Cave Refuge

If you say that to the north of Rabbit's Home lies Big Hair's territory, which completely relied on their aggressive racial instincts during the apocalypse, then the situation to the south of Rabbit's Home was somewhat eerie.

Although before the apocalypse, the existence of rabbits had turned the ferocious Asian Monster Room into a primitive tribe that only knew how to dance with knives and sticks, the situation in Southeast Asia had become quite peculiar after the apocalypse descended.

Although everyone had once been influenced by Confucian culture, it seems that Southeast Asia had learned it in a distorted way.

Or perhaps, if we trace back to the region's history, the zoos located to the south of Rabbit's Home, as well as the Prison Tower at its back, were both once exiles.

Among those exiled to these places, apart from the well-known officials, there were also a group of people little known to others: the Witch Poison Alchemists.

Despite how much both Buddhist Path and Confucianism were favored by many emperors of the past, they would severely crack down on anything related to Witch Poison, and these practitioners not only had to endure the emperor and officials' persecution but also faced extermination from other teachings.

Therefore, those Witch Poison Alchemists originally residing in the Central Plain were all expelled to South of the Ridges, and the countries now located in Southeast Asia were historically considered part of that region too.

The reason for their exile was because the methods they practiced in their sorcery were not only insidious but also often required cannibalism for sustenance.

Even though, at the onset of the apocalypse, the concentration of Spirit Energy in the air was not dense enough to allow for Cultivation, the Spirit Energy needed for refining Witch Poison and performing various Evil Methods was not substantial.

Indeed, since it was possible to substitute blood or life span in place of Spirit Energy, as long as one had the essential catalyst for the spell's incantation, all subsequent Consumable Materials could be replaced with life or blood sacrifice.

Because of this, a significant portion of the deaths in Southeast Asia during the early stage of the apocalypse had nothing to do with the natural disasters.

During the arrival of the Bug Race and ancient creatures, Southeast Asia saw massive slaughter.

That's why, when the great floods came, there were actually few casualties within the zoos there; the reason was both simple and brutal—there were not many people left alive before the flood.

Thinking about how those people were mad enough to capture members of the Bug Race for Gu Refining, although they ultimately refined some very powerful Bug Poison, they were unaware that within the Bug Race there's a strict hierarchical system. Unless they remade the ultimate refined Bug Poison into their personal lifeblood Vermi, the Bug Poison they refined would still be controlled by the higher echelons of the Bug Race.

After the flood, the zoos located inland suffered minimal damage; the people that remained were powerful Bug Masters with Vermi companions, so it was not unusual for them to survive.

As for the coastal zoos, even though they owned very few large vessels, those who made a living fishing had no shortage of boats capable of going to sea, so the death rate there wasn't high in the beginning stage of the flood.

Unfortunately, a small boat is still just a small boat; therefore, when the compound disasters struck, those small boats suffered severe losses.

Moreover, the dangers they faced didn't only come from natural disasters. The inland Bug Masters, running out of "Consumable Materials" for Cultivation, had only two choices: risk their lives heading north to cause trouble at Rabbit's Home zoo or go south to bully those weaker than themselves.

Any person with a shred of common sense would know what the right choice was, so the following events were quite straightforward—at the arrival of Dragon Siphon, what they faced were primarily Bug Masters with various enigmatic abilities.

Although those Bug Masters did not have cannons or Missiles, they were able to control variously shaped Vermi, and with the peculiar abilities of these Vermi, surviving the disaster was not a difficult feat.

To be slightly crude, those Bug Masters who had managed to survive until now, not to mention their ruthless cruelty, just their mastery of various Evil Techniques and Vermi, in terms of combat power alone, were far superior to most Martial Artists in Rabbit's Home.

Beyond Southeast Asia, the situation in White Elephant was even worse. Despite White Elephant always claiming to be the world's third superpower before the apocalypse, the situation there was truly indescribable.

Because of the presence of a centralized system, the situation there after the apocalypse was far worse than in Southern Stick and Basin Chicken.

Before the disaster, it might have been those elites who held absolute power, but after, the seemingly obedient lower-order animals, when they bared their fangs, subjected those elite animals to a fierce backlash.

Looking back at history or even at the present, there is one fact, though often overlooked, that is undeniable: the more knowledge one has in their head, the weaker their close combat capabilities become.

The close combat mentioned here isn't the type displayed in a ring with rules, but rather no-holds-barred fighting.

Because of firearms and other factors before the disaster, White Elephant's zoo's lower-class animals would forever remain lowly, but once the disaster struck and the rules vanished, those non-combat elite animals suddenly became the primary targets for all the lower-class ones.