For countless days and nights, Chai Yuening had imagined what the Floating City might look like.
But as she soared through the air, crossing mountains and ranges, traveling under the stars to the human base she had so deeply yearned for, she finally realized just how barren her imagination had been.
This human base possessed a magnificence and beauty that was difficult to put into words.
Beneath the night sky, countless stars dotted the firmament. Hazy moonlight pierced a wisp of thin cloud, pouring down upon the suspended cities on the distant horizon as they slowly rose into the aircraft’s field of view.
It was, at present, the most developed human base on Earth—the Floating City.
From a distance, it looked like a solitary archipelago, a Noah’s Ark moored in a sea of clouds.
The aircraft continued its journey, and the city’s full silhouette gradually came into view.
Mountain-like clusters of metal buildings hung high above the clouds, interconnected by long, narrow causeways. The city lights reflected one another, appearing like channels connecting the city to the brilliant moon beneath the swirling clouds.
Throughout the city, a light distinct from the stars and moon was visible everywhere.
They were pale golden, transparent spheres of varying sizes, one after another, flickering with flowing arcs of electricity. Beneath each sphere was a golden pillar of light that shot straight up through the clouds.
Each of the Floating City’s constituent cities extended from the one at its very center.
That was the main city of the Floating City base.
Above this main city hung the largest golden sphere in the entire Floating City.
The people of the Floating City called these spheres Floating Lights. Beneath the Floating Lights were technologically manufactured buoyancy cores, and beneath the cores were buoyancy pillars of light that went straight to the ground.
For decades, their existence had allowed this human base to remain suspended in the air.
This was where Chu Ci lived.
A place where one could look up and see the sky, look down and survey the mountains, reach out and seemingly pierce the clouds, close one’s eyes and feel the wind and rain.
Moving further forward, the details of the base slowly revealed themselves.
Countless small aircraft circled around each city.
The aircraft carried surveillance cameras, moving mechanically along fixed, crisscrossing routes, whether for patrol or environmental detection was unclear.
Fighter jets, returning from afar one after another, successfully landed on the wide airfield under the guidance of the main city’s control tower lights.
Long shuttle buses transported people away from the tarmac.
A nine-seater white van was parked at the airport entrance. The female driver, in her early thirties, rolled down the window. While picking up Yi Shuyun, she also gave Chai Yuening’s group a ride to the city district.
The moment he got in the car, Lu Qi exclaimed in amazement, “Hey, this van is an old-world model! I’ve only ever seen broken-down ones on the surface!”
Hearing this, the female driver asked curiously, “What models have the vehicles in your Fourth Base been upgraded to?”
Lu Qi quickly explained, “No, no, it’s not an upgrade. We only have armored vehicles where we’re from.”
“Over where we are, the outer districts aren’t very large, so it’s convenient to walk anywhere within a district. If you need to go to other districts, you just take the district train,” Ren Dong patiently explained. “So, we don’t really need cars unless we’re going to the surface. But once you’re on the surface, you can’t get anywhere without an armored vehicle.”
For this very reason, the Underground City Base believes that any vehicle model without combat capabilities has no production necessity.
These types of vehicles completely ceased production over thirty years ago.
Back then, no one in the Thirteenth Mercenary Team had even been born yet, except for Lao Xiang.
“So that’s how it is.” The driver nodded and smiled. “I’ve never been to the surface in my life. I used to yearn for the mountains and rivers in books, but now I just want to stay in the base and live out my days in peace until I die.”
“In this world, there’s no safe place besides the base,” the driver said, talking nonstop. “Especially in recent years. Whether it’s the military or civilian mercenary organizations, many people who go to the surface never come back.”
“Did they die on the surface?” Ren Dong asked.
“Not at all. If someone’s injured by a mutated beast and the wound isn’t fatal, they can still be saved. But most of those who didn’t return had just come up from the surface on the lift platform. The moment they were detected with signs of infection, they died at the hands of a city defense officer and were carried off to be cremated.” The driver shook her head and sighed. “If they have family, the ashes are given to them. If not, the ashes are scattered onto the surface. A gust of wind, and who knows where they end up.”
Chai Yuening was somewhat surprised that the driver spoke so freely on such a relatively sensitive topic, and that Yi Shuyun, who was resting with her eyes closed in the back seat, said nothing.
Lu Qi: “They kill them directly as long as there are signs of infection?”
The driver nodded. “What else? You should know, the mutated beasts on the surface are becoming more and more infectious, and the mutation rate is getting higher and higher. Each district in the base has a population of one or two hundred thousand, and the daily flow of people is huge. If even one infected person slips in, it’s a disaster.”
“Isn’t there an infection control center here?” Chai Yuening couldn’t help but ask. “A place to quarantine and observe the infected…”
“There used to be,” the driver said. “But over twenty years ago, a malignant infection incident involving a humanoid mutated being occurred in the base’s Third District. Before mutating, that being was an infected person under quarantine and observation in the infection control center.”
“A humanoid mutated being?” Lu Qi looked astonished. “What happened then?”
