Chapter 124: Seed City Has Reached This Level of Strength?
“Commander!”
“Commander Joyce!”
The guards of the defense unit caught Joyce as she collapsed.
Without even returning her salute, Mo Zeya dropped to one knee and immediately checked Joyce’s condition.
Lifting the woman’s eyelids, she saw the toxic taint had already spread into the pupils.
Her hazmat suit was torn to shreds, and the bandages bound around her shoulder were soaked red with blood.
There were puncture wounds on her neck as well.
Reaching up, she pressed a hand against Joyce’s forehead.
A raging, stubborn fever.
Fortunately, faint breaths still brushed past her lips.
“Eudora!”
The moment Mo Zeya’s voice dropped, the user of [Healing] was already at her side.
“Neck and shoulder,” Mo Zeya ordered tersely, turning to call out to the guards who had dismounted with her: “Bring over rice porridge and Five-Ingredient Mushroom Soup!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Officer, what are you doing?”
The Firefly City guard who had rushed out of the warehouse to catch Joyce asked in bewilderment.
Mo Zeya cut straight to the chase: “Where are the other commanding officers of your evacuation column?”
“I am the deputy commander of the Firefly City evacuation column, Fang Peng,” he answered.
“Good. Leave Major Joyce to us for now.” Mo Zeya handed the unconscious woman over to her own guards and Eudora.
“?”
Mo Zeya swept her eyes over his rank insignia. “Captain Fang Peng, what is the state of the evacuation column?”
“…Dire. Over half our numbers have been lost.” Fang Peng glanced at the escorted Joyce, then snapped a salute toward Mo Zeya.
Though he had been inside the warehouse’s makeshift command post just moments ago, he had witnessed the tactical display of this Seed City unit from the doorway.
Awakeners.
Seed City had deployed a squad of Awakeners as their relief vanguard.
Logic told him Seed City shouldn’t possess an Awakener unit right now, but emotion urged him that their arrival was an absolute godsend for the battered refugees.
Doubt, turmoil, bewilderment, and sheer relief tangled together, yet sheer confusion held the upper hand.
After briefly outlining the column’s harrowing ordeal, he opened his mouth: “You…”
The syllable hung in the air; Fang Peng abruptly ground to a halt.
He didn’t even know what to ask first.
There were simply too many glaring questions.
Or rather, the scene before his eyes exceeded his comprehension entirely.
It went beyond the understanding of every single Firefly City soldier present.
He had never dared to believe that Seed City’s military could actually pull off a rendezvous.
Much less in such a jaw-dropping manner.
Yet upon hearing Fang Peng’s sparse summary, Mo Zeya’s tone turned rapid and sharp: “Call your people over to unload the transports. Fast.”
“Supplies?”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures—there’s no time to explain. If you want as many of your people to survive as possible, stop asking questions and get your men moving!”
“…Yes, ma’am!”
…
“These are for detoxification. Distribute rice porridge to those whose pupils have already darkened with venom; give roasted sweet potatoes to those suffering severe toxic corruption; hand out roasted potatoes, boiled corn, and sugar-roasted chestnuts to those with milder symptoms.”
“Distribute Ginger and Jujube Tea to those shivering from the cold, and Chrysanthemum, Goji Berry, and Tangerine Peel Tea to those soaked in damp clothes…”
“Give Mutton Soup to the critically wounded, and Five-Ingredient Mushroom Soup to those burning with stubborn fevers…”
“This transport contains potable water reserves—pure, uncontaminated drinking water…”
Mo Zeya directed the unloading of the trucks, delivering a concise rundown of each item’s properties.
As she finished, she noticed the Firefly City personnel helping unload were staring back at her in a complete daze.
Having gone without food or water for days, the intoxicating aromas wafting from the crates didn’t trigger immediate ecstatic celebration.
Instead, the sheer shock left them paralyzed in profound hesitation and disbelief.
Seeing this, Mo Zeya drew her military credentials directly from her chest pocket.
She had discussed this scenario with Yves; they had fully anticipated this exact reaction.
