Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 166: There Are Living People in This City

Dawu City was never a tourist destination. However, its sheer urban sprawl was on par with Rong City, and its pre-apocalyptic permanent population had been vastly larger.

The city earned its moniker, “Dawu” (Great Fog), because it sat in a geographic basin that trapped a perpetual, grayish smog year-round. It was a name made famous by internet memes and national mockery regarding the city’s notoriously abysmal environmental governance.

Despite moderate clean-up efforts in recent years, the name stuck. If you asked a local for the city’s original, historical name, they’d likely draw a blank. But mention Dawu City, and everyone had a joke ready.

The sprawling metropolis was physically split down the middle by the massive Wu River, dividing the urban grid into the Old City and the New City districts.

As Chen Ye and Chu Che’s two-car convoy finally breached the city limits, the atmosphere shifted drastically.

The unnatural fog here was different. It carried a heavy, cloying stench—a nauseating cocktail of rusted iron and sour, rotting garbage. Even with the N95 masks strapped tightly to their faces, the smell coated the back of their throats.

“Cough! Cough! Hack…”

In the SUV behind Chen Ye, Xiao Wang was practically coughing up a lung. He had layered three masks over his face, but the filtration was utterly useless against the toxic dampness of the fog.

It was glaringly obvious that the mist blanketing Dawu City was heavily laced with corrosive or toxic gases. They needed military-grade gas masks, but in the apocalypse, scavenging a box of paper surgical masks was considered hitting the jackpot.

Chu Che shot a deeply worried glance at the young assistant convulsing in the passenger seat.

Uncle Bao, lying comatose in the back, didn’t have many days left. If Uncle Bao died, and Xiao Wang succumbed to the toxic fog, Chu Che’s “faction” would be reduced to a party of one.

The fact that a healthy young man like Xiao Wang was actively suffocating, while a skeletal, dying man like Uncle Bao was somehow clinging to life without coughing once, was a morbid miracle.

The two vehicles crawled to a halt on the ruined national highway leading into the city proper. The world ahead and behind was an impenetrable gray void. The silence was absolute, suffocating, and terrifyingly still. There wasn’t even the whisper of a breeze.

Looming out of the gray soup ahead was the rusted, skeletal frame of a massive highway billboard. Peeling red paint spelled out a grim, ironic greeting: WELCOME TO DAWU CITY!

Even though he couldn’t physically see the skyline, Chen Ye’s instincts screamed that he was driving straight into the mouth of a leviathan.

“Bzzzt… Captain Chu, what’s the read… up ahead?” Chen Ye asked, his voice tight as he keyed the radio.

In the trailing SUV, Chu Che was hunched over the steering wheel, tracing routes on a laminated topographic map.

A Pathfinder’s sense of direction wasn’t a magic spell; it was an innate, hyper-evolved intuition. If a tourist asked a local for directions, the local might say, “Go east three blocks, then south.” The tourist would be completely lost, unable to find cardinal north to save their life. But to the local, the directions were as obvious as up and down.

A Pathfinder possessed that ‘local’ intuition, but amplified to a supernatural degree. Even blindfolded and spun in circles, Chu Che always knew exactly where True North was.

Combined with the physical map, Chu Che could mentally chart a course through the blinding fog. The problem was that Pathfinders rarely got to choose their optimal routes; their paths were almost always dictated by the terrifying auras of the Anomalies they had to steer around.

“Bzzzt… We are officially crossing into Dawu City. Keep your eyes peeled, Yezi,” Chu Che’s voice crackled back. “If I ping anything dangerous, I’ll call it out immediately. Everyone, stay frosty. Cough, cough…”

Xiao Wang’s hacking interrupted the transmission.

Chen Ye swallowed hard, shifting the Doomsday Pickup into drive and easing onto the accelerator. The heavy truck parted the gray soup, crawling forward at a snail’s pace.

Driving in zero visibility felt like floating through an isolation tank. The silence was maddening. Occasionally, the truck’s reinforced bumper would scrape against an abandoned car or crush a pile of debris, the grinding metal echoing like gunshots in the dead air.

Every time it happened, Chen Ye’s knuckles turned white around the hilt of his Heavy Machete. He would slam the brakes and wait in agonizing silence until he was certain nothing had been drawn by the noise before inching forward again.

