RotA – Chapter 36

Posted by April Fox, ? Views, Released on July 6, 2025

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“Those are fighter jets…”

Ren Dong stared at the distant sky, murmuring softly.

The armored vehicle gradually pulled away from the giant beast behind them.

One after another, fighter jets pierced the thunderstorm, flying swiftly toward the vast plain.

Amidst the wind, rain, and lightning, the survivors who had escaped death’s clutches turned to look back.

It was a resplendent sight, difficult to describe and unforgettable for a lifetime.

The giant black jellyfish was like a blooming flower of death.

All the black vines worshipped it, offering it their lives and souls.

The red and purple motes of light transformed into wisps in the night sky, drifting like smoke from all directions toward the giant beast.

The dense fog that filled the sky, along with the lives of the black vines, slowly dissipated like smoke.

Human fighter jets hovered high above, amidst the shifting lights and hazy mist.

They looked down upon the colossal creature in its death throes.

Bursts of fire erupted on the beast’s mangled body.

The moment the giant beast crashed to the ground, the earth shook violently for an instant.

The dozen or so jets circling in the air still did not cease their fire on the beast.

In the distant sky, the fog lights of more jets pierced through the clouds.

The battered armored vehicle came to a stop in the downpour.

Chai Yuening unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up, looking at the night sky that was no longer just endless darkness.

From the jets that landed one after another, fully armed humans emerged.

They wore unfamiliar military uniforms and ran in formation through the rain, weapons in hand, quickly surrounding the broken, leaking armored vehicle.

In an instant, seven or eight flashlight beams fell upon the survivors inside the vehicle.

The rescuers’ eyes remained vigilant in the extreme.

Chai Yuening walked to the driver’s seat and glanced at Lao Xiang, who was slumped exhaustedly against the backrest.

The left side of his body was soaked in blood that had been diluted by the rain, and his face, pale as paper, was nearly drained of all color.

Weak as he was, he clutched the wound on his waist with one hand, took off his goggles with the other, and gasped, “Can you tell those guys from the sky to stop shining their lights? They’re dazzling my eyes.”

Chai Yuening didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You’re still in the mood to say that.”

Lao Xiang smiled nonchalantly. “This little wound won’t kill me.”

From the direction of the countless lights, a reassuring voice called out.

“Are you from the Underground City Base?”

“Yes! We’re from the Underground City Base, ordered by the military to wait on the surface for reinforcements from the Floating City!”

“Please take us into the Underground City Base!”

“No problem, but someone in our squad is injured and needs immediate medical attention!”

“We have professional medical personnel, but before that, you need to undergo infection screening!”

“We’re willing to cooperate with the infection screening!”

The reinforcements from the Floating City had arrived, the black vines had withered, and they had survived.

Everything felt so unbelievable.

The Base’s signal towers, scattered in all directions, stood silently, covered in withered vines.

For the past month or so, all the surface signal towers had malfunctioned, forcing the Base to use the underground core signal station to distribute short-range signals to the outer districts.

This kind of distribution could be easily disrupted by destroying the temporary signal reception points in the outer districts, making it far less stable than the surface signal towers.

Now that the signal towers were no longer obstructed by the black vines, she wondered if the Base’s signal could gradually be restored.

As Chai Yuening thought this, she pulled out her communicator and glanced at it. The signal had gone from nonexistent to unstable.

She sent a voice message to the Base military.

“Floating City reinforcements have arrived. Thirteenth Mercenary Team, mission complete.”

A few dozen seconds later, the communicator showed that the message had been sent successfully.

At that moment, she couldn’t help but look toward the distance, toward the vast, rain-swept sky.

The thick fog that had lingered over the Base for so long had finally dispersed.

The light of dawn was the purple tinge of dark clouds, the pale white of the moon overhead, and the all-night storm finally softening into a steady drizzle.

After they passed the infection screening, a slender, middle-aged woman in a raincoat walked quickly toward them.

