RotA – Chapter 66

“The Abyss… ten thousand meters deep…”

Chai Yuening unconsciously repeated Chu Ci’s words. She suddenly remembered something.

In 2155, geological surveyors from the Old World discovered traces of life nearly ten thousand meters underground. This life form was named the Black Vine. Humans brought it to the surface, and it brought destruction to the world.

Could the Abyss the old woman spoke of be the excavation site where humans discovered the Black Vine? What kind of flower bloomed in that place? And what connection did that flower have with Chu Ci?

Chai Yuening couldn’t help but press, “What did you remember?”

Chu Ci frowned, her gaze somewhat distant as she struggled to recall something. In the end, she only clenched her fists in disappointment and silently shook her head.

“If you can’t remember, don’t force it. We’ll find the answers,” Chai Yuening said. She went to the bathroom, got a dry towel, and sat down beside Chu Ci to dry her still-damp hair.

Whether Chu Ci truly couldn’t remember anything, or if she had remembered something but was unwilling to speak of it, didn’t matter to her.

She just wanted to be with her, to do whatever she could for her.

The silence stretched on for a long time. It was Chu Ci who finally broke it.

By then, the lights in the bedroom were off. They lay beside each other, feeling the other’s steady breathing.

Before drifting off to sleep, Chu Ci spoke softly, “I’m not hiding anything from you. This time, it’s the truth. My memories before I was sixteen are chaotic and blurry. They’re scattered fragments that appear before my eyes, one by one. Whenever I try to grasp one, it floats away… It’s my own past, but I can’t piece it together…”

Chai Yuening took a deep breath and turned her head slightly, looking into Chu Ci’s eyes in the darkness.

“What am I?” Chu Ci’s words were filled with bewilderment.

Chai Yuening faintly sensed a hint of subtle self-blame within that bewilderment.

What was she blaming herself for?

For a past she had no choice in, for a future of potential ruin that she could hardly change?

Even if everything was truly as that crazed old woman had said, that all the disasters in this world originated from the Abyss, and that her unique existence was indeed inextricably linked to it, she was merely a vessel forced to bear it all.

It was humanity that chose her, the Abyss that chose her. She had no choice.

The world had never been kind to Chu Ci. People taught her about duty, told her about responsibility, and after any failure, they couldn’t wait to pin all the suffering on her. For a girl who had to face all this before she even had a chance to grow up, it was far too cruel.

Chai Yuening was silent for a long time.

She wanted to tell Chu Ci to stop thinking about it.

She had other words of comfort, but each one felt so clumsy that she couldn’t bring herself to say them.

She was afraid she couldn’t truly empathize, afraid that words too pale and feeble would only make someone already feeling lonely more certain that no one in this world truly understood them.

She simply reached out a hand, searching in the darkness until their fingers intertwined and held fast.

She asked Chu Ci, “Do you care?”

Chu Ci didn’t answer, as if hesitating, or perhaps afraid of something.

Chai Yuening thought for a moment, then added softly, “I don’t care.”

Whatever Chu Ci was, she didn’t care.

That soft reply was the faintest, warmest current in the vast, cold night.

As the words fell, the person beside her suddenly drew closer.

Chu Ci hugged her, her body, no different from a human’s, clinging to her in silence.

Warm breaths puffed slowly and gently against Chai Yuening’s shoulder and neck. She unconsciously lowered her lashes and met that pair of bright eyes, as if meeting a silent question.

In that instant, her heart couldn’t help but race. She wanted to respond, but didn’t know how.

Time ticked by, second by second. The breathing of the girl resting on her shoulder grew steadier and more even. She had clearly fallen asleep.

She gazed at her sleeping face, so quiet, so well-behaved, like a little girl who had yet to grow up. It made one, even knowing this body possessed power far beyond that of a human, still want to cup her in their hands, to cherish and protect her.

But Chu Ci was no little girl, and she was not the one with the ability to protect Chu Ci.

This world was collapsing at an accelerating rate, and humans were constantly dying. Whether selfish or selfless, every cry they uttered, every act of resistance they made, was like trying to grasp the last rays of twilight, trying to fend off the coming night.

