Chapter 6: Exploration of the Cave

Together with her friends, she climbed the back mountain. The path up the mountain was quite clean, mostly because the fallen pine needles were regularly collected and used as kindling; here, pine trees dominated, and pine needles were excellent for starting fires.

Once they reached the mountain, everyone quickly scattered. After all, they came here often, so everyone knew where to find wild fruits—though whether they tasted good was another matter. Perhaps it was the soil, or something else; some fruits were juicy and sweet, while others were dry and tasteless.

Mu Yin wandered toward places she remembered. The black riceberry was seedless, while the red myrtle had seeds. Generally, the black riceberry was considered better, but in terms of taste, the red myrtle was sweeter—of course, only if you found the variety with thick flesh and a small pit, not the thin-skinned ones.

The black riceberries needed to be large and black for the best flavor; the small, red ones were usually dry and full of pulp. Before long, the group had crossed several hills, and Mu Yin’s basket was already quite full, packed with the choicest, most delicious red myrtles and black riceberries she could find.

Today, they’d wandered farther than usual, ending up at the other end of the village. “Why is there a cave here?” Chen Hui, Bai Ling’s younger brother, asked as they passed a narrow path and spotted a dark, ominous cave mouth.

“Oh, that? I heard it was dug long ago to hide from the enemy soldiers,” answered Yan Zi, Lily’s older sister, who was among the oldest at fourteen, while her sister was twelve.

“Enemy soldiers? Tell us more, Sister Yan Zi!” The children’s interest was instantly piqued; their only knowledge of such things came from war dramas, where the enemy soldiers were always portrayed as fools.

Mu Yin listened as Yan Zi spun her tale, but her attention kept returning to the cave. She sensed something unusual emanating from within. If she were alone, she’d definitely go in and take a look—what was there to fear about the dark, after all? She had survived until the very end of the apocalypse, crawling and fighting; darkness held no terror for her.

“Is it true that our elementary school is built over a mass grave?” At some point, the conversation had drifted to this topic.

“Yes, someone said they saw skeletons in the cave under the school,” Yan Zi replied.

Mu Yin thought back to the school. It was separated from the main road by a small hollow, only about ten meters wide, with fields below. There were a few caves on the slope near the school, but skeletons? Weren’t those just cellars where the adults stored sweet potatoes?

She looked to the sky, exasperated, as they continued along another path to yet another hilltop. After a day running around the mountains, her basket was completely full.

At noon, none of them returned home; they simply feasted on black riceberries, which sufficed for a meal. The fruits Mu Yin had picked were the best and were praised by everyone.

Back home, her family also complimented her. Mu Yin was delighted. In the future she’d come from, she hadn’t eaten much at all. Pollution had become severe, with plants and animals dying off one after another, and the variety of edible food dwindling constantly. Even without the apocalypse, humanity wouldn’t have lasted long.

Ironically, the apocalypse had initially brought about a kind of revival. After mutation, plants and animals were in some ways better than before—at least they were edible. Before mutation, eating anything risked poisoning or infection.

She had never eaten anything like this before. Secretly, she vowed she would never let Blue Star descend into that state again. It was a complex problem she needed to ponder carefully.

Though alien interference had played a part in the planet’s decline, humanity’s failure to protect their mother planet was also to blame.

Unfortunately, before the apocalypse, she had studied biology, not engineering, so she couldn’t reproduce the purification products developed later. Those hadn’t been especially effective anyway. But right now, there was still time to make a difference.

She only knew the underlying principles, not the actual process. Still, she could take another approach, like cultivating plants capable of absorbing pollutants. Such mutated plants had appeared after the apocalypse; perhaps she could nurture something similar.

As she pondered this, she ate her dinner, then quickly put down her chopsticks. “I’m done!”

“Don’t eat so fast—it's bad for your digestion,” Zhou Qi couldn’t help but chide her.

“I know,” Mu Yin replied with a smile, and dashed off. Though her family had split into separate households, there was only one staircase in the house, right in the middle at her uncle’s place.

“Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle, Aunt!” She called out as she ran into the main room, where her uncle’s family and her grandparents were eating.

“Finished already?” Dong Feng asked when he saw her.

“Yes, I’m heading upstairs. Enjoy your meal,” Mu Yin said, already thumping up the stairs.

“This child is always in such a hurry,” Dong Feng shook his head.

“That’s how she stays healthy,” Zhang Yi laughed, feeding a spoonful of rice to his daughter.

Back in her room, Mu Yin first practiced a set of physical exercises, then moved on to cultivation techniques. Once a thread of primordial energy had circulated through her body and returned to her dantian, she lay down to rest. The next day was Sunday. She secretly took her father’s powerful flashlight—the kind that ran on a water battery, not dry cells or charging—and made her way to the cave.

She shone the beam into the pitch-black entrance. The cave was damp, with a small stream running through it. She kept to the margin, slowly venturing deeper.

By rights, the cave shouldn’t have been very deep; it was called a tunnel, but it was more like an air-raid shelter. Yet Mu Yin kept descending for a long time, feeling herself going deeper and deeper.

Could she have struck it lucky, and found a passage to the earth’s core? Her imagination ran wild, though she knew she was being fanciful. Soon enough, she reached the end—but the scene before her took her breath away.

“What is this…” It should have been pitch dark ahead, but instead there was a faint light, seeping through a crack. Through that slit, she could make out shadowy figures moving.

She had heard that Blue Star was once the center of the universe, not only possessing origin energy, but also connected to other worlds. She had only ever heard cultivators speak of such things—never seen them herself. Yet here, in the very place where she had been reborn, she had found a spatial gateway.