Chapter 522: Chapter 517: Those Bygone Days (Part 1)
Ji Ning didn’t like the family records; the characters on them were hard to recognize and difficult to write. Even though she was the smartest child in the village, she still hated studying.
But when the old clan leader gave her the family records, symbolizing the clan leader’s status, she had to carry it, as it represented that she would be the clan leader of the Ji Family in the future.
In her clan, earth burials were common. She didn’t have the strength to move those stones, so she buried the exposed, dead clan members and erected a large wooden board that could be found outside the village.
Facing the characters on the family records, she carved the names of all the deceased clan members with a small knife.
The Ji Family Village was deep in Jiuming Mountain, with few outsiders ever setting foot there, and no one knew how the shells accurately sent her entire village away.
After burying the clansmen, she left once again, carrying dry food and water on her back.
She had never emerged from this mountain forest, only often heard the adults talking about how to get out of the forest, and groped her way forward based on these memories.
She didn’t know how long she had walked until her food was almost gone when she finally found a small river.
It was here that she encountered the old professor, who was fleeing with his young grandson.
He was dragging a heavy suitcase, and with his grandson drank water by the river.
Upon seeing her, the old professor was very surprised and thought she was a child who had gotten lost from her parents, and kindly offered to take her along to escape.
"In a while, my son will send a car to pick us up, you just follow us."
The old professor’s son was an official at the Jiuming Mountain Base, and they were transferring to the south this time.
Because of his skills, the old professor had been temporarily summoned into service by the base, but because his grandson was the only one left at home, he was unwilling to entrust him to others and brought him along.
In a hurry, they had brought less water; the grandson was complaining about wanting water, so the old professor could only ask the driver to temporarily park, and he took his grandson to find water near the road, happening to encounter Ji Ning, who had come upon the sound of water.
Perhaps this was a destined encounter.
Ji Ning was taken onto the base car by the old professor and through several transfers, arrived at the Nanling Battlefield.
The old professor was a knowledgeable military doctor, very proficient in botany and pharmacology.
Nanling Battlefield wasn’t different in many ways, except that it had many plants.
The old professor could gather materials locally to make medicines.
When the war was not tense, he would give lessons to orphans rescued within the camp about literacy and recognizing medicinal herbs.
Upon discovering Ji Ning’s gift of photographic memory, he taught her even more knowledge and let her read all the treasured books he had.
Once a battle started, it would fall into an endless tug of war, with more and more wounded in the camp, making the old professor often too busy to take care of them.
Ji Ning’s high intelligence and mature personality often made the old professor forget her age, treating her as half an adult, and entrusted some children saved to her care.
Ji Ning learned to handle simple tasks like trauma and burn treatment through large amounts of practice.
Days passed like this until someone awakened a superpower.
It was an ordinary soldier with severe injuries, who was brought in barely alive. The old professor immediately arranged for surgery and even had Ji Ning help brew medicine.
Ji Ning remembered the wounded soldier; he was the driver who picked up the old professor and was very considerate towards his grandson and herself.
Ji Ning didn’t want him to die, but in her haste, she accidentally cut her hand while cutting herbs, her fresh blood dripping onto the herbs.
She quickly rinsed the herbs with clean water before putting them into the medicine pot.
Whether her wishes played a role or not, the severely injured soldier’s condition improved day by day, until one day suddenly awakening a superpower.
It was the highly destructive Fire Ability.
His situation quickly was known by those above, and many came to investigate and research.
Ji Ning watched him have tube after tube of blood drawn, seeing his face turn pale and gave him some blood nourishing herbs to drink.
But it didn’t last long because he wasn’t an isolated case; more people in the camp started awakening superpowers, increasingly so.
Researchers found that people with stronger physical abilities were more likely to awaken.
In hopes of more people awakening superpowers to be thrown into the battlefield’s meat grinder.
Gradually scarce resources began to lean towards physically strong men, while children like Ji Ning, along with weak women and the elderly were allocated fewer resources.
The old professor’s long-feared situation still occurred.
He had worried that as the war stalemated and resources grew scarcer, patients and weak people in the camp wouldn’t be able to escape quickly and would become burdens to be abandoned.
He painstakingly taught the children to identify plants edible in the wild, to gather edible wild vegetables and berries as long as it was still safe, but these would eventually be exhausted.
As Pollution Zone expanded, the fronts gradually retreated.
Their camp relocated repeatedly.
Finally—
One morning, a precisely targeted shell from an enemy force fell within the camp; the enormous explosion turned the camp into hell on earth.
The old professor had to lead the children in fleeing like headless chickens.
They moved through forests, slept in ruins, fought with wild beasts, scrambled for food with fellow countrymen...
Chaos was cruel, driving people to act unhuman.
Even someone as kind-hearted as the old professor had to turn his scalpel on living people.
Ji Ning wandered for nearly a year beside the old professor, finally stopping in a relatively quiet forest deep in Nanling.
They enjoyed a brief period of peace without war flames.
The air here was relatively clean; during the day, the old professor would take the children to gather wild vegetables and fruits to stave off hunger, occasionally using traps to catch some small animals for a meal. At night, he taught them various knowledge, hoping they would awaken superpowers one day.
He speculated that with the emergence of superpower users, the future world order would surely change, and he hoped the children would awaken soon, striving to survive in the chaotic times.
Yet, such a good man was mercilessly killed by the superpower user he admired.
To avoid complete disconnection from the outside world, the old professor would disguise himself from time to time to gather intelligence outside the forest.
If lucky, he could even find some preserved food from houses with no inhabitants.
On this day, he had again ventured out in search of news and food, coincidentally encountering a fully armed group.
They were also gathering supplies nearby. The hidden old professor saw someone among them merely wave their hand for the items in the house to disappear.
The old professor desperately wanted to rush out and ask if they were superpower users, but for safety, he remained hidden, only emerging after the group left, carrying the found food back to the forest.
What he didn’t know was that a superpower user in the group had long discovered his hiding place, just waiting for the old professor to lead them to his hideout.
In a chaotic world, there was no order and the strong preyed upon the weak as commonplace occurrences.
Without resources, one simply robs others; this group harbored such intent.
Initially, they thought the old professor’s hideout might be some small village, potentially allowing them to raid, but they didn’t expect him to venture into deep woods, further moving inward.
Almost losing themselves in the vast forest, the leader grew agitated, hastening his actions that facilitated the cautious old professor to detect their presence.
Alarm bells instantly rang in the old professor’s mind; he silently led them on diversions through the forest.
Once distancing them sufficiently, he took a shortcut to the temporary settlement.
"Quick, hide, someone’s coming..."
