“What’s wrong, tired? You were pretty fierce when you pried those steel claws apart.”
“I’m worn out. Need to rest a bit.”
“All right, then.”
David didn’t notice anything unusual about Zhuang Fan. He only thought Zhuang Fan was tired from walking, so he ordered the team to form a circular defensive line and protect him in the middle.
For all his loose tongue, he still did what he was supposed to do.
Zhuang Fan panted lightly. It took him quite a while to come back to himself; his vision refocused, and that lingering sense of deathly stillness finally receded.
But the pain from just now still left him shaken. He couldn’t figure out where the problem had come from.
The only explanation was perhaps that forcibly controlling the black mist—or controlling it for too long—had exhausted his mind and caused a backlash.
At this moment, the mass of black mist inside his body had already thinned and dissipated. The few remaining wisps of pale mist were also gradually being purified under the effect of the fog-dispersal lamps.
Now he could only “observe,” and could no longer mobilize even the slightest trace of eerie fog.
I was careless... He sighed softly, not knowing when this ability would recover. For now, all he could do was wait patiently.
But he still had to push forward with his grand escape plan. Time waited for no one.
“Rested enough, right? Time to go.” David tossed him a sentence.
Zhuang Fan nodded. “Let’s go.”
……
As night fell, the concentration of eerie fog in the wilderness surged, and the frequency of walking corpses attacking the team increased as well.
The armored soldiers’ rotary machine guns never stopped. Tongues of flame danced wildly from the muzzles, and the dense “rat-tat-tat” of gunfire tore through the night sky as countless brass casings scattered across the ground.
The guards’ flamethrowers cleared away a large swath of eerie fog and corpse hordes. The crackle of charred remains and a pungent stench filled the air.
Zhuang Fan glanced at David again and saw that he was currently holding a scatter cannon, bombarding the horde of walking corpses, with no attention to spare for anything else.
He knew this was his last chance, one that would vanish in an instant.
In the blink of an eye, he suddenly bent down. His figure moved like lightning as he swiftly slipped through beneath the crotch of the armored soldier beside him, charging straight toward the fiercest web of fire without any regard for the bullets whistling around him.
“Shit! Everyone stop!”
David’s eyes nearly split with fury as he decisively gave the order to cease fire, terrified that the armored soldiers would accidentally injure this precious “Magic Scout.”
At this moment, Zhuang Fan cared about nothing else. He had already rushed out several dozen meters, running specifically toward the densest cluster of walking corpses. Only by seeking life through death could he find a sliver of a chance to survive.
“What are you standing there for? Chase him!”
David threw down the heavy scatter cannon, adjusted his powered exoskeleton to maximum output, and chased after Zhuang Fan like a madman.
Zhuang Fan’s movements could not exactly be called agile. He was still struggling to adapt to this body after it had been thawed.
But thanks to his advance predictions, he easily dodged the swinging arms of dozens of walking corpses, while using them at just the right moments to slow David and the others down.
He had long since calculated the distance between himself and the cliff edge. There was a crooked tree growing by the cliff there; the terrain was the gentlest, and relatively fewer walking corpses climbed up from that spot.
All he needed to do was protect his head, curl up, and roll down the cliff. With the cushioning of the grass and branches, there was a high chance he would survive.
At the very least, it was better than staying where he was and waiting to die.
All the escape routes, the density and distribution of the corpse horde, David and the others’ normal reactions—Zhuang Fan had considered all of it in an extremely short time.
What he was betting on was that David wouldn’t dare shoot and risk injuring him.
But just then—
“Whoosh—”
A taser round struck his back with precision, instantly releasing an intense current strong enough to paralyze a person.
All the muscles in Zhuang Fan’s body spasmed violently. Once his torso stiffened, he fell straight to the ground.
He was only one step away from the cliff.
He clenched his teeth, blue veins bulging hideously across the back of his hand, and laboriously tore off the taser device on his back before barely managing to climb up.
