RotA – Chapter 54

“Someone’s there,” Chu Ci murmured. Seeing no reaction from Chai Yuening, she repeated, louder, “Chai Yuening, there are people over there!”

Her voice wasn’t particularly loud, but it was enough to jolt Chai Yuening from her daze.

It wasn’t a hallucination. The distant glow was a fog lamp, a fog lamp that could only belong to humans!

They had found other people deep in the Fog Zone.

For a rare moment, Chu Ci grew anxious and shouted toward the distance, but the torrential rain completely drowned out her already faint voice.

“They can’t hear you.” Chai Yuening grabbed her arm and rummaged through her bag, pulling out a flashlight. She managed a pale smile. “We need to use this.”

She switched the flashlight to its red light mode and aimed it toward the distant fog lamp.

The red beam pierced through the night’s heavy rain and dense fog. In the distance, the human vehicle slowly turned toward them.

The rain was icy, the fog lamp blinding.

A black off-road vehicle pulled to a stop in front of them.

The window rolled down, revealing the bald man in the driver’s seat, his eyes wide with astonishment.

…

The off-road vehicle drove through a jungle that was almost devoid of roads.

Two soaking-wet figures, each wrapped in half of a thin blanket from the vehicle, sat shivering in the back seat.

To be precise, only Chai Yuening was shivering.

A black vine that had spent years submerged in a laboratory tank was not about to catch a cold from a downpour.

The bald driver was in a good mood, his gravelly voice booming out a mountain folk song they had never heard before. It was truly awful to listen to, yet it brought a strange sense of peace.

In the passenger seat was a girl who looked to be sixteen or seventeen, her hair tied in a low ponytail.

The moment Chai Yuening and Chu Ci got in the car, the girl had handed them white sugar pills, and she had been studying them with curious eyes ever since.

The bald man finished his song, and the car fell silent for a moment.

The young girl finally couldn’t hold back any longer. She turned around, kneeling on her seat with her hands clasped over the backrest, and introduced herself. “My name is An Li, as in the ‘li’ from ‘plowing the fields.’ This is my uncle, An De. What about you?”

“Chai Yuening.” Chai Yuening glanced at Chu Ci. “Her name is Chu Ci.”

“You’re from the outside?” An Li asked.

“Yes,” Chai Yuening nodded.

“Where did you come from?” An Li asked again. “Can you still find your way back?”

“…Achoo!” Chai Yuening sniffled. With a hint of caution, she replied casually, “We were out collecting samples. We ran into danger and got lost while trying to escape. We can’t get back.”

“That’s some terrible luck,” An Li said, her eyebrows curving into a smile. “But it’s not all bad. At least you ran into us!”

She seemed to have no intention of prying any further.

“I haven’t seen an outsider in six or seven years,” An De remarked with a smile. “We all thought everyone on the outside was dead.”

“Have you met people from the outside before?” Chai Yuening asked, curious.

“Of course. We still ran into them six or seven years ago, but not anymore,” An Li said, pointing out the window with her chin. “These things just keep getting bigger and bigger. Outsiders can’t get in.”

Chai Yuening paused for a moment, then asked, “Have you never thought of going out to find other survivors?”

An De laughed. “We’ve thought about it, sure, but that’s all it is—a thought. The people who end up here either fell from the sky or were dragged here by mutated beasts. Most of them lost their bearings long before they arrived and have no idea how to get back. The world is so big, we can’t just gamble with our lives and take a trip with no return, can we? Besides, our car is electric; it can’t go very far.”

He wasn’t wrong. Back when the Floating City was trying to support the Underground City, they had delayed their departure because they couldn’t pinpoint its exact location.

The world was simply too vast. To it, human bases were but a drop in the ocean. Without precise coordinates, finding one was nearly impossible.

Perhaps that was why they didn’t press her on where she had come from.

This was good news for Chai Yuening. This place was almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. The people living here didn’t know where the Floating City was, and it was even less likely they would report her presence to them.

She stared out the window in a daze for a while.

She couldn’t help but ask, “Have you always lived here?”

An Li: “Yeah. We were out scouting the degree of ecological evolution. We’re on our way back now.”

Chai Yuening: “The degree of ecological evolution…”

An Li: “The evolution rate of these mutated beasts has been too fast lately. When Sir finds out, he’s going to have another headache.”

Chai Yuening: “How many… people do you have?”

An Li: “A few hundred, I guess.”

Chai Yuening couldn’t help but be astonished. “A few hundred? With so few people, how do you defend against giant beasts and hordes?”

An Li blinked and smiled. “That’s something you wouldn’t understand. We have our own ways!”

“Want to learn? I can teach you if there’s a chance!” the young girl said, her gaze flicking to the gun at Chai Yuening’s waist. “That thing is okay for killing people, but it’s not very useful against mutated beasts.”

With that, she sat up straight, looking smug. “We’re almost at our base! The base welcomes all humans to join!”

Deep within the Fog Zone, amidst the raging storm, An Li’s tone was remarkably cheerful, which greatly surprised Chai Yuening.

Chai Yuening suddenly remembered something.