“These are my credentials as a commissioned officer. I swear on my honor that every word I just spoke is true. Furthermore, gather all those with life-threatening trauma immediately,” Mo Zeya urged. “We still have a mountain of work to do!”
Fang Peng was the first to snap out of his stupor. Catching sight of Mo Zeya’s official seal, a bolt of clarity struck him—right, the refugees came first.
Nothing could possibly be worse than the living hell they were already in.
Saving lives was the only priority!
“Patrol squads! Gather the wounded! Defense Squad One, take provisions to the northern warehouse; Defense Squad Two, distribute to the southwest warehouse; Recon Squad, head to the southeast warehouse! Pull extra hands from Defense Squad Three on perimeter watch!”
“Captain Fang Peng, a suspected beast surge approaching from the south…”
A scout guard dashed up to report, only to freeze dead in his tracks the instant he saw the idling transports and the mountain of supplies being hauled off the tailgates.
His words caught in his throat.
“What?!”
“Pay it no mind. Tend to the supply distribution,” Mo Zeya said, casting a cool glance toward the south. “Our people have already moved to clear it.”
Fang Peng: “…?”
He was just as utterly confounded as the guards around him.
Seed City has reached this level of strength?
…
Hunger. A ravenous, gnawing hunger.
No one could recall how long it had been since their last meal.
Inside the warehouse, aside from stifled groans of agony and faint, ragged sobs, barely a sound could be heard.
Forced to march day and night through torrential storms, everyone’s stamina was drained to the bone, with not a crumb of grain to replenish it.
By now, conversation had ceased entirely.
No one debated whether they would live, nor did anyone guess if they would ever reach Seed City.
Every breath was hoarded to preserve energy.
Thirst.
The moment the monsoon hit, the settlement’s freshwater reserves had been contaminated. When they evacuated, most people carried canteens that were bone-dry.
There was nowhere to refill them.
Over the grueling march, driven mad by thirst, some had ignored the shouted warnings of the sentries, tearing off their face coverings and tilting their heads back to gulp rainwater falling from the sky.
It quenched their parched throats for a fleeting moment, but soon after—the mutated mosquito eggs swallowed with the water hatched inside their bellies.
First came hair-raising, bloodcurdling screams as the mutated larvae gnawed through their visceral organs.
Then, the screams cut dead.
The mutated pests tore through flesh and bone, clawing their way out through the victims’ ruptured abdomens.
A few were comparatively fortunate.
The rainwater they drank happened to be free of parasite clusters.
Yet the road was too long; a momentary swallow could not carry them across the wastes.
Where there was a first time, there would be a second, and no one could remain lucky forever.
Stench.
A foul, nauseating stench hung thick in the air of the warehouse.
It reeked of rotting wounds inflicted by mutant horrors that had ambushed them along the trek—bites, lacerations, and crushing constrictions.
Some had their arms gouged to the bone, others had their toes snapped off, and many had tumbled across jagged rockslides while dodging beasts, leaving extensive patches of their bodies raw with scraped flesh.
Miseries of every shape and form festered in the dark.
As venom circulated through their veins, the absence of medical supplies meant uncleaned, unbandaged wounds festered and putrefied in the muggy damp.
Oozing pus, rotting away.
Followed inevitably by violent fevers.
Then there were those infected by plagues carried by the mutated mosquito swarms.
Looking across the floor, countless figures lay motionless in the dark, their eyes shut tight against raging delirium.
In all honesty, anyone still drawing breath could already be counted as a miracle.
Buzz-buzz-buzz—
When the droning hum of mutated mosquitoes echoed into the warehouse, many forced their heavy eyelids open.
Their gazes held nothing but cold despair.
Bang—!
Swoosh—!
Rumble—!
The sounds that followed were decidedly peculiar.
Before long, the clamor outside the warehouse cut dead.
Footsteps.
A few lifted their heads, seeing members of those “major gangs” step inside.
Their faces were gaunt and hollow, yet their expressions held a strange, bewildered intensity as they muttered something… “Someone’s here”?
Who could possibly be here?
