Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 190: Uncle Abao, Xiao Wang, Goodbye!

Everywhere the convoy passed, the blurry, fog-formed figures lining the streets slowly turned their featureless heads, tracking the escaping vehicles with silent, chilling synchronization.

The only sound cutting through the dead air was the heavy crunch of tires rolling over ruined asphalt.

No one dared to speak.

Chen Ye drove the Doomsday Pickup like he was piloting a fighter jet. The massive, mismatched commercial cargo box strapped to the truck bed violently swayed and bucked with every sharp turn, nearly tearing itself free from the chassis several times. If he lost the box now, the system’s integration upgrade would undoubtedly fail, wasting thousands of Slaughter Points.

Desperate, Chen Ye commanded Hatred. Thick, writhing willow branches erupted from the blade’s scabbard, shooting out the window and lashing tightly around the steel box, physically binding it to the truck bed with supernatural force.

Something catastrophic was unfolding in Fog City. If they didn’t break past the city limits right now, they would be entombed here forever.

The convoy pushed their engines to the redline, tearing through the streets.

Gradually, the dense urban ruins began to thin out. The suffocating gray fog grew lighter, losing its oppressive density.

Sensing the shift, Chen Ye slowly eased off the accelerator.

The mist thralls were still present, but their numbers had drastically thinned.

As the Doomsday Pickup rolled past a scattered group of thralls, Chen Ye’s eye caught a familiar silhouette. The posture and build of one of the Anomalies looked uncannily like a survivor who had been lost during the initial chaos.

He stared hard at the swirling fog-head. For a fraction of a second, the gaunt, terrified face of the missing man flickered into existence within the mist, only to melt away into a gaping, silently screaming maw.

Suddenly, Chen Ye spotted a small cluster of figures standing completely still by the side of the road, just ahead of the gaunt thrall.

There were only about three to five of them.

The figure standing at the very front possessed a distinct, hunched posture that Chen Ye recognized instantly.

It was Uncle Abao.

The old man stood by the desolate roadside, his back permanently bowed. His head was nothing but a swirling vortex of gray mist, completely devoid of humanity. Yet, every few seconds, a tired, worldly-wise eye would briefly materialize in the fog, followed by the terrifying distortion of a screaming mouth.

Standing quietly just behind Uncle Abao was a thinner, shorter mist thrall.

Though its face was also a featureless void, Chen Ye knew exactly who it was. It was Xiao Wang, the convoy’s young assistant.

Xiao Wang had technically held a position of authority within the convoy, but Chen Ye had never once seen the kid abuse his power or bully the ordinary survivors. He remembered the grueling trek through the desert before they encountered the camel merchants. Chu Che had ordered Xiao Wang to stand atop a blistering sand dune and act as a lookout. The kid had obediently stood there in the lethal forty-degree heat, baking alive without a single word of complaint, just doing his job.

Behind the two of them stood several other blurry figures, likely the other survivors who hadn’t made it out of the Second Elementary School. Chen Ye didn’t recognize them.

As the Doomsday Pickup rolled past the small group, something bizarre happened.

Uncle Abao’s fog-head slowly tilted upward, “looking” directly at Chen Ye. For a fleeting second, the mist warped, forming the distinct image of the old man’s gentle, kind smile.

Behind him, Xiao Wang stood rigidly at attention, but his featureless head swiveled, perfectly tracking the movement of Chen Ye’s truck. Though he lacked a face, Chen Ye felt a strange, quiet certainty.

The kid was saying goodbye.

Chen Ye pumped the brakes, bringing the heavy pickup to a slow halt a short distance down the road.

They had finally breached the edge of the fog. The world ahead was clear. The surrounding landscape was lush with overgrown vegetation, the visibility stretching for miles toward distant, tree-capped mountains. Even the air felt lighter, stripped of the cloying, necrotic dampness of the city.

Warm, genuine sunlight spilled through the windshield, bathing the cabin in a comfortable glow.

