Chapter 489: What a Pity They Didn't Know

In the family portrait on the wall of the stone house in the Hidden Valley, the fair, plump woman standing behind her parents, wearing a qipao with long hair, smiling happily — in the last video she already looked like the typical state of humanity during the Calamity Years.

Withered, sickly thin, eyes without light, face numb — but she was lucky enough to still have all four limbs intact, and no scars on her face or neck from acid rain burns or venomous insect bites.

This woman stood by the table, trembling as she set her phone down, then stared at the screen trying to force a smile. But because she hadn't smiled in so long, her facial muscles had gone stiff, and the smile she pulled onto her lips was twisted and terrifying.

During the Calamity Years, if you saw someone smile like that, the first reaction of the people around you was to shield your own food and run. Because someone who suddenly smiles at you might, the next second, snatch away the last bit of food you have, or suddenly go mad and attack you.

"I'm… going… crazy." She probably hadn't spoken in a long time — her voice was inaccurate, and she had trouble organizing her words. On top of that, the audio quality of this phone had also deteriorated. What Xia Qing heard, she still relied on her hearing-evolution ability to pick out from the background noise of the video — the patter of noisy rain.

"Food, yours, house, yours, hot spring… bury me… Shi Jiayi, my name… Shi Jiayi… hot spring…"

The name Shi Jiayi was one of the two names inscribed on the stone marker standing in front of the overgrown grave mound inside the Hidden Valley.

As she spoke, this woman called Shi Jiayi suddenly raised both hands and clawed at her own head — one of the typical self-attacking behaviors of humans after losing control to Calamity evolution.

On Shi Jiayi's withered wrist, Xia Qing saw the blackened, bleeding wound from a venomous snake bite. The wound hadn't been treated — no wonder this woman, poisoned and undergoing Calamity evolution, lost control.

She probably hadn't wanted to live for a long time already, which was why after losing control she didn't exhibit outward-directed aggression, but turned to self-harm.

Just then, a clear clap of thunder came from the phone's background audio. The sound echoed back and forth in the valley, and not only startled the woman who was in the middle of harming herself, but also alarmed Sheep Boss and Sick Wolf, who had been resting beside Xia Qing — both of them stood up and leaned against Xia Qing, looking out the window.

Xia Qing set the phone down and reached out to soothe her two companions. "It's nothing — no Calamity explosion or thunderstorm here, it's just a sound from inside this phone."

Sick Wolf immediately let out a string of "haha"s at Xia Qing, while Sheep Boss stared at the phone in a very displeased way.

After the woman, fresh from self-harm and covered in blood, came back to her senses, she mumbled indistinctly "hot spring," and stretched out a trembling hand, smeared with blood and grey-white hair, to stop the recording.

Xia Qing looked again at the recording date of this video, and combined with the thunder, she remembered which day it was.

This was the second day of the third Calamity Rain of the seventh Calamity Year — the day she killed the most people in her ten Calamity Years.

That day, lightning strikes, thunder, strong winds, and red-grade hail swept through the Hui-3 Base safe zone. Countless people lost control and hacked at each other everywhere; some also took advantage of the chaos to pretend to lose control and rob and smash things. The outer city of the safe zone turned into a river of blood, a hellscape littered with corpses.

Even the Tier-4 strength evolvers, who in previous Calamity Rains had only been assigned hauling tasks, were forcibly conscripted by the base to fight the disaster.

The conscripted Xia Qing, gripping her large cleaver, hacked to death thirty-nine people who had lost control and six who were pretending to have lost control — the cleaver's edge was rolled over.

Sitting by the warm fireplace, Xia Qing watched the last two videos over and over several times before she began going through the phone's notepad, calendar, and files, confirming that this woman was an elementary school homeroom teacher, because the files on her phone were all various forms that needed to be submitted.

Xia Qing turned the phone off and checked the kindergarten textbooks and exercise books that had been placed in the bag along with the phone. These two paper materials were both covered in children's handwriting and arithmetic — crooked, but written very carefully.

Putting the phone, exercise books, and textbooks back into the sealed bag, Xia Qing lay back in the reclining chair, quietly gazing at the ceiling, no longer snowy white from smoke staining, and began to analyze the information she had obtained.

First, the hot spring inside the Hidden Valley cave must have something special about it, otherwise the woman wouldn't have mentioned the hot spring again and again in her final video. But Xia Qing had tested the hot spring and found that the Calamity element content wasn't low. It seemed necessary to mention this matter to the professional big shot Zhang San.

Second, in the second-to-last video, the six- or seven-year-old little girl celebrating her birthday, the old man, and this woman who survived to the end — they should all have been evolvers, and their evolution tiers weren't low either. Otherwise, without protective masks, protective suits, or Calamity element detectors, exposed to round after round of Calamity rain and Calamity snow, eating food of unknown quality and drinking unpurified water, the old man and child couldn't have survived to the third Calamity Year, and the woman couldn't possibly have survived to the seventh Calamity Year.

Third, in the final video, the woman used the word "crazy," clearly not knowing this was caused by excessive Calamity element content in the human body — loss of control from Calamity evolution. This proved that from the second Calamity Year onward, they had been unable to receive any news from the outside world inside the valley.

If they could have received news, they would certainly have known that after the Calamity Yi two elements and the Great Evolution appeared on Blue Star, one had to obtain the necessary supplies — protective suits, Calamity element detectors, and insect-repelling sterilization agents — in order to survive.

In order to survive, they would have left the valley and headed for the various human gathering places that had already been established at the time.

In the second and third Calamity Years, bases and human gathering places of all sizes were using every means, including wireless broadcasts, to continuously play notices recruiting evolvers with generous conditions.

The Hidden Valley was only ten li of mountain road from the old regiment headquarters on the northwest side of No. 49 Mountain — what a pity they didn't know. The blockage of information caused these evolvers, whose tiers weren't low, to slowly weaken and die inside the valley.

Xia Qing reached out from under the thin blanket and gently scratched Sheep Boss's neck.

Sheep Boss, lying beside Xia Qing, paused chewing cud for a few seconds, then continued chewing unhurriedly, but tilted its head toward Xia Qing to let her scratch a more comfortable spot.

Sick Wolf noticed and came over, gazing at Xia Qing with eager, hopeful eyes.

Xia Qing simply sat up, took out the grooming brush made from the quills of a porcupine, and brushed her two companions for a while. Only when her hand hurt intensely did she clean up the brushed-out fur, then drove the micro-tiller to clear the accumulated snow in the yard.

This Calamity snow's forecast duration was 58 hours; it still needed 19 more hours to stop, so she had to keep clearing it, otherwise the snow she'd shaken down from the roof would definitely block the door. After clearing the Calamity snow around the house, Xia Qing drove the micro-tiller to clear the main paths within her territory.

Seeing Xia Qing come out driving the micro-tiller again, Chen Cheng, who was also clearing accumulated snow, originally wanted to go over and relieve Xia Qing so she could rest. But when the micro-tiller drew a bit closer, Chen Cheng saw the sheep and wolf squeezed inside the rain cover with Xia Qing, and didn't dare move.

Don't be fooled by how obedient those two evolved animals are beside Xia Qing — if he dared to climb into the rain cover, he wouldn't be clawed by the wolf's paws, he'd be kicked by the sheep's hooves.

Thanks to reader 1018 for the tip, and thanks to everyone for your subscriptions and votes. Today's second update is delivered — wishing everyone a happy Children's Day.