Chapter 350 - 171: Sand

Chapter 350: Chapter 171: Sand

THUD, THUD, THUD.

The sound was dull, like knocking on dead wood or striking dried-out leather. With each knock, the desiccated corpse trembled slightly but showed no reaction. It was truly dead, and had been for some time.

Xu Mo crouched down to observe it carefully.

This zombie hadn’t died from an attack. Its cause of death appeared to be the complete evaporation of all moisture from its body, turning it into a desiccated corpse. It was just like the dried-out animal carcasses in a desert, drained of every last drop of moisture by the high temperature and arid air.

The desiccated corpse before him answered a question Xu Mo had been pondering: zombies had water in their bodies, and they too would die if all that moisture evaporated.

They had literally died of thirst in this extreme environment.

Xu Mo stood up, his gaze sweeping across the surrounding wasteland. This was a true no-man’s-land—no people, no animals, not even any zombies. The zombies that once roamed this land had probably all ended up like the one before him, becoming dried-out corpses lying in some corner, gradually buried by wind and sand.

Xu Mo’s expression grew cautious. He felt that he wasn’t just facing the threat of zombies and mutated creatures anymore; he might also have to face the threat of the environment itself. The high temperatures wouldn’t roar and pounce on him like a zombie, but they were far more terrifying. Zombies could be killed, dodged, or dealt with using guns and knives. But you couldn’t kill the environment; you could only endure it with your body and hold out with your supplies.

’If this situation continues, if the drought in this area gets worse and worse, how much longer can I last?’

Xu Mo returned to his vehicle and first checked his supply reserves.

The supplies in the trunk were still ample, but after a moment’s thought, Xu Mo climbed onto the roof of the SUV.

A door was secured to the roof—Xu Mo’s personal storage space. It had been fixed there ever since he left Jiang City, and he had never opened it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to use it, but because there was no need. The supplies in the vehicle were sufficient, so there was no reason to use his ace in the hole.

But now, Xu Mo felt it was necessary.

After taking the door down, Xu Mo opened it. This was the first time he had entered this space since the Dandelion Plan began. Looking at the familiar supplies before him, Xu Mo even felt a sense of nostalgia.

In a corner of the Void, rows of daily necessities were stacked neatly. These were all things Xu Mo had stockpiled bit by bit in the early days.

Xu Mo walked over to the pile of supplies and began moving them. He didn’t need much, just enough to fill up the empty space in his trunk.

After confirming his supplies were replenished, Xu Mo secured his door once more, started the engine, and continued on his way.

With these supplies as a buffer, Xu Mo felt much more at ease. Even if he ran into some accident and got trapped somewhere, he could last a long time with these provisions. This was the advantage of having the door—it was like carrying a personal supply depot, ready to be accessed at any time.

The SUV pressed on as the wind and sand grew stronger.

Fine grains of sand rattled against the windshield. The wipers activated, scraping the sand aside, but new grains quickly fell to take their place.

Faced with this situation, Xu Mo had no choice but to slow down and carefully watch the road ahead.

He drove like this for another day. At dusk, Xu Mo parked the vehicle outside a small town.

This town was also small, with buildings of the simple, self-built rural type. It was surrounded by open wasteland—no mountains, no trees, just a boundless expanse of flat land.

What struck Xu Mo the most was how quiet the town was.

It wasn’t the kind of quiet that demanded caution because of wandering zombies, but a true, profound silence. There were no sounds, no signs of any living thing, to the point that even the rustle of the wind seemed exceptionally clear.

Xu Mo stopped the car, holding his AK-47, and cautiously entered the town.

The streets were deserted. The doors and windows of the houses on both sides gaped open. Some doors hung crookedly from their frames, while others were gone completely. Through the pitch-black windows, he could see that the interiors were also a complete mess.

Xu Mo continued forward and soon discovered something unusual. In the corner of an alley lay several corpses. They weren’t human corpses, but zombie corpses. They were curled up in the corner, their bodies shriveled and twisted, taking on that familiar, dead-wood appearance. Xu Mo walked over and kicked one of them, and that thudding sound of dead wood echoed once more.

These zombies were all dead, and all of them had died from extreme dehydration, turning into desiccated corpses.

Xu Mo did a full sweep of the town, checking every zombie corpse he could find. Without exception, all of them were desiccated.

Some of the zombies lay inside houses, others had fallen by the roadside, but most had turned into desiccated corpses in some dark corner of a room. All the zombies in this town had actually died out.

For Xu Mo, this was undoubtedly good news.

It meant he could rest peacefully in this town for a night without worrying about a zombie attack or something suddenly pouncing on him in the middle of the night.

Xu Mo chose a relatively intact two-story building as his camp for the night. He found a room on the second floor, tidied it up a bit, and settled in.

Dinner was canned food and a self-heating meal—simple, but it filled his stomach. After eating, Xu Mo stood at the window, looking out at the small town and the wasteland beyond.