Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

Chapter 392 Crossing Mountains and Rivers

The sparse contour lines indicate that the terrain in this area is relatively flat. The dot is located halfway up the mountain, at an altitude of about 400 meters. She pressed her finger on the screen and slid it northwest, following the line that represents the ridgeline with her eyes.

Thanks to the contour lines, she quickly found the northwest direction, where there was a very conspicuous mountain peak 30 kilometers away.

The contour lines on the screen converged into a small circle at that location, shrinking inwards like a bullseye. The center circle was marked with the number 3686. She zoomed in on that area, and the name of the mountain peak appeared on the screen: Cloud Peak.

She didn't know the geological structure of the mountain, whether there were suitable caves on it, or how many mountains she would have to cross or how many rivers to get there from where she was.

But she knew one thing: in heavy rain, altitude was the safety line. As long as she stood high enough, no flood could catch up with her.

Without much thought, Xu Xiaoyan pressed and held her finger on the screen, and a red logo appeared on the circle that read "Cloud Peak".

The watch beeped softly, and the path planning began. A blue line started from her current green dot, meandering northwestward, winding around several ridges, crossing a valley, and then climbing all the way up, finally stopping at the red thumbtack.

The total length is 31.6 kilometers. The estimated walking time jumped a few times on the screen before finally displaying an estimate: 14 hours and 20 minutes.

This calculation is based on walking speed under normal weather and road conditions. The current road conditions are obviously abnormal. The rainstorm has just passed, the mountain roads are muddy, and the river is swollen. In addition, she is crossing mountains and valleys alone, so the actual time required will probably double.

Whether it takes fourteen hours, twenty-four hours, or thirty-one hours, you can always get there.

She put the watch back on her wrist, adjusted the strap to make sure the screen was facing upwards so she could easily check it while walking.

She slung her backpack over her shoulder, filled with bottled water, compressed biscuits, and instant noodles, put on her raincoat, jumped off the truck, and with a thought, the truck vanished from the ground.

Xu Xiaoyan started heading northwest. The reason she didn't drive was, of course, because the ground was muddy and there was no way to drive!

Looking around from where she stood, there wasn't a decent road in sight. The already narrow mountain dirt roads had turned into yellowish-brown muddy rivers after being soaked by the torrential rain all day.

The soil, saturated with water, becomes soft and slippery. Driving on such a surface, the four wheels can't grip the ground at all. If you step on the gas, the tires will spin freely. Forget about moving forward; you'd be lucky if you didn't slip and get stuck in place.

Instead of the risks of driving, it's better to walk. Two legs are much more flexible than four wheels. If the road is blocked, you can go around it; if the slope is steep, you can climb it; if the river is swollen, you can find a place to cross it.

Xu Xiaoyan followed the route planned by her watch, walking slowly on the muddy mountain path. The blue path line on the watch stretched before her eyes, and every few hundred meters it would emit a soft "beep" to remind her that she was going in the right direction.

She looked down at the screen, where the green dot representing herself was slowly moving across the map, gradually shifting northwestward.

In three hours, she had only walked less than six kilometers. This pace made her a little anxious, but the road under her feet was like that—slippery, soft, and full of potholes. In some places, she had to go around fallen trees and collapsed slopes, so she couldn't walk fast at all.

The hem of my raincoat was covered in mud, and my rain boots were covered in a thick layer of yellow mud. Every step I took felt like I had sandbags strapped to my feet.

After walking for about two more hours, a large lake appeared in front of her. Xu Xiaoyan stopped, stood by the lake, and looked around. The water stretched into the depths, and she couldn't see the opposite shore at all.

The lake water was murky, clearly muddied by mud and sand washed down from the mountains by the torrential rain. Tree branches, leaves, and other debris that she couldn't recognize floated on the surface.

She glanced down at her watch and carefully checked the map. The blue path on the screen was in front of her current location. It should have been a straight mountain path, passing through an area marked "woodland" and then continuing northwest.

But now, the blue line was covered by a blue body of water. She zoomed out on the map to see the more detailed markings. The map clearly showed a small pond, with an area of ​​only a few hundred square meters.

She suspected she was seeing things, so she checked again and had to admit that the location of the small pond completely overlapped with the location of the large lake she was facing.

In other words, what was originally a small pond of only a few hundred square meters has swelled into a large lake, at least dozens of times larger, lying in front of her after the rainstorm.

Xu Xiaoyan stood by the lake, looking at the endless expanse of water, and sighed helplessly. She was starting to feel a headache coming on. The lake blocked her way completely, and it seemed she had no choice but to go around it.

She felt that if she didn't find the peak soon, the water levels of the rivers and lakes would continue to rise, and the newly made bamboo raft would probably be forced to go into the water.

Xu Xiaoyan walked along the lake for a full hour and a half before finally leaving the area of ​​the large lake.

The shoreline suddenly narrows here, and the turbid water is blocked by a raised earthen slope. The water gradually recedes behind her, replaced by a muddy but at least tready mountain path.

She stopped and looked around. She could vaguely see the trees lying askew and the loose rocks on the hillside dozens of meters away.

The green dot on her watch indicated that she had strayed nearly two kilometers from her original route and needed to veer diagonally to the right to reconnect with the blue path leading to the summit.

She straightened up and was about to take a step when a voice entered her ears.

The voice was muffled, and from a distance, she couldn't make out what it was saying, or even whether it was a man or a woman, but she was 100% certain that it was a human voice!

Xu Xiaoyan's brain was racing. How could there be someone here? Was they a survivor like her? Or had they fled from somewhere else? She quickly glanced at herself: backpack, windproof jacket, rain boots, watch, raincoat—nothing else.

She quickly hid behind a dead tree and squatted down. The dead tree had been dead for who knows how long; its trunk was rotten and blackened, and most of the bark had peeled off, revealing the grayish-white wood underneath.

The sound was still there, intermittent, sometimes sounding like talking, sometimes like shouting something.

She strained her ears to discern the sounds. There were at least two people, perhaps more, moving slowly about a hundred or two meters to her right front, seemingly heading towards her left.