The clear sunny morning gave a little bit of relaxation to me and Luo Zhen as we greatly progressed in our journey. It's been two days since we got out of the city where Luo Zhen found me and now, we're taking a stroll underneath the cover of the trees.
Unlike the times when there was still a lot of hustle and bustle in the city due to its overpopulation, the forest was unusually quiet, which was occasionally interrupted by the chirping of birds and the breeze that rustled the leaves. Even in the middle of an outbreak, I still found it soothing.
"Aah," I exhaled after breathing in a lungful of fresh air. There were hints of the disgusting smell from the rabid humans but I ignored it. Right now, it was time to relax.
It was quite surprising that the forest wasn't filled with rabid humans at all. Thinking about it, the cause of that was probably due to the limited number of humans living in the forest. If such was the case, then that would explain why a shelter has been built here. They're utilizing the forest as an invisible barricade from the rabid humans that roamed and patrolled the area.
"Is that what you're going to check out? A shelter?" Luo Zehn suddenly asked me. There was a hint of disappointment in his voice as he spoke. And I could tell that he was afraid I would join this shelter instead of theirs.
"Yes, a friend of mine told me about this shelter," I said in response. "Oh, we're here."
"So... are you planning to join them?"
"Um, not really." I shrugged in a nonchalant manner. It was amusing how Luo Zehn looked a little panicked right now. But his expression quickly shifted to that of relief upon hearing my response.
My jaws almost dropped to the floor as I saw the state of the shelter that Lin Xian told me about, assuming that this was the shelter she was referring to.
Broken fences, messy barbed wires, and thin walls that were patched together by scrap materials were everything that I've seen as I observed the shelter. There were probably a few strong rabid humans who were able to infiltrate them since there were a few gaps by the fences and barbed wires surrounding the walled shelter. It would be an overstatement to coin it as fortified since there aren't any signs of fortification at all.
To summarize, the shelter was in shambles. Even if it was big enough to fit more than a hundred people, it won't be long before it gets felled by a wave of rabid humans. Sooner or later, it would happen. t's only a matter of time before this shelter disappears.
"Are there people living within those walls?" Luo Zehn asked in surprise as his pupils shrunk. The expression on his face aggravated as it paled, in reaction to my answer.
"Yes, and I think that they're undergoing inhumane practices because of the difficulty of their situation." I laid it out before him, just so he wouldn't be surprised once we raid the shelter.
"What do you... wait, are they doing the c-thing?!" Luo Zehn almost screamed as he asked me, disturbing a couple of birds who were resting peacefully in the trees.
"Let me ask something... why is everyone calling it a C-thing? Why don't you just call it cannibalism so everyone won't get confused?" I hissed at him as I remembered how Yu Sying looked at me when I didn't realize what she meant by it.
"Since you've been traveling alone for the past five years, I'd guess it would be understandable that you don't know certain etiquette. I might as well tell you the story of why we refer to it as the C-thing instead of the actual word. Although I'm surprised that you don't know anything about it from the word of mouth through the people you've met, I will give you the benefit of the doubt."
"Two years ago, there was a shortage of rain in this area. And since there were fewer and fewer supplies that you could obtain from abandoned supermarkets, a lot of the shelters decided to plant crops and raise livestock. As you might have guessed, all of us were dependent on rain and water to live. But for seven months that year, it didn't rain. Not a single drop of rain fell from the sky. Of course, since our Tang Shelter has become a formidable shelter, we didn't have to worry about food shortages since we always kept a stockpile in case of emergencies. However, as for the other shelters that didn't see the drought coming— and let me tell you that no one saw it coming— they resorted to the C-thing. For the last two months of that drought, the C-thing became so wildly rampant around the majority of small-scale shelters that it became the talk of the other shelters who weren't practicing it."
"The C-thing became so common that even those shelters who rejected practicing it were forced by a few of its inhabitants as they started doing it. As for our Sect, we decided to eliminate those who wanted to do the C-thing so we only had minor problems back then. But as for the other shelters, the damage was so awful that they couldn't dare talk about the C-thing. That's when a few of the shelters unanimously decided to just call it the C-thing instead. That way, they could get past the trauma of their traitorous inhabitants who did such a taboo. In short, we use the C-thing as a euphemism to remind us of what happened back then."
Uwah! That's darker than I'd have imagined! To think that such a thing happened two years ago, I couldn't believe it.
That's right, a lot has changed in this world. And that change was something inevitable. But there's hope. Us cultivators should just join hands and eliminate these rabid humans off the face of the planet. Well, it's not like they would easily ally themselves to other cultivators. All I've got to do for now is cultivate even more and rise to the top as the strongest cultivator. That way no one would trample over me.
"Luo Zehn, let's check it out."