He wasn’t stupid enough to believe the silence meant the city was empty. In the post-apocalyptic world, a ruined metropolis without Anomalies was a statistical impossibility.

“Wait. Chen Ye, hold up…”

Chu Che’s voice suddenly hissed over the radio.

Chen Ye slammed the brakes so hard the ABS engaged. Behind him, Chu Che’s SUV fishtailed, stopping mere inches from rear-ending the pickup.

“Captain? Anomalies?” Chen Ye asked, his heart rate spiking.

“Yeah…”

Sitting in the SUV, Chu Che’s expression was deeply unsettled.

Before they had breached the city limits, his radar had been screaming. He had distinctly sensed multiple, terrifyingly massive auras lurking deep within the urban grid.

But as they crossed into the city proper, the supernatural signatures had… glitched.

The massive auras hadn’t vanished, but they were violently flickering in and out of his perception, like a radio signal losing its frequency.

It was deeply disturbing. He had never encountered a phenomenon that could jam his Sequence abilities.

First Law: Anomalies are indescribable, unfathomable, unclassifiable…

Chu Che knew that one day, he would inevitably encounter an Anomaly whose sheer conceptual weight completely bypassed his Pathfinder radar. He just hadn’t expected that day to be today.

He closed his eyes, focusing his entire consciousness on the supernatural currents for three agonizing minutes.

Finally, he keyed the mic. “It’s… fine. Keep moving.”

Chen Ye wasn’t buying it. “Captain Chu, we are literally driving blind into a death trap. Stop hiding the ball.”

Chu Che hesitated. “I’m picking up massive auras, but they’re unstable. They keep flickering in and out of my perception. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

A cold sweat broke out across Chen Ye’s back. “Captain, screw this. Let’s turn around and detour through the mountains. Iron Lion is a Sequence 2 Titan! He can definitely hold out for another week!”

“Too late for that,” Chu Che replied grimly. “I can clearly sense three distinct, massive auras actively closing in on our rear. Each one of them is projecting a threat level equal to the Eight-Limbed Human Face. If we turn back, we drive straight into them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Chen Ye wisely shut his mouth. He had no smoke clones charged up, and his machete was currently useless in the middle of a system upgrade. Driving backward into three apex predators was courting death.

The only way out was through.

The convoy crept forward, but Chen Ye’s speed dropped to an agonizing crawl.

Even Chu Che lost his patience. “Yezi, are we driving or taking a scenic stroll?”

“If you think you can do better, you take the lead!” Chen Ye snapped back.

“You…” Chu Che sighed, rubbing his temples.

He couldn’t really argue. Chen Ye was undeniably the most cowardly, self-preserving bastard he had ever met. The fact that the man was actually driving point into a haunted city was a miracle in itself. Pushing him to drive faster was a lost cause.

It was still baffling to Chu Che how a man with zero heroic qualities had managed to ascend to a Sequence 2 Beyonder.

Slowly, agonizingly, the convoy penetrated deeper into the urban sprawl of Dawu City.

Through the thick smog, the skeletal outlines of towering skyscrapers and ruined overpasses loomed like ghosts. Faded zebra crossings painted on the cracked asphalt confirmed they were navigating the main arterial roads.

As they navigated down a narrower commercial street, Chen Ye could barely make out the shattered neon signs hanging over the sidewalks: Dawu Beef Noodles, 24Hr Convenience, Internet Cafe.

The storefronts were gutted, their interiors pitch-black voids.

“Help… please, help me…”

An incredibly faint, raspy whisper suddenly drifted through the cracked window of the Doomsday Pickup.

Chen Ye flinched, a chill racing down his arms, but his foot remained perfectly steady on the gas. He didn’t speed up, and he certainly didn’t slow down.

He had literally just spent an entire night being psychologically tortured by Anomalies mimicking human voices on the highway. Only a braindead idiot would hit the brakes.

“Bzzzt… Chen Ye, stop the truck!” Chu Che suddenly yelled over the radio.

“Captain, what the hell?” Chen Ye hissed.

“Did you hear that? The cry for help!”

“Captain Chu, we are in the middle of a haunted, toxic city. Do you honestly think a random cry for help is legitimate?”

“Yezi, listen to me,” Chu Che’s voice trembled with sheer, unadulterated shock. “That’s not an Anomaly. My radar is completely clear. There is no supernatural aura attached to that voice. It’s a human… My god, there are actually living survivors in this city!”