Chapter 2129 - 2127: The Scourge Descends
On the way back with the brother and sister, Fang Zheng also learned the whole story from the girl named "Saotome Tomoe."
According to the girl, they were woken up in their sleep by sudden alarms, warning that a nuclear bomb was about to fall on Tokyo, so all Residents had to head to the shelters immediately.
Disasters never stop in Japan anyway, but a nuke still caused massive panic. People were running everywhere in chaos, and in the panic the siblings followed the crowd with their parents into a nearby subway tunnel—that was pretty much the only plan they could think of at the time.
But after that, the disasters didn’t stop.
First, the nuclear explosion naturally blasted huge chunks of the ground to rubble, and the subsequent earthquakes and howling seawater flooded a lot of areas. The people hiding in the subway tunnels basically looked like extras in a disaster movie—just running, running, desperately running. And in the chaos, the siblings got separated from their parents.
In the end, though, the quakes subsided, the backflow of seawater and flooding came to a halt, and the two kids were fairly lucky, surviving in a section of subway tunnel that was still relatively safe.
But that was only the beginning.
The Scourge from nature had temporarily ended, but man-made catastrophe was just getting started, beginning with outbreaks of infectious disease. Lots of people were injured while fleeing, and many fell seriously ill. With no other options, to prevent plague and infection, the rest could only throw the gravely sick and the corpses outside.
On top of that, food was a huge problem. The refugees had found a subway station with a convenience store inside, but obviously there wasn’t enough food for so many mouths. So after that, people were forced to risk going up to the surface to scavenge medicine, supplies, and food.
The nuclear blast hadn’t been long ago, so the radiation outside was a huge issue. At first, some people really went out with the mindset of "doing this for everyone," but later most of them died from excessive radiation. So people started forcing others to go instead. In that situation, those who had families became the prime targets—their families were held as hostages, and they were ordered to bring back supplies, or their families would be killed.
Under those circumstances, most people practically had no choice.
Of course, there were exceptions. For example, there was a very "loving" couple: the wife was taken as a hostage, the husband went out to search for supplies. He never came back, and only when people were about to make a move on the wife did it come out from her own mouth that before the nuke the husband had wanted a divorce because she cheated, and they’d been riding the subway to file the divorce papers when the nuclear explosion hit.
After arriving at the shelter, the husband had treated her with meticulous care, moving her to tears; she thought she’d finally found true love in adversity...
Turns out he’d just been waiting for this moment.
After that, the order in the shelter fell further into Honkai. Once nobody was willing to go out and gather supplies, people immediately started killing each other. It was at that point the older sister grabbed her little brother and used the chaos to escape the shelter, then made their way back to their own home.
Of course, with the blizzard and brutal cold, they had nowhere else to go.
Every day the siblings scrounged around for food and anything they could use to keep warm, then hid in the cellar at home. The whole thing reminded Fang Zheng of a game he’d played before Rebirth called "This War of Mine"; the siblings’ experience was pretty much the same as the protagonists in that game, only even more dangerous.
During that time, they also ran into other people who’d given up on the underground shelter and chosen to live back on the surface (including that guy who abandoned his wife). It was from these people’s mouths that the siblings learned some information—among it, these rumors about strange Vampires.
According to those people, these white-robed Creatures moved incredibly fast, and ordinary folk had no way to deal with them. They would drain human blood and kill their victims. At the same time, though, they also captured human children and took them away—where they were taken, nobody knew.
Nobody knew where these Creatures came from either. Before the nuclear blast the siblings had never seen any news about Vampires; these weirdos felt like they’d suddenly appeared overnight after the nuke. And today, on their way home, they noticed someone tailing them, so they rushed back in a panic, only to find that the Creatures were even more terrifying than they’d imagined...
After that, Fang Zheng brought the three kids to the shelter Celestia had found. Seeing Jumping Bugs and Aliens all around made the siblings a little nervous, but they still agreed to stay. Fang Zheng exchanged a few words with Celestia and Feli, confirmed the situation of the others, then told Saya that if anything non-human approached she could just eat it. Only then did he leave the shelter, eating hotpot and singing as he went.
Those two Vampires chose death over submission, but Fang Zheng didn’t need them to submit. As long as he had a concrete target, he could use Ratziel to get the answer. He hadn’t used Ratziel before because the information about what he needed to investigate was too vague to lock onto a target.
It’s like searching "study materials" from "My Computer"—you’re going to get a huge pile of results. But if you specify searching the E drive for "Japanese High School study materials," then you can accurately find the license plate number you’re looking for.
Now, Fang Zheng only had to open Ratziel, and then...
"Magic Mirror, Magic Mirror, who’s the most handsome man in the world... yeah, no need to ask, it’s obviously me. So, Magic Mirror, Magic Mirror, where did those two idiot Vampires crawl out from?"
Just that simple, and the answer appeared.
"So they really did crawl out, huh."
Looking at the tunnel before him, Fang Zheng chuckled. Right now he was in a patch of woods on the outskirts of the city, and here there was a passage that looked like an abandoned mine shaft.
Yeah, this was the place.
Fang Zheng nodded, then strolled down the passage at his leisure.
At first the whole tunnel was quite crude, looking just like one of those old, poorly maintained mine shafts. But the farther he went, the stranger the passage felt. Smooth stone slabs replaced the uneven ground underfoot, and then a massive doorway appeared before Fang Zheng.
"Hmm... this doesn’t look like something that was finished recently."
