Sun Hang opened the car door, jumped out, and walked around the vehicle.

The condition of the off-road vehicle was fairly good. Except for the many new collision marks on the front, there weren't any other issues—gotta say, having a good reputation really worked in his favor. If it were someone else's car, daring to crash through a checkpoint like this, it would've already been blasted into a beehive by automatic weapons.

At the very least, the tires would definitely have been obliterated.

Yet none of the soldiers dared to stop him, allowing him to drive to this ghostly place by sheer persistence.

The remaining fuel in the vehicle was still plentiful, more than enough to drive back to Tianfu City along the original route. However, behind the car, the tire tracks only extended for a dozen meters or so before disappearing without a trace.

Sun Hang also wasn't sure if, while unconscious, he might have changed directions… If so, following this short segment of tire tracks back could actually lead him further into the Surrendered Area.

"Anna?" Sun Hang called out, "Anna Demosheva?"

No response.

Sun Hang looked into the distance, vaguely seeing the outlines of mountains beneath the dark sky—but unfortunately, he wasn't familiar enough with the terrain surrounding Shuzhou to determine his location just by glancing at the shapes of the surrounding mountains… Not to mention, in Sun Hang's view, all those distant mountains looked pretty much the same.

A lot of mountains surrounded Tianfu City as well, and to Sun Hang, they all looked the same too.

Sun Hang sighed, instinctively wanting to summon the Liquid Metal Blade to hover beside him… But soon, he realized the problem.

The Liquid Metal Blade had solidified, transforming into a hard wristband firmly attached to his forearm.

He tried to summon the mycelium, but there was no response whatsoever.

He drew a knife and sliced the pad of his thumb. A slight burning pain accompanied by crimson blood seeping from the wound.

The wound did not heal, and the pain did not dissipate.

Sun Hang furrowed his brow, took a step back, and leaned against the door of the off-road vehicle.

He realized that all his "abilities"… seemed to have vanished.

He wasn't sure if the meme inside him had disappeared… because he didn't even possess the ability to sense memes anymore.

"Have I returned to being a normal person?" Sun Hang sucked on the blood on his thumb, mumbling in his heart, "Is this the real world… or another layer of nested dreams?"

If it's a dream, what should he do to break free from it?

Sun Hang looked at the hunting pistol holstered in his gun holster.

He pulled out the gun, turned the muzzle, and aimed it at his head.

The cold metal pressed against his chin, and with just a bit more force on the trigger finger, Sun Hang's head would burst like a watermelon dropping from a great height.

No, not just the head… With the power of this gun, having lost those special abilities, it could tear his entire upper body apart.

Only the parts below the waist would remain intact, with flecks of blood and flesh splattering like paint on the ground beneath and the body of the off-road vehicle.

Sun Hang took a deep breath and then put down the gun.

His intuition told him this was not a dream.

"In that case, why not just kill me directly instead of leading me to a place like this?" Sun Hang deactivated the gun's safety, "Could it be because… they can't kill me?"

"I've lost all meme abilities… As I am now, just an ordinary person. There's no reason they can't kill me."

"But when I had the gun aimed at myself, that feeling was just too intense… It was as if they intended to induce me into suicide… I even seemed to hear a laugh of triumph…"

"And, when I put down the gun, that sigh of disappointment tinged with anger."

"Was it an illusion? Maybe it was."

Sun Hang looked around again, opened the car door, and sat back inside.

"If I were to commit suicide, the Three Apes would definitely come to stop me, wouldn't they?"

"Which brings up a possibility…"

"Did the existence that lured me here and the Three Apes perish together to strip away my abilities?"

"So there's no effort left to finish me off?"

"Or to put it another way… without abilities, I'm already no different from a normal person. Whether to get rid of me or not makes no difference, and it's better to toss me here to fend for myself rather than waste energy?"

Sun Hang took another deep breath, then cast these tangled thoughts out of his mind.

There were only two things he needed to do now.

First, survive. Second, return to a place belonging to human civilization.

After rummaging under the seat for a while, he found a medical kit that had been flattened, extracting a band-aid of unknown expiry from it—fortunately, the band-aid's adhesive hadn't expired.

"Damn… I got used to having self-healing abilities, didn't have to cut this deep." Sun Hang cursed as he bandaged the wound on his thumb, then reclined the seatback of the driver's side and crawled into the second row of seats.

Beneath the second row of seats was an emergency weapon box, inside which was a fully accessorized short assault rifle, three boxes of 100-round ammunition, and six grenades compatible with the under-barrel launcher… In the event of encountering a monstrosity, this rifle's firepower would definitely be more formidable than that seven-bullet hunting pistol without spare magazines in Sun Hang's hand.

Of course, that is assuming the bullets can affect that monstrosity.

"Weapons, medicine… and water and food…" Sun Hang meticulously inventoried the vehicle's supplies. Although many items stored on the vehicle had expired, military-grade canned goods and compressed biscuits, despite having a shelf life of only three years, won't go bad even after thirty years in a sealed environment… They just might taste worse.

This wilderness gave Sun Hang a strong sense of depleted resources, with cloddy, cracked soil, lifeless shrubs… Coupled with this perpetual night, finding safe food in the wild seemed as unlikely as having Yang Lian do a pole dance in a bunny costume for him in the office… The latter might still be possible in the future, but the former…

"Compressed biscuits seem more reliable." Sun Hang reorganized the supplies, securing the loaded assault rifle to the co-pilot seat he could reach with a seat belt, then pulled out a marker to draw the first stroke of a Chinese character meaning "one" on the lower-left corner of the windshield.

"Wilderness survival, day one, 9:17 a.m., location unknown." Sun Hang muttered to himself, "Phone battery at 72%, fuel tank at 60%, two spare fuel tanks full. Ammo left: 300 rifle rounds, 7 pistol rounds, 6 grenades. Food estimate enough for one week… Water might be a problem since even if conserving usage, there could be just enough for three days."

"Too bad there's no water filtration system in Yang Qi's vehicle… the water sources in the Surrendered Area are extremely hazardous. If after three days I haven't made it back to Shuzhou… I might have to resort to drinking my own urine."

"Immediate tasks, find the right direction; secondly, identify my location, gather resources, and avoid possible threats."

"First, explore a distance of one kilometer in one direction, then return here." Sun Hang memorized the distribution and shape of the surrounding shrubs, then turned the car around, driving in the direction of the ten-meter-long tire track "back."

Sun Hang drove very slowly, maintaining a tortoise speed of 25 miles per hour—the off-road vehicle had searchlights installed in four directions besides the headlights. Once all these searchlights were turned on, an area within at least a 50-meter radius around the off-road vehicle could be illuminated.

Light always brings a bit of psychological comfort in darkness.

Yet likewise, in the dark, the sole light source can make one a target.

[End of Volume 1]