The people here still had to face infection from mutated beasts, but it seemed they wouldn’t give up on a single life.
The inhibitor the doctor mentioned seemed to be the drug they used to resist infection.
Chai Yuening could understand some of the data on the medical screen. After being injected with the inhibitor, the severely injured patient on the operating table still showed a slow, fluctuating upward trend in their mutation level.
It started in the low forties, and as the surgery progressed, it crept past fifty percent.
Immediately after, his body began to undergo visible changes. The exposed skin gradually grew pale gray, armor-like scales.
He had already begun to undergo irreversible mutation, yet the life-saving surgery didn’t stop.
A person assisting nearby administered another shot of the inhibitor.
“First time seeing a scene like this, isn’t it?”
A voice pulled Chai Yuening back from her boundless shock.
The person speaking to her was a woman dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and long pants, wearing black gloves. She had shoulder-length black hair, slightly deep-set eyes, and fine lines at their corners.
The woman leaned against the white wall outside the infirmary, staring at Chai Yuening for several seconds before leisurely asking, “Where are you from?”
Chai Yuening didn’t answer.
The woman asked again, “The Floating City, or the Underground City?”
In this isolated place, for someone to suddenly mention the human bases outside instantly put Chai Yuening on alert.
She said, “I’m from the Underground City Base.”
A flicker of disappointment crossed the woman’s eyes. She didn’t press further, only letting out a soft sigh.
“I’m from the Floating City. I was taken in here eight years ago… I haven’t heard any news from the Floating City in a long time.”
As she spoke, she added wistfully, “I also have a younger sister. She lived in Outer District One, just like me. I wonder how she is now.”
Chai Yuening saw longing in her eyes.
But she couldn’t bear to tell her that the Floating City’s outer districts had already fallen.
Chai Yuening asked, “How did you come to be here?”
“My name is Lan Yi. I was a ground survey operative for the base. My husband was a pilot. Every time I went down to the surface with my team for a survey, he would accompany me. Until one time, I sustained a minor injury during a survey, and the self-test results showed signs of infection…” the woman said softly, a helpless smile on her face. “In our Floating City, once a person is infected, they can never go home again.”
“…I’ve heard as much,” Chai Yuening replied in a low voice.
“I heard your Underground City Base doesn’t have such a rule.”
“It didn’t before, but it does now,” Chai Yuening answered her. “Because of a major incident within the disease control center, the infection spread outward. Mutants killed humans on a massive scale, and the Underground City Base paid a terrible price.”
Lan Yi smiled after hearing this and continued her story. “Yes. As long as the one infected isn’t yourself, or your family, or your friends, then everyone will be grateful for the security such a system provides. But data has always shown that being infected doesn’t mean you will definitely mutate. Everyone wants to live. Even if the probability isn’t high, no one wants to be pushed into the abyss of despair when there’s still hope.”
“To avoid being executed by firing squad at the base entrance, my husband made a crazy decision… He took one of the base’s fighter jets and tried to fly me to the Underground City Base.” As Lan Yi spoke, a trace of sorrow appeared in her eyes. “But we couldn’t find the Underground City at all. We were lost in the boundless sky, like the loneliest of birds.”
“Before our fuel ran out, we made an emergency landing in a desolate, hopeless land. He led me forward. We didn’t know whether tomorrow or death would arrive first; we just kept walking, and walking, as if by simply not stopping, we could walk out of the abyss… But I made it out. He didn’t.”
Chai Yuening’s lips parted. She asked softly, “He mutated?”
Lan Yi nodded, her voice heavy. “Actually, I’ve mutated too.”
As she spoke, she rolled up a small section of her sleeve, revealing the skin on her wrist.
It wasn’t human skin. It was like fish skin, pale gray with fine black lines, and covered in dense, bristle-like short spines.
Chai Yuening subconsciously held her breath.
“You must be thinking, why hasn’t that person been given up on, even though he’s like that,” Lan Yi said. “But the truth is, in this place, there’s almost no one who hasn’t mutated at all.”
She looked into Chai Yuening’s eyes, her gaze shimmering with an indescribable light. “We’ve mutated, but we’re still alive. Perhaps one day, we’ll suddenly lose the self-awareness that makes us human, but until that day comes, we won’t be abandoned by anyone here, nor will we abandon anyone. All of us cherish every day and night we have as human beings.”
She said this place had inhibitors, drugs that could conceal one’s scent, and weapons and ammunition capable of inflicting heavy damage on most mutated beasts.
This small base had everything. In a crisis, it could even consume energy to activate a stealth mode to avoid attacks from giant mutated beasts and hordes.
“This place is wonderful. You’ll grow to like it here,” Lan Yi said, her gaze shifting to the injured man on the operating table.
Chai Yuening couldn’t help but ask, “Will he make it through?”
Lan Yi replied, “I don’t know. It’s not certain. His mutation level is very high. Whether he can retain his human consciousness… that’s up to fate.”
With an uneasy heart, Chai Yuening stood outside the infirmary door.
At some point, Chu Ci came down to find her, and together they stood guard in silence, the wind blowing on them all night.
