still raining outside. What do we do?"
Thangka put her hand on Tiantian's forehead and exclaimed, "It's so hot!"
She looked at Tiantian again. Her eyebrows were furrowed, her eyes were closed, and her cheeks were red. The laughter of the previous day was gone.
"There's nothing we can do. Take the antipyretic if you have a fever. We have to go!"
Chu Zhiyun said coldly, "If nobody takes you out today, you won't be able to leave tomorrow!"
"What?"
Zhou Xiuyun was shocked. She burst into tears of joy. "You're going with us? That — that's great! That's great! "
"Cut the crap. Let's go!"
Chu Zhiyun found a large piece of rainproof blanket and covered Tiantian with it. Then, she and Thangka carried the big bag that was hidden in the debris of the shuttle out.
Now that they had taken the first step, there was no turning back. The two of them looked back at the camp and set off on the road of escape with Zhou Xiuyun and Tiantian without looking back.
"This way, the map says it's this way!"
Thangka was holding the 'compass' that was loaded with the 3D map. He led the way in the front, Zhou Xiuyun was in the middle with Tiantian in her arms, and Chu Zhiyun was in the rear with two storm bolters. In the frontline of colonization, weapons were not rare. Even a town of civilians such as New Joy City had a lot of stores of magical equipment. When the citizens fled, they had lost a lot of attack magical equipment on the streets and alleys, too. Chu Zhiyun, on the other hand, managed to collect a lot of knives, spears, swords, and spears to boost her courage.
They gradually walked into the depths of the city. The surroundings were silent, as if there was no one around. But it also seemed that there were countless ferocious beasts with eyes all over their bodies. They were holding their breaths and looking at them without blinking from behind the fog.
"After we leave this downtown area, we should be in the northern suburbs of New Joy City. As far as I know, it's an agricultural area, so there's no cleansing mission there."
Chu Zhiyun said in a low voice, "We should be safe once we reach there."
"Did you hear that, Little Tiantian?"
Zhou Xiuyun whispered to her daughter in her arms, "We'll be safe soon. Soon."
Her lips curled into a smile.
Tang Ka, however, suddenly stopped. He raised his wrist and wandered around as if he were a ghost.
"What's wrong?"
Chu Zhiyun asked in shock, "Why aren't you walking anymore?"
"I'm lost."
Thangka mumbled, "I can't find a way to get out of here."
"Impossible!"
Before Chu Zhiyun could say anything, Zhou Xiuyun was anxious, "The route is clearly marked on the map. There's even a navigation mode. We just need to follow the arrow on the navigation and keep moving forward!"
"I know, but the map is stuck. It's dead. Look —"
Thangka waved the "compass" in her hand. The arrow on it was indeed like a stiff dead fish, "There are probably too many tall buildings nearby. It's also raining and foggy today, so it's blocking the signal. I need to find a slightly more spacious place or a higher place to search for the signal..."
Thangka walked around and around, trying to climb up the high walls and ruins, pretending to be searching for something.
Chu Zhiyun and Zhou Xiuyun could only follow behind her, praying silently that they would not run into anyone at this time.
They seemed to be really lucky. Along the way, they did not run into any danger. They did not run into any classmates or cleansing soldiers on patrol.
However, their good luck seemed to have completely run out at this moment. Because just as Thangka climbed up a wall that was not too tall with Chu Zhiyun and Zhou Xiuyun, there was a deafening explosion not far from their feet. Not only did the entire wall collapse, but even the ground was blasted open.
It was a landmine or a roadside bomb!
Planting a lot of landmines and roadside bombs when they retreated from the valuable areas was a very common trick in a protracted war of attrition.
Speaking of which, it was actually the Holy League that made the move popular first. In the "Imperium's counterattack" in the past twenty years, although the people of the Holy League were retreating nonstop, they had turned most of the worlds into fatal swamps with the "Scorched Earth Strategy". The most powerful weapons among them were landmines and roadside bombs.
The seemingly shabby and unattractive magical equipment was a headache for countless experts, not to mention the common soldiers who were shuddering in fear.
The landmines and roadside bombs that the people of the Holy League sowed on a large scale brought infinite trouble and left a deep impression on the people of the Imperium. Now that it was the Imperium's turn to retreat, they naturally had to leave a few "gifts" for the people of the Holy League.
