“Due to the influence of the Growth Season, the surface signal tower has been covered by black vines. Signals in and out of the Base will be unstable for the time being. The military will reclaim and repair it as soon as possible. The estimated time is about half a month, so please wait patiently.”
“Beast tides have been surging recently. Experts believe this is related to the black vines’ Growth Season and the expansion of the Fog Zone. We trust that with the military’s efforts, the tides will recede in two months at most.”
“According to research, the giant… that passed by the Base several months ago… carrion-eating inverte… threat index is…”
“Hiss—”
In the old radio, the steady female voice was intermittently disrupted by a sudden crackle of static, until finally, only the seemingly endless hissing of static remained.
In the team’s base, a converted garage, a single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, casting a somewhat dim, yellow light.
The rolling shutter door was halfway open, just enough for a person to stoop and enter.
The girl in the wheelchair, wearing glasses, held a thermos that was still steaming.
The woman leaning against the wall glanced over, then nonchalantly lowered her head and continued cleaning her gun.
A tall figure emerged from under the armored vehicle, tucked a tool into his belt, and walked over to the radio in a few strides, giving it a series of loud smacks.
“Lao Xiang, keep it down,” the woman cleaning her gun said without looking up.
The tall man turned and yelled toward the wheelchair, “Ren Dong, when are we getting a new one of these damn things? It’s useless.”
“The Base’s signal tower is buried. It’s a signal problem; new or old, it’s all the same.”
“Feels like there’s no end to these damn days.”
“If we ever reach the end, we won’t have heads left,” Ren Dong said. “You should hurry up and fix the vehicle. Everyone’s counting on it to eat.”
“It’s fixed. I’ll catch my breath and then install the chassis. I guarantee it’ll be faster, smoother, and more stable this time.”
“You say that every time…” Ren Dong muttered under her breath.
A rush of hurried footsteps approached from a distance. Someone, panting, ducked inside, their gaze flitting nervously across the three of them.
“It’s… it’s bad…” he said, out of breath.
The woman cleaning her gun looked up, her brow furrowed slightly.
The tall man unconsciously wiped his sweaty palms on his clothes.
Ren Dong: “What’s wrong?”
“I, I heard from the City Defense Office that… that… the Captain went to the surface with that bastard from the Seventh District!”
“When?”
“Just last night!”
“Lao Xiang, the chassis!”
“Right away!”
…
Boundless fog shrouded the ruins of the old world’s human cities.
After several continuous days of spring rain, the air on the surface was damp.
The high-power fog lights of a large armored vehicle cut a path through the dense mist.
In the fog, under the lights, a type of black vine was visible everywhere in the ruins.
This vine, known as the black vine, sprouted from the cracks in the concrete ground.
Some remained underground, while others climbed high, coiling around poles, columns, or walls like snakes, blooming with flowers that resembled succulents.
Base scholars unanimously believed that the dense fog in the Fog Zone was all “exhaled” by the black vines. Fortunately, the black vines did not attack any living creatures, and the fog they emitted was non-toxic.
They simply grew quietly amidst the countless ruins shrouded in fog. Both their flowers and stems glowed with a faint dark red or deep purple light, adding a strange beauty to this broken old world.
The light was dim inside the armored vehicle’s rest compartment.
Chai Yuening clutched a rusted, stopped watch in her hand, silently gazing out the small, round window at the skyscrapers flashing past.
Outside the cabin door, several overjoyed, loud voices were estimating the value of the giant insectoid beast’s carcass, the one mentioned countless times on the Base broadcast.
It was a giant, corrosive, invertebrate, arthropod-like mutated animal. For some unknown reason, it had recently left the dense Fog Zone and moved on the surface in the thin fog area near the Base, only to be severely injured by the military.
This type of monstrous beast usually held great research value, and its hard exoskeleton made it a treasure trove. Whether sold to the military or on the black market, it represented a huge fortune.
For this reason, besides the Base military, many mercenary teams and bounty hunters had taken a keen interest in it.
Luo Kun’s mercenary group was one of them.
Five hours ago, these guys, knowing full well that continuing deeper would mean entering a level-six risk zone, were still blinded by the beast’s high bounty and drove into the depths of the Fog Zone, chasing the injured giant insect.
The armored vehicle followed the giant beast’s tracks to an old urban area that was difficult to navigate.
Everyone jumped out of the vehicle, using flashlights to scout the path. Before long, a sudden beast tide sent them fleeing in terror.
To escape, they even abandoned several companions who couldn’t get back on the vehicle in time.
As one of those left behind, Chai Yuening was luckier than the other two who were devoured by mutated beasts.
Relying on her experience in facing danger, she managed to survive and found a beat-up truck that could still start.
When she encountered the group again, she even “magnanimously” provided them with the direction of the giant beast’s corpse.
But the bounty for hunting this giant beast had nothing to do with her.
As the captain of an elite mercenary team from the Base, she had left her team alone at a time clearly unsuitable for missions, risking her life to cooperate with the people outside the rest compartment—people who valued profit over loyalty—all for a transaction that had nothing to do with money.