In truth, they were already in an eternal night, and dawn was in a distant place they couldn’t see and might never reach.

If they couldn’t find a way out, when the last flame was extinguished, humanity would be plunged into darkness forever.

Could she stay with her for a lifetime?

Perhaps, on the day humanity perished, she would cease to exist. But Chu Ci was special; Chu Ci would surely be able to live on.

All she could do, it seemed, was to hold that slender hand tightly and walk a few more steps forward with her, before humanity perished, before she herself died.

With this thought, Chai Yuening reached out and gently tucked a stray lock of hair from Chu Ci’s temple behind her ear, then closed her eyes with a silent sigh.

---

The Base military wanted to establish contact with the Fog Zone Base as soon as possible and had repeatedly expressed their desire to set out for the Fog Zone Base immediately, but Chai Yuening was being extra cautious.

First, she and Chu Ci had returned here not just to pass messages between the humans inside and outside the Fog Zone, but also to investigate some old matters and find the truth that had been silently hidden away years ago.

Second, she could not expose the existence of the Fog Zone Base until the Floating City had successfully implemented the inhibitor, changed the Base’s laws of survival, and promised everyone that they would no longer readily execute the infected.

The Floating City was not the Fog Zone Base. The population here was too large, and fully implementing the inhibitor would not be easy. Moreover, the inhibitor could only suppress and delay the body’s complete mutation; it could not cure those who had already mutated.

If, after a period of implementing the inhibitor, a few incidents of mutated individuals going berserk and harming people occurred in the Base, and the uninfected began to fear for their own safety, believing this policy was tantamount to raising monsters within the Base, and thus started to resist the inhibitor and the existence of the mutated, the Fog Zone Base could very well be endangered as a result.

Chai Yuening knew she shouldn’t assume the worst of others, but having witnessed countless acts of malice, she couldn’t completely dismiss these negative outcomes.

She was waiting. The initiative was in her hands, so the military could only wait patiently with her.

More than ten days after their arrival, the research institute issued a broadcast.

An infected individual, with the help of the inhibitor, had successfully retained their human consciousness.

After half a month of real-time monitoring, the subject’s mutation level had been fluctuating around twenty percent. Although their body had undergone some irreversible changes, their emotional state was very stable.

He was the first infected person in over twenty years not to be immediately executed.

It seemed humanity had finally found a way to coexist with the ecology.

But subsequently, the research institute revealed the true efficacy of the inhibitor: it could only temporarily suppress the onset of mutation. It was like an unstable pause button; pressing it would have a temporary effect, but the duration of this effect was not fixed. The pause could end at any time, and the mutation could continue at any moment.

The research institute did not hide any of this, because the truth would eventually come out, and another deception would cause them to completely lose their credibility.

Regardless, the Base and the research institute unanimously agreed that this was a good start. As long as they were on the right track, the Base could surely develop a true “stop button.”

Soon, they released the infected person to go home and sent this research data to the distant Underground City Base.

This should have been good news, and at first, people did indeed think so.

After the inhibitor appeared, the number of infected personnel in the Base who were not killed gradually increased, from one case to a dozen, and finally to hundreds, then thousands.

Although the infected were still a very small minority, one or two strangely shaped figures could occasionally be seen on the streets.

The strangeness of these people doomed them to be a powerless minority within the Base.

Chai Yuening and Chu Ci couldn’t freely leave the residence provided by the military, but Ye Qing would visit them from time to time, and each time she came, she would mention things happening outside.

“The rollout of the inhibitor isn’t going well,” Ye Qing said. “People in the Base are privately calling these partially mutated infected individuals ‘Xenos.’ They look down on the Xenos while also fearing they might suddenly mutate and harm them. These people have survived, but their lives are becoming distorted. They’re treated differently wherever they go, can’t find work, and might even be shunned by their families and friends.”

Everything was just as Chai Yuening had expected. Voices of opposition gradually emerged from the crowd.

Most people believed they didn’t need to go to the surface, that under the protection of the Base, the mutated beasts outside could never get in. They were supposed to be completely safe, but now the existence of these Xenos made some feel that danger was right at their doorstep.