Fang Zheng narrowed his eyes, studying the doorway and the decorations on it. Judging from the exquisite ornamentation, this place had been around for quite some time. In other words, this group of Vampires had been coiled up underground all along, waiting for humanity to die off so they could come out and look for a sense of existence?
You had to admit this bunch of Vampires had ideas. Given the current situation, the collapse of human civilization was only a matter of time. In another ten or twenty years, or half a century, human civilization might well be completely wiped out, and the rise of Vampire civilization would be just around the corner.
Unfortunately, their luck sucked—they ran into Fang Zheng.
Just then, Fang Zheng reached the end. At the same time, he saw on the far end of the brightly lit passage a figure with long silver-white hair, also wearing a white robe. The man was standing with his back to Fang Zheng, seemingly saying something.
"Yes, that expression—that look on a human’s face when hope suddenly shatters. That’s why this game is so addictive to me..."
As his words fell, the silver-haired man suddenly flickered; when he returned to his original spot an instant later, there was a little girl in his hand.
"Well then, next up is... hmm?"
Just as the silver-haired man opened his mouth, ready to bite down, a flash of cold light suddenly swept past in front of him. His body flickered as he hurriedly leaped back, and blood sprayed as an arm fell to the ground. At the same time, Fang Zheng stood there, one hand gripping a Pitch Black Greatsword, the other arm wrapped around the girl the silver-haired man had just grabbed.
"...Oh? You’re human?"
Staring at Fang Zheng, the silver-haired man narrowed his eyes, gaze sliding to the Greatsword in Fang Zheng’s hand.
"You seem to possess a very peculiar power."
"And you must be one of these idiot Vampires, right."
Fang Zheng narrowed his eyes, watching him with a smile, then casually set the girl in his arms down on the ground. After that, he swept a glance to the side, only to see several children of various ages standing not far away. They were dressed in strange outfits, boys and girls both, and right now they were all staring, dumbfounded, at Fang Zheng who had suddenly appeared.
"Alright, go back to your companions for now. I’ll deal with this idiot first."
"Ah, um..."
Faced with this sudden turn of events, the little girl timidly nodded, then hurriedly ran back to her companions. Only then did Fang Zheng turn around again, looking once more at the silver-haired man before him.
"Interesting..."
Staring at Fang Zheng, the silver-haired man let out a faint smile. He stretched out his hand to pick up the arm Fang Zheng had severed, quickly reattached it, then looked at Fang Zheng again.
"For a human, you’re quite interesting."
"But as a Vampire, I don’t find you very interesting at all. Honestly, trash like you should just die early and reincarnate already."
"That depends on whether you have the ability!"
Even before his voice had fallen, the silver-haired man’s figure vanished again. Fang Zheng, however, only stood there with his arms folded, not moving an inch. A moment later, he suddenly raised his right hand and slammed it down toward the front like swatting a mosquito.
"Boom!!"
The instant Fang Zheng struck down, the ground in front of him suddenly exploded, turning into a huge crater. The previously swaggering silver-haired Vampire was now sprawled in the center of the pit, looking utterly wrecked. His eyes were bulging wide, staring blankly, as if he couldn’t understand what had just happened.
"That’s right, that’s exactly the expression."
At that moment, Fang Zheng planted his foot on the silver-haired Vampire’s face.
"That look you get when you think having some great power means you can do whatever you want, only to be ground into the dirt by an even greater power—that’s exactly why I just can’t get enough of dealing with scum like you..."
"You... ugh..."
The silver-haired Vampire’s eyes went wide as he tried to say something, but Fang Zheng’s foot just slowly pressed down. Then, they watched as that handsome head of his was gradually crushed flat, and with a "bang," like a watermelon stomped to pieces, it burst into a mess of meat paste. The silver-haired Vampire’s body twitched a few times, then went completely still.
"You want to rule the world—did you ever bother to ask what I think?"
Fang Zheng picked up the Pitch Black Greatsword stuck nearby and drove it forcefully into the silver-haired Vampire’s corpse. As flames ignited, the silver-haired Vampire quickly turned to Ash and vanished without a trace.
"Hmph, what a bunch of trash."
Watching the silver-haired Vampire vanish in the flames, Fang Zheng let out a cold snort, then turned his head again to look at the children.
"Now then, let’s have a little talk. You all are... human, right?"
"Ah, yes, we’re human!"
Hearing Fang Zheng’s question, a blond boy ran out, eyes shining as he looked at Fang Zheng.
"Did you come to save us?"
"More or less. I’m here to take care of these idiot Vampires. What’s your situation?"
"Um... we are..."
Very quickly, the blond boy told Fang Zheng where they came from. Just as Fang Zheng had previously heard, these children were all brought here by those Vampires. They were placed in an orphanage, and under the pretext of protecting their safety, the Vampires demanded they provide blood.
Unable to endure that kind of life, the children planned an escape—only to find out it was nothing but a trap.
"Besides you, are there any other humans here?"
"Um... I’m not really sure."
"Alright. You all step aside for now. Once I’m done with this Old Mouse hole, I’ll get you out of here."
With that, Fang Zheng smiled at the blond boy, then opened his personal terminal.
"This is Fang Zheng, calling Iona."
"Copy, Commander. What are your orders?"
Soon, Iona’s voice came through.
"Order Rodney, Warspite, and Reputation to load high-energy lasers. I’m going to launch a ground strike."
At this, the corners of Fang Zheng’s mouth curled up slightly.
"First, let’s flip this Old Mouse hole over."