Doomsday Cat City Lord - Chapter 18

“Everyone, speed up!” Lu He-tao carried his grandmother on his back, walking at the very front, followed by a group of villagers who had also fled from Ludong Village for refuge.

Lushan Town was built halfway up the mountain, and because of its high elevation, the government had established shelters both in the town and at the summit. The nearby villagers had gathered together because of the Great Flood. As the water submerged the mountainsides, everyone had originally planned to wait for the waters to subside before migrating inland.

Two days ago, when the Great Flood ended, a foreign fleet of five medium-sized ships stopped in town for repairs, which led to a rift in the shelter.

One group felt that the Great Flood had completely stopped, Lushan Town had been preserved, and the nearby mountains were still intact, so they wanted to stay, clear the land, and farm while waiting for the water to recede. It was their hometown where they had lived their whole lives, and with countless monsters on the road, staying put felt safer.

The other group had learned from the outsiders that the monsters were evolving rapidly. They felt there were too many monsters hiding in the mountains, and the forests had recently become very strange who knew if a monster might come looking for them while they slept? Even if the road was dangerous, reaching a military base or the Changsong Plain meant access to soldiers and weapons, which was the only true guarantee of safety.

The two sides argued incessantly, and last night, it even turned into a brawl, with injuries on both sides.

Seeing that staying any longer would lead to a bad situation, Lu He-tao consulted with his family and found the village chief. At the crack of dawn, they took the villagers who were willing to leave and fled the shelter.

“Brother Tao, can we really make it out? One of Peng Wang’s subordinates is an olfaction-type evolver.” Lu Ji-ming, a twenty-year-old strength-type evolver, was carrying his father, whose leg had been trampled and broken the night before; his face was covered in sweat from nervousness.

“Why wouldn’t we? Peng Wang and his people, along with the Hong Jia-xi group, have already looted all our supplies. Keeping all of us old and young is just a burden to them.” Village Chief Lu punched his son and reminded him: “Focus on the road.”

“Uncle Hai is right. Otherwise, do you really think no one could have caught up with us on this journey?” Lu He-tao saw they had reached the water’s edge. While remaining alert for potential monsters, he shared his thoughts:

“Doesn’t our village have an abandoned elementary school built on the mountain? It has courtyard walls that can block monsters, and the playground’s concrete floor can be torn up to grow food and vegetables. Even if the walls need repairs, the four-story, square-shaped teaching building is safe enough if we block the exits. The point is, this place can definitely accommodate the twenty or so of us.”

Hearing this, the uncles and aunts following behind began to discuss it:

“That’s right, having a spacious place to stay would be comfortable. The shelter area only gave everyone one bed; my old legs couldn’t even stretch out.”

“I don’t know when the rain will stop, but we could turn the extra classrooms in the school into planting rooms. We’d have fresh vegetables in less than a week. But we have to think about where to find seeds.”

“There are seeds in my storeroom at home; I wonder if they’re still usable after being soaked?”

“We’ll always be able to salvage some undamaged seeds.”

The lively discussion stopped abruptly when they saw a woman standing in front of them carrying a large box.

With short brown hair, facial features that were neither beautiful nor gentle, a unique temperament, and pale, cold skin, her black pupils seemed somewhat unfocused, framed by light brown eyelashes. Being watched by her made the body involuntarily produce a stiff, cold sensation, like being stared at by a snake.

Behind her was a matte-textured plastic breeding container. As the distance closed, one could vaguely see ink-green, black, and white bodies the thickness of an arm intertwined inside. The sound of scales rubbing against the inner walls made one’s scalp tingle.

She was from the foreign fleet. Although they hadn’t seen her fight, they had heard that she was very strong.

Lu Jia ignored their alert gazes, her light-colored eyes staring dully at the water, and she stepped back to the side of the road.

Lu He-tao let his father carry his grandmother and waited for the villagers to leave first. As he was the last one to leave, he turned back to warn the girl: “Thank you. Girl, please be careful of that man Peng Wang; the way he looks at you isn’t right.”

After speaking, Lu He-tao ran at full speed, and his figure disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The girl remained motionless, her lifeless eyes fixed on the water, until the snake box behind her shook violently. A white snake head pushed open the lid, and its round black eyes were full of happiness.

“What is it, Jiuxin?”

“Hisss!” Good friend! Good friend!

Jiuxin excitedly poked more of its body out. Its pure white, jade-like scales extended downward, revealing the irregular gray-brown scales unique to the back of a white-sided rat snake.

Not understanding what Jiuxin meant, she looked up and surveyed her surroundings, seeing a fleet slowly sailing across the water in the distance.

Lu Jia couldn’t help but widen her eyes, staring dully at the two furry hills one white and one red on the fleet.

As the ships drew closer, she finally saw clearly: on the two wooden-plank boats sat a three-meter-tall white giant cat and a red panda that was over a meter long even when lying down.

On the remaining ships, which showed traces of makeshift repairs, humans stood together with cats, dogs, lions, giant pandas, apes, antelopes, zebras, moles, birds, goats, giraffes, and other animals, all waving at her.

Urged on by Jiuxin, Lu Jia waved back, filled with wonder, vigilance, and confusion.

“Meow!” Jiuxin, let’s chat next time!

Mi Miaomiao smiled and said goodbye to its friend from its past life. It hadn’t expected to arrive two days early and still encounter Jiuxin and Lu Jia.

