nycdaug Chapter 396 Flower Market
Chapter 396 Flower Market
The convoy traveled across the wilderness for three whole days.
The blood-red sun rises and sets, sets and rises again.
In these three days, there were no strange occurrences at high altitudes, no convoys with ill intentions, and not even any significant trouble.
Everything was calm and peaceful.
These three days should be enough for the team members to process all their emotions.
On the fourth day, the convoy inexplicably drove into unfamiliar land.
The landscape here is completely different from before. It is no longer a barren, cracked wasteland, but large areas of dead vegetation have begun to appear.
Beneath the withered grass, grayish-white skeletons are faintly visible, densely covering the field of vision.
"What the hell is this place?!" Jiao Jiao pressed her face against the car window, feeling that the air she was breathing smelled of decay.
Actually, those bones didn't emit any unpleasant smell.
However, at this moment, everyone can only associate this scene with eeriness and horror.
Xu Si sat on the roof of the Nirvana vehicle, the star veins spreading out silently.
Beneath the withered vegetation, he sensed faint signs of life.
It's somewhat similar to the spores of the "Spore-Eyed Earth Mother" that I encountered in the mountain village, but not quite the same.
A strange feeling that I can't quite explain.
"Aunt Fu, are you sure we're on the right track? Isn't this a city?"
The convoy slowly moved along a road whose original appearance was no longer recognizable.
As you venture deeper into the area, you can occasionally see the ruins of buildings on both sides of the road—a half-collapsed wall, a rusted iron gate, a road sign with its lettering worn away by wind and sand.
There appear to be traces of human habitation.
It just looks extremely old, like it's been uninhabited for decades or even centuries, giving it a dilapidated feel.
"Didn't I say it was ruins? Everyone be on high alert!" Fu Xiaojian was also feeling uneasy.
His "unknown imprint" showed that it was indeed a ruin, and he thought it was the same kind of ruin he had encountered a few days ago.
"Ya Ya said there are lots of flowers ahead," Dou Dou's voice suddenly came through the walkie-talkie, tinged with doubt.
"Flower?" Shocks echoed through the walkie-talkie.
In the apocalypse, people had never seen anything like grass, let alone flowers.
There are only two possibilities: either Ya Ya is under an illusion, or something strange has happened.
Xu Si flew straight up into the sky, looking in the direction the convoy was heading.
The pupils contract, expanding the limits of the field of vision.
Then, he fell silent.
That was not an illusion.
On the horizon, the silhouette of a city floats like a mirage at the edge of the wasteland under the blood-red sun.
The building outlines are remarkably well preserved—high-rise buildings, bridges, tower cranes, and even rows of long-abandoned and rotten cars on the roads leading out of the city.
But what's truly awe-inspiring isn't the architecture itself.
It's a color.
The entire city was covered in a vibrant sea of flowers, so beautiful it seemed otherworldly.
On both sides of the road, on every balcony of the building, in every crevice of the ruins, even inside the half-collapsed buildings and on the abandoned cars on the road.
The entire place was covered with all sorts of strange and beautiful flowers.
Red, purple, blue, gold, silver...
The flowers swayed gently under the blood-red sun, their petals gleaming with a beautiful sheen, as if carefully nurtured by some force, or as if they had "grown" from inside the building.
"Old Xu? What's going on!" Fu Xiaojian's voice came through the walkie-talkie, filled with barely suppressed tension.
Xu Si floated down from mid-air and landed on the roof of the Nirvana vehicle.
"The city," he said.
"A city full of flowers."
There was a moment of silence on the walkie-talkie.
"Covered with...flowers?" Jiao Jiao's voice was filled with obvious doubt.
"Redhead, are you sure you're not seeing things?"
Xu Si ignored it, because the convoy hadn't been traveling long when the 'flower market' came into view of everyone in the convoy.
Everyone looked out of the car windows at the eerie sea of flowers, and for a moment no one spoke.
It's not that I don't want to talk, it's that I don't know what to say.
In the apocalypse, I've seen ruins, mountains of corpses, and cities ravaged beyond recognition by strange forces.
But I've never seen anything like it before—a city "swallowed" by flowers, so beautiful it doesn't seem like something from the apocalypse, yet it exudes an eeriness deeper than bones.
The flowers weren't just scattered here and there, but rather spread out in abundance.
Each balcony of the high-rise building is draped with waterfall-like vines, covered with fist-sized flowers in colors so vibrant they seem unreal.
The road was covered with a thick layer of flower petals; it would probably feel as soft as a carpet when you stepped on it.
Even in those wrecked cars, slender flower stems extend from the windows and hood gaps, with tiny flowers the size of fingernails blooming at the top, like countless prying eyes.
"This...this is so beautiful!"
Jiao Jiao pressed her face against the car window, her eyes wide open, her tone carrying the instinctive amazement of a little girl seeing a sea of flowers. Then she realized something was wrong and swallowed back the words "Go for it!"
"This is obviously problematic. Are we really going to throw our lives away?" Yang Fan felt a chill run down his spine, not a sense of beauty.
He had no good impressions of any of the cities.
"Something's definitely not right! Maybe we should take a detour!" Shao Bing continued.
"Don't speak, I want to watch a little longer!" Jiao Jiao really couldn't bear to leave; she wished she could die here.
But she didn't say it aloud; in the apocalypse, it's a consensus among everyone not to talk about life and death.
Ivan then took out the "Road Book" and began drawing the scene before him.
Although he only had a ballpoint pen, he drew with utmost care.
Perhaps it was a desire to let these flowers be seen by those who have passed away.
"Ah! My iPhone 27!" After looking at it for a while, Jiao Jiao finally remembered to take a picture and post it on her "WeChat Moments".
The post-apocalyptic online world made her even less capable of basic tasks.
If I had managed to take a picture of that dragon last time, I could have bragged about it for the rest of my life.
Even without Xu Si's reminder, Nirvana has been fully included.
Because those flowers were truly beautiful beyond reason.
Before the apocalypse, he had seen flower fields all over the world on his phone, tulips, lavender, cherry blossoms, none of which could compare to the scene before him.
That's not a beauty that humans can cultivate; it's more like something else...
It transcends the limits of aesthetics.
He preferred to think of it as a grand illusion.
The distance was too great, so Xu Si didn't bother using the Star Pulse Probe.
The authenticity can be confirmed simply by using Star Eyes.
The convoy didn't set off for a long time, and no one spoke. Everyone was cherishing this moment of tranquility and beauty.
"I'll have Ya Ya catch some back, and everyone can see if they're real," Dou Dou said into the walkie-talkie, showing little interest in the flowers in front of her.
The crows in the sky clearly didn't just grab a few flowers; instead, they used their sharp claws to snatch up a wrecked car that was already surrounded by flowers and drove it toward the convoy.
The entire car resembled a specimen swallowed by flowers.
The good news is that the vehicle's structure is still intact and it didn't fall apart because of the crows' gripping.
The original color of the vehicle was almost unrecognizable. The rusty red body was wrapped in layers of vines, which were as thick as a baby's arm and had a dark green sheen, as if they were coated with wax.
A dozen or so fist-sized flowers bloomed on the vine, their color gradually changing from the center to the edges of the petals to a purplish-red, blooming almost eerily under the blood-red sun.
"Let him leave him outside the camp!" Fu Xiaojian instructed Dou Dou, remembering something.
"Okay!"