Players, Please Board the Train

The temperature inside the city was a bit lower, but it still wasn’t a normal climate suitable for human life. Not long after sunrise, the temperature began to rise sharply.

Xu Huo chose to walk in shaded areas. Before he even got close to the crack in the city center, he sensed someone following him. When he reached a street corner, he turned around and saw two young Split-head Mutants throwing stones at him.

He raised his hand, caught one, and threw it back in one smooth motion. The two Mutants were frightened by the stone hitting near them and immediately turned and fled. Their escape posture was very human-like; at least on the surface, they didn’t seem like Mutants who had lost their reason.

Keeping a certain distance, he followed behind the two. He discovered they ducked into a sewer in a small alley and quickly lost their trail.

Even for underground spaces, as long as they weren’t too deep, Xu Huo could usually sense a little movement. For two children to go down and immediately have no trace was not normal.

He waited outside the alley for a minute before walking in, moving aside the manhole cover and jumping down.

The passage below wasn’t very spacious. It might be convenient for children, but for an adult male like him, it was a bit cramped. He barely made it to the end of this passage. After exiting, the space branched into five different tunnels.

These tunnels were a mix of old and new. Two were dug very crudely, unlike the others which had metal pipes laid down. They were merely smoothed over with some kind of coating on the soil.

However, these tunnels carried sound. Even standing outside, Xu Huo could determine the source of the footsteps.

He chose the left tunnel and crawled in. After turning twice and descending twice, the surroundings finally began to change.It was no longer just simple pipes. He had likely descended deep beneath the crack in the city center. Occasionally, through openings, he could see the sunlight from the narrow fissures outside and clothes hanging there.

That’s right, clothes. Looking out from the two fissures he discovered, he saw at least three or four places where clothes were hanging.

People were living underground.

Or rather, Mutants were living underground like people.

A skinny, emaciated child passed by ahead and bumped right into Xu Huo. From a distance of a few meters, the child with pinkish-white skin on its head and forehead opened its mouth and made a ”ha, ha” sound.

This sound attracted the attention of nearby Mutants. The first to run over were the two children who had thrown stones at Xu Huo earlier. The two shielded the skinny one, retreating while baring their teeth in a threatening manner at Xu Huo.

Within seconds, several more Mutants ran out, likely the parents of these children. They immediately tightly hugged the smaller ones, looking at Xu Huo with terrified eyes. As Xu Huo stepped forward, they retreated.

Walking out from the narrow passage that only allowed a person to stand upright, Xu Huo saw that both sides of the fissure outside had been hollowed out into many stone and earthen caves. At first glance, it resembled the dwellings of humans in ancient times when intelligence was just budding. Inside, pale gray faces peered out, some fearful, some angry, but most shrank back inside their caves without coming out.

Noticing they were all pitifully thin, and because the underground space was small, many were hunched over. Even though they outnumbered him, they appeared weak in front of a normal person.

Surveying the ”Mutants” who looked wary but did not attack him, Xu Huo looked at the few in front. ”Can you understand what I’m saying?”

The few adults just stared at him intently. It was still the two children who were bolder. One of them grabbed a handful of mud and threw it at him, mouthing the word, ”Scram!”

Xu Huo smiled slightly and raised his hand, throwing something over as well.

The adults let out strange, startled cries and hugged the children tightly. When the object landed on the ground, the skinny child, unable to resist the smell of food, struggled out of its parents’ arms, picked it up, and sniffed it hard.

”Food,” Xu Huo said, opening one himself and taking a bite.

The skinny child imitated him, opening the bread. Just as it was about to eat, another child suddenly slapped its hand. The bread fell to the ground and got dirty with mud. Seeing this, the skinny child began to wail loudly.

Xu Huo ate his bread, staring at the child who had done the hitting.

The child looked at him angrily but didn’t hold out for long before compromising for its increasingly exhausted companion.

Carefully picking off the mud, it handed the bread to the skinny child. Seeing it eat so hungrily, it couldn’t help but lick its own fingers.

Some other children crawled out of the caves and gathered around the skinny child, drooling. Each got a finger-sized piece of bread.

Xu Huo simply gave them all the clean bread from his luggage compartment, along with two bottles of water. Then he called over the child who had thrown the mud and asked if it could write.

The child looked at him several times before writing its name on the ground, then added a sentence afterward: ”Do you like to eat children? Are you fattening us up before eating us?”

The smile instantly vanished from Xu Huo’s face. He then said, ”I have a lot of food. I just came from outside. I don’t eat children.”

The child somewhat believed his words and then asked him what the outside world was like.

Xu Huo took out his communicator and found some images to show it.

This was clearly more attractive to them than food. Not only the children, but adults also crowded around, greedily staring at the bustling crowds and various food shops in the holographic projection.

”Can all of those be eaten?” the child wrote on the ground, asking him. ”Is there really that much food outside?”

Xu Huo nodded, then asked them what they ate underground.

A group of adults gathered, gesturing and discussing for a while. Then a woman stepped out to lead the way for him.

The city was in a high-temperature zone. Nothing grew on the surface, but seeds underground could sprout. Some grass grew in the edge fissures, and occasionally, things resembling wild vegetables could be seen, though they were scarce. Additionally, Xu Huo saw some rats and dried meat strips from unknown animals.

”Have you lived here for a long time?”

The woman took out a tattered notebook and flipped through the pages. There was writing on them: ”We came to the cleanup area over ten years ago.”

”After being polluted, we became Mutants, but we didn’t lose our humanity. For over ten years, we’ve lived underground and haven’t eaten a single person.”

”The pathogens we’re infected with are not highly contagious. Even contact with us won’t cause infection.”

”There are many children here who have never been outside or eaten normal food. After all these years, there must be potions outside that can cure the infection.”

”You are a good person. Could you take one or two children out? Clown City will definitely cure them.”

”Please!”

After finishing the text that was already prepared in the notebook, the woman knelt before Xu Huo with tears in her eyes. Seeing him unmoved, she opened the last page and held it up high. ”You just came from outside, you must not know the situation here. The group living above ground treats us like livestock. They will eat people who reach the city but are not infected. We are telling you this information. Please, at least take one child away!”

When the child asked him earlier, Xu Huo had roughly guessed that Gao Peng and his group weren’t good people either.

”How many people have you shown this notebook to?” Xu Huo looked at the woman. ”Since you haven’t lost your reason, why don’t you leave yourselves?”