However, David had already rushed close. He pressed Zhuang Fan’s head down with one hand and once again locked his torso with the steel claws.
“You just charge around like that, slippery as a loach—you really aren’t afraid of dying, huh!”
David’s voice trembled slightly, full of lingering fear. If he hadn’t brought a stun gun today, this kid would definitely have slipped away.
The residual current was still rampaging through his body, but Zhuang Fan no longer cared. A trace of exhaustion flashed through his eyes as he said slowly, “Bro, I want to live.”
The air instantly froze. David paused for a long while before speaking in a low voice. “Bro wants to live too.”
“Fine...”
Zhuang Fan could be considered resigned to his fate. His expression returned to calm, with not the slightest emotion visible anymore.
David looked at him, hesitating to speak, and in the end lost even the desire to make sarcastic remarks.
On the way back, more walking corpses climbed up from the cliffside, but the team did not linger in battle. They took only twenty minutes to return to the military fortress.
As the fortress’s alloy gates slowly closed, they also closed off Zhuang Fan’s last hope of escape.
The group returned to the underground laboratory. The blond doctor, who had long been waiting, immediately took out a detector and scanned Zhuang Fan once more.
“0 milligrams per cubic meter. Magic Scout identity confirmed.”
The blond doctor revealed a brilliant smile. When his gaze swept over Zhuang Fan’s wrinkled clothes, his brow lifted. “Did something interesting happen just now?”
David hesitated for a moment, but in the end reported every detail honestly, including how Zhuang Fan had broken free of the steel claws and how he had escaped.
“Something like that happened?” The blond doctor glanced at Zhuang Fan, clearly rather surprised.
Zhuang Fan did not speak the entire time. His eyes stared vacantly at nothing, and there was no emotional fluctuation on his face.
Next, he underwent a new round of full-body examinations, including deep-level tests on his bones, blood, nervous system, brain tissue, and everything else.
But the test results showed that he was no different from a healthy ordinary person. He had neither undergone enhancement surgery nor been implanted with any microchips.
“Doctor, should we use nanobugs?”
The blond doctor stared at the screen and shook his head. “His body is extremely precious. Nanobugs would cause contact damage. Even the slightest wound is a consequence we cannot afford.”
In the end, the blond doctor could only attribute Zhuang Fan’s abnormality to “an extremely outstanding manifestation of physical fitness.”
“From now on, no one will be able to harm even a single hair on your head.”
The blond doctor made the solemn promise. “No one can afford to.”
Regarding this promise, Zhuang Fan smiled. “Mm. As long as no one kicks me again.”
“That kind of situation will not happen again.” The blond doctor’s solemn promise was equivalent to directly sentencing that reckless guard to death.
Afterward, Zhuang Fan was locked inside a room with even tighter security. The furnishings inside were simple: only a bed, a table and chairs, and a toilet.
With a light sweep of his eyes, he discovered eight cameras in plain sight. As for how many were hidden in the dark, there was no telling.
Outside the door, a small squad of heavily armed soldiers stood guard. Just the towering silhouettes of those two armored soldiers were enough to dispel any thought he had of breaking out.
He absolutely could not get out.
……
After passing through layer upon layer of security checks, David entered the room and saw Zhuang Fan standing by the wall, motionless, staring at something.
“What do you want to eat? I’ll have the kitchen make it. Guaranteed fresh.”
Zhuang Fan ignored him, standing there like a piece of rotten wood.
“Little bro?”
David walked forward and only then realized that Zhuang Fan was staring intently at the world map on the wall. He had already been dazed for a very long time.
“What are you doing, looking so focused?”
Zhuang Fan slowly turned his head and looked at David. His expression was calm and solemn, his tone unusually low.
“This is the world map?”
“Yeah.”
“The current one?”
“That’s right. It’s all the latest measurements. Though some remote places are pretty dangerous, so the measurements aren’t too precise. But the overall outline should be right.”