“That mutated being’s condition was highly unusual. In the initial stages of its mutation, it maintained a human form without any bestial traits, appearing completely normal. Yet it was precisely this normal-looking ‘person’ who silently infected half the quarantined individuals in the infection control center, even though the quarantine rooms were connected but had no doors or windows between them!”
“How did it manage that?” Lao Xiang pressed.
“Because that mutated being was infected with a type of oviparous parasite. It secretly laid its eggs on the medical staff who delivered meals.”
“After that, the infection began to break out from the control center. The mutated beings shed their human skins, burst out of the center, and attacked any human in sight.” The driver grew more animated as she spoke, her tone rising and falling like a storyteller’s. “Their attack and defense weren’t strong; they couldn’t break down doors or windows, nor could they kill a person instantly. But they had an incredibly powerful reproductive ability… Not only did they lay eggs inside human bodies to hatch new mutated beasts, they also laid eggs in the district’s water reservoir!”
“Suddenly, even people hiding behind closed doors at home became potential infectees.” At this point, the driver took a deep breath. “Although it was just an outer district, the severity of the situation far exceeded the base’s expectations. To quickly eliminate this highly infectious mutated being that was running rampant inside the base, the base made a decision…”
Chai Yuening: “What decision?”
Chu Ci: “Better to kill by mistake than to let one slip through.”
Chai Yuening: “…”
Such an answer was not surprising. When infectivity and mutation rates reached a certain level, and the scope of an infection was clearly out of control, the Underground City Base had made the exact same decision.
“Soon, the Third District was completely sealed off. After all known mutated beings were eliminated, the Third District’s reservoir was thoroughly cleaned and supplied with an external water source.”
“Under the military’s strict control, hundreds of infection detectors were transported from the infection control centers of various districts. Every single person in the district had to undergo daily infection monitoring for half a month.”
“During those fifteen screenings, if even one showed signs of infection, no matter how slight, the person was executed immediately.”
“For that half-month, rivers of blood flowed through the Third District. There were so many bodies they couldn’t be cremated fast enough.” The driver let out a soft sigh. “Sigh. After that, to prevent such a thing from happening again, the base shut down all infection control centers. The City Defense Office in each district began to guard the district lift platforms day and night. The moment an infected person is discovered, they are executed on the spot, no observation necessary. No one is an exception, regardless of their identity or status.”
Yi Shuyun, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly followed up on the driver’s words, saying faintly, “The main city’s communication tower once sent a similar warning to the Underground City Base, but the Underground City Base considered it inhumane.”
Chai Yuening: “…”
Yi Shuyun: “In recent years, the surface ecology has become increasingly absurd. Before a mutation occurs, people never know what kind of ‘surprise’ an injured, infected person will bring back from the surface. They might be extremely aggressive, or extremely contagious, or perhaps possess a super-divisive capability beyond the understanding of human biology, able to split from one to two, two to four, and so on ad infinitum… They might even, even possess human-like intelligence. Can a mere infection control center contain such unknowns?”
The doctor’s words left everyone speechless.
“Can’t answer, can you? That’s why you fell.” Yi Shuyun gave a soft laugh. “You relied on surface signal towers for communication. When you lost them, you were like headless flies in this disaster, unable to find any direction. In the end, the consequences you bore were a thousand times heavier than what we endured back then.”
Her words were harsh, but no one could find any reason to refute them.
The car fell silent. An hour and a half later, everyone was dropped off at the temporary residence Yi Shuyun had requested for them from the main city.
Yi Shuyun, who hadn’t gotten out, rolled down the window. Her gaze lingered on Chu Ci for a few seconds before she said softly, “For the next few days, just show your friends around. When you’re about ready, let me know, and I’ll arrange for someone to see them back safely.”
Chu Ci nodded. “Dr. Yi, thank you.”
Yi Shuyun: “For what… Ye Qing, let’s go back.”
“Yes,” the driver replied. The window closed, and the van drove off into the distance with Yi Shuyun.
The people from the Underground City stood at the building’s entrance with all their luggage, gazing up at the building that was over twenty stories tall, their eyes filled with excitement.
Ren Dong: “The buildings here are like the ones from the old world! They have windows you can look out of!”
Lao Xiang: “It’s so tall! Not like our base, where no matter what kind of building it is, it’s only four stories high.”
Lu Qi: “This is incredible!”
Du Xia: “So what floor are we on?”
Lu Qi looked down to study the key cards he had just received from the driver. “Uh, the seventeenth floor.”
“The seventeenth floor?!” Ren Dong unconsciously gripped the armrests of her wheelchair, her voice trembling. “So… are we supposed to climb up…”
“I’ll carry you,” Chai Yuening said, walking to Ren Dong’s side. “Lu Qi, help carry the wheelchair up.”
“Oh, okay!” Lu Qi quickly agreed.
Chu Ci: “There’s an elevator.”
Lao Xiang scratched his head. “What’s an elevator?”
“A lift platform,” Chu Ci said faintly, leading the way.
The group of unworldly underground dwellers froze on the spot. So in the Floating City, even ordinary residential areas had lift platforms! How could the gap between two human bases be so vast?
Author’s Notes:
Underground City: Why the hell would you need an elevator for just four floors?
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