Chapter 129: The Riverbed Sinkhole

"Did you see anyone from the county shelter as you passed through?" "We've lost contact with them for almost 24 hours and have no idea what's going on there."

The voice on the radio was both anxious and apprehensive, carrying the weight of someone desperate for news about loved ones.

"Why didn't you check it out yourselves?" Su Wu asked.

"The temperatures are too high, and we don't have the means to leave the shelter safely. But if we don't hear anything soon, we're planning to send a team on foot to investigate," the voice explained honestly.

"You don't need to bother," Su Wu replied. "The radiation levels in the county are dozens of times higher than normal. No protective suit will save you—anyone who goes there will be dead within minutes."

He didn't mince words, laying out the brutal truth.

"What about the people in the shelter? Do you have any information on them?"

The man's voice trembled slightly, as if he already suspected the worst but didn't want to face it.

"They're all dead," Su Wu stated bluntly. "I scanned the area with radar. All the equipment in the shelter has shut down, and there's no sign of life."

The line went silent. Only faint sounds of sobbing could be heard in the background.

After a long pause, a middle-aged woman's shaky voice came through, her grief barely contained.

"Did they suffer... when they died?"

"They wouldn't have felt much," Su Wu said cautiously. "The radiation levels there are so high that the shelter couldn't block it. Within a few minutes of the disaster, everyone likely fell into a deep coma. There wouldn't have been any pain."

Again, silence filled the channel. It wasn't until almost thirty seconds later that the man spoke again, his voice hoarse and unsteady.

"Sorry about that... She's just upset. Her son went to the county shelter yesterday to trade for some medicine to help with her illness. Now... this."

The man's voice cracked, the weight of his loss evident.

"I see," Su Wu replied quietly. "Do you have any working phones left? I can send you a copy of the footage I captured from the city. That way, you'll know what happened without risking your lives by going there."

Moved by a pang of sympathy, Su Wu decided to share the vehicle's camera footage and radar scans with the shelter, hoping it would dissuade them from making any rash decisions.

"Yes, we do," the man replied, though his tone faltered when he added, "Yang Dajie still has the phone her son bought her recently—" He caught himself mid-sentence, realizing the mention of her son might be painful. Changing course, he focused on expressing his gratitude. "Thank you. Really, thank you for telling us the truth."

"Just don't blame me for bringing bad news," Su Wu sighed. He disliked witnessing moments of loss and grief; the emotional weight was too heavy to bear.

Once out of the county, Su Wu adjusted the base vehicle's route slightly, steering it toward a northwestern road that bypassed the mountainous areas north of Jianghe City. Although this detour added some distance to his journey, it promised smoother terrain, allowing for quicker overall travel.

After traveling another 50 to 60 kilometers, Su Wu noticed a significant drop in temperature. At times, the thermometer dipped below 80 degrees, settling into a more tolerable range of 70 degrees.

"It seems global temperatures vary greatly," Su Wu mused. "If the difference is this obvious within a couple hundred kilometers, it must be even more dramatic on a global scale."

He wondered if somewhere on the planet, there might still be habitable areas where surface conditions were less extreme. After all, according to the data he had, radiation only affected certain continents and regions, while extreme heat was the only truly global catastrophe.

"I just don't know enough," Su Wu lamented. At that moment, he wished he had access to a reconnaissance satellite to get a clearer picture of the planet's current state.

On the morning of August 6th, Su Wu woke to find that the base vehicle, which he had set to autopilot, had stopped moving. In front of the vehicle stood a twisted and broken bridge spanning a dry riverbed.

The way forward was blocked.

"I'll have to go down into the riverbed," Su Wu muttered, deploying a reconnaissance drone to survey the area around the bridge.

The drone revealed that the bridge was in worse shape than it appeared from a distance; crossing it was out of the question. Beneath the bridge, the once-mighty river had completely dried up, leaving behind a vast, sandy bed.

Su Wu redirected the base vehicle along the river's upper course, eventually finding a sloped path leading into the riverbed near the remains of a third collapsed bridge.

As soon as the vehicle entered the riverbed, Su Wu felt it sink slightly. The riverbed's soil was far less stable than the ground he had been traveling on, struggling to support the vehicle's massive weight of 200 to 300 tons.

Turning back wasn't an option.

Su Wu maximized the power of the vehicle's radar, carefully identifying the sturdiest sections of the riverbed to use as supports. Progress was slow, but the vehicle moved steadily forward.

After only a few hundred meters, disaster struck.

The front section of the base vehicle sank into a hidden sinkhole, sending the entire structure lurching violently. A cascade of sand and debris buried most of the panoramic glass at the front of the driver's cabin, leaving only a narrow slit a few centimeters wide through which Su Wu could see the sky.

"Well, this is unlucky," Su Wu muttered, frustrated but not panicked.

A quick inspection revealed that the vehicle had suffered no significant damage

, but its bottom was now buried nearly six meters deep in sand and gravel.

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