Chai Yuening clearly sensed the woman’s gaze linger on Chu Ci.

And Chu Ci, too, was quietly looking at the woman.

The arrival of reinforcements from the Floating City undoubtedly allowed the Underground City Base to see the dawn after the apocalypse.

Human fighter jets could not fly inside the Underground City Base.

After landing, the jets brought by the Floating City were all arranged in the Base’s vacant hangars.

Under the main city military’s arrangements, the Floating City reinforcements headed first to the Ninth District, to liberate the main city’s military forces as quickly as possible.

The moment communications were restored, the thing the Base was most thankful for was having chosen to believe in that seemingly slim hope.

Those outer districts, which in the eyes of ordinary people might have already completely fallen, made contact with the main city one after another within half an hour of the communication signal gradually recovering.

The people trapped in desperate situations were still alive.

The security officers, City Defense soldiers who hadn’t had time to evacuate, and mercenaries with their own firearms had organized the uninfected people around them in the midst of the chaos.

They blocked ventilation shafts and hid in supermarkets, academies, and medical clinics, deploying the strongest defenses they could within the smallest possible areas.

Some districts had even retaken their City Defense buildings, which, despite severe equipment damage, still had solid fortifications.

The people of the outer districts had been holding on, had been waiting.

They endured one sleepless night after another, the sole belief in their hearts being to wait for rescue from the main city.

The moment the communication signal was restored, their hearts were filled with the wild joy of surviving a catastrophe.

“District Ten, emergency communication! I am the adjutant of the District Ten City Defense Force. We are still holding the City Defense building. We have fewer than four hundred survivors. Requesting support from the main city.”

“District Four, emergency communication! We have defended the District Four medical clinic with all our might. There are over a thousand survivors. We are almost out of weapons and ammunition. Requesting support…”

“District Seven Security Office, emergency communication. After the isolation walls were raised, we and the City Defense Force retreated with the residents to the district power station. Estimated combat losses are over fifty percent. Requesting support from the main city as soon as possible.”

“District Three, emergency communication.”

“District Eight, emergency communication.”

“District One, emergency…”

Countless distress signals were transmitted from the outer districts to the main city.

Their voices, their locations, all reached the ears of the unified combat commander who had remained in the main city.

Rescue, from that moment on, officially began to unfold in designated directions.

Inside the main city’s medical center, Lao Xiang, who had gone into shock from excessive blood loss, had been wheeled into the emergency room.

The squad members waited outside the operating room, some sitting quietly, others pacing anxiously.

Waiting was always long. Chai Yuening couldn’t help but close her eyes and let out a long sigh.

The pocket watch in her hand ticked away, second by second. Finally, the moment the emergency room doors pushed open, they received good news.

Lao Xiang was fine. His physical constitution was excellent, so he had pulled through. He was just still very weak and needed to be hospitalized for observation for a while.

Chai Yuening couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.

She subconsciously looked at Chu Ci, only to see her gaze was distant, her mind clearly elsewhere.

After a brief silence, she gently hooked Chu Ci’s pinky finger.

Chu Ci snapped back to reality, a trace of surprise flashing in her eyes.

Chai Yuening pulled her to an empty corner of the stairwell.

They stood hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the cold wall, each lost in their own thoughts as they stared at their feet.

After an unknown amount of time, Chai Yuening asked softly.

“Who was that person who was sent to the Base Research Institute?”

Chu Ci: “Which one?”

Chai Yuening: “The woman, she looked to be in her thirties or forties.”

“Dr. Yi…”

Chu Ci said softly, slowly lowering her lashes.

“She is my current guardian.”

Chai Yuening: “Guardian…”

Chu Ci: “Mhm.”

Chai Yuening couldn’t help but press her lips together tightly.

After a short silence, she asked again in a low voice, “Are you going back with her?”

Chu Ci hesitated for a moment, then finally nodded.

She said, “She will take me back.”

