Outside the car window, as far as the eye could see, was an endless reddish-brown desert. The ground was covered with pebbles of various sizes, and occasionally, a small cluster of low shrubs appeared, their branches and twigs all dry and withered.
W also followed her gaze out the window. “This is supposed to be a sightseeing route. I wonder, in such desolation, where the sights worth seeing are.”
Pei Ran thought: You don’t know that in another world, there are so many people who never get to see this kind of beauty on the surface their entire lives.
Looking into the distance, one could see the horizon—this kind of vast, expansive feeling was enough to shock a child who had grown up in an underground bunker.
Pei Ran first took out a JTN34, pulled out a piece and ate it—successfully extending her life by another day.
Today was Saturday. Pei Ran remembered that the memo said it was Beef Noodle Day again. That bowl of beef noodles must be extremely delicious to be worth eating twice a week.
Two students from Yehai University came over, arms full of meal boxes, distributing them to the passengers one by one.
Pei Ran received a box of potato and beef rice. The potatoes were soft and glutinous, the beef tender and falling apart—just enough to ease her longing for beef noodles.
Sheng Mingxi’s roll of tape worth eight hundred bowls of beef noodles really was effective—the allergic reaction on her face had improved a lot.
After finishing her meal, Pei Ran tore off a beef noodle patch and stuck it on her face, then grabbed her backpack and headed to the driver’s cabin.
Inaya was being very well-behaved, still sleeping against her seat. The parrot nestled in the crook of her neck, its head buried in the feathers on its back, was also sound asleep.
The driver’s cabin was lively.
Engineer Jiang and Ai Xia were huddled together eating breakfast. They looked up and greeted Pei Ran.
The two of them were about the same height, looked similar, and even had the same expression. The grandfather and granddaughter were calm and clear-headed in the post-apocalyptic atmosphere. The only difference was Engineer Jiang’s silver hair and Ai Xia’s black hair—like one person who had suddenly aged, with the years in between having vanished.
Driving was Sheng Mingxi.
Early in the morning, her head of big wavy hair was all fluffy from sleep. Her eyes were bright, hands on the controls, staring straight ahead. Tang Dao stood beside her, constantly poking her to signal her to switch, but she was firmly rooted in the driver’s seat, unmoving—probably the first time in her life she got to drive a train and hadn’t had enough of it yet.
The flat desert gradually began to undulate, and on the distant horizon, a large cluster of tall buildings slowly appeared.
Yehai No. 7’s final stop, Yercha, had finally arrived.
W gave Pei Ran a brief: “Yercha is the largest city in the northwest of the Federation. It’s an industrial city, and also the financial center and transportation hub of the northwest…”
Everyone on the train stuck their heads out the window, excited yet anxious.
Thankfully, from this view, everything in Yercha looked normal. The tall buildings were quietly nailed to the ground, showing no signs of coming to life.
The train approached the city.
Just like Yehai, power had been cut off here long ago. The signs on the buildings were scorched and tattered. Everything was quiet, not a soul in sight. Yehai No. 7 seemed like the only living thing in the entire city.
Yercha Station was open-air, and the platform was decorated in a very retro style.
The train pulled into the station and slowly came to a stop.
Ever since leaving the Tanggu Dam, the whole night had passed without incident—no one else had died. After spending the night in the safety of the train car, now that they had arrived, no one dared to get off.
Pei Ran strapped on her backpack, grabbed the metal sphere, opened the driver’s cabin door, and was the first to jump down.
Outside the train, the winter morning air was cold and fresh, with the distinct dryness unique to the northwest.
Ai Xia jumped down carrying her pot of peace lily on her back, turned around and supported Engineer Jiang’s arm. Sheng Mingxi and Tang Dao helped Jin Hejun, whose eyes were still covered with gauze, down from the train as well.
With them taking the lead, the others finally followed, carrying large and small bags, and left the train one after another, stepping onto the platform.
Pei Ran waited until everyone had disembarked and did a headcount—there had been forty-seven people and one bird when they left Yehai. After the journey, thirty-seven people and one bird remained. Ten people lost.
Black Well was still more than twenty kilometers from here, all rugged terrain full of rift valleys where vehicles couldn’t pass. There were both elderly and children among this group; they could only proceed on foot, and it wouldn’t be easy.
Pei Ran opened the virtual screen on her wristband, enlarged the map, and showed everyone Black Well’s position in relation to Yercha City.
In case anything happened along the way and someone got separated, at least they would know where to go.
Everyone prepared to depart.
One by one, they filed out of the station exit.
Outside were the streets of Yercha, vast and silent. With dozens of people suddenly appearing, it somehow made the place feel even stranger.
The group walked along the street, heading northwest.
Unlike the chaotic city of Yejai, the ground here was spotless.
During the previous two Silent upgrades, there definitely should have been people discarding all documents containing written language. These documents, thrown onto the streets, would catch fire during the next Silent upgrade, and there should be at least some leftover traces on the ground.
But there were no signs of discarded documents, no traces of burnt paper—nothing at all.
Pei Ran was a bit puzzled. “W, is Yercha very windy?”
W immediately understood what she was asking. “Due to the terrain, Yercha’s average wind speed in winter is 0.8 meters per second…”
Pei Ran: “Level ten natural language processing status, really?”