In its past life, they didn’t arrive at Lushan Town until the 10th. As soon as they got off the boat, they were attacked by a Level 5 monster. Mi Miaomiao and Cheng Ningye were dragged into the water by the monster’s tentacles and almost died; it was Jiuxin and Lu Jia who saved them in the water.

Mi Miaomiao became friends with Jiuxin, who possessed a rudimentary consciousness, but by the next day, Lu Jia and Jiuxin were gone. It was said that Lu Jia had gone to the Changsong Plateau with her parents.

It wasn’t until two years later that it heard news of Lu Jia again. At that time, she was wanted by the Base Alliance and her whereabouts were unknown. It was said that all the snakes she raised had their crystals dug out by a laboratory, and later, it was discovered that her metal-type ability was actually disguised by her snakes. She was then drugged and sent to one of the base’s administrators.

When she found out that all of this was done by her parents, Lu Jia went mad and killed everyone she saw both her enemies and her parents.

This was a regret for Mi Miaomiao and Cheng Ningye. The kind and reticent Lu Jia and the innocent Jiuxin shouldn’t have had that ending.

“Now is not the right time. Wait two more days; this time, no one will be able to take Lu Jia away against her will.” After Lu Jia’s incident in the past life, Cheng Ningye used the contributions he had saved up to hire special evolvers in the base to help investigate. Only then did they learn that Lu Jia hadn’t wanted to go to the Changsong Plateau back then; she had been forcibly tied to the ship by her parents.

Mi Miaomiao tossed honeysuckle seeds onto the shore. Rong City wasn’t far from here, and in case of an accident, it could rush over in advance.

Heading east from Lushan Town, the fleet sailed for about another half hour and found the small mountain village where Cheng Ningye had attended his great-grandmother’s funeral.

This place was completely covered by water, but according to the map, they could still find the mountain road that Great-Grandmother Qin Rong had repaired years ago.

“This looks like it was being developed as a tourist area; is that a parking lot on the mountain?” Yue Ya-yun, 40, a 3D construction architect, was very sensitive to architecture. After standing in place and looking for a while, she quickly understood the surrounding environment.

“Let’s go see. Even if we can only find an abandoned car, modifying it would speed up our entry into the mountains.” Deng Huai, 26, a precision electronics engineer, looked up at the mountaintop and immediately picked up his toolbox, ready to rush up.

The man who had once been grabbed by Mi Miaomiao to modify King’s wings and had complained, “This isn’t my specialty, I’m an electronics engineering major, I don’t know mechanics, I really don’t!” now seemed to have been inspired by King’s life form. He spent all day researching the equipment on the ships, wanting to modify everything he saw.

“I’ll go up the mountain and take a look first.” Xuan Yu spread its wings and flew to the mountaintop first.

An hour later, Deng Huai brought five people down from the top of the mountain in three vans, saying excitedly: “There’s also an abandoned bus in the parking lot, but it’s out of gas!”

They unfolded the collapsible towed mobile cargo boxes, hooked them to the back of the simply modified vans, added energy to the bus, and gave it a thorough cleaning.

Humans and cargo could barely fit all at once. The animals squeezed into the humans’ arms, some lay on top of the cargo boxes, while the Miaomiao Group insisted on sitting on Mi Miaomiao’s back.

The team followed the winding mountain road deep into the mountains. The boats were wrapped in honeysuckle branches and hidden in the banyan forest on the shore.

Mi Miaomiao and the animals and humans in the team remained alert all the way, but they didn’t encounter any decent monsters. The few Level 1 monsters that popped out of the soil were easily handled by Xiao Tian and Hua Bi, who had just been promoted to Level 2.

What Mi Miaomiao found strange were the trees along the way the mountains, stretching for who knew how many kilometers, became more lush the further they went, unlike the outer mountain ranges, which were covered in gray, withered trees without a trace of greenery.

However, these trees on the mountains, though varying in thickness and height and canopy density, were all the same species of large banyan trees.

Mi Miaomiao channeled wood-element energy deep into the trees and discovered that these trees only looked vibrant on the surface; internally, their life force was already running low. In a natural state, their roots were already necrotic, and they could live for at most a year or two.

It was too strange. If the system hadn’t guaranteed repeatedly that the Rong City territory hadn’t been invaded, and even shown Mi Miaomiao and the two vice city mayors the response regarding the gift left by the world consciousness, Mi Miaomiao would have already turned the team around.

On the afternoon of the 8th, the fleet reached the end of the road. Ahead lay a long, narrow valley, and the high and low peaks on either side were Mount Muyuan and its associated mountain ranges as indicated in the documents.

Xuan Yu, King, and the drones took turns flying into the sky to investigate, and they finally decided to rest on the main peak of Mount Muyuan.

The main peak was 1,300 meters high. The east side facing the mountain road was a gentle slope, and halfway up the mountain were seven staggered flat areas, one of which contained a Mountain God Temple that had been abandoned for nearly thirty years.

When they climbed halfway up the mountain, everyone was exhausted, but no one dared to rest for too long. Night was about to fall, and they had to build shelters before it got dark.

The elderly looked after the children and cubs, while burning fire and boiling water to heat up their food.

The animals cleared the withered branches and weeds inside the stone temple, while the humans cleaned up the dust, tidied the rooms, and repaired the courtyard walls.

In their busyness, all the humans and animals kept looking toward the tent at Cheng Ningye, who was busy in front of the printer.

Line after line of text appeared on the white paper, it was the first version of the rules and regulations for Rong City, as well as the city resident benefits and contribution trading system that everyone had been looking forward to for two days.