RotA – Chapter 63

The vehicle drove off the lifting platform, heading in the direction of the Base’s City Defense Center.

Silence fell inside the vehicle. Some were waiting for an answer, while others were at a loss.

After an unknown period of silence, the military officer in the driver’s seat spoke again. “Is he… still around?”

A soldier living in such a world, witnessing the death of his own kind at every moment, should have understood what such silence meant. He was merely clinging to a sliver of hope in his heart.

Chai Yuening subconsciously wanted to weave a lie, but the words caught in her throat, and she couldn’t bring herself to speak.

The moment the Floating City found the Fog Zone Base, the lie would inevitably be shattered. Its brief existence held little meaning.

Sensing her struggle, Chu Ci answered softly for her. “He was infected. Half a month ago, he turned into a bird and flew away.”

“Is that so…” As expected, the officer was not surprised by this. “He mutated. Why didn’t the people there kill him?”

“The Fog Zone Base doesn’t need infection monitoring. They have medicine that can resist mutation. Although it can’t completely stop it, and mutation can happen again at any time, at least they can retain their self-awareness for a longer period after infection.” Chai Yuening spoke softly, as if trying to offer him a shred of comfort. “There, humans don’t have to kill other humans. They release every mutated being who was once a companion.”

Chai Yuening stopped there, saying no more.

She thought that was enough, and Chu Ci had no intention of adding anything.

Some truths were not something everyone could accept, so some things didn’t need to be spelled out completely.

After a long silence, she heard a sigh-like response.

“Thank you for telling me this.” His voice was filled with regret, but also a measure of relief. “I was only about ten when he was still around. His greatest wish was for me to grow up and become a soldier like him, to protect the Base… Back then, the Base still had an Infection Control Center. Infected people didn’t have to be shot on sight. The military was truly protecting everyone in the Base.”

“Not like now, where mutated beasts are killing people, and we are too.” As he spoke, he took a deep breath, his words calm yet carrying a hint of gratification. “He truly did spend his entire life protecting humanity.”

A separation of over twenty years was like a long buffer zone. All the sorrow had long been silently endured, with no need to converge into a single teardrop at this moment.

At that instant, Chai Yuening couldn’t help but think that perhaps this, too, was fate.

A soldier who had guarded humanity his entire life, uncontrollably wanting to harm humans after his complete mutation, and his son, who stopped it all before he could make a terrible mistake.

With mixed feelings, Chai Yuening looked out the window. She noticed that the vehicle, originally heading for the City Defense Center, had turned toward the Base Research Institute.

The officer, surnamed Liu, began to initiate a communication with the Base Research Institute.

“Hello, this is the Base Research Institute.”

“City Defense Office, Liu An. Please connect me to Dr. Yi Shuyun.”

The standby signal beeped a few times before the doctor on the other end finally answered.

“Base Research Institute, Yi Shuyun. What is it?”

The familiar voice was extremely weary, even tinged with impatience.

Chai Yuening remembered this doctor once telling her that when the military suddenly contacted the institute, it was never for anything good.

In the doctor’s own words: “What the hell do those guys know about science? Soldiers meddling in research is just making a mess, either by imposing all sorts of rules and regulations or making unreasonable demands.”

The last time, regarding the leak of Chu Ci’s classified file, the military had used ambiguous language to exert invisible pressure on the institute. In the end, a mob stormed the institute, smashing things up, and it was only natural that the institute lost its last shred of trust in the military.

This time, however, it really wasn’t bad news.

“Dr. Yi, the person who took the sample has returned. She said she wants to see you. She has extremely important research findings with her—these findings come from a human base deep within the Fog Zone.”

After a long silence, Yi Shuyun’s trembling voice came through the communicator.

“Alright. I’ll wait for her at the institute.”

Chai Yuening couldn’t tell how many complex emotions were suppressed in that reply, but her voice seemed to have cast a hazy film over Chu Ci’s eyes as well.

Chu Ci never said it, but Chai Yuening knew that in this seemingly heartless human base, there was one person who had once shown her an inexpressible tenderness.

The vehicle crossed the cloud-shrouded skyway. They carried hope, rushing toward the unknown in their hearts.

Before long, they saw the Base Research Institute in the distance.

It stood tall amidst the clouds, just as it always had, but it had also just endured a frenzied riot.

Much of the equipment inside the institute had been destroyed, experimental samples had suffered varying degrees of damage, and even some researchers had been injured.

The number of people involved in the riot was too large for the Base to punish them all. In the end, they could only lock up the few who had led it.

The sample designated A0027 was lost, yet Yi Shuyun, who had been guarding it, received no official punishment.

The reason was simple. For the Base at that time, this sample could only continue to exist or die at the hands of the mob; there was no third option.

Because the people had already been deceived for fifty long years, they would absolutely not believe the story of a “missing sample” again.

To quell public anger, the Base threw out a scapegoat—the old woman from District E3 who had mutated into a black vine.

The mutated sample left behind by that old woman happened to share similar genetic characteristics with Chu Ci, capable of displaying data on the lab’s large screen that was similar to what was in the leaked experimental files.

It was a grand deception, but neither the institute nor the Base had won. They had lost the sample that was very likely humanity’s last hope.

“Dr. Yi said it was all retribution. For a biologist to say something like that is quite ironic, isn’t it?” Officer Liu said with a self-deprecating laugh. “But it all really feels like retribution. It’s as if people were truly wrong, so the retribution came one after another.”

On the day the sample was lost, the onslaught of the beast horde descended like divine punishment.

In just one afternoon, the infection situation in more than a dozen outer cities had spiraled out of control.

The mutated humans joined the beast hordes, continuously attacking people and the buildings and facilities of the outer cities. All systems seemed to collapse that afternoon.

