52: Chapter 52 The Journey

Chen Mo found a hotel near the high-speed railway station in Yi City.

The room was small, with just a bed and a table, and the night lights of the plaza visible outside the window.

He put down his backpack and called his uncle.

"Uncle, the old house is going to be vacated. I'm leaving early tomorrow morning and won't have time to go back."

"Please help me look after the moving company; have them take all the furniture and appliances."

"I'll send you the contact information for the relocation housing on your phone in a moment."

His uncle was silent for a moment, then agreed.

After a few more words of caution about staying safe, Chen Mo acknowledged them one by one and hung up.

He edited the contact information for the relocation housing and the moving instructions into a single message and sent it to his uncle.

He finished his daily training, washed up, and turned off the lights.

In the darkness, the light from outside filtered through the gap in the curtains, cutting a thin line across the ceiling.

He closed his eyes, and his breathing soon steadied.

Starting tomorrow, he would begin a three-day trans-border journey.

At eight o'clock the next morning, Chen Mo boarded the high-speed train from Yi City to Jing City.

His seat was by the window.

As the train started, he placed his backpack on the luggage rack and turned to look out the window.

On both sides of the high-speed railway, the vegetation had been cleared away completely.

Dark brown soil was upturned along the embankment, still marked with white patches of chemical agents.

At regular intervals, one could see sprayed buffer zones where grass and shrubs had been cut down ten meters away from the tracks.

Given the current rate of plant growth, roots could penetrate the ballast in just a few days and warp the tracks.

With the high-speed train traveling at three hundred kilometers per hour, any deformation of the tracks would be fatal.

Spraying herbicide was the simplest and most thorough solution.

The train pulled out of Yi City, passing through urban and rural areas.

Outside the window, construction sites were everywhere.

On the outskirts of old residential areas, rows of tower cranes were rotating.

The foundations for the new relocation housing had already been dug, and concrete mixer trucks were queuing to enter and exit.

Some buildings had reached seven or eight stories; the exterior walls hadn't been painted yet, and safety slogans were printed on the grey-white cement surfaces.

On the edge of the city, a wide buffer zone was taking shape.

Bulldozers uprooted shrubs and wild grasses, piling the turned-up soil into low walls, the surfaces of which were sprayed with the same chemical agents.

On the outside of the buffer zone was the primeval forest being swallowed by vines, while on the inside was the freshly cleared, bare yellow earth.

The two sides were clearly demarcated.

Chen Mo watched that buffer zone.

It was the same as what he had seen online.

Xia Country was redefining the boundary between the city and the wilderness.

The train continued northward.

Upon entering the Xia North Plain, the view suddenly opened up.

The horizon outside the carriage window stretched from one end to the other, with no obstructions in between.

Vast farmlands spread out; the rice seedlings in the paddies were nearly a head taller than in previous years, and their color was not a tender green, but a deep, dark green bordering on black.

Occasionally, one could see a few farmers walking along the ridges, their figures so small against the expanse of green that they looked like punctuation marks.

At 2:14 PM, the high-speed train arrived in Jing City on time.

Chen Mo did not leave the station; he waited in the waiting hall for less than an hour, and at 3:12 PM, he boarded the train to Erenhot.

This train ride would take twelve hours.

After the train left Jing City, the scenery outside changed from city to mountains, and then from mountains to grasslands.

It was evening when it entered the Mongolia grasslands, and the setting sun dyed the entire steppe a golden red.

The grass grew much denser than in previous years; when the wind blew, it no longer formed ripples like before, but instead looked like a thick blanket being lifted by the wind, layer upon layer of folds.

Occasionally, he saw herds of cattle and sheep.

Those cattle were a bit larger than in his memory.

The movements of the sheep herds when they ran were more agile than before.

Chen Mo withdrew his gaze.

After it grew completely dark, the window became a mirror, reflecting only the lights inside the carriage and his own silhouette.

He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes to rest, the Human Breathing Method operating automatically while he sat in silence; none of the surrounding passengers noticed him.

At 2:50 AM, the train arrived in Erenhot.

The lights on the platform were dim and yellow.

Chen Mo followed the sparse crowd out of the station; the night wind was dry and cool, carrying the scent of sand and soil peculiar to the Gobi Desert.

He did not stay in the city.

