RotA – Chapter 60

That mutated beast flew far away.

The moment the will that belonged to a human completely dissipated, a pair of wings that did not belong to a human finally carried the body, which perhaps still held human memories, toward the boundless sky, breaking through the dense fog and flying free from its bonds.

Chai Yuening had never exchanged a single word with him, yet she still remembered the morning she first saw this elder.

In her memory, he seemed to have just come from Mr. Shi Wenlin’s room, and his tone when greeting An Li was amiable.

Many people in the Fog Zone Base liked him; he must have been a very good teacher.

Unfortunately, he could no longer take those little ones who constantly flocked around him to fly up into the sky for a good look at this deep mountain forest. He could no longer carry news from the Fog Zone Base to the outside world, where more of humanity dwelled.

The people of the Fog Zone would never receive the kindred spirits they had long awaited from the other side of the world.

The convoy that had seen Uncle Liu off began its return journey.

The people were silent. Only the sound of the wind howled ceaselessly in their ears.

The road ahead was vast and uncertain, the distance impossible to see.

Chai Yuening felt a surge of frustration. She found she was growing to despise this feeling of aimlessness.

By the time the truck returned to the base, it was already past four in the afternoon.

Chai Yuening saw Chu Ci standing at the base entrance from a distance. The moment the truck stopped, she vaulted down and ran to Chu Ci’s side in a few steps.

“When I left, it was still dark. You were asleep…” she explained, her voice lacking confidence.

Chu Ci shook her head, not blaming her at all, and simply said, “Lan Yi made soup at noon and brought some over for us.”

Chai Yuening: “Was it good?”

Chu Ci: “I don’t know.”

I don’t know meant she hadn’t tried it yet.

Chai Yuening realized she had asked a foolish question. Chu Ci had been waiting for her to come back so they could eat together.

“It must be cold, right? Let’s go back and heat it up. We’ll try it together.”

“Mm.”

Chai Yuening walked ahead. It seemed she had something she wanted to say to Chu Ci, but her heart was a chaotic mess, and no matter how she thought about it, she couldn’t grasp a single thread of an idea.

She heated the soup Lan Yi had sent over, broke some flatbread into it, and filled her stomach.

She felt that when facing Chu Ci, she probably shouldn’t hide her worries. Yet, she found herself uncontrollably hesitating for a long time, only to realize that some worries were simply impossible to articulate—after all, she couldn’t even figure out why she was so dejected.

Chai Yuening silently suppressed the inexplicable frustration in her heart.

She washed Lan Yi’s thermos, thinking she would return it in a little while and thank her at the same time.

But then, Chu Ci was standing behind her. “Mr. Shi came to see me today.”

Chai Yuening’s hand, which was washing the dish, couldn’t help but pause. A jumble of thoughts raced through her mind, but she couldn’t seem to catch any of them. Besides nervousness, nothing remained.

She quickly collected herself and put on a nonchalant expression. “What did he say?”

“He ran some tests on me. He said I’m exactly the same as I was over fifty years ago. Even though I’ve clearly fused with non-human characteristics, the results of all my tests are no different from those of an uninfected, ordinary human,” Chu Ci said. “He’s beginning to understand why the researchers outside could never find the truth from me… From a research perspective, I’m truly impervious to analysis.”

Chu Ci’s words were as placid as ever, yet Chai Yuening could almost hear her self-reproach.

The people outside had not treated her well, yet she always blamed herself for not being able to help them.

Chai Yuening placed the washed thermos upside down on a dry towel, wiped her hands, and turned around. “It’s not your fault. They’re the ones who saw you as their hope. You don’t have to force yourself to become what they expect.”

“Mr. Shi said the same thing.” Chu Ci lowered her gaze.

“There are just a lot of ‘what if’ things in this world.” Chai Yuening shrugged. “I don’t understand all that complicated jargon, but I know that probability is random. Everything is a coincidence. No one can replicate a ‘what if’.”

“You don’t have to comfort me. I’m not actually sad, nor do I mind it that much.” Chu Ci raised her eyes and looked at Chai Yuening earnestly. “I just wanted to say it out loud, to tell you.”

“Ah…” Chai Yuening was a little slow to react.

“It’s not just this. There’s something else,” Chu Ci said, turning to walk out of the kitchen and sitting down at the small table by the window.

Chai Yuening followed and sat down beside her. “What else?”

Chu Ci looked out the window, unable to see through the dense fog that shrouded the world.

“The day I first arrived, Mr. Shi said he had seen me before. That doesn’t match the Floating City’s files,” Chu Ci said softly, falling into a brief silence.

Chai Yuening didn’t interrupt her silence, just quietly waited for her to continue.

The silence didn’t last long. Chu Ci suddenly said faintly, “Mr. Shi found some old information about me. A few fragmented pages hastily transferred from the Secret Research Institute. It turns out that in 2177, I really did undergo a fusion experiment surgery at the Secret Research Institute.”

“…”

“What Mr. Shi said is true. That surgery happened before the Old World was destroyed, back when the Floating City base hadn’t even been established,” Chu Ci said calmly. “The history related to me in the Floating City is fake, the file written for me is fake, and even my memories are fake… They’re hiding something. There must be something that was erased from my memory.”

She frowned, a hint of sorrow in her eyes. “They lied to me. I don’t understand why they had to lie to me.”

She had clearly been so obedient, yet someone still wished for her to lose her memories, her emotions, and the judgment and thought that should have belonged to a human.

Thinking back now, for the past fifty-odd years, she had indeed lived a life not much different from that of an inanimate object.

If Shi Wenlin hadn’t found those yellowed, old documents, she would never have even had a shred of doubt about the “vague period in her past” that existed in her memory.

She would have just thought that she had lived too long and couldn’t remember many things clearly.

Or perhaps, she would have naturally assumed that during the time she met Chai Yuening, she had indeed lost her memory, and it was normal that some of it hadn’t returned.

It was just that some things, even if never mentioned, didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

“Do you hate them?” Chai Yuening asked softly.

Chu Ci seemed to be in a slight daze.

She thought for a long time before finally just shaking her head. “I just can’t help but wonder what they made me forget. Were those memories important to me?”

“I want to find that answer,” she said. “I want to go back there.”

She looked at Chai Yuening and asked earnestly, “Can I go back?”

This was the first time she had asked the person who seemed to always respect her every choice before making a decision.

Her gaze was full of anticipation.

The next second, she saw Chai Yuening suddenly smile, as if a great weight had been lifted.

She smiled and said to her, “I’ll go with you.”

In this crazy world, they shared a similarly crazy idea.

—To return to that cage and do something.

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