Chapter 36 - 34: Dusty Diary

Chapter 36: Chapter 34: Dusty Diary

December 20th

Winter is here. It’s so cold. Food is getting harder and harder to find. The town has been scavenged over and over again. Dad went out looking for food yesterday and was almost robbed by two men with knives. He barely managed to escape. Mom has been crying nonstop. ’Did we make the wrong choice? If only we’d stayed at the shelter...’

January 2nd

It’s too quiet. I can barely hear a sound outside anymore. Those... wandering things (I don’t even want to call them zombies anymore, it’s disgusting) seem to have thinned out. But we’re completely out of food. Yesterday, we found Old Man Zhang’s family on the next street... they’d starved to death. And they were... ’How much longer can we last?’

Reading this, Xu Mo’s gaze sharpened.

January 17th

I’m almost out of pages in this notebook. Maybe my life is almost at its end too. Mom and Dad are sick. They have fevers and are coughing, but we have no medicine. I feel weak all over, too. I think it’s snowing again outside. It’s so cold... ’How did the world turn into this? What was that flash of light? And where did those things come from? I miss my old classroom... I miss playing games with Fatty and the guys... I miss Mom’s braised pork belly... If only... If only there were do-overs...’

The handwriting here became extremely faint and sloppy. The final word trailed off into a long, weak line, as if the writer had used their very last ounce of strength.

Here, the diary came to an abrupt end.

No continuation. No conclusion. But Xu Mo could already imagine the ending.

In the bitter cold of winter, with no food or medicine and the whole family sick... death was almost certainly all that awaited them. The diary was most likely left behind in these ruins when the family was forced to leave one last time in search of a way to survive, or perhaps it fell from their bag when they met with disaster. Of course, there was also the possibility of a happier outcome—that the diary was simply lost by accident.

Xu Mo slowly closed the diary, remaining silent for a long time.

The afterglow of the setting sun shone on him and the small diary in his hands, casting a desolate, warm hue over the cartoon characters on its cover.

He sat on the cold rubble, his back against a ruined wall, a storm of emotions raging within him.

This diary, which he had found by chance, was like a crucial puzzle piece, allowing him to assemble a rough picture of the early days of the apocalypse:

It began with a strange, worldwide flash of light, followed by official denials that were quickly overwhelmed as the situation spiraled out of control. A zombie virus (or something similar) erupted simultaneously across the globe with incredible speed, too fast for even military intervention to contain. Social order rapidly disintegrated, and communication networks collapsed completely as satellites fell from the sky.

The government established large-scale shelters, but with limited resources and strict regulations, they were no paradise. Some people, like Liu Ning’s family, chose to leave the shelters and try to survive on their own in their hometowns.

Xu Mo now had a rough timeline for when the disaster struck—about a year before the diary’s last entry. He learned of a major outpost called the Jiang City Shelter, roughly a fifteen-day journey away, though he couldn’t be sure if it still existed. He also learned that the strange behavior of the zombies was not an isolated phenomenon.

However, this also gave rise to more questions:

What exactly was that global flash of light? Was it a natural phenomenon or man-made? What was the true origin of the zombie virus? What had become of the Jiang City Shelter? Was it still operational? What were conditions like inside now?

The diary didn’t provide answers. Instead, it was like a key, opening a door to an even deeper and vaster fog of uncertainty.

Xu Mo carefully placed the diary into the innermost compartment of his backpack. This wasn’t just a record; it was the typical life of an ordinary person in the apocalypse. Liu Ning was a minor footnote in the history of an era, and for Xu Mo, his diary was the first tangible link to the "past" that he had found in this strange and dangerous world.

Getting to his feet, Xu Mo brushed the dust from his clothes and took one last look at the half-collapsed building and the surrounding ruins.

Here, a young man named Liu Ning, along with his family and countless others like them, had struggled desperately to survive, only to be silently swallowed by the cataclysm.

And he, Xu Mo, was still alive.

Gripping his Mountain-Cutting Saber tighter, Xu Mo’s gaze turned toward the west, to the horizon obscured by twilight and the silhouettes of distant mountains.

’At winter’s end, I’ll go take a look at the Jiang City Shelter.’