Yet, for the very first time since the apocalypse began, Chen Ye felt a heavy, suffocating knot form in his chest.

He was a man who would cross any moral line to guarantee his own survival, but right now, a bitter, unspoken grief pressed down on his lungs. He couldn’t swallow it, and he couldn’t spit it out.

The sunlight suddenly felt harsh and blinding.

Chen Ye rummaged through the center console and pulled out a pair of dark aviator sunglasses he hadn’t worn in weeks. He slipped them on, completely hiding the terrifying, glowing crimson of his Blood Eye and the raw, weeping cavity of his right socket.

With the glasses on, he looked almost human again.

He stepped out of the truck, leaning against the door frame, and pulled a Tazi Cigarette from his pocket. He was running dangerously low on the premium Huazi Cigarettes; he needed to ration them.

He lit the cheap tobacco and took a long drag. As the blue smoke drifted into the clear air, the crushing weight in his chest eased slightly.

A hundred yards back down the road, Captain Chu Che’s reaction was entirely different.

When Chu Che laid eyes on the two familiar figures standing by the roadside, it was as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to his ribs.

His breath hitched violently. He couldn’t draw air into his lungs, and a sharp, burning sting flared in the back of his nose.

He recognized the other blurry figures standing behind them, too.

“Stop… hit the brakes!” Chu Che choked out.

Little Fu slammed his foot down, bringing the modified SUV to a screeching halt directly in front of the small group of mist thralls.

The rest of the convoy slowed to a stop behind them.

Chu Che shoved his door open and stumbled out onto the asphalt, his feet completely bare. In that single, agonizing moment, the brilliant, calculating Captain Chu Che looked ten years older. His spine, usually held with an arrogant, unyielding rigidness, slumped forward, making him look heartbreakingly similar to Uncle Abao.

He took a slow, trembling step toward the old man’s fog-formed body. He reached his hand out, desperately wanting to touch Uncle Abao’s shoulder.

His fingers passed right through the Anomaly, uselessly disturbing the gray mist.

He turned and tried to gently touch Xiao Wang’s head. The result was exactly the same.

Chu Che stood in dead silence before the ghosts of his men. His face was a mask of rigid stone, but his jaw muscles ticked furiously, and a deep, blotchy red flush spread rapidly up his neck.

He was the captain. If he broke down and wept in front of the survivors, the entire psychological foundation of the convoy would shatter. How could he lead them through hell if he couldn’t shoulder the grief?

He lowered his head, his arms hanging limp at his sides, his fingertips trembling violently.

“Is that… Uncle Abao?” Sun Qianqian had slipped out of the SUV and was standing next to Chu Che, staring in absolute horror. “How… how did he become a monster?”

“And Xiao Wang…” Her massive, beautiful eyes shook as tears welled up, her pupils blown wide with sheer disbelief.

When they had been separated at the school, she knew Uncle Abao was running on fumes. She had mentally prepared herself for the reality that the old man might succumb to exhaustion.

But seeing him physically warped into a mindless, immortal Anomaly was a horrific violation of reality. It severed her mind in two.

And Xiao Wang was so young. How could he…

“Anyone who dies within the thick fog eventually mutates into a mist thrall,” Chu Che said. His voice was terrifyingly calm, delivering the cruelest truth with clinical detachment. “Uncle Abao and Xiao Wang… they didn’t make it out.”

Sun Qianqian gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

Because neither Chen Ye, Chu Che, nor Sun Qianqian had died in the fog, they had never triggered the Anomaly’s conversion mechanic. They hadn’t known.

“Uncle Abao… what did they do to you?”

“Waaaaah! Xiao Wang!”

The first person to truly break the silence wasn’t Chu Che. It was the youngest survivor, Little Yu.

She stood by the convoy, bawling hysterically. A messy mix of tears and snot streamed down her face, dripping from her chin in long, unbroken strings.

If Uncle Abao had a single genuine friend in the entire convoy, it was Little Yu.

