She hadn't seen a fat person in who knew how many years! This was the apocalypse. Fat people starved until they were thin. Thin people starved until they were skin and bones. Skin and bones people starved until they stopped breathing. Even the leaders who controlled supplies in different gangs were never this fat. After all, getting fat didn't just mean having enough food and water. It also meant living an easy life—resting all day and doing nothing. But life in the apocalypse was cruel. People joked that even the water might be poisoned. Catching a small cold could make you lose ten pounds easily. So how could there be someone this huge? Just then, Cassian, who was holding the binoculars beside her, spoke in a low voice, "I guessed right before." Natalie was surprised. "About what?" Cassian handed the binoculars back to her. "This cult leader is really ugly." Natalie quickly looked around at the believers. Luckily, everyone was focused on the stage. Cassian was sitting far from the crowd, and his voice was very low. No one heard him. She shot him an annoyed look. "Watch what you say. Thousands of people could surround you." Cassian gave a small smile. "I'm controlling my volume." Natalie took the binoculars from him and muttered, "Being fat doesn't always mean ugly. A lot of chubby people look pretty decent..." She stopped halfway through the sentence. The rest of the words got stuck in her throat. No—this was way too ugly.Through the binoculars, the cult leader's face was very clear. Natalie had never seen someone with so much fat and such sharply sticking-out cheekbones at the same time. The man had a high brow ridge, a sunken forehead, and sharp, sticking-out cheekbones. All his fat was squeezed around his eyes, cheeks, and double chin. None of it made his face look smooth or balanced at all. Besides all the dark spots on his face, there was a huge mole between his nose and his lips, impossible to miss. His face looked wildly exaggerated. His ugliness actually had nothing to do with being fat. Natalie even felt that if he were thin, he would look even scarier. But... Natalie did not lower the binoculars. Instead, she studied him carefully. "Why do I feel like I've seen this guy before?" Cassian turned to her in surprise. "You know him?" Natalie shook her head. "No. But he looks very familiar." She held the binoculars up, studying his face while her mind raced through people she had met before. A fat man who looked this strange should have been easy to remember. But no matter how hard Natalie thought, nothing came to mind. She was sure no one like this was part of her usual social circle. Still, his face really did feel familiar. Natalie trusted her instincts. She was sure she had seen him somewhere. Could it have been during a past trip to Yloria she took years ago as a tourist? She kept the binoculars on the cult leader's face for a long while, but still had no clue.That trip had been great, and she could still remember many of the local people she saw back then. But she really didn't remember anyone who looked this strange. After a moment, she suddenly gagged. Seeing this, Cassian quickly pushed the binoculars away from her hands and frowned. "Stop looking. It's making you sick." Natalie lowered her hands in embarrassment. After all, gagging while looking at someone's face was very rude. But she really couldn't control it. It was a physical reaction. This guy's face was just way too good at making people feel sick. Who he was did not matter. They probably would never cross paths again anyway. She raised the binoculars again, avoided the fat guy's face, and shifted her view to the area below the stage. She tried to spot the top government official. By now, the man on stage had started teaching his so-called "lesson." Inside the building, the believers all sat straight with bright eyes, listening closely. Many of them even brought notebooks and pens, then took careful notes. Angus, sitting beside them, looked shocked. "They actually keep notebooks to write things down instead of using them as firewood?" He was not overreacting. In the freezing world they lived in now, anything that could burn—wood, paper, coal, charcoal—had almost all been used up by survivors. Forget a few cheap notebooks. Even rare books from libraries would be torn apart and burned. When people could barely stay alive, who still cared about culture or history? The notebooks in these people's hands were like someone during the Great Heat holding a bucket of water, refusing to drink it, and just staring at it every day. Angus suddenly became interested. He wanted to hear what kind of amazing lesson could make these people treat it so seriously.But Natalie didn't share his interest at all. Since graduating from college, Natalie had never sat down properly to listen to a class again. For all these years, she had either been fighting natural disasters or fighting people with bad intentions. Even now that life had gotten a little better, she was either training and practicing combat or lying on the couch watching TV shows. She had never quietly sat on a hard chair and listened to a lesson.