Huang Jinghe agreed at once. "They must have treated the road somehow. Not a single patch of ice here, and it's far too clean. Without treatment, no way it'd look like this."
But that wasn't the real point. The strange part was, when they were sitting in the car earlier, it felt like they were close to the H City Base once they saw its walls in the distance. They thought it was only a short walk. Yet after getting out, it took more than forty minutes on foot before they finally saw the base's gate. And the feeling—carrying their skates and gear in hand, unable to use them because the ground was bare soil—was especially frustrating.
It was lucky they were all in good shape. Anyone else might have collapsed halfway.
All four of them lit up with excitement when they spotted the gate. They pointed toward it and picked up their pace, walking quickly in its direction.
But as they drew closer, several soldiers emerged from the gate and moved to block them, their faces stern.
The expression alone made Lan Jin start to wonder if they had come to the wrong place. She glanced past the soldiers at the base's gate and asked in a low voice, "Excuse me, is this the H City Base?"
An older soldier looked her over before replying, "Yes. Official base of H City. Are you here to register for residence?"
"Yes."
After Lan Jin answered, the soldier said nothing more. He didn't ask questions or let them in. They simply stood there, a standoff in silence.
After a long moment, the soldier gave them another look, frowning. "How did you get here? From your accent, you're not locals."
Lan Jin pointed toward the tools in Lao Gao's and Huang Jinghe's hands. "We're from J City. Left from the J City Base and skated our way here. Of course, not all the way—we caught a ride part of the way when we met a passing car."
Back when they went to the J City Base, they had applied for temporary residence permits. Official bases shared a connected system, so lying about something like this would never work. Once they registered here, the truth would be obvious. Lan Jin had no reason to hide it.
Besides, they had used these skating tools to get to J City before, and it wasn't as if they would throw them away just to come to H City. But there was no way they could skate all the way here in just a few days. So they had to claim they'd been picked up partway. As for who had given them the lift—well, in the apocalypse, no one asked too many questions.
Her explanation was clear and easy to verify, so the soldier didn't seem suspicious. Still, he asked, "So how did you walk to the base?"
"We just walked here," Lan Jin answered, thinking he hadn't understood her. "When there was ice, we skated. After it was just dirt roads, the skates didn't work, so we walked."
But that wasn't what the soldier meant. "On the way here, you didn't encounter anything?"
That left them genuinely baffled. The truth was, the road had been too smooth. They hadn't run into anything at all.
Lan Jin asked in confusion, "Was there some kind of checkpoint halfway? We didn't see anything."
She had barely finished speaking when a chorus of low, guttural "coo" sounds rose behind them. The noise was loud enough to put every soldier at the gate on edge.
In an instant, the place turned chaotic. Those with batons raised them. Those with rifles took aim. Every eye was on them—and on whatever was behind them.
Lan Jin had never seen such a tense reaction. She instinctively raised her hands as if she were a dangerous criminal. But the soldier who had been speaking to them suddenly shouted, urgency in his voice, "Quick, inside! Get inside, now!"
Before she could respond, he grabbed Lan Jin and pulled her behind him.
The moment she stepped into the shelter of the gate, the dead branches of the trees nearby began to rustle.
Without warning, more than a dozen massive rabbits leapt from the branches.
To be fair, normal rabbits—small, plump, soft—were adorable. But these were nearly the size of Nana, and there was nothing cute about them.
Lan Jin only glanced back once before her eyes went wide in shock.
Cute or not didn't matter anyway. From the way these rabbits moved, their aggression was obvious.
And she was right. These mutant rabbits weren't just aggressive—they were one of the most troublesome pests for the H City Base.
At that moment, everyone outside the base gate was already locked in as their prey.
Within seconds, the rabbits landed and charged straight at them.
The soldiers rushed forward, weapons ready, firing at the rabbits. But while the rabbits were large, they were astonishingly fast. Nine shots out of ten missed entirely, and even when a bullet hit, their thick, tough fur absorbed much of the impact. The best it did was make them flinch before they came right back at their targets.
Seeing the soldiers struggle, the four newcomers exchanged a quick look and then joined the fight, unleashing their abilities.
Ling Jiang, with her ice powers, froze several rabbits in a thick shell of frost. But these creatures were born in the extreme cold, their fur offering extraordinary insulation. Her ice slowed them for only a short time before they broke free.
Lao Gao's fire powers, on the other hand, worked far better. Cold-adapted or not, no living thing was immune to fire. When Lao Gao set their fur alight, flames spread fast over their bodies. Other rabbits scrambled to smother the flames, retreating as they did.
Once the burning was extinguished, the rabbits' eyes burned with even greater fury.
They would remember this.
Lan Jin called to Huang Jinghe, "Xiao Huang, spray them with water. Get the ground wet too—water conducts electricity. Should work."
At once, Huang Jinghe summoned a wave of water. As it spread, Lan Jin channeled her lightning into it.
The combination caught the rabbits off guard. Several spasmed violently before collapsing to the ground.
The soldiers stared in disbelief. The pests that had plagued them for so long had just been dropped in seconds.
Lan Jin turned to them. "They're probably not dead. Want to tie them up? If not, we'll just burn them here."
"Don't," a soldier behind her called quickly. "They're edible. I'll get them tied up and sent to the kitchen."