Chu Che was his commanding officer, not his friend. Chen Ye was a terrifying psychopath he actively avoided.

The dynamic was simple and heartbreakingly human. Uncle Abao had lost every single member of his blood family when the world ended. In his profound loneliness, he had quietly adopted the bright, innocent Little Yu as a surrogate granddaughter.

“Uncle Abao… Uncle Abao… Xiao Wang…” Little Yu sobbed uncontrollably.

A massive shadow fell over the little girl. Iron Lion had finally woken from his regenerative coma. He stepped out of the school bus and stood silently beside Little Yu like a mountain, his one remaining eye staring solemnly at the mist thralls.

Further down the line, Ding Dong slid out of the driver’s seat of the supply van.

She was the newest member of the convoy, but Uncle Abao had shown her immense kindness. When she first arrived, battered and terrified, it was Uncle Abao who had patiently explained the brutal rules of their survival. It was Uncle Abao who had gently advised her to seek shelter with Iron Lion’s faction. It was Uncle Abao who had personally handed her her first ration of supplies.

Every time she had looked at the old man, he had seemed so impossibly tired.

She never thought their final meeting would look like this.

One by one, the survivors slowly stepped out of their vehicles.

They stood in the road, staring at Uncle Abao, Xiao Wang, and the other blurry, familiar silhouettes. Every single pair of eyes was red and weeping.

Some survivors stepped forward, desperately trying to hug the mist thralls, only to fall through the empty vapor.

Others simply collapsed onto the asphalt, hugging their knees and wailing in utter despair.

The blurry figures simply stood there, entirely motionless. The occasional, agonizing flash of their human faces within the fog only twisted the knife deeper into the survivors’ hearts.

Xue Nan stood frozen by the Doomsday Pickup. He didn’t dare step forward.

His mind raced to his missing sister. Is she dead? Did she turn into one of these things, too? Did I just walk right past her in the fog without knowing?

No! He violently crushed the thought. She can’t be. She has to be alive. I can feel it!

Despite the sheer panic tearing through his mind, Xue Nan’s stitched face remained completely expressionless. He stepped forward and bowed deeply, perfectly bending at a ninety-degree angle toward Uncle Abao and Xiao Wang.

“Uncle Abao,” Xue Nan said, his voice rough. “I will do exactly as you did. I will guide them. We will survive until the end.”

Little Fu mirrored the gesture, bowing deeply beside Chu Che. “Uncle Abao. Xiao Wang. I… I promise I won’t let you down. I’ll do my job properly.”

At the very back of the crowd stood Zhou Xiaoxiao. Having lost her brilliant older sister and even her own vehicle, she possessed the lowest social standing in the entire convoy. She hadn’t been particularly close to Uncle Abao or Xiao Wang.

Yet, tears streamed silently down her face.

She realized the horrific truth. This was the inevitable end for all of them.

The only difference was the timing.

Chu Che closed his eyes. When he spoke, his voice carried an exhaustion that seemed to age his very soul. “Everyone. Get back in the vehicles.”

“Captain Chu!” Little Fu protested weakly.

“It’s an order,” Chu Che said quietly. “Let me stay with them for a minute. Just… three minutes.”

Little Yu scrubbed the tears from her face and allowed Iron Lion to gently guide her back onto the bus.

Little Fu reached into the SUV, put the vehicle in drive, and let it slowly idle forward a few dozen yards until it parked next to Chen Ye’s pickup.

The rest of the convoy slowly rolled past the small group of mist thralls.

Every single survivor who passed by Uncle Abao and Xiao Wang stopped their vehicle and bowed deeply in respect. Even the heavily pregnant woman awkwardly leaned out her window to bow her head.

Just as the final vehicle cleared the thralls, a sound ripped through the dead air.

It was an earth-shattering, apocalyptic roar—something massive, ancient, and undeniably draconic—echoing from the absolute depths of Fog City.

The sheer concussive force of the sound caused the entire ocean of dense fog blanketing the city to violently churn and surge.