It was as light as a sigh.

Chai Yuening couldn’t help but ask, “Is there no choice?”

Chu Ci thought for a long time before replying softly, “There is.”

“Then you…”

“Didn’t I already make a choice?” Chu Ci said faintly.

She suddenly looked up at Chai Yuening, her brows curving into a faint smile. “Chai Yuening, can’t you see how much importance the Floating City places on me?”

Chai Yuening was momentarily speechless.

She could see it. How could she not?

For a single sample, countless fighter jets from the Floating City had braved wind and rain, crossed thunderstorms, just to rush to an unknown location with all their might.

The accompanying rescue team even included a doctor who should have been in a research institute, receiving the best protection at all times.

That made sense. A sample that had successfully fused with the black vines, a being completely immune to infection and even capable of temporarily concealing the presence of humans—to all of humanity, she was like a miracle, an irreplaceable glimmer of hope.

Based on the few words Chu Ci had mentioned before, the Floating City must have been studying her on one hand, while on the other, valuing her special abilities and training her into a “secret weapon” capable of carrying out dangerous missions.

The disappearance of such a sample must have caused them a great deal of trouble, perhaps even throwing them into a panic.

Now that the sample had returned, how could they possibly not take her back?

“Dr. Ge said that humanity has never given up, and absolutely will not give up,” Chu Ci murmured softly. “As long as there is a glimmer of hope, no matter how painful it is, we must keep moving forward, tirelessly and by any means necessary.”

As she spoke, she took a long, deep breath, a hint of a smile rising in her eyes. “I forgot to tell you, since the great disaster erupted, the Floating City has never stopped its human experiments.”

“In the Floating City, people with terminal illnesses can, if they are willing, sign an experimental agreement to voluntarily dedicate their bodies to scientific research. The Base provides a large subsidy to the relatives of the signatories and conducts experiments on them.”

“The Base Research Institute promises people that no matter the outcome of the experiments, every participant will be allowed to retain their dignity and die as a human.”

“Fifty-some years have passed. Guess what the Base’s results are?”

Chai Yuening: “I can’t guess.”

Chu Ci: “Arranged sequentially from A to D, from A0001 to D0341, with each group capped at 9,999 samples. In all the research to date… I’m the only one who survived.”

Chai Yuening couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath.

If she hadn’t heard it with her own ears, who would dare believe that in over fifty years, out of more than thirty thousand human samples in the Floating City, only one had survived.

“They want so badly to find something out from studying me,” Chu Ci laughed self-deprecatingly. “But I’ve disappointed them greatly. I’m just a one-in-ten-thousand special case. Aside from some fusion tests, the routine monthly blood draws haven’t allowed them to produce any results. I can’t be infected by anything, nor can I infect anything.”

“But even so, they’ve never given up…”

“They’ve always believed that my existence is not an accident, that there must be some secret hidden within me that they haven’t yet found.”

As Chu Ci spoke, she curled her lips slightly and sighed with a smile, “I’ve thought it through. The glimmer of hope in their eyes is perhaps the responsibility I am fated to bear. From the moment I survived, there was no escaping it.”

Chai Yuening didn’t understand how Chu Ci could say these words in such a calm tone.

That so-called hope, that inescapable responsibility—each one was so heavy. How could one person possibly bear it all?

A hope that couldn’t be found in fifty years—how much longer would one person have to face the darkness before seeing the light of dawn again?

Chai Yuening bit her lower lip tightly, silent for a long time, but in the end, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “After you go back, what will they do to you?”

Chu Ci blinked, her tone placid as she said, “Dr. Yi has never treated me badly.”

“Really?”

“Mhm.”

“You’re not lying to me?”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“Will you be locked up?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m used to it.”

“Then… then why did you…”

“Hm?”

“Why did you ever think about staying?” Chai Yuening’s voice trembled slightly.

“Because…”

Chu Ci looked up at the ceiling light in the stairwell.