Who in their right mind actually knows if 0.8 meters per second is fast or slow?
W was as natural as ever and sighed, “In short, the wind is very light in winter. It’s unlikely it could blow away all the burned paper ash.”
Pei Ran tilted her head up to look at the surrounding buildings. There were no signs of burning inside these buildings either. Maybe the water supply wasn’t cut off here, and when a fire broke out, the automatic sprinklers activated.
But that didn’t make sense either. Whether it was fire or the sprinkler water, it would’ve driven the residents out into the streets—and the streets wouldn’t look like this.
This city gave off an eerie feeling.
Pei Ran had a grim suspicion: maybe something had already happened to the people in this city before the Silent Upgrade and before the files caught fire.
In the silent city, the group’s footsteps echoed clearly.
Suddenly, Sheng Mingxi grabbed Pei Ran, staring fixedly ahead.
Pei Ran immediately stopped and followed her gaze. There was only the gray sky between the high-rises over there.
As soon as they stopped, everyone else also paused, full of doubt and unease.
Sheng Mingxi gestured with her hands—pointing to her eyes, then slicing a hand quickly across—her performance was vivid: I saw something flash by.
W also spoke up: “Pei Ran, I think I heard a strange sound too. A faint buzzing noise—and it’s coming this way.”
His metal sphere had keen ears and sharp eyes, with senses far superior to those of a human. Pei Ran held her breath and perked up her ears, but she couldn’t hear any strange sounds at all.
W added, “You probably can’t hear it yet. It’s just up ahead, some distance away, but the sound is coming this way. You should be able to detect it very soon.”
Pei Ran immediately looked around, wanting to find a more concealed spot.
Suddenly, a clear singing voice rang out from behind—resounding and powerful like a military song:
“You say that gentle breeze is your song of courage—
Did you ever imagine a glimmer of dawn on that night—
Across the vast lands of East Manya…”
Pei Ran turned her head.
Inaya, her face full of panic, clamped her hand over Nuomituan’s beak, stuffing the parrot into her jacket.
Everyone else turned to look at Inaya, both startled and fearful.
But in truth, it had nothing to do with the parrot’s singing—the suspicious buzzing sound was already approaching, and now even without W’s input, Pei Ran could hear it herself.
Between the skyscrapers, in the sky, countless small dots were flying over from afar, neatly arranged in formation and swiftly closing in on them.
From a distance, it appeared to be an entire fleet of flying drones.
While flying, they maintained an exact and uniform distance from one another. Their movements were perfectly synchronized—turning together, advancing together—strictly orderly, without a single one breaking formation.
In this uninhabited city, in the Silent state, for such a large swarm of drones to be flying in formation was deeply strange.
Maybe they were drones piloted by artificial intelligence.
Pei Ran felt a bit puzzled. “Don’t these drones have any written symbols on their bodies?”
If any part of them had writing, they should have already been incinerated.
W, whose camera function far surpassed the human eye, answered, “Pei Ran, those aren’t drones.”
In the few seconds it took, the formation—moving with perfect precision—had already approached rapidly. They were far too large to be drones. The people could now see what they really were, their eyes wide with terror.
Pei Ran also saw clearly.
They were each “people”—flying in the sky.
Each one was strange—or rather, no longer resembled a “person.” Like kites, their limbs were stretched wide. Their heads, bodies, and arms and legs had all been completely flattened by something, stretched to their limits, turned into thin sheets floating in the air.
Because they were so flat, their clothes had torn apart and bizarrely fused with their skin and bodily tissues, forming strange patterns.
A strange thought suddenly surfaced in Pei Ran’s mind: Once, when she went to the surface world, she had picked a yellow wildflower. She brought it back to the bunker and pressed it inside her notebook. When she looked at it again after some time, the wildflower had become a thin, flattened little petal.
The “human sheets” in the sky looked just like that—like they’d been pressed in a book for a long time.
They could fly so smoothly in formation because each of them had a power source. On their abdomens, fused with their flattened bodies, was a device that looked like a drone.
The drone’s metallic parts were embedded in their abdominal cavity, emitting a constant buzzing sound.
Among them were men and women, old and young. Their flattened faces all looked about the same—like dried wildflower corpses pressed into a book—completely lifeless, expressionless. Only their eyeballs remained round and black, embedded in the flattened sheets, rolling around with eerie motion.
Without a doubt, they were frenzied-state fusion entities.
This group of formation-flying “human sheet drones” numbered at least several thousand. As soon as they appeared, their formation suddenly froze in midair.
They quickly rearranged their formation.
Each drone took its place, neatly assembling into the shape of a jewelry box.
The “lid” of the box opened, and a “ring” formed by over a hundred human sheet drones slowly rose out from the jewelry box.
Above the silent, deserted city, in the apocalyptic sky, it was as if someone were proposing with a drone fleet made of flattened humans—so grotesque it sent chills down the spine.
Pei Ran thought: Just write “Marry Me” already.
If those characters appeared, the human sheet drones would probably explode in droves.
But unfortunately, they had no intention of writing anything. The jewelry box and ring vanished, and the formation regrouped, returning to a tidy square array, rapidly advancing toward the group of people standing on the sidewalk.
The human sheet drones surged in with overwhelming momentum. Most people were still frozen in place, but Pei Ran had already started running, taking the lead and sprinting straight across the street.