Whether in the Underground City or the Floating City, anyone returning from the surface had to undergo an infection screening.

Any mercenary who had been to the surface would know that if you rescued a survivor on the ground, the very first thing you did was hand them an infection test kit.

An De and An Li hadn’t.

Not only did they not ask them to undergo an infection screening, they hadn’t mentioned the word “infection” at all.

Could it be that these people living deep in the Fog Zone were, like Chu Ci, immune to infection?

Chai Yuening wanted to ask, but she didn’t dare.

She was worried that An De and An Li had simply forgotten about infection tests, and that a slight reminder from her would make them immediately produce a test kit or device.

She hadn’t been injured recently, and neither had Chu Ci, but she wasn’t sure if Chu Ci’s current state would still be considered human by human infection screening standards.

If not, would the rules here be the same as in the other human bases, unwilling to grant an “aberration” any chance to live?

The off-road vehicle continued onward. Illuminated by the fog lamps, Chai Yuening could vaguely make out several interconnected, Old World-style human buildings through the heavy rain and dense fog.

The buildings’ night lights glowed faintly, standing tall amidst the wind, rain, and fog, surrounded by layers of iron mesh fencing.

The place was small, perhaps not even as large as the research institutes in the Underground City and the Floating City.

If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, Chai Yuening would never have believed that humans capable of surviving in the Fog Zone would live in such a tiny place.

“We’re here, we’re here!” An Li said, turning around. “There are still empty rooms in the base. They’re a bit messy, but I’ll help you clean one out!”

“Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” An Li giggled. “You can’t go back anyway, so from now on, we’re all family.”

As the off-road vehicle drove into the small human base in the Fog Zone, Chai Yuening’s heart leaped into her throat. The infection screening she had anticipated never came. She and Chu Ci had successfully entered this base that you could see from one end to the other.

She held Chu Ci’s hand and followed the two of them inside.

“That’s the infirmary, that’s the planting area, the well and generator are over there, and at the very back is Sir’s laboratory. This area is where people live…”

An Li introduced the place to them as they walked.

Everyone in the small base knew each other. The first thing they did upon meeting was greet one another. After the greeting, they would see the strangers behind them and ask a casual question, but with no intention of getting to the bottom of things.

It was clear this wasn’t the first time the base had taken in outsiders. No one seemed particularly surprised by it, nor did they treat newcomers like some rare species.

With the help of An Li and others from the base, after wandering for so long, they were finally living in a human house again.

The windows were sealed tight, there was no wind in the room, and the light from the overhead lamp was a warm yellow.

There was a clean little bed, a place to take a hot shower, clothes to change into, and even a bowl of sweet potato soup to warm them up, brought over by a woman she didn’t know.

Everything before her gave Chai Yuening the surreal feeling of being in another world.

Was this really not a dream?

She took a hot shower, changed into clean clothes, and stood stunned before the glass window, holding the hot soup.

The night was not yet deep, and countless lights in the base were still on.

Lightning flashed and thunder roared in the sky, but this place was as peaceful as if it were isolated from the world. No matter how she looked at it, it didn’t seem real.

“Why don’t you pinch me?” Chai Yuening suddenly turned to look at Chu Ci.

Chu Ci was sitting on the bed, drying her long, wet hair with a towel. She looked up, a little bewildered. “Why?”

Chai Yuening: “This feels like a dream.”

Chu Ci: “It’s not a dream.”

Chai Yuening pouted and pinched her own arm. It hurt, and it turned red. Only then did she dare to believe that this was truly not a dream.

“We came from the outside, but we didn’t have to do an infection test,” Chai Yuening said, walking over to Chu Ci with the sweet potato soup in her hands. She spoke with suspicion, “Are the people here not afraid of infection, or are they simply immune?”

Chu Ci blinked, a flicker of curiosity in her eyes as well.

Chai Yuening was about to say more when she suddenly heard a deafening shout.

“Someone! A little help!” The voice was frantic.

She stood up and hurried back to the window.

Right at the entrance of the small base, a man with a hoarse voice was carrying another man covered in blood—his intestines had been torn out by a mutated beast.

Given the current infection and mutation rate from mutated beasts on the surface, even a tiny scratch was enough to get you shot by the base, at least in the Floating City and the Underground City.

Someone injured this badly would almost certainly be abandoned, yet the people here were bringing the wounded man back to the base. Chai Yuening was utterly astonished by this.

She saw many people rush out of their homes into the heavy rain, carrying the injured man toward the infirmary.

She stood there in a daze for a moment, then said to Chu Ci, “I’m going to go take a look.”

With that, she turned, pushed open the door, and ran toward the infirmary.

The infirmary door was wide open; there seemed to be no sense of privacy among these people.

A female doctor with a calm expression skillfully treated the horrifying wound. Beside her was a display screen showing highly complex data, much like the one in the Floating City’s underground laboratory.

She muttered under her breath, “Severe injuries, severe infection, loss of self-awareness… Give me the inhibitor.”

They were actually saving him, saving a man who had been grievously wounded by a mutated beast…

She had almost forgotten.

A human life, it turned out, was not worthless.

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