After leaving the station, he headed straight north, quickly leaving the last traces of the city lights behind him.

At this hour, there was almost no activity on the Xia-Mongolia border.

Chen Mo had checked in advance and avoided all guard posts and patrol routes.

When he crossed the border, the ground beneath his feet was a semi-desertified Gobi.

Drought-tolerant shrubs grew sparsely on the sandy, rocky ground, casting long shadows under the moonlight.

He did not pause and began to pick up speed.

The straight-line distance from the border to Ulan-Ude was nine hundred and sixty kilometers.

Chen Mo pushed his speed to the most efficient pace he could maintain for a long time, about one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour.

At this speed, the Human Breathing Method could barely keep up with the consumption, allowing a dynamic balance between the replenishment of Spiritual Qi and physical exhaustion.

The surrounding scenery began to flow at a different speed.

The Gobi Desert.

The moonlight stretched the shadows of the sand dunes into long, diagonal black stripes, and his footprints on the sand were left far behind in less than a second.

Occasionally, he startled a few sand rats; before they could even dive into their burrows, he had already swept over their heads.

As the sky was about to brighten, the terrain began to change.

The shrubs on the Gobi became denser and denser, and the grass became more abundant.

The bare sandy ground was covered by a thin layer of green, and in some places, one could even see patches of meadows.

The originally desertified grasslands were sprouting specks of green following the Spiritual Energy Revival.

That green was still sparse, like stubble just emerging from the earth, yet it was spreading all around.

While running, Chen Mo glanced at the newborn grass.

Desert turning into oasis.

The trend he had previously deduced in his mind was slowly becoming reality before his eyes.

It was past six in the morning, and the sky was fully bright.

Chen Mo entered the forest-steppe transition zone in northern Mongolia.

Rolling green hills undulated in the morning light, their slopes covered with dense larch and birch forests.

Rivers meandered through the valleys, their water clear to the bottom.

He did not stop.

Once he entered the forest, the road no longer existed.

Former paths had been completely swallowed by shrubs and ferns.

He traveled directly through the forest, stepping on thick layers of fallen leaves, the scent of pine resin and humus permeating the morning breeze.

The canopy overhead blocked out the sky, and the morning light leaked through the gaps in the branches and leaves, dotting the ground with flecks of broken gold.

There was absolutely no sign of human habitation.

The entire northern part of Mongolia seemed to have returned to the state it was in before humans appeared.

Trees were growing wildly, grass was spreading, and rivers were flowing quietly.

Occasionally, he could see herds of deer foraging in forest clearings; their antlers were much larger than before. When they saw him flash by, the herds froze for a second, then scattered and fled at high speed.

It was past eight in the morning when Chen Mo crossed the Mongolia-Russia border and entered Russian territory.

The terrain changed again.

The Siberian Taiga Forest.

The largest forest belt on Earth, stretching from the Ural Mountains all the way to the Pacific coast.

Larches, spruces, and firs—these trees were already tall, but under the nourishment of Spiritual Qi, they grew even more to blot out the sky.

The trunks grew straight upward, some so thick they required several people to embrace, and the canopies crowded together high above, slicing the entire sky into fragments.

The light dimmed.

It wasn't that it had become dark, but that the trees were too dense.

The air was filled with the cold, crisp scent of pine unique to coniferous forests.

The humidity was very high, and every breath felt like his lungs were being filled with cool mist.

The moss on the ground was so thick it felt like walking on a spring mattress.

Chen Mo traveled through the forest without slowing down.

When jumping over a mountain stream, he saw his reflection on the water's surface.

It was blurry and flashed by in an instant.

Then he saw Ulan-Ude.

The city emerged from the edge of the forest.

Old-style buildings with Russian architecture had tin roofs that shimmered with a dark red hue in the sunlight.

People were walking on the streets, and vehicles were sparse.

The city was not large, but surrounded by the boundless primeval forest, it was like an isolated island encircled by a sea of green.

It was past ten in the morning.

Chen Mo stood in the birch forest on the edge of the city, his clothes having been dampened by dew and then dried by the wind.

He took out the rubles he had exchanged in advance from his backpack, counted them, and walked toward the city center.

Next, he needed a vehicle and enough supplies.

Beier Lake was still to the north; he had to set off from here, follow the lakeshore northward, and finally arrive at Cape Khoboy on Olkhon Island.