Although everyone knew that by now, there would be no food left in the shopping malls, Lin Zhuoran still went there to try her luck.
At this point, they no longer cared about whether things were expired or not. As long as they could fill their stomachs, they would be grateful. Who would care if these things were past their prime?
Zhou Haimei and Xu An lagged a little behind Lin Zhuoran. Zhou Haimei stepped forward and quietly asked Xu An.
"Anan, are we just going to follow them like this?"
Xu An naturally understood what she meant. After all, they had their own tasks to complete, not to mention these things.
They still had to return to the lighthouse. Now that they were so close to Lin Zhuoran, parting would only be more difficult.
"You don't mean..."
"No!" Xu An interrupted Zhou Haimei before she could finish. "She probably doesn't want to go to the lighthouse either. She has her own way of surviving here. I don't want to make decisions for her out of presumption."
Zhou Haimei stopped talking. Before, she had wondered if Xu An wanted to bring Lin Zhuoran to the lighthouse.
But it was easy to bring one person, but Lin Zhuoran had Yu Qin with her.
However, that girl seemed to have an unusual relationship with Lin Zhuoran. Hearing Xu An's assurance, her worries lessened considerably.
"However, if it were just one person, there would be ways to get her up."
Xu An shook her head, looking around cautiously, and replied to Zhou Haimei, "Zhuoran is not that kind of person. She told me the location of the lighthouse in the first place. If she really wanted to go up, she would have told me the moment we met, instead of waiting until now."
After hearing Xu An's explanation, Zhou Haimei realized that there was such a connection between the two.
She immediately understood why Xu An trusted Lin Zhuoran so much. It was because of this.
"Then why didn't she go to the lighthouse herself?" she asked, voicing her confusion.
"At that time, she said she was going to look for her sister."
"Did she find her?" Zhou Haimei's tone was filled with curiosity.
"No, and then she stayed here."
No one knew how Lin Zhuoran had spent that period of time. It was as if those painful days were condensed into these few words.
Zhou Haimei, being sensible, did not pry further into her private matters. Instead, she brought up another topic with Xu An.
"Anan, have you noticed that both Lin Zhuoran and Yu Qin are very strong?"
Zhou Haimei's tone was serious, not like ordinary praise. "I'm not sure. When you met Lin Zhuoran, was she already this capable?"
This was Zhou Haimei's first time undertaking a mission outside the lighthouse since she had arrived there. She didn't know much about the survivors on the ground.
However, Lin Zhuoran and Yu Qin in front of her had constantly refreshed her understanding.
In terms of physical fitness alone, the survivors on the ground were several times stronger than the people on the lighthouse.
Not only that, although they were wearing ordinary long-sleeved shirts and pants before descending, they had also put on the lighthouse's specially made combat suits underneath. The outer layer of clothing was just a simple disguise.
But Lin Zhuoran was actually wearing a halter top and a pair of tattered jeans!
It was April or May, and the temperature on the ground was not even ten degrees Celsius. Yet, throughout their journey, Lin Zhuoran and Yu Qin had never complained about the cold, nor had their movements been sluggish due to the cold.
Xu An shook her head. "When I met her, she was just an ordinary car salesperson."
She looked at Lin Zhuoran's back. The strong and elastic muscles made her figure appear even more upright.
Beneath those firm lines lay an explosive power that could not be underestimated.
Unknowingly, the average combat capability of people on the ground had long surpassed that of humans on the lighthouse.
They exchanged glances, and both saw seriousness in each other's expressions.
Xu An, with the memories of her previous life, naturally knew that it wouldn't be long before a fierce struggle erupted between the survivors on the ground and the people on the lighthouse once the existence of the lighthouse was made public.
But in her previous life, she was also a survivor on the ground. Coupled with her aversion to trouble, she had never participated in the encirclement of the chosen ones.
She didn't know the disparity in combat power between the two sides.
But now, seeing it with her own eyes, she understood that these so-called abandoned land dwellers were growing at an exponential rate.
And at that time, no one knew what kind of beings the humans on the ground would eventually evolve into.
As they ventured deeper, Xu An felt a strong sense of unease, as if something was ambushing them ahead.
As the sound of footsteps drew closer, Xu An's fear deepened.
Lin Zhuoran looked to her side and realized that Xu An had already reached her back at some point. She stopped to wait for her, but seeing that she wasn't catching up, she turned back to look at Xu An.
"What's wrong?"
But Lin Zhuoran only saw terror in Xu An's eyes.
The large object that could be called a head drooped like a huge gourd on a poorly supported skewer, hanging from a thin and long neck, kept from falling only by some unknown force.
Two enormous eyes occupied nearly half of the face. The pupils contained only gray-blue whites, and compared to its grotesque face, it was nauseating.
The creature was huge, estimated to be two meters tall, broad-shouldered and stout, exuding an overwhelming smell of rotting flesh.
Xu An had never hated her good eyesight so much. She immediately saw a trace of scarlet flesh hanging from the monster's mouth. Unknown bones were stuck between its jagged teeth.
Its enormous, devil-like eyes stared eerily in their direction, looking at Xu An and the other three as if they were delicious food.
The moment Xu An's eyes met the monster's, she reached out and grabbed Lin Zhuoran's clothes. She then rolled to the ground, shouting loudly.
"Get down!"
As Xu An's voice fell, a massive axe flew past their scalps and embedded itself fiercely into the thick support column behind them.
Xu An looked back with lingering fear. The axe was stuck in the wall, with half of its blade submerged.
It was hard to imagine that if they hadn't dodged it, being hit by this axe would have probably split them in two.
Lin Zhuoran was completely stunned. Pinned beneath Xu An, she followed Xu An's gaze and saw the monster's appearance.
Zhou Haimei had spotted the monster at the same time as Xu An. The moment Xu An pulled Lin Zhuoran, she also took cover. Yu Qin, although a bit scared, was not in the axe's attack range and was also lucky to escape.
Looking at the behemoth before them, they didn't even know how long this monster had been lying in ambush here, waiting for their appearance...