Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Bai Xiaolu felt that she was not just running but also flying.

No one had ever held his wrist as tightly as Boss Gold Tooth did. It seemed that Boss Gold Tooth was not willing to let go of his wrist even if it cost him his life. His heart was beating fast, and he felt that he was stepping on cotton.

He could not tell what he was feeling, but he kept asking himself, “He believes me? I believe him? Why?”

“Ding!”

Weird noises were echoing behind him, which seemed to be the sound of the components of the landmines being bounced up.

But Bai Xiaolu was not scared at all. She could hear Boss Gold Tooth’s steady and powerful breathing, feel his vigorous fire of life, and hear his thunderous roars echoing in her ears. They can do it! They can do it! They can definitely survive!

“Jump!”

Boss Gold Tooth suddenly pulled him. The two of them were only twenty to thirty meters away from the foxhole.

BOOM!

The landmines behind them exploded. The blast pushed them out like a surging heatwave and hit the foxhole precisely.

Bai Xiaolu felt that her entire back was burning. The fire soon penetrated into her lungs. She was in so much pain that she could barely speak.

But the intense pain told every nerve in his body that—he was still alive!

“Hehe. Hehe. Hahahaha!”

He lay in the foxhole and breathed for a long time before he let out a difficult and twisted laughter. The boy breathed in the scorching air and enjoyed the pain all over his body.

Boss Gold Tooth did not lie to him. They had made it and survived!

“8.6 seconds.

While he was thinking, Boss Gold Tooth’s head appeared above his foxhole. The dominator of the desert grinned while vomiting blood. “Kid, you will be the champion if you join the pre-war Olympics.”

Bai Xiaolu waved her hands at the gold-toothed boss to express her sincere gratitude, but she felt that something was not right. After pondering for a moment, she widened her eyes and said, “8.6 seconds? Didn’t Boss say that the landmines would not explode until at least ten seconds later?”

“Is that so?”

The gold-tooth leader scratched his burnt beard and said casually, “It was just a guess. There must be errors, right?”

“You—guessed it?”

Bai Xiaolu was dazed. “In fact, you don’t know when the landmines will explode, do you?”

“Nonsense.”

The leader of the Gold Teeth Gang said matter-of-factly, “Do you think that I’ve ever delayed the explosion of a landmine with sticky gel before? If I didn’t, how would I know when the landmine would explode?”

“Well—”

Bai Xiaolu was dumbfounded, half angry and half frustrated. “You—you lied to me!”

“Therefore—”

Boss Gold Tooth grinned and patted Bai Xiaolu’s face with his shaking hands. “Kid, I told you not to trust anybody.”

Wan Canghai staggered toward the two of them.

He was also laden with guns and bullets.

Bai Xiaolu and the gold-tooth leader looked at each other. They both forgot the conflict between the two of them and focused their brainwaves to the maximum.

Wan Zanghai’s eyes were rolling nonstop. He looked at the two of them, who were still sane despite the bruises all over their bodies, and then at the scout falcon of the Vulture Gang that was hovering in the sky behind him. He hesitated for half a second and forced a sincere smile on his face. He pulled the Gold Tooth Boss up and opened his arms to Bai Xiaolu.

“Congratulations on your narrow escape, Little Lu. It seems that our worst moment has come!”

…

Huala. Huala!

There was the sound of chains dragging.

Squeak squeak squeak squeak!

The grinding and rolling sounds of the winch and the pulley.

When the sandstorm dispersed, a cool breeze blew over. An underground wine cellar and a small shelter appeared in front of the three.

“Oh oh oh oh, there is actually electricity here all the time. This time, we are really saved!”

Wan Zanghai was dancing and shouting.

They were indeed hoping for a happy ending, as if all their bad luck had been consumed the moment Bai Xiaolu stepped on the landmine.

After wandering around the wind power plant for a while, they found the ruins of the winery and the entrance to the wine cellar and the shelter.

It was a fairly large wine cellar about the size of half a football field before the war. It was powered by a wind power plant. Although most of the wind power generators had been destroyed in the nuclear war, one or two of them were still functioning normally enough to support the daily use of a small wine cellar as a shelter.

At the end of the war, in order to pacify the people and encourage them to excavate and modify their own shelters,”Search our n?wno?el.?rg” the government would provide the greatest support for the energy supply. The wind power plant had been built for such a purpose with a fully-automatic design. Even so, it was still a miracle that some of the units had survived until now. Maybe, it was a miracle that had been specially prepared for them.