The Base’s main city had to make a cruel decision.

Activate the outer cities’ self-destruct systems, pull all military forces back to the main city, and shrink the defensive perimeter as much as possible.

“Did you see it? How the outer cities and the beast hordes perished together that day…”

“We saw it.”

“It was a nightmare from which we couldn’t wake,” he said. “We are still in the dream, waiting day after day for the dream to collapse.”

“…”

It seemed no one in this world was an optimist, and Dr. Yi at the research institute was no exception.

Chai Yuening had never thought she would see Yi Shuyun again in this lifetime. Though it had only been a little over a month, this reunion felt as if a lifetime had passed.

White lights illuminated the research lab. Yi Shuyun sat quietly in front of the large electronic screen, with a few more white hairs than when they had last parted.

She was no longer young. She had dedicated her entire life to this institute.

The moment she heard footsteps approaching, she turned to look at the door. Her gaze flickered with something, perhaps anticipation, but the moment she saw Chu Ci again, it all transformed into an undisguisable glint of tears, welling in her eyes, turning them slightly red, yet refusing to fall.

“Why did you come back?” Yi Shuyun asked, her voice trembling uncontrollably.

“We found a human base in the Fog Zone,” Chu Ci replied. “We brought back their research findings.”

“Why did you come back?” Yi Shuyun asked again.

Chai Yuening saw unconcealed guilt and self-blame in her eyes, and even more so, disbelief.

Yi Shuyun found it hard to imagine that the sample who had endured fifty years of torment from the Floating City’s various experiments, who had no freedom, saw no light, and was ultimately loathed, hated, and abandoned by all, would actually risk danger to bring back research findings from deep within the Fog Zone that could potentially change humanity’s fate.

Did she not feel any hatred?

“Doctor, we brought back their research findings,” Chu Ci said once more.

She didn’t answer Yi Shuyun’s question. Her words were the calmest of reminders—Doctor, you know what is most important.

Yi Shuyun turned her back, her shoulders seeming to tremble slightly.

After a brief silence, she tilted her head up slightly, trying to calm her emotions, and said softly, “What findings…”

Chai Yuening took out the silver-gray USB drive and walked to Yi Shuyun’s side. “This is what the gentleman in the Fog Zone asked me to give to the Floating City. All his life’s research is in here. He hopes it can be of help to the Floating City.”

Yi Shuyun took it with trembling hands and clutched it tightly in her palm. “The gentleman you mentioned is…”

Chai Yuening said, “Mr. Shi Wenlin. He was once one of the researchers at the Secret Research Institute of the Old World. For over fifty years, he has been living deep in the Fog Zone with a group of humans, waiting to be discovered by the outside world.”

Yi Shuyun was silent for a moment, then repeated thoughtfully, “The Secret Research Institute of the Old World…”

Chai Yuening nodded and continued, “The people of the Fog Zone Base use inhibitors to delay mutation. Although the effect isn’t long-lasting, and they more or less develop some non-human traits—traits that would surely get them killed on sight or captured for research in the Floating City—in the Fog Zone Base, everyone is like that. They cherish every day and night they retain their human consciousness, cherish every life, and in their own way, they don’t despise one another. They rely on these mutated traits to adapt to life deep in the Fog Zone…”

A light gradually appeared in Yi Shuyun’s calm eyes, like a person in a desperate situation seeing hope.

Allowing humanity to integrate into this new ecosystem had always been the institute’s sole goal. To be able to inhibit and delay the onset of mutation within the human body, and to allow humans to acquire non-human traits while retaining their self-awareness—wasn’t this precisely the outcome they had been searching for?

Yi Shuyun turned and inserted the USB drive into the data port, beginning to carefully examine its contents.

It was a collection of data that would be exceedingly complex for most people, but to Yi Shuyun, it was a treasure beyond measure. After flipping through just a few pages, her eyes couldn’t help but well up with tears.

Chai Yuening took an inhibitor from her backpack and placed it gently on the desk. “Dr. Yi, the institute might have a use for this.”

Yi Shuyun didn’t speak, just stared quietly at the pages of research findings on the screen.

“So… we were wrong all along…”

“The old shackles… they bound us…”

“The new direction was right under our noses, beneath the manacles, and we brushed past it…”

She murmured in a low voice, joy and self-reproach intertwining in her heart, as if she were crying, as if she were laughing.

After an unknown amount of time, she stood up and told Liu An to inform the military, to inform the entire Base.

She was eager to announce this long-overdue hope to everyone. After receiving the Base’s permission, she would also transmit these research findings from the Fog Zone Base to the Underground City Base.

Liu An left the research lab. The bottomless fatigue in Yi Shuyun’s eyes was finally gone.

Although the research from the Fog Zone Base was still not perfect, as long as there was a correct breakthrough, she firmly believed that humanity could find the truth.

A nightmare from which no one could awaken seemed, at this very moment, to have finally been led to its end by a thread of hope.

She turned to look at Chu Ci, but the words of thanks were stuck in her throat.

She saw not a trace of joy in Chu Ci’s eyes. The survival of humanity seemed to have nothing to do with this girl.

“Dr. Yi, the Base files show that in the year 2178, I was sent to the institute and became the only being to successfully fuse with the black vine.” Chu Ci took two steps forward. “But that gentleman said that in 2177, before the Old World was destroyed, he saw me at the Secret Research Institute. He was the lead surgeon for that operation. Is this true?”

“…”

“My memories from before I was sixteen are very blurry. Why did the Base alter my files, and what did it take from my memory?”

Chu Ci looked at Yi Shuyun, wanting, with utmost earnestness, to press for an answer.

In her eyes was an anticipation Yi Shuyun had never seen before. “Doctor, can you tell me?”

She was the only person in the entire Floating City that Chu Ci trusted.

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