Chapter 345: Human

Staring at the incredibly shocking scene before him, Zhang Wenda swallowed hard. The dry air made his throat itch.

Zhang Wenda stomped his foot. The ground was hard, like concrete, but somewhat weathered. The resulting dust floated into the air, forming the gray, hazy sky.

This area was completely different from the previous two. Where the first two areas had felt small and quiet, this place was the epitome of a vast world’s utter desolation and emptiness.

A soft cough broke the whisper of the breeze against the concrete walls. ‘Alright. No matter what this place is like, she ran here, so I’ll definitely find her.’

Zhang Wenda released Song Jianguo’s cats, letting them turn into dogs that crouched on the ground and began searching for Hu Maomao.

The breeze on this empty plain seemed to have long since blown away Hu Maomao’s scent. The dogs couldn’t smell a thing.

Zhang Wenda had prepared for this. He began leading the dogs in a spiral search pattern, with the hidden door as its center.

‘Hu Maomao arrived not long ago. She should still be in this area. As long as there’s the slightest trace of a scent, the black dogs will be able to smell it.’

Time seemed to pass faster here. Zhang Wenda had lost track of how long he’d been searching, but when he raised his hand to look at his watch, he saw that eight hours had already passed.

‘The Little Black Cat is watching the Prefrontal Strait, so my memory is fine. It’s just that without the sun as an anchor, I’m losing my sense of time.’

Zhang Wenda looked up again at the gigantic, varied concrete structures all around him. He saw that his arrival had changed nothing here.

After continuing on to a giant concrete structure that resembled an archway, Zhang Wenda looked down at the black dog beside him. “Well? Still no scent?”

The black dog shook its head and woofed twice, its ears and tail drooping.

‘According to that person’s report, Hu Maomao has only been here for two days. In that short amount of time, where could she have gone?’ Zhang Wenda wondered.

‘Judging by the excited look on Hu Maomao’s face in the memory, she must have discovered something valuable here. But as far as I can tell, this place is worthless.’

‘You could even say this godforsaken place is worse than Area 2. At least Area 2 had plenty of fresh water, but there’s nothing here.’

‘No fresh water, no food. Other than air, this place is completely uninhabitable. The rest of the area is probably in the same state.’

Suddenly, Zhang Wenda felt something rubbing against his pants. He turned his head and saw it was the black dog.

Seeing Zhang Wenda looking at it, it pointed to its open mouth with a paw. It was hungry.

“Tired, are you? Alright, let’s take a break.” Zhang Wenda found a spot sheltered from the wind near a concrete structure and began to feed the cats the subway meat he had brought specifically for them.

Fortunately, to avoid a repeat of the situation in Area 1, he had prepared ample supplies before coming, including food for the Black Cats and for himself.

This time, he had made thorough preparations to find Hu Maomao. In his Inner World, he had dug a pit and stored over half a ton of fresh water alone.

He poured fresh water into an iron pot he’d fashioned from a sheet of metal. With help from Red, the water in the pot gradually began to heat up.

When he saw the water begin to boil, Zhang Wenda tossed in a packet of instant noodles, followed by a few slices of luncheon meat. A savory aroma soon filled the air.

Zhang Wenda had the Little Black Cat snap off two Serotonin branches from the Inner World to use as chopsticks, then began to wolf down his simple instant noodle lunch.

A solitary world, a vast, empty environment. It felt as if staying here too long would cause him to be assimilated by the emptiness.

In that moment, as the savory aroma hit him and he put the steaming noodles in his mouth, Zhang Wenda suddenly felt like he was still in the world of the living, still human.

“MEOOW~” A Little Black Cat ran to his feet, scratching lightly with its paw while looking longingly at the bowl of noodles in Zhang Wenda’s hand.

Yellow ran over and patted its head. “This is too salty for you. Go eat your meat.”

“Hah!”

“Hah all you want, I’m still not giving you any. Salty food will make you shed.”

Just as Zhang Wenda was nudging it away with his foot, Red, who was standing guard, suddenly let out a low growl at something in the distance.

Zhang Wenda quickly bent down, shoved the noodle bowl into the little cat’s paws, and instantly switched places with Red. In the distance, across the empty expanse, he saw a blurry figure walking toward them.

‘It’s not Hu Maomao. If it were, with her Spiritual Control, she would have already linked to my mind to say hello.’

As Zhang Wenda watched the approaching figure with utmost caution, its features grew clearer.

It was tall, nearly five meters, but incredibly thin—as gaunt as a skeleton. A tattered cloak was wrapped around its withered body. Its head wasn’t a head at all, but a dusty, gray block of cement.

‘It’s probably not human. More like some kind of monster native to this region.’ As Zhang Wenda thought this, the Hippocampus beside him began rapidly recording the creature’s data.

Zhang Wenda then noticed it was holding a wooden staff, nearly six meters tall. A wooden-cased radio seemed to have grown naturally from the top of it.

As it drew closer, he could hear the HISS of static coming from the radio, occasionally punctuated by snippets of a heavily distorted human voice.

“I don’t like to get too close to others. If you want to talk, I can hear you just fine from here!” Zhang Wenda said, brandishing a sharp scythe and staring at it threateningly.

Fortunately, the being did indeed stop ten meters away. It raised the radio, and a man’s muffled voice, laced with static, drifted out of it.

“I mean you no harm. I wish to obtain the object from beyond that you carry. I can feel its rhythm. She is of no use to you.”

‘It can communicate? That’s good.’ After studying the unknown humanoid entity before him for a moment, Zhang Wenda decided to engage with it.

“What do you want? I have quite a few objects from beyond on me. Can you give me a hint? A mushroom or something?”

The being didn’t speak. Instead, it lightly tapped its wooden staff on the ground. The concrete melted away, and a round sphere slowly rose from the ground into the air. “You know what this is,” the voice from the radio said. “You have seen it, and it has seen you.”

Zhang Wenda didn’t have many spherical objects on him. The moment he saw its shape, his pupils contracted. He knew what it wanted.

‘It wants the Golden Ball! It wants a piece of 1999!!’