“How is that possible...” Zhuang Fan murmured to himself.
David was also confused by him. He carefully studied the map on the wall again, confirmed that there was nothing wrong with it, and nodded. “There really isn’t any problem. What’s wrong?”
“No problem?”
Zhuang Fan raised his hand and pointed at the map. “Then let me ask you: where did the seven continents and four oceans go? Where’s the Eurasian plate? Where are Africa and the Americas? Even the entire Antarctic continent is gone? They all merged into one supercontinent? Who made this lousy map?”
“Seven continents, four oceans, Eurasian plate—what are those...” These terms had clearly touched David’s blind spot of knowledge.
Now it was Zhuang Fan’s turn to fall silent.
The two stared at each other, their eyes clear, bright, and confused, both confirming that the other really wasn’t joking.
Zhuang Fan’s tone was stiff. “This isn’t funny at all.”
“Common Era person, huh... I think I kind of get it.”
David pondered for a while, then turned and left the room. “Wait here a bit.”
“I can wait as long as you want.”
The world map before him had thrown Zhuang Fan’s mind into complete chaos. All his previous understanding had been twisted out of shape, and he was more inclined to believe someone was playing a prank.
What kind of world map was this?
Almost all the plates had been squeezed together, indistinguishable from one another. Enormous and exaggerated mountain ranges and fault zones cut across it, and surrounding this supercontinent were nothing but scattered, broken islands.
Wait...
Zhuang Fan frowned and took a few steps back, studying the map again. The more he looked, the more familiar it seemed.
Why did the outline of this supercontinent look a bit like “Amasia”?
He had once read a research paper that calculated that over the next three hundred million years, Asia would continue moving east while the Americas drifted west, and in the end all continents would converge into a new supercontinent—Amasia.
Fine. At the end of absurdity lay reality.
After taking a deep breath, Zhuang Fan tried to make reasonable associations:
Assuming the map was real, then the main body of this supercontinent was the World Island. The large protruding piece in the east of the World Island looked quite like Alaska;
The southeastern region of the World Island somewhat matched the American plate. As for whether it was North America or South America, he could not tell, since sea level had already risen a great deal;
The western part of the World Island had a clearly defined outline and still retained a trace of old Europe’s charm. That long, open strip in the southwest was definitely the African plate;
In the south of the World Island was an inverted triangular region that looked very much like South Asia, but its area had likewise shrunk considerably;
As for the Australian plate, Zhuang Fan searched all around but found nothing similar. It had probably disintegrated and been buried among a cluster of broken islands;
And the Antarctic ice sheet had probably melted completely, with the entire plate submerged beneath the sea...
In short, this was an utterly ridiculous world map. The combined area of all the continental plates had shrunk by at least two-thirds.
“Aside from the massive reduction in area, this is practically a copy of Amasia...”
Zhuang Fan could not accept this joke.
Three hundred million years of Earth’s plate evolution had been compressed into a few short centuries. What kind of concept was that?
Just the crustal tearing, volcanic eruptions, and towering tsunamis brought about by plate collisions would have been enough to wipe out humanity a dozen times over.
However, David truly put the final seal on this joke. He brought over an old paper map.
Because of its age, the map was covered in dust, its corners yellowed and moldy, and several loops of transparent tape were wrapped around it. But the familiar layout of the seven continents and four oceans on it was a memory carved into Zhuang Fan’s bones.
“Little bro, you’re really something. This thing couldn’t be found online at all. It was an old guy in the archives who’s lived more than two hundred years who rummaged through everything and finally found this Common Era map for you. Mm, it really is way too different from now.”
Zhuang Fan took the old map and carefully compared it with the new map on the wall. After that, his whole person fell silent.
The good news was that he hadn’t transmigrated;
The bad news was that it was basically the same as transmigrating.
Zhuang Fan pointed at the new and old versions of the map, his voice slightly grave. “Why did it become like this?”