Hao Qi looked at the group of people before him with pity. They were starving, reduced to a state even more harrowing than mere emaciation; if one had to describe it, they were no different from the African refugees he had seen in his long-lost previous life—starved to the point of being barely human. Their faces were skeletal, their bodies frail, and if not for the steadfast and sharp glint still lingering in their eyes, Hao Qi might have truly taken them for nothing more than wretched Descenders who, unable to survive in the city, had run out into the wild to meet their deaths.
The group remained silent, their eyes fixed on Hao Qi with a mixture of dread and some indefinable emotion. They sat motionless, neither speaking nor resisting, each wearing an expression of those who had accepted death.
Hao Qi looked helplessly at Zhang Heng behind him, both of them wearing expressions of frustration.
Chapter 188