Led by the soldier Willie, the group set off along the Road of Plenty and the Avenue of the Kingdom, heading for the family fief called "The Hearth City". The roads under their feet were all the streets and highways in the original refuge city, but the years of disrepair had made these roads lose their luster and became very difficult to walk. The broken concrete pavement rolled up, and the man-made ground was exposed. The potholed road seemed to have never been repaired. Walking on it was deep and shallow, and it was no different from a wilderness trail. Nangong Wuyue was quite strenuous walking on such a road. She even thought that it would be easier to simply turn into a water snake and crawl around, but thinking that Vivian just put some ice cubes would scare the shit out of the locals , she still suppressed the urge to slam into a three-meter-long tail. It’s just that complaints are still unavoidable: “By the way, the roads here are so difficult?”
"It's hard to walk?" Willie looked down at the road, "Oh, it's really not as magnificent as the High Tower Kingdom's road, after all, this is just a remote place, and neither the Iron City State nor the High Tower Kingdom will send people to sort out the roads in this kind of place .”
"You two... why do 'countries' fight? What kind of hatred is there?" Hao Ren asked awkwardly.
Willy blinked: "Why? Winter is coming, and the flame at the end of the world must be ignited. The souls of those who died on the battlefield are the fuel for the flame. The four kingdoms never fought because of hatred. I think it should It's common sense."
Everyone looked at each other, and Vivian frowned slightly: "You are still divided into... four kingdoms?"
"Are you really from the world of Winter?" Willie swallowed, "Everyone should know—the Kingdom of the Tower, the Iron City, the Free City, and the Fortress of Stars, these are the four kingdoms of this world."
After hearing this, Hao Ren was filled with strange feelings. He thought it was absurd—in a starship, in a refuge city built by the ancestors, the territory and forces were re-divided, and it turned out to be scattered small city-states and village settlements. The streets of the past have become traffic arteries between various "cities", and buildings have become bunkers and market towns. After demolition and clean-up, the factory vacant land has become "wilderness" and "wasteland", the shelter is beyond recognition, and a primitive society grows strangely on the ruins of advanced civilization - and the ruins are still so small.
All this is like a twisted and weird dream.
He looked up into the sky, from here he could see the land of the city opposite the closed space, and he wanted to ask Willy what he thought of such a strange structure in this world, but soon he realized that he couldn't ask anything: The young people in front of us were born here and grew up here. He has received all the education from childhood to adulthood here, and the world in his mind should be like this. If no one in this ship knows the concept of "Ark", I am afraid that people living here will regard the whole world as a A giant egg shell. The cold space outside the steel shield meant nothing to Willy.
Willie seemed a little trembling along the way, he was very reluctant to walk on this avenue, especially after his comrades had all fled, he was surrounded by a group of people of unknown origin like Hao Ren who knew "witchcraft". Seriously insecure. But this young soldier has no choice, he still has to lead the way for the strangers with fear, and he is always on the lookout for ambushes from the Iron City or Liberty City rushing out of the roadside.
But it has been on this road for a long time. Hao Ren didn't see anyone else appearing either, so he couldn't help but doubt what Willy said: "You said this is a very dangerous road? Why didn't I see anyone passing by here?"
Willie rubbed his hands together and tightened his cuffs. Now the weather is cold, making him tremble a little: "I don't know... usually there should be soldiers passing here. At least there are also merchants from city-states passing by..."
As he spoke, he looked up at the sky. The dim lights all over the city in the ship shone like fireflies in the dark, embellishing this enclosed space like a strange cave full of fireflies. The young man's light brown There is some anxiety in the eyes: "The world has gone from bad to worse in the past ten years. I can't count how many times I have encountered unusual things. Maybe the patrols from Iron City State and Liberty City happened to be lazy today?"
"It's getting worse?" Hao Ren asked curiously.
Willie opened his mouth and was about to say something, but a strange low sound suddenly interrupted him.
The sound came from deep underground, and it sounded like a low, falling tone of some kind of huge equipment gradually shutting down. It spreads along the earth, though not very sonorously. But it seems that the whole space is shaking. At the same time, Hao Ren felt his body lighten up, and a feeling that he was about to float away from the ground came from under his feet. Willie's complexion changed instantly, and he screamed in horror: "Everyone, don't move! It's 'Ascension'! 'Ascension Phenomenon'!"
Almost at the same time as Willy's voice fell, everyone felt that their bodies were completely lightened: the artificial gravity in the shelter disappeared.
Hao Ren saw a red light flying rapidly from one end of the enclosed space to the other, followed by another one, which looked like some kind of alarm light, and Willie stared at the light with terrified eyes, Silently counting: "One... two... three... three shooting stars! Great, it doesn't look like it will last long... Everyone, don't move! Especially don't jump up!"
At this time, the artificial gravity has completely disappeared. Although Hao Ren and the others are still "footed on the ground", their bodies are actually in a state of floating, but the soles of their shoes are still slightly touching the ground. Willie tensed his body and didn't dare to move, for fear that a slight movement would lift him off the ground: it would cause him to fly uncontrollably into the sky, and even fly to the other side of the earth in one breath. Hao Ren quickly understood the reason for the young man's fear, and he tried to relieve Willy's nervousness: "Don't worry, don't worry, you reminded me in time, no one will fly out—does this happen often?"
"No, it only happens once in a few months, but it is said that before I was born, it happened less frequently than now." Willie took a deep breath, he was no longer curious about Hao Ren's "ignorance", At this time, someone can talk to him, which makes him relax a lot, "Winter is coming, the heart of this world is slowly freezing, and the earth can no longer hold us on the surface... My grandmother told me. But as long as it can be rekindled Ancestor Hong Lu, everything will return to normal, this is what my grandmother told me."
Hao Ren casually let out a perfunctory expression, and silently looked up at the huge pipes and alloy bridges running through the entire space. There were lights swimming on the surface of those things, and those lights hadn't appeared before. This is probably some kind of automatic maintenance system of the Ark giant ship. There is obviously a problem with this system, but it is still alive.
The artificial gravity was gone for nearly an hour, during which time Willy kept his hands on his chest, muttering to himself as if praying to some god. Finally, this difficult hour finally passed. Hao Ren heard a different deep voice coming from the depths of the earth. When the voice gradually subsided, his body sank, and he felt the feeling of being down-to-earth again. .
Willie's feet went limp and he almost fell to the ground. He managed to stand up and smiled awkwardly at Hao Ren: "You don't seem to be afraid of 'ascending to heaven' at all."
"As long as you don't fly up, you won't fall down." Hao Ren said casually.
Willie's face darkened: "My best friend once said that too—but in the end he died on the other side of the land in the 'Wind Valley City' square."
As he spoke, he raised his head and looked at the overhanging city buildings above his head: "It was a long 'ascension', which lasted a whole day and night, poor Birkenstock, he just stretched his legs accidentally, and then I just watched. Watching him rise into the sky from the ground, flying higher and higher... At that time, I didn't know how to judge the duration of the phenomenon of ascension from meteors. I thought everything would end soon, but I just watched him change. Became a little black dot in the sky, when his sister was next to me, poor girl... her brother even went all the way across the 'axis of heaven and earth'. Birkenstock landed in the world when Mother Earth came back to life On the other side, it wasn’t until a few days later that the lord of Wind Valley sent someone to send Birkenstock back in a big box.” (To be continued~^~)