Only when the heavy rain stopped and the sky brightened, only when the injured man—a stranger to them—survived, did Chai Yuening finally let out a sigh of relief.
His mutation level peaked at sixty-seven-point-something percent, then slowly decreased bit by bit, finally stabilizing at around thirty percent.
Lan Yi said that mutation monitoring is based on both body and will. The physical mutations are irreversible, but as long as the human will hasn’t completely dissipated, it can be reawakened.
That man’s thirty-percent-or-so mutation was the irreversible physical part. His consciousness had mostly recovered. Although it wasn’t absolutely stable, until the next mutation occurred, he was still a human.
It was just that the people this base deemed “human” would probably all be dragged out and shot, from an outsider’s perspective.
After all, they could go berserk at any moment. It was only the people here who didn’t care in the slightest.
In this place, it was a common occurrence for an unstable body to undergo a second mutation, or to develop a new mutation after an injury.
Every one of them, to a greater or lesser extent, possessed superhuman physical abilities due to their partial mutations. So no matter who lost control, they could swarm in, restrain them, and carry them, trussed up, to the operating table.
It sounded somewhat comical, yet Chai Yuening couldn’t help the stinging in her eyes.
Chai Yuening had never imagined that such a group of humans lived deep within the Fog Zone.
After the cataclysm, they had nowhere to run. They were cut off from the world, surviving deep in a Fog Zone a hundred, a thousand times more dangerous than the outside.
In this land of despair, they built a home for humanity. They faced the new ecosystem brought by the black vines head-on and, long before the escapists far away, found a way to contend with it.
In their eyes, there were no infection tests, no rule that you must die after showing signs of infection.
All of them cherished every day and night they had as human beings.
They revered every life that could be called “human.”
Although they must have paid a terrible price, although their community numbered only a few hundred, they were truly living in freedom. Every one of them possessed the dignity and the right to live that a human being ought to have.
The morning light pierced through the dense fog, illuminating this human base. As Chai Yuening watched, the patient who had successfully undergone surgery was carried to a nearby ward.
An Li’s voice came from behind her. “Hey, you’ve been here all night!”
Chai Yuening came back to her senses and turned to look at An Li.
An Li said, “My uncle told me to take you to see Sir.”
Chai Yuening asked, “Sir?”
An Li nodded. “Everyone has to see Sir. Sir has to do research. We have to inform him of our every mutation and cooperate with his recording and sample collection.”
Chai Yuening subconsciously tightened her grip on Chu Ci’s cold hand.
An Li didn’t see. She just waved at them. “Come with me.”
They followed behind An Li to the research area.
It was a blue-gray building, not very tall and slightly old.
An Li skipped ahead, dark patches on the back of her neck faintly visible beneath her black ponytail.
A “person” whose hands had mutated into a pair of bird claws and who had deep brown wings growing from beneath their reddish arms walked past them.
“Morning, An Li.”
“Morning, Uncle Liu!”
With just those two brief greetings, they passed each other.
Chai Yuening couldn’t help but look back at the man a few more times. When she came to, she asked in a low voice, “That person has wings. Can he fly?”
An Li said, “Sir says that, judging from his physiological structure, Uncle Liu should be able to fly. But maybe he has a mental block or something; he’s never been able to learn.”
As she spoke, she looked up at Chai Yuening and added, “But mutating to that extent is very dangerous. The more genes from other species a human has in their body, the closer they are to completely turning into a monster. One wrong step, and there might be no coming back.”
Chai Yuening took a long, deep breath, her gaze unconsciously drifting to Chu Ci.
It seemed that while both showed non-human signs, Chu Ci was still different from the people here. Would this difference bring new trouble for her?
With this question in her heart, she walked step by step to the door of the room where the man An Li called “Sir” was.
The moment the laboratory door was pushed open, she saw a white-haired old man sitting quietly by a window, a wheelchair beneath him.
He slowly turned to look in the direction of the sound, his calm and profound gaze revealing a kindness and benevolence that made one want to draw near.
“Sir, these are the new friends my uncle and I brought back last night,” An Li said, then turned to introduce him to Chai Yuening and Chu Ci. “This is the founder of our base, and the guardian of us all, Mr. Shi Wenlin.”
With that, An Li waved at them, turned, and left the room.
Chai Yuening looked at the old man before her, momentarily at a loss for words.
This “Sir” looked no younger than the elderly man from District Nine she had cared for. This was a human who had experienced the wars and hardships of the Old World; he had eyes that had seen through the ways of the world.
He quietly looked at Chu Ci, his gaze momentarily losing focus for a few seconds before slowly returning.
“Young lady, you remind me of someone.”
“What person?” Chu Ci asked.
The man was silent for a long time before asking in a low voice, “Have you heard of the Old World’s Secret Research Institute? In 2177, before the Old World was destroyed, a sixteen-year-old girl was sent there. She successfully merged with the black vine, and the entire institute saw her as humanity’s hope… She had the same rare eye color as you.”
“But, Sir,” Chu Ci said softly, “I was only sent to the Floating City’s research institute in 2178.”
Author’s Notes:
Not a bad guy, hmm.
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