It wasn’t that there were no other voices in the Base, but extreme voices were often more likely to attract attention and followers than moderate, neutral ones.

Soon, this voice grew louder. It didn’t need much time to ferment; it was an overnight explosion.

Just like when they had shouted slogans, wanting to destroy sample A0027, under the mighty momentum, the infected population was isolated and helpless, only daring to cower in their homes, listening to the piercing curses from outside their windows.

Someone committed suicide, leaping from the rooftop of a twenty-story building.

A life was extinguished in an instant. Before dying, he left a suicide note and had shouted from the rooftop—The infected are human too! We are alive, and we are innocent!

However, the death of one infected person could only stir up a brief flurry of discussion.

To survive, humanity had already abandoned over a dozen outer cities and more than two million of their own kind.

Now, every survivor in the main city had come to treat the Base’s daily death toll as just another ordinary, fluctuating number.

The cry of an infected person, made with his life, was utterly insignificant. In just two or three days, it was completely forgotten.

The public opposition to the inhibitor surged like a rising tide. The research Shi Wenlin had used to protect the people of the Fog Zone was now being dragged through the mud outside it.

Sometimes Chai Yuening couldn’t help but feel that humanity was beyond saving. But then she would think of those who never chose to give up hope, even knowing the path ahead was filled with despair, and she would feel that humanity ought to be immortal.

She was a contradiction, she thought, and the existence of humanity was also a contradiction.

She asked Ye Qing what the military thought, what the research institute thought.

Ye Qing smiled and said to her, “The interests of the individual and the collective have always seemed to conflict, yet from ancient times to the present, they have always coexisted.”

“The fate of humanity is that ever-dwindling number. The cries of newborn infants are far outpaced by the speed of its decline… If there was a choice, who would want to stop the killing by killing more?” Ye Qing said, unable to hold back a long sigh. “Until a safe method of integration is found, the Base must fully implement the inhibitor from the Fog Zone. The Base even anticipated the price that would have to be paid for doing this.”

“What is the price?”

“Who knows?” Ye Qing said. “Anyway, the Doctor has a premonition. She said something is bound to happen… But she believes the Base will definitely pull through.”

Chai Yuening stood up and poured her a glass of warm water.

Ye Qing took the glass and said, “Thank you. I didn’t come here to talk about this.”

Chai Yuening: “Have you found any of the people on that list?”

Ye Qing smiled. “Found two. Couldn’t bring them in, and didn’t get anything out of them. But while I was digging through old files, I found an unpublished manuscript in an old, discarded computer from a newspaper office. I looked up the author of that manuscript and found that not long after he wrote it, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.”

“What did he write?”

“He wrote a conjecture about the cause of the Old World’s destruction, one with no scientific basis. The entire piece was written in a fantastical style. The people of the Old World had plucked the only flower from the Abyss, angering the ancient god sleeping deep within the earth. The deterioration of the surface ecology was the ancient god’s punishment for humanity, and perhaps only by returning that flower could the god’s wrath be appeased,” Ye Qing said. “The Base would never allow such talk to spread.”

Chai Yuening: “It was just an unpublished manuscript.”

Ye Qing: “Yes, but the Base seemed to care a great deal. Even though the author stated at the end that it was just a short fantasy story in a prose style, he was still thrown in prison.”

Chai Yuening subconsciously glanced toward the bedroom.

She didn’t really want Chu Ci to hear such baseless things, but at that moment, Chu Ci was standing at the bedroom door, quietly looking at her and Ye Qing outside.

Chu Ci: “What about the author?”

Ye Qing: “He’s dead. I saw his belongings at his daughter’s home. In the box of his effects, there was a work notebook.”

Chu Ci: “A work notebook?”

Ye Qing: “Senior Zhang Hanqing’s work notebook.”

As she spoke, she took out a curled, wrinkled notebook with a sky-blue cover from her backpack.

It looked very old, as if it held many sealed-away pasts, unknown and unheeded.

---

If you’d like to read ahead and support me, you can request extra chapters or get the full novel as an EPUB.