Cultivation Reconstruction in the End Times

Chapter 12 Departure

At night, after Zhang He finished practicing the breathing technique once, he opened his eyes in the darkness, then got up from the earthen kang. He didn't put on any extra clothes because he had originally been sitting fully dressed with his shoes on, and the bedding hadn't been laid out either.

After getting up, he casually picked up the kraft paper bag on the table. Considering the long journey ahead, he hesitated for a moment, then grabbed a handful of dried rabbit meat made by the villagers in the village from the peach pit space. To sterilize it, some salt had been sprinkled on it, and it was quite delicious to eat directly. Then he opened the bag and threw two handfuls of it inside.

The young panther was still unruly. When the power of the talisman on the bag's opening was greatly reduced as he opened it, it actually stretched out a paw with barbs outside the bag. Zhang He casually tightened the bag's opening. The paw obviously didn't want to retract and was still struggling to get out, but under the coercion of that forbidden talisman, it could only retract unwillingly.

Zhang He put the kraft paper bag into the inconspicuous gray travel bag on his back, then looked around the room. Seeing that there was nothing left behind, he walked to the door and opened it.

He was wearing handmade cloth shoes with multiple layers of soles. When he walked, there was hardly any sound. Every household in the village raised dogs, and dogs were far more sensitive to sounds than humans. Before going out, he casually took out a concealment talisman and slapped it on himself.

The concealment talisman couldn't hide his body, but it was something similar to a sleight of hand. It could reduce the aura and the sounds he made to the minimum.

Apparently, this talisman was effective for the dogs. When he opened the door and went out, the dogs didn't make any noise. Seeing this, Zhang He walked to the place where the tender corn was stored in the yard. With a wave of his hand, he put dozens of sacks of tender corn, which were still wrapped in corn leaves for preservation, into the space.

The peach pit space had a circular bottom, and it wasn't convenient to stack various things. After using it more often, Zhang He gradually figured out a way. It turned out that items could be stored in the peach pit space as he pleased, without being restricted by the rules of the outside world. As long as he defined any range within the space with his consciousness, he could store items freely within it. Even if they were in mid-air, they wouldn't fall.

At this time, the peach pit space had been divided into three parts by Zhang He. One part was for storing plastic buckets of water and gasoline, another part was for clothes and fabrics, and the remaining part was for some food items.

In just a few minutes, Zhang He had silently put more than ten bags of wet peanuts, dozens of sacks of tender corn, and several bags of potatoes placed in the yard into the space. Then he walked towards the room where the dried goods were stored.

The door was made of wood. Probably due to the village's custom, among the dozens of households, every door wasn't locked. Although they raised dogs, it was just to guard against some beasts in the mountains that might attack the chickens. In this way, it saved Zhang He the trouble of opening the lock. He opened the door and put all the dried goods, vegetables, and sundries piled up in the room into the space.

Zhang He didn't have the time to classify them one by one at this moment. He piled them all together. At a rough glance, they only occupied a small part of the space. When he walked out of the wooden house, there was still no movement at the place where the dogs were tied up. It seemed that they regarded his actions as just the wind blowing and leaves rustling. Only occasionally did the dogs' ears move, and they didn't even open their eyes.

Finally, there were nine vats of fresh meat left. Among them, there was the most pork, followed by chicken, and then rabbit meat. If he fished out the plastic bags containing the meat from the water, the sound of the water would definitely startle the people in the house. And if he didn't take them out, he couldn't put them into the space. After thinking for a while, Zhang He waved his hand and put all nine large vats into the space.

The vats were the kind with a big belly in the past and could hold quite a lot of things. Since he couldn't take out the meat, he simply took them all away. It was already early morning at this time. Almost everyone in the village had entered a deep sleep, and even the domestic livestock were sleeping soundly in their pens. No one noticed that Zhang He had taken away tens of thousands of jin of mountain specialties and had quietly left their village.

Although there were stars and the moon in the sky, the dirt road in the mountains was uneven, and it was blocked by trees, so it wasn't easy to walk. It was so dark in front of him that he could hardly see his own hands. However, Zhang He had prepared in advance. He had drawn several night-traveling talismans according to the notes left by his father. At this moment, he took out one, held the talisman paper between his fingertips, and with a casual flip of his hand, the talisman paper was ignited.

This skill of igniting the talisman paper wasn't something that everyone could learn. The fire used to ignite the talisman paper wasn't ordinary firewood fire, but the fire from the palm of the hand as described in his father's notes.

Zhang He couldn't do it before. Since he started practicing the breathing technique and was able to condense the spiritual energy in his palm, he could naturally ignite the talisman with a flip of his hand. It was the same principle as when Taoist people often ignite incense with a flip of their hand when offering sacrifices to their ancestors.

He rubbed the ashes of the burned talisman paper and applied them between his eyes and on his forehead. Although it wasn't as bright as in the daytime, he could see the road a bit more clearly than before. When he reached the stone road on the cliff, he felt a gust of cold wind blowing up from the bottom of the cliff, which dispelled the little sweat he had sweated from walking before.

