Chapter 338: Chapter 328: Xiao Jin’s Wishes

Later, the school organized a large-scale sketching trip into the mountains. Aside from the upperclassmen preparing for their college entrance exams, most of the students attended.

The location for the trip was an extremely remote scenic area in Huaxia. Despite its remoteness, the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful. Such an undisturbed environment was perfect for the students to focus on their art.

To ensure the students could make the most of this opportunity, the school had made arrangements with the authorities beforehand. They constructed several temporary foam-board houses to accommodate the students for the month-long sketching trip.

Because the location was so remote, there was only a single path leading up the mountain. A dedicated delivery person would bring them a fresh batch of food every three days.

This was no small expense, but it was a school for the elite, after all—and not just any elite school. Between the school’s influence and the power of the students’ parents, such a trivial matter was barely worth mentioning.

The group was led by the principal and a few teachers, along with over a hundred students. Among them, of course, was Xiao Jin, who loved painting more than life itself.

The first week after their arrival passed peacefully, but during the second week, the sky suddenly went dark and the ground began to shake with earthquakes.

This was a mountainous region, surrounded on all sides by towering peaks. An earthquake here was an unimaginably terrifying event.

Fortunately, there were no large-scale landslides, and the area within a few hundred meters of where the students were staying remained safe.

They were situated on a plateau halfway up the largest mountain in the area. If this mountain collapsed, none of them would make it out alive.

When daylight returned, everyone discovered that the only path down the mountain was blocked. "Blocked" wasn’t quite accurate; it was more like it had vanished completely. There was no way to even start digging, as massive boulders were scattered everywhere.

Their cell phones had no signal. They were completely trapped.

Right before the signal died, Xiao Jin received one last message from her father on WeChat.

[Xiao Jin, your mom’s had a relapse. Come back quickly.]

Tang Mo sighed silently. ’Isn’t this just pushing the poor girl to her breaking point?’

The path was blocked, but the hundred-plus people trapped there—be they teachers or students—were far from ordinary.

The parents quickly began to pull their strings. Excavating the road would be a massive undertaking, but at the very least, they could get information and supplies to their precious children trapped on the mountain.

In the first few days, countless planes circled over the towering mountain ranges, dropping supplies as if they were free.

The terrain made it impossible for helicopters to land, so airdrops were the only way to carry out a temporary rescue.

However, Xiao Jin and the others were on a plateau halfway up the mountain. It was difficult to accurately airdrop supplies to their location from a safe altitude. Most of the packages ended up caught on the mountainside or falling into the ravine below.

Only a tiny fraction of it reached them.

But even from the information included with that small amount of supplies, they learned what was happening in the outside world.

For some unknown reason, ever since that night of world-shaking cataclysm, the world’s plants had begun to wither and livestock were dying off one by one...

Tang Mo understood immediately upon reading this. ’The beginning is just like in my world,’ she thought. ’Another age of famine.’

But...

Tang Mo searched through this stretch of memory for a long time, but she couldn’t find any mention of mutant beasts.

’But then again,’ she quickly realized, ’this is a parallel world. Anything is possible.’

Besides, the apocalypse here had just begun. It was still early.

Because of that last WeChat message, Xiao Jin was desperate for news from home, desperate to know how her mother was doing.

So every time a supply package was dropped, she would be the first to rush forward, hoping to see if it was from her father.

She knew that given her lack of popularity, if someone else found a package meant for her, they wouldn’t tell her anything about its contents. She could only rely on herself.

However, Xiao Jin’s behavior only angered the other students more. In these times, supplies meant Life. Everyone had agreed that all supplies would be collected and distributed evenly by the principal and teachers. So why was she so eager to grab them first?

Even though Xiao Jin never actually took anything from the packages, her behavior of rushing to find and open them first made everyone despise her even more.

Despite her efforts, Xiao Jin never found a package from her father.

Three weeks had now passed since the apocalypse began in this world.

And her fainting this time was a direct result of that search. She had been looking for packages, wandered to this spot, and collapsed from exhaustion and hunger.

At this point, the memory came to a complete end.

’It seems this apocalypse is pretty easy,’ Tang Mo thought. ’If it’s just a matter of surviving hunger, this will be a piece of cake for me.’

After all, she had already checked—she could still open her personal space.

’Then what’s the mission for this space?’ Tang Mo asked internally.

She knew she could only leave by completing the mission. If it were just a matter of survival, there would be no end in sight.

"The mission is to fulfill Xiao Jin’s two wishes. As the theme of this world is hunger, for the sake of fairness, all players entering this space are forbidden from using their spatial attribute or any Space Treasure. Any use will result in mission failure."

Mission failure meant being erased from this world. Tang Mo knew that.

’But if I can’t use it, you should have just sealed it away! What kind of cruel rule is this, dangling it right in front of me but forbidding me from using it?!’

Tang Mo felt an urge to curse.

But no matter what Tang Mo said, the voice remained silent, as if it had vanished.

’Still, they’re airdropping food,’ she thought. ’Finding something to eat shouldn’t be too difficult.’

Overall, Tang Mo’s outlook was still quite optimistic. After all, she had weathered great storms before. A small hardship like this was nothing to her.

Two wishes...

Tang Mo thought carefully about everything she knew about Xiao Jin.

’The first wish must be related to her family. She loved them so much; she must have felt so hopeless, unable to get any news about her gravely ill mother.’

’And the second wish... to get out of here?’

’No, that’s not right. Xiao Jin hasn’t been trapped here for very long. The desire to escape probably hasn’t become an obsession for her yet.’

’Besides, the principal received word that people on the outside have already started clearing a new path. They’re expected to be out in three months.’

’Then what could Xiao Jin’s other wish be?’

Tang Mo replayed the recent memory in her mind. A large portion of it was dedicated to one thing: Xiao Jin’s plagiarized painting!

If it had merely been plagiarized, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. The crucial part was that the person who stole her work was the only person Xiao Jin had ever considered a friend.

When betrayal, plagiarism, criticism, and ridicule all crashed down on a young girl at once...

’That’s it! It has to be about that painting!’

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