Chapter Four: Leaving the City

After the tumult had faded, the city was plunged once more into utter silence; the governor's mansion remained the sole beacon of light in the darkness.

Xiang Jiuxi turned his back on that illumination and made his way to the city's edge.

He was not leaving to flee, but because he understood that this continent held more than a single city—he needed to seek aid elsewhere.

Yet years of unbroken darkness had fostered the rise of peculiar creatures: some were scavenging animals that lived in packs, others night-stalking hunters swift as shadows, and even the plants had begun to evolve in strange directions.

Deprived of sunlight, most plants could no longer photosynthesize efficiently and were forced to draw nutrients from animals, giving rise to numerous carnivorous flowers with all manner of bizarre hunting methods.

Xiang Jiuxi himself had once encountered a "Udumbara Tree" disguised as food.

The Udumbara Tree was immense, its trunk and leaves a shade of ashen black that melded with the night. Its fruits were dazzling, growing in a multitude of shapes—some resembling pears, some like grapes, and some even reported to look like braised meat.

More than that, the fruits exuded a variety of alluring scents, each designed to tempt a different kind of animal.

However, all the fruit grew high in the canopy; to reach them, one had to climb the trunk. This, of course, was the predator’s carefully devised snare—touch the trunk and the branches would ensnare you, rendering the victim nourishment for the Udumbara Tree.

Other shrubs had learned to shed their now-useless green leaves, diverting all their life into the growth of roots that could stretch a dozen meters underground, mining nutrients to survive.

Such shrubs were the most common in the wild and the favorite food of many herbivores; learning to dig up their roots was a lesson every grazing animal had to master.

...

Curiously, though fierce and dangerous creatures abounded across the continent, they never strayed into human territories.

For this reason, humans were effectively penned inside their cities; any refugees attempting to venture out would be met with screams of terror before they had traveled even two kilometers.

At times, Xiang Jiuxi found this baffling. Could a mere few decades of darkness truly have driven such drastic evolution? And why had humans themselves not changed?

Perhaps the answer lay hidden in the darkness.

With a final glance at the city behind him, Xiang Jiuxi pulled his coat tighter, turned, and strode into the gloom.

A deserted highway lay shrouded in the dark.

Long ago, this road had been the lifeline linking cities, with military fortresses built along its length to ensure close communication.

Then, hordes of mutated beasts had sprung up like mushrooms after rain, assailing the fortresses without respite.

Deprived of energy supplies, all human weaponry became mere single-use expendables. In the end, to uphold the tenets of sustainable survival, humanity was forced to abandon the highway strongholds and retreat into the fortresses of their cities.

Thus did the last human outposts on the continent become isolated from one another, each surviving as an island unto itself.

Xiang Jiuxi’s destination was the nearest city, a journey that would take him past three fortresses and cover roughly seventy-two kilometers.

He was not a reckless man—he always left himself a line of retreat. Now, his escape route was hidden in an old cemetery on the outskirts.

"Caw! Caw! Caw!"

Shrill cries echoed from above.

Glancing up, he saw several pairs of red-glinting eyes circling overhead.

Mutated crows. To survive, they had evolved eyes suited for darkness, their bodies half their former size, and beaks sharp enough to pierce bone.

The one comfort was that their habits had not changed; they still fed on carrion and would not attack the living.

Xiang Jiuxi oriented himself in the darkness and estimated the cemetery’s location—a small hill about two kilometers away.

"Caw! Caw! Caw!"

"Caw! Caw!"

...

The crows’ calls drew more of their kind until a ring of them hovered above his head, all waiting for him to collapse so they could feast.

He paid them little mind, crouching to study the terrain and sketch a quick map in the dirt.

At his current pace, it would take about twenty minutes to reach the hill, but a towering, lush tree along the way gave him pause.

Normally, no tree should thrive so luxuriously without sunlight—its vigor was all the more suspicious next to the stunted shrubs.

Anything out of the ordinary in this world was a potential threat. He decided to spend a little more time skirting around it.

Scanning the distance, Xiang Jiuxi frowned. "When did a river appear?"

A winding stream now encircled the hill.

This was bad news. Water was the source of life; where there was water, there were sure to be animals—human history itself attested to that.

"Let’s hope I don’t run into any large carnivores..." he sighed inwardly, unable to fathom how the landscape could have changed so much in just a few decades.

After planning his route, Xiang Jiuxi wiped away the map he had drawn and set off toward the hill.

"Caw, caw! Caw!"

...

The crows shadowed him relentlessly, squabbling endlessly overhead.

A sense of unease crept over Xiang Jiuxi. With food so scarce, few creatures would squander energy without reason. There must be a purpose to the crows’ persistence.

Damn it! Had these crows formed a symbiotic relationship with other predators?

The crows found prey and provided coordinates with their calls; the predator hunted, and together they shared the spoils.

Such things were far from unheard of in the natural world.

"Caw, caw, caw!"

Xiang Jiuxi halted, and the crows hovering above him stopped as well, their calls seeming to convey something.

"Not good..."

Of course, these crows were no simple scavengers. But he had no choice—holding his breath, he sprinted toward the hill with all the strength he could muster.

"Caw! Caw!"

The crows’ urgent cries relayed his position to the predators.

Xiang Jiuxi’s thin frame raced across the open plain. He dared not breathe deeply for fear he’d lose the last of his strength.

A few minutes later, beneath the crows’ calls, he heard a rhythmic "clip-clop" in the distance.

Glancing sideways, he saw a plume of dust swelling on the horizon—the predator had come.

But something was odd. Most hunting animals, seeking stealth, evolved to walk on their toes, moving silently and striking swiftly.

Yet these were unmistakably hoofbeats—any prey with a shred of sense would have known the predator was near.

Then again, any creature reliant on crows to find food could hardly be a master hunter.

A minute later, Xiang Jiuxi’s speculation was shattered.

The predator was nearly as fast as a leopard; the billowing dust closed in rapidly, hoofbeats thundering louder with every stride.

The crows’ cries grew ever more frenzied.

Alarmed, Xiang Jiuxi realized he was barely halfway to the hill—at this rate, he’d be eaten alive before he ever reached safety.

He glanced at the lush green tree not far away, then patted a bulge in the pocket at his waist. "No choice—I’ll just have to gamble!"

Abandoning his plan to skirt the tree, he raced for the hill by the shortest route.