Ordinary people would feel very cool, but Zhang He immediately frowned. When he stepped onto the stone road with one foot, he thought of something and then stepped back. His eyes slowly looked down at the bottom of the cliff not far away. He only saw a dark hole, which was bottomless. Especially in the dark night, facing the cold wind blowing up from the bottom of the cliff, it was a bit like the Cliff of Death in the movies. At first glance, it made people feel inexplicably terrified.

Although Zhang He had experienced the bloodshed of the apocalypse, he still felt a chill in his heart at this moment. He couldn't help but secretly speculate that in just half a month, the wind was completely different from when he came here before. It was blowing so wildly, as if something was decaying and reviving at the bottom of the cliff.

His many years of experience in the apocalypse made him have an inexplicable fear of the abyss, and he absolutely refused to enter the underground easily. Because once those unknown creatures were triggered to wake up, it would be a disaster of extinction for humans.

For thousands of years, humans have lived on this planet under their feet, always thinking that they stood at the top of the food chain and always yearned to conquer space. But no one would have thought that decades later, the disaster of destruction would come from under their own feet.

Zhang He suppressed the fear in his heart. He took out a talisman from his bosom. With a flip of his fingertips, he folded the talisman paper into the shape of the Eight Diagrams. This gesture of folding the Eight Diagrams was learned under the coercion of his father back then. At this moment, he folded it without any rustiness. Then he took out a piece of oiled paper, wrapped the folded Eight Diagrams talisman, and then stuffed it into the stone c***k.

Then, in the dark night, he carefully took steps, walking according to the number of the Eight Diagrams. Every nine steps, he stuffed a talisman wrapped in oiled paper into the stone c***k. Along the way in the darkness, he folded the talisman paper while walking. He didn't know how many steps he had walked before he reached the place where the mountain road was damaged. He only felt that the cold wind here was even stronger and carried a bit of a rotten smell. Zhang He immediately stopped, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. Seeing this, he cautiously stepped back. Without hesitation, with a flip of his palm, he took out a set of Seven Star Talismans from the space. In the dark night, the cinnabar with his bloodstains on it was actually a bit eye-catching.

Then he put the talismans one by one into the gaps of the broken cliff wall according to the cycle of the Eight Diagrams, and stuffed them with oilcloth and stones. The moment he placed the seven talismans in their respective positions, Zhang He felt that the fierce wind around the stone road at the gap slowed down, and the yin qi and the rotten smell around his body suddenly dissipated.

Zhang He then let out a sigh of relief. He squatted on one side of the broken stone road and looked down. It was still pitch black below, and his gaze couldn't reach how deep it was inside.

The village chief had said that this mountain road had been there for several generations. After years of wind and rain, it had always been very sturdy. No one in the village had expected that it would suddenly collapse after a rainstorm.

But at this moment, Zhang He thought that the collapse here might not be due to the rainstorm and the sliding of stones, but because it was corroded by the strongest wind eye at the bottom of the cliff. Where there was an unusual occurrence, there must be something strange. It didn't collapse earlier or later, but precisely collapsed on the eve of the apocalypse. No one knew what kind of disaster would arise under the cliff...

Thinking of this, Zhang He's mood suddenly became heavy. Then he retracted his gaze. Originally, the life and death of the people in the mountains had nothing to do with him, and he wouldn't easily tell anyone about the coming of the apocalypse. But after getting along with them for half a month, coupled with the fact that the mountains were like a paradise, he had actually forgotten about the apocalypse for a while and had lived the most peaceful days. He couldn't help but feel a bit nostalgic, and even hoped that one day when he came back here again, he would still see the same people and things as when he came.

However, this broken cliff woke him up from his sweet dream and made him break out in a cold sweat. Without realizing it, he had laid out a formation all the way. If his premonition was wrong, that would be great. If unfortunately it was right, he still hoped that after using the few remaining Seven Star Talismans he had, he could save the lives of the more than twenty households in the village.

Zhang He continued to walk on the dark mountain road alone with strange steps, and his hands didn't stop folding the talisman paper. If someone saw him at this time, they would probably think he was a madman.

When he folded the last talisman, wrapped it in oiled paper, and stuffed it into an inconspicuous stone c***k, he finally finished walking this section of the stone road. His back was already soaked in cold sweat. At this time, the sky was faintly getting brighter. He looked back. Before he knew it, there was a fog in the mountains, and the whole village became a bit misty in his eyes, and he couldn't see it clearly.

Thinking that after a while, when the people in the village got up and found that the things in the village chief's yard and he himself were gone, the villagers and the village chief would probably be extremely shocked. But at this moment, Zhang He couldn't care so much. He couldn't leave the convenient space unused, spend money and time hiring a vehicle to transport the goods, just to tell a lie to others, and this lie had no merits at all. So leaving at night like this was the method he had already decided on.

Regarding the care the villagers had given him during this time, last night, he had already done what he could for them. In the future, whether this village faced bad luck or was lucky enough to escape the disaster, it was all up to fate. Their life or death was no longer within his consideration.

He couldn't even guarantee his own life, so how could he take care of others? With a self-deprecating smile, he then took steps and walked towards the other side of the dirt road in the fog.

He had already inquired from others that there was a train leaving Province Z at 7 am today at the train station in the county town at the foot of the mountain. He had to arrive at the station before that time and then take the train directly to leave Province Z.