Embers Ad Infinitum

In the North Anheford area, in a city ruin that Ruin Hunters no longer visited.

Yass stood at the top floor of the tallest building and looked at the scenery through the relatively intact and clean floor-to-ceiling windows.

The Old World city was so huge that most of the scenes he saw were still all kinds of buildings, wide or narrow streets, and rusted cars that had zero repairability.

They spread out, painting a lost and desolate picture across the land. However, it was different from the Old World.

At that moment, the city was enveloped in green. All sorts of plants grew, and large numbers of mosquitoes flew around like a real forest.

Yass was the leader of the Vulture bandits. In the North Shore wastelands, their reputation was only slightly inferior to Nois and a few other peers.

Frankly speaking, Yass looked down on bandits like Nois. He believed that they were brainless and never considered any repercussions. They would only do things that would harm their future interests, such as participating in the slave trade.

From Yass’s point of view, the human population was the most precious resource. Everyone in the wasteland could create wealth for him, so it was extremely foolish to sell them to slave merchants.

He believed that not only did he have to keep the wilderness nomad settlements, but he also had to provide some protection to prevent First City’s slave hunters from finding and destroying them.

This was because wilderness nomads always followed their instincts that ran deep in their pulse. They established settlements in places that were suitable for farming. Every time they were about to harvest food, Yass would lead the Vulture bandits to plunder them.

Relying on this strategy and gathering points of various sizes, the Vulture bandits never worried about food—they lived every day with great confidence. For this reason, they wouldn’t take away all the food when they robbed those settlements. They would almost certainly leave a portion behind.

This way, with the help of hunting in the wilderness, a large number of the wilderness nomads could survive the winter and live to the second year. They could continue farming, thus forming a cycle.

Of course, the Vulture bandits wouldn’t directly say that this was their goal. Yass would use a tone of charity to get the people in the settlements to sacrifice the women they had chosen to satisfy his and his subordinates’ desires in exchange for the corresponding food.

If the other party refused, Yass wasn’t stingy with using bullets, blades, and blood to let them know who was lord. Then, he would use violence to achieve his goal in front of them.

Yass—who liked to read Old World history books—had even considered implementing droit du seigneur in areas his bandits could project power. He eventually gave up on the idea because it was impossible to implement.

They couldn’t really take the settlements for themselves. First City’s slave hunters, the army that pursued the bandits, the other bandits, and the Ruin Hunters that occasionally worked as bandits who reached a certain scale could cause harm to those settlements.

The reason why the people in the Ashlands still called the residents of these settlements wilderness nomads was that they couldn’t stay in one place for long. Every seven to eight years or even shorter, they would be forced by reality to migrate elsewhere.

Fortunately, the other bandits only made deals with slave merchants and didn’t dare to cooperate with First City’s slave hunters directly, afraid that they would become the other party’s spoils of war. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be many settlements left to provide food for the Vulture bandits.

As for the bandits who controlled the mineral resources and attacked settlements to gather slaves for their businesses, Yass felt that their actions were understandable. It was even enviable.

With the basic guarantee of food, the Vulture’s style was in line with their name. They liked to ‘hover’ around their prey, waiting for the other party to show their weak side and peck at the fattest part.

This was also the reason why Yass always liked to find the top floor of high-rise buildings to look around every time he entered a city ruin. This gave him the satisfaction of overlooking the world and controlling everything.

In his eyes, every person and team in the North Shore wastelands were dying prey as long as they showed signs of weakness. He and his bandits were waiting to turn them into corpses and rotten meat.

As night fell, the city ruin was gradually swallowed by the darkness. Yass reluctantly retracted his gaze and walked down the stairs.

To him, climbing a building was also a form of training. Compared to when he came up, the journey down was much easier. But Yass—who liked reading Old World books—still put on knee pads to protect his joints.

Knowledge is power… Every time he encountered such a scene, Yass would recall this Old World proverb. This was what he had heard from his teacher when he was young.

Back then, he was still living in a wilderness nomad settlement. Every week, there would be adults taking turns as teachers to teach the children.

When he reached adulthood and could go out hunting, the feeling of not being able to fill his stomach for extended periods and his strong desire for various things made Yass leave with a group of companions and go down the path of being bandits.

To this day, he still remembered the Old World proverb that had prompted him to make up his mind: We do not sow!

As for the original wilderness nomad settlement, after the older generation that looked down on bandits passed away, the remaining people either followed Yass or migrated elsewhere.

As he recalled, Yass returned to the ground floor of the building. His subordinates gathered in groups of three to five, playing cards, drinking the batch of wine they had snatched yesterday, or hiding in other rooms deep in the corridor to fornicate with one another.

In the Ashlands, female bandits weren’t rare. Guns made them equally dangerous.

Raising his hand to touch his shaved temples, Yass shouted to his subordinates patrolling outside the building, “It’s about to rain. Don’t let your guard down!”

This was one of the strongholds of the Vulture bandits.

Yass liked such city ruins. In such a huge place, it was no different from finding a needle in a haystack if the enemy wanted to find the building they lived in.

“Yes, Boss!” Outside the building, the bandits with submachine guns responded.

Yass nodded in satisfaction and circled the bottom floor.

Two armored vehicles, several cannons, and many machine guns flashed past his eyes.

At that moment, the storm that had been brewing for a long time finally released its load. It wasn’t too heavy, but it made the night appear misty.

Apart from this building, the entire city was dead silent.

Suddenly, a loud voice sounded from somewhere outside. “You are surrounded!

“Drop your weapons and surrender!”

It came from a man.

Yass’s eyes suddenly widened as he waved his hand, gesturing for all his subordinates to be prepared for an enemy attack.

The voice outside didn’t stop—it was as though it had changed into a different person. It became slightly magnetic and was accompanied by static. “Therefore, we have to remember that when facing things we don’t understand, we have to humbly seek guidance and put down the prejudices brought about by experience. Do not be filled with conflicting emotions from the beginning. Adopt an attitude of accepting everything and learn, understand, grasp, and accept…”

In the quiet rainy night, this voice echoed as though it was accompanied by an electric current.

This… Puzzled thoughts surfaced in the bandits’ minds. They didn’t understand why the enemy was preaching, especially when it had nothing to do with the current situation.

Yass had a bad feeling. Although he didn’t know what was going on, his years of experience told him that anything abnormal meant trouble.

After the voice faded away, two figures—each holding a black umbrella—walked toward the building where the Vulture bandits were.

“Halt!” Yass shouted.

The abnormal situation prevented him from giving the order to fire.

One of the two figures answered, “We’re here to make friends!”

Yass gaped his mouth, feeling that the other party wasn’t lying.

Soon, two figures entered the world of light outlined by flashlights and torches from the extremely dark city ruins.

They were a man and a woman. The man was tall and handsome, while the woman was beautiful and valiant.

They had kind smiles on their faces.

…

My name is Yass, the leader of the Vulture bandits. I like to look down at city ruins from high above; it makes me feel like I’m the master of this world.

I’m different from the other bandits. I know how precious the farming population is and how important it is to stabilize a food source. In my eyes, Nois and company are indeed powerful, but they are brainless. To earn some supplies, they work with slave merchants to sell the wilderness nomads on the wastelands. Perhaps they have never considered the future.

My bandits and I plundered every target we could. We are like vultures in the sky, treating every weak target as rotten meat.

I thought that my life would continue like this. I thought that my bandits would grow in strength day by day and ultimately become the ruler of the North Shore wastelands until the day the two of them came to visit.

…

That night, the leader of the Vulture bandits—Yass—and his subordinates believed without a doubt that the garrison at Early Spring Town was beyond weak.