It was possible that Thangka accidentally touched the tripwires of the roadside bombs just now, which raised quite a huge explosion.
Perhaps it was a coincidence, or perhaps it was the intention of those who threw the bombs, but below the debris was the confluence of quite a few sewer pipes. Except for the hard road that was several meters thick, the ground was hollow!
The ground had collapsed, and there was nothing below their feet. They fell into the sewer pipes together as if they had fallen off a cliff.
It had been raining for a whole night. A lot of rainwater had gathered in the sewer pipes and barely reached the top of the pipes.
Also, the fire of war must've blown up some of the pipes and blocked some of the critical routes. The places that were not blocked were even more turbulent and surging.
Pu Tong!
The four of them fell into the cold and dirty rainwater, as if they had fallen into a deep pool from a waterfall. They felt that the world was swirling, and they could not tell where they were going. An enormous attraction force was coming from the surroundings and below their feet, as if an invisible monster had grabbed their feet and dragged them to the bottom of the water.
"Thangka, Zhou Xiuyun, Little Tiantian!"
Chu Zhiyun thought that she was the strongest among the four of them. She knew very well how strong Thangka was, Zhou Xiuyun was a weak commoner, and Little Tiantian was even more so.
According to her original cold and heartless personality, she would at most call out "Thangka" twice. She would not care about the life and death of Zhou Xiuyun and Little Tiantian at all.
After all, they were just strangers who had met once.
But for some reason, the scene of her playing with Little Tiantian in the "Children's Playground" yesterday appeared in front of her eyes. Little Tiantian's bell-like laughter also appeared in her ears. She also remembered Little Tiantian's frown and painful expression.
No matter how hard Chu Zhiyun tried to shake her head, she could not get this image and this voice out of her head.
"Is this the Omen?"
The big girl's imagination ran wild. "Is this the Omen? Damn it, damn it!"
She cursed indiscriminately while kicking her legs, trying to find where Little Tiantian was.
Unfortunately, the water flow here was too fast and too chaotic. There were a total of seven or eight sewer pipes that converged here. The seven or eight streams of water here formed seven or eight huge whirlpools that interfered with each other and strengthened each other. The visibility in the sewage water was extremely low. She bobbed up and down a few times in the water, and her eyes were in so much pain that she could barely open them. She could only see a patch of gray, and she could not see anyone at all.
Her voice also echoed on the dark walls of the pipe and bounced back. She did not know if Thangka and the others could hear it.
She did not know if she was hallucinating, but she vaguely heard the little girl crying. Just as she was about to swim over, she suddenly felt a bone-piercing cold from her ankle. It was as if something was pulling her and fiercely dragging her to the bottom of the water!
"Gulp, gulp!"
Chu Zhiyun drank a few mouthfuls of sewage water and felt that she was about to suffocate.
When she popped her head out again, the light had disappeared. She had been washed into the depths of a sewer pipe.
The water flow was too fast and too strong. It was like an invisible sledgehammer hammering her chest. She felt that her sternum was about to be completely shattered.
"How can the water flow in the sewer be so strong?"
Chu Zhiyun could not believe it. "This, this doesn't make sense at all!"
Regardless of whether it made sense or not, she was almost unconscious. She could only go with the flow and let the water flow take her to an unknown place.
Power flowed out of her limbs and fingers drop by drop, and her consciousness gradually blurred. She did not know how much time had passed, but she gradually sank to the bottom of the swamp-like water.
"Could it be … that this is the punishment of the gods?"
Chu Zhiyun thought in her last consciousness. "I was wrong. I was tempted by the Skyscraper Devil and abandoned the path of the gods. So I lost the favor of the gods, and so I have to die in the depths of the black sewage for no reason?"
At this moment —
She suddenly felt that there was a pair of strong arms holding her tightly in his arms. He took her to escape from the dark abyss and the shadow of death. He pulled her from the damp and rotten sewage to the shore!
"Crack!"
The owner of the arms broke a light stick and waved it vigorously, using the light to disperse the darkness.
His body was also enveloped by the light, as if he was the messenger of the gods who had descended from the sky.
Chu Zhiyun looked carefully. When her pupils gradually adapted to the light around the other person, she found that the person who saved her was actually — Thangka!
The young man's face was indescribably calm and determined. Moreover, he was holding a very familiar felt in his arms. In the felt, there was a little kitten that was arching up and down. It was Little Tiantian!
"Wow …"
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