Wasteland Border Inspector - Chapter 975

Chapter 975: Chapter 310: Thrills in the Wilderness, Unknown Infection! (Part 2)

As he spoke, he pulled out a crowbar, jack, tire patches and a pile of other tools in quick succession. “Twenty minutes at most and it’ll be done, won’t delay today’s schedule.”

“Alright.” Liu Bi immediately arranged, “You patch the tire, Cheng Ye handles security, I’ll go check the stretch we just drove over. My guess is there’s more of this stuff.”

Skill breeds courage; saying this, he followed the tracks in the dirt, walking in the direction the armored vehicle had just come from.

If there were more caltrops, he’d bury them on the way, so no one else would get hit later.

“Brother Niu, need a hand?” Cheng Ye crouched down too, his gaze falling on the damaged tire.

If he were alone, he could spend a few Action Points and fix the tire in an instant, but right now he was out with an old hand from logistics—better to learn and do more.

“No need!” Niu Fu waved him off, briskly setting up the jack. “Flat tires in the Wilderness are about as common as dirt. Slap a patch over the leak and you’re done—simple as it gets.”

As he spoke, he removed the wheel rim, let all the air out of the tire, and used the crowbar to pry the run-flat tire off the rim.

After he plucked out those caltrops with the pliers, the thick tire was left with only a few shallow nicks.

The toolbox carried over a hundred tire patches. Wipe the inside of the tire dry, stick on a patch, then remount the tire and inflate it—Niu Fu ran through the whole process in one smooth, seamless motion.

But once the tire was back on tight and the pressure back to normal, Liu Bi was still out searching the area and had yet to return.

Afraid the vehicle might get punctured again the moment they moved, Cheng Ye and Niu Fu could only climb back into the car and sit in their seats, waiting patiently.

Taking advantage of the lull, Cheng Ye pulled the map from the storage compartment, unfolded it, pressed his fingertip on the marks, and compared them carefully with the surrounding terrain to determine their current position.

On the unfolded map, two prominent marked lines crisscrossed.

A red line near the top wound and twisted; a green line in the middle stretched straight ahead.

The red line was Guang Province’s old route, opened seventeen years ago and fully abandoned seven years back.

The green line was a new route opened twelve years ago, likewise fully taken out of use two years earlier.

These two routes once linked over twenty large and small gathering points and three Shelter Cities, and the core reason they were eventually abandoned was that those settlements and Shelter Cities either relocated entirely or ceased to exist.

What was certain was that these two old routes into Guang Province were now off limits.

Since being abandoned, they had become hard-hit zones thick with infection sources and Infected Bodies; there might even be dormant infection tides lurking within. They were far more dangerous than just crushing a new road directly through the Wilderness.

The armored vehicle was currently driving along a lower-area route that had never been formally opened before.

From Dongping Town all the way east, the first two hundred kilometers were the same endless Wilderness they saw now, and beyond that they would have to cross mountains and ridges, pushing into desolate lands seldom touched by people.

The saving grace was that the route had quite a few spots marked where they could temporarily camp, so they wouldn’t have to sleep in completely exposed open ground.

Cheng Ye took out a blue marker and first marked off the hundred kilometers they’d driven out from Dongping Town, then circled their rest point for the night,

Old Tang County.

Back in the Old Era, this county was simply called Tang County, named after the nearby Shatang Lake.

When the New Era began, Tang County had a brief period of glory; tens of thousands of people established the “Xintang Gathering Place” here, and its scale once came close to a Shelter City.

Unfortunately, in the winter of Wasteland Calendar Year 22, a Disaster Level infection tide swept through, and the Xintang Gathering Place collapsed in an instant.

After the infection tide passed, several thousand people tried to return and rebuild, but it happened to coincide with an outbreak of the Extraordinary Mother Source left in the gathering place. Everyone was turned into Infected Bodies, and Tang County was completely reduced to a dead zone.

To warn those who came after, “Xintang” was renamed “Old Tang.”

“According to Wilderness rules, a ‘dead zone’ with that kind of notorious reputation is actually safer.”

Hands resting on the steering wheel, Niu Fu grinned. “Everyone’s afraid of what’s inside, so nobody steps in for a long time. Infection sources and Infected Bodies don’t bother gathering in a place with nothing living in it either. We’ll camp on the outskirts of Old Tang tonight and move at first light. If you want to take a look at that Shatang Lake, we can swing by on the way and have a peek.”

“Records say an Extraordinary Creature appeared in Shatang Lake back then and drew in several million people to fight over it. Is that true?” Cheng Ye’s interest was piqued, and he pressed on.

“Of course it’s true. Our Happiness City still has descendants of the survivors from Tang County back then.”

Niu Fu nodded solemnly, a hint of legend in his tone. “That Extraordinary Creature was called the Dragon Eye Carp. To gain its Extraordinary power, you had to follow the drifting route it set, going alone in a single boat through a series of cliff waterfalls. Just like the old saying ‘the carp leaps over the Dragon Gate’—you had to prove your courage to earn the right to that opportunity!”

“I heard from those survivors’ descendants that on the very first day of the scramble for that opportunity, nearly forty thousand people fell to their deaths at the base of the cliffs. The corpses piled over ten meters high. Just imagining that scene gives you chills!”

Niu Fu smacked his lips, his voice full of sighs.

The places where Extraordinary Creatures appeared were among the few records that could pierce the long history of the Wasteland and survive to this day.

Back then, Tang County had been a small city with a permanent population of barely a hundred thousand, yet the emergence of the Dragon Eye Carp drew in over a million people, all for a sliver of Extraordinary opportunity.

And gaining the power of an Extraordinary Creature was never as simple as “eat its flesh, gain its strength.”

Every Extraordinary Creature had its own exclusive inheritance conditions, and only those who fulfilled them could earn recognition from its power.

More crucially, powerful Extraordinary individuals had no right even to participate. Even if they forced their way through all the trials, they would never be accepted by the Extraordinary Creature.

“It wasn’t until the sixth day that a young man finally passed all the waterfalls and obtained the Dragon Eye Carp’s power.”