Chai Yuening sighed heavily in frustration.
The young girl who had been curled up in the corner, hugging her knees, suddenly raised her eyes and looked at her with a somber gaze.
The girl looked to be only seventeen or eighteen, with a petite frame and milky-white skin. Her silver hair, stained with blood, was disheveled and draped over her shoulders, partially obscuring her face.
But her eyes were beautiful, a beauty that couldn’t be hidden no matter what.
They were a rare brownish-red, the brown not too deep, the red not too dark, as translucent as red amber.
Like the girl herself, she was beautiful in the dim corner, silent and still, as if all the clamor of the outside world had nothing to do with her.
Being watched by such a pair of eyes, no one could pretend not to have seen.
However, the girl had barely spoken a few words since being rescued.
It could have been from a heavy blow, or perhaps from excessive shock.
This was also the first time Chai Yuening had met this girl.
It was three hours ago, in a patch of urban ruins deep within the Fog Zone.
At the time, she hadn’t been able to get back to the armored vehicle. To escape the hunting beast pack, she had fled all the way to a nuclear ruin area where black vines were relatively sparse.
Beast packs liked to be active where black vines grew, and some ruins from past nuclear wars were not conducive to the vines’ growth.
The fog was not thick, so there were relatively fewer infected mutated beasts.
Along the way, she saw the corpse of the giant beast, which had succumbed to its injuries from the gunfire of Luo Kun’s men.
It hadn’t managed to escape very far, dying in a place those humans dared not enter.
But Chai Yuening had no mind for profit; she just wanted to escape quickly.
Such a massive corpse was not something she could carry away by herself.
The cold, gloomy urban ruins were deathly silent.
Ordinary low-level mutated beasts wouldn’t appear in this kind of area, but giant mutated beasts with stronger survival and evolutionary capabilities often liked to occupy such relatively quiet territories.
In the Fog Zone, the quieter it is, the more dangerous it is—that’s what her former combat instructor had told her.
Chai Yuening was on edge the whole way. She had two bullets left in her gun; if she used them up, she would only have a dagger for self-defense.
Fortunately, her luck wasn’t bad. She found a broken-down truck.
The truck’s doors and windows were gone. In the driver’s seat, the upper half of the driver’s corpse was missing, and the lower half was already a set of decayed bones, gnawed on by who knows how many things.
Chai Yuening was used to such scenes. She went forward and pushed the half-corpse aside.
The key was still in the ignition. This dilapidated vehicle could still start.
This made her let out a long, deep sigh of relief.
But just as she started the engine, preparing to leave, a very low whimper came from not far away.
It sounded like someone injured, trying to suppress their pain for fear of being discovered.
But in such a silent urban ruin, even the slightest sound was extremely noticeable. This attempt at suppression was clearly futile.
Chai Yuening’s heart leaped into her throat.
When a human is injured by a surface beast, even if they aren’t eaten and the wound is treated correctly, there is still a certain probability of infection and mutation.
It was the Growth Season now, and the mutated beasts in the Fog Zone were particularly active. In such a high-risk area, even if there was a survivor, they were most likely infected.
She was one of the very few people from the Base who had been to this area. She knew the way back and had a high chance of returning alive.
No one was a saint, and this was no place to linger.
If she delayed, it would be even harder to find her way when night fell and the fog grew thicker.
At that moment, she sat in that filthy driver’s seat. All she had to do was step on the gas, and everything behind her would have nothing to do with her.
But after a moment of struggle, she jumped out of the driver’s seat and tiptoed toward the source of the sound.
What if, she thought.
What if it was an uninfected person in distress? If she left, wouldn’t she be completely cutting off a living person’s path to survival?
Taking a step back, what if it was an infected person.
If it really was…
At the very least, she could see them off, let them die as a human.
And so, Chai Yuening met this girl.
It was hard for her to describe the feeling in her heart at that moment, because on the second floor of a dilapidated building, she saw a girl who was completely out of place in those ruins.
At that moment, the girl was squatting by a broken wall, covered in bloodstains. Her blood-soaked coat was half-draped over her, revealing her milky-white shoulders and neck.
The girl’s right leg and both arms were seriously injured; it was clear that even lifting them was a great effort. She was biting down on a blood-stained strip of cloth torn from her clothes, seemingly trying to bandage the deepest wound on her arm.
And in her right hand, she tightly clutched a small, blood-stained knife.
Chai Yuening could tell the purpose of that small knife at a glance—it was for carving out wounds.
Experienced old mercenaries, in order to reduce the probability of being infected by mutated beasts, would often carve out the entire wound area.
This girl looked very young, very beautiful, and her body was very petite. She looked like a child from a wealthy family in the main city, yet she could be so ruthless to herself.
Chai Yuening subconsciously took two steps forward. The girl raised her eyes.
She looked at the girl, and the girl looked back at her.
Those beautiful, blood-amber eyes were filled with wariness toward a stranger.