The wine cellar maintained a constant temperature and humidity. Most of the wine was not broken. Even if it was, it could still be used as daily water.

The corner of the wine cellar had been modified into a living area that was small but well-equipped. There were bedrooms, living rooms, and washrooms. There was also a small warehouse where all kinds of goods were piled up. It could almost be called a small supermarket.

It seemed that the owner of the winery had made up his mind to stay in the underground world for a long time.

It was a pity that they died anyway.

The three of them found a skeleton in the bedroom. Judging from the decayed clothes, it should be the mistress of the winery.

Her body was emitting a vague blue color. Some of her bones were even somewhat deformed, which indicated the cause of her death—either radiation syndrome, bacterial invasion of various biochemical weapons, virus infection, or both.

Next to the bedroom was the living room. In the middle of the living room was a colorful carpet painted with colorful cartoons. On the carpet was an unfinished chess set. Dice, toy bills, and toy deeds were scattered all over the floor.

Two corpses, one large and the other small, were curled up in a corner. It should be a middle-aged man hugging his child tightly. Beside him were a few opened medicine bottles. Green pills were scattered everywhere.

“VE44 nerve antidote.”

The gold-tooth leader picked up a bottle on one of his knees. “In the safe dosage, the muscle injection after the water is dissolved can ease the damage caused by most neurological biochemical weapons. However, if the dosage is more than five times the safe dosage, it will be an effective suicide drug that paralyzes the central nerves directly. One will fall into an eternal sleep without any pain or feeling.

“I don’t understand.”

Bai Xiaolu said, “They have so many assets, most of which are vacuum-packed cans. The compressed drinking water is enough, too. They are not short of energy, either. They have everything. They could’ve stayed here for twenty years or even longer. Why did they kill themselves?”

“No. Not everything. They prepared everything, but they lost the most important thing.

Boss Gold Tooth said in a low voice, “Hope. They’ve lost hope.”

Bai Xiaolu was lost for words.

He did not understand what ‘lost hope’ meant.

Because he had never had any hope.

There was no hope, so there was no loss.

“If my memory serves me right, the owner of the winery is named ‘John’ or something like that. He loves his wife very much. His wife used to be a great wine producer, too. Everybody knows the winery nearby.

The gold-tooth leader said, “Poor Old John. He prepared everything like a squirrel preparing for winter. Modifying the shelter must’ve cost him a lot of time and effort. But in the end, he discovered that his beloved wife was infected by the virus or radiation before she had the chance to enter the shelter. In the end, he could only guard so many assets and watch his wife mutate, fail, and die.

“The incident must’ve crushed Old John and made him lose all hope. Maybe he suspected that he and his son had been infected, maybe he didn’t think that he could persist until the war was over, or maybe he knew that the war was over and the outside world had turned into a living hell. As a wine producer, there was no way that he could defeat the guns and the drones. Sooner or later, his winery would become the nest of the devils, and his son would become the prey of the animals. Therefore, he played the last game of chess with his son. While he was playing, he tricked his son into taking the overdose of the antidote. Just like that, he went to reunite with his son’s mother painlessly.

After finishing his speech, the gold-tooth leader sighed and covered the dead father and son with a blanket.

Bai Xiaolu was silent for a long time. She couldn’t help but say, “Let’s carry them to their beds, to his wife and his mother.”

Boss Gold Tooth looked at Bai Xiaolu deeply.

“Correct.”

Wan Canghai also said, “This living room is not bad, but there are two dead bodies in the corner. It is quite creepy. Let’s get them out so that we can take a good rest here.”

“Alright.”

Boss Gold Tooth lowered his head and picked up two corpses that had become very light together with the blanket.

Bai Xiaolu went up to help. She held the heads of Old John and his son carefully and brought them back to the bedroom together with the gold-toothed leader. They lay down next to the female corpse and covered the family with a rotten, moldy blanket.

It was not until then that Bai Xiaolu noticed a picture covered in dust on the bedside table. She brushed the dust away and realized that it was Old John’s family before the war.

It was a very healthy and happy couple. They had the dark skin and snow-white teeth that were unique to the locals. Their golden hair seemed to be shining on their own.

The child in the middle was holding a bunch of grapes that looked like rubies. He picked one and stuffed it into his mouth, smiling even more happily than the adults.

In the background was the vineyard, which was ten times more glamorous than what Boss Gold Tooth had described. It reminded everybody of the good days, the good days in the past, and the good days that were gone forever.