It was wariness, nothing else.
There was not a trace of the joy and anticipation a human would have upon grasping a lifeline, nor the terror of someone about to mutate from infection, afraid of being killed by their own kind.
Such a gaze, on the contrary, made Chai Yuening feel a bit at a loss.
After a long silence, Chai Yuening clipped her gun back to the most accessible spot on her waist, then held up her empty hands to show she meant no harm.
She moved forward again, and the girl’s gaze moved with her.
Finally, she stopped a meter away from the girl, leaned against a broken wall, and offered what she considered a friendly smile.
“Need help?” Chai Yuening asked.
The girl’s gaze remained fixed on her, making her very uncomfortable.
After a brief, awkward moment, Chai Yuening rummaged through her utility pouch and pulled out a roll of clean medical gauze.
“Maybe you need this.”
As Chai Yuening spoke, she extended the hand holding the gauze slightly forward.
The girl’s wary expression faltered for a moment. After a few seconds of silence, the guarded look in her eyes softened slightly.
Chai Yuening was afraid of startling her by getting closer, so she just tossed the gauze onto the girl’s lap and once again stood by, watching in silence.
It was extremely difficult for the girl to bandage her wounds alone. Even Chai Yuening, as a bystander, frowned watching her. Several times she wanted to help, but the slightest shift of her feet would earn her a glare, so in the end, she had to force herself to stand by for a long time.
The sky above was gradually darkening, and Chai Yuening began to feel uneasy.
She frowned, looking at the girl before her. “I have to go.”
“At night, the road will be hard to see,” Chai Yuening said. “I don’t know what happened to make you so wary of a fellow human… but no matter what happened, this place is very dangerous. You’re badly hurt. I want to help you. If you’re willing to accept, you can come with me. There’s a vehicle not far from here, and I can find the way back to the Base.”
Perhaps remembering something, the girl’s gaze drifted, as if lost in thought.
“If you don’t mind, I can take you home first when we get to the Base.”
Unsure what had stirred her emotions, the girl’s expression became even more dazed than before, like a small animal unable to find its way home on a rainy night.
Such a look was enough to make one’s heart ache.
Chai Yuening looked up at the fog-shrouded distance and sighed softly. “Or, can you sense signs of infection in your body and don’t dare to go back? If that’s the case, I really can’t take you back. You know, even if you’re not discovered by the City Defense, you’ll be killed when your body mutates. If you want to fend for yourself here, I respect that. If… you want to die as a human, I can also…”
At this point, she paused slightly.
What could she do?
There were still two bullets in the gun at her waist. She could indeed see this girl off.
She had learned a similar lesson in books: when a human is infected by a mutated beast, dying before mutation is the most dignified way to die.
People didn’t call this killing; they called it salvation.
Humans, living in this world, no matter how difficult, should come as humans and go as humans.
But for some reason, when she met those eyes filled with helplessness and confusion, she simply couldn’t bring herself to say such cruel words.
For a moment, she wished so much that this girl had no signs of infection, wished so much that she could take this girl home.
The moment of silence was gently broken by a single sentence.
“I’m not infected.”
The girl’s voice was exceptionally cold. It was the first thing she had said.
Finally, she looked up at Chai Yuening again. “I… want to go with you.”
Chai Yuening was stunned for a moment, then nodded after coming to her senses.
She looked down and took a test kit from her bag, tentatively asking, “Just in case, you… want to test it first?”
It was a simple test kit used at the Base to check for infection. The civilian version wasn’t very accurate, but it was somewhat useful.
No matter how much her kindness overflowed, she didn’t dare to bring someone who had been injured in the Fog Zone with her without any testing.
It was just that the girl had been too wary before, and she hadn’t dared to take it out, afraid that the moment she did, the girl would lose control like most infected people who feared being killed.
But it turned out her worries were unfounded.
The girl very calmly took the test kit and, under Chai Yuening’s guidance, dripped her blood into it.
While waiting for the test result, Chai Yuening felt her hands drenched in cold sweat. Every second felt excruciatingly long.
It wasn’t until her watch showed that a quarter of an hour had passed and the test kit with the blood still showed a relatively normal color that she let out a huge sigh of relief.
She took two steps closer. Seeing that the girl didn’t shy away, she couldn’t help but curve her brows into a smile, wiped her cold, sweaty hands on her clothes, and then generously extended a hand toward her.
A cool spring breeze ruffled her short golden hair but couldn’t blow away the warmth from the corners of her mouth.
The girl was slightly taken aback.
She pursed her lips, completely letting down the guard in her eyes, and took the hand offered to her.
Author’s Notes:
This story features dual strong protagonists, a post-apocalyptic wasteland setting, and a Human x Non-human pairing. The non-human is a hidden powerhouse.
Part of the world-building is inspired by Ling Cage, and the other part is my own creation.
![The Rebirth of the Last Days and Return to [Fang] Hao](https://www.freenovels.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image_2021-09-11_143139.png "The Rebirth of the Last Days and Return to [Fang] Hao")