RotA – Chapter 69

“Have humans… infected me…”

Chu Ci closed her eyes, sealing the tears back in.

Listening to the heartbeat by her ear, she thought quietly, in this world, there would never be another person who would comfort her like this.

Chai Yuening was comforting her, yet Chai Yuening’s voice was also trembling. She had cried, and it seemed as if Chai Yuening was about to cry with her.

Emotions were contagious between people.

In the past, it was always Chai Yuening who made her unhappy, but this time, it was she who had made Chai Yuening unhappy.

She thought she should accept Chai Yuening’s comfort, even if it didn’t have a shred of scientific basis.

But if everything in the world truly did infect one another, then she really ought to be a plant infected by humans.

Because a plant shouldn’t understand humans, but she did.

After possessing a human shell, after meeting Chai Yuening, after feeling what it was like to be cared for, or perhaps, after learning to choose for the first time.

She knew humanity’s fragility, had seen humanity’s selfishness and depravity, and had also seen humanity’s selflessness and fortitude.

She found it difficult to comprehend the complex emotions of humans, difficult to feel the joy or sorrow of most people, yet in the end, she had come to feel all the things she once found incomprehensible.

Even with all the facts laid out before her, there was still one person willing to firmly believe she was human.

If she was human, she ought to do something for the continuation of human civilization.

“Chai Yuening.”

“Hm?”

“If the mother flower that birthed the entire ecosystem truly exists, if everything is its revenge against humanity,” Chu Ci leaned against Chai Yuening’s embrace, her words carrying a slight sob, but her mind was gradually calming. She said, “I should go find it.”

Chai Yuening hesitated for a moment, but didn’t object, only asking softly, “You’re going back?”

Chu Ci nodded slightly.

Everything must have a beginning and an end, mustn’t it?

She didn’t know where that flower might be, didn’t know if going back would truly stop this revenge, and certainly didn’t know if, after “returning” herself, her human will could possibly remain.

But she knew that it was a sliver of hope for humanity.

She couldn’t watch humanity just perish from this world; she would lose the thing she cherished most.

Chu Ci raised her head, her tear-filled eyes gazing quietly at Chai Yuening.

She thought Chai Yuening would respect her choice as she had in the past, but human emotions seemed to be more complex than she understood.

Chai Yuening was silent for a very, very long time. The tears shimmering in her eyes broke and fell at some unknown moment.

“It’s not worth it…”

Chu Ci heard Chai Yuening’s reply.

This was the first time Chai Yuening had rejected her choice.

This should count as a rejection, right? But she didn’t feel angry. Instead, she felt quite happy.

Humans liked to weigh gains and losses; “worth it” and “not worth it” were things they considered before doing anything.

But in every choice she had ever experienced, she was always the one who could be sacrificed. No one had ever asked her if she wanted to or if she was willing.

In over fifty long years, for the first time, someone cared about her gains and losses.

Even if the other end of the scale was very likely the survival of all humanity, that person would still feel for her, would still whisper in her ear—not worth it.

But that person didn’t know that this very “not worth it” was, to her, the most worthwhile thing in the world.

So she raised a smile and, with words bordering on stubbornness, responded to this choice: “You’re not me. You don’t understand.”

“Always like this…” Chai Yuening couldn’t help but take a long, deep breath.

She said no more, only reached out and gently wiped away the teardrop at the corner of the person’s eye in her arms.

Everyone has their own choices. She thought she understood, she got it.

Chu Ci’s only selfish act was her decision to hide her identity in the underground city base.

Since then, in every choice Chu Ci made, she had never considered herself.

There was just such a little girl in the world, one who never seemed to grow up, who, even if exiled by the entire world, would never hold a trace of malice toward it, so long as one person treated her with sincerity.

Is this fate?

It must be fate.

Before the old world was destroyed, fate chose this girl. She had a partial understanding of this world; she fell into this world.

Good and evil, black and white, were reflected one by one in her eyes.

She observed this world; she judged this world.

She was like a deity; whether people were unforgivably sinful was all decided in a single thought from her.

But in the end, she was not a lofty deity. She was just herself, a girl who had never been treated with kindness for as long as she could remember. Every choice she made was as simple as a child’s: whoever showed her kindness, she would give her all for them.

She was always like this…

“If this time is for real, everything will get better, right?”

“Yes.”

“Humanity will find its freedom again.”

“Yes.”

“The birds will leave their cages.”

“Right.”

Chu Ci pressed her lips together and said softly, “One last time. If I still can’t help with anything, then I’ll accept it.”

Chai Yuening: “Accept it?”

Chu Ci: “Then you can just take me away. Anywhere is fine. You choose for me.”

Chai Yuening nodded. “Okay.”

Chu Ci thought for a moment, then added, “If the world is destroyed, if humanity no longer exists, if you die…”

Chai Yuening: “…”

Chu Ci: “I’ll do as you said before and eat you… You’ll be my nourishment, you’ll live on inside my body…”

Chai Yuening: “Okay.”

The moment Chai Yuening agreed, her heart felt as if it were being frantically pushed by something, and she unconsciously wanted to say the words that had been suppressed in her heart for so long.

She hesitated for several seconds, the words on the tip of her tongue, but before she could speak,

An alarm blared through the air.

She stood up and walked to the window in a daze.

On the street not far away, incensed people were still protesting loudly against the introduction of the inhibitor. The sound of the alarm made many of them lower their protest signs in a state of confusion and terror.

In that moment, countless people looked up at the same blue sky.

Fighter jet after fighter jet soared into the sky. The electrical defense mode, long inactive, was reactivated, and a translucent protective power grid enveloped the entire main city of the base in an instant.

In the distance, something was approaching, a dark mass swarming through the layers of clouds.

It was a sudden beast tide, its scale far exceeding the one that had previously destroyed all the outer cities.

Here, was the food they most wanted to hunt.

The Floating City base had not yet had time to mass-produce the medicine used to mask one’s scent, nor had it had time to build the kind of high-energy-consumption but effective self-concealing defensive fortifications like those at the Fog Zone Base.

They had only just received the research data from the Fog Zone Base not long ago.

In the face of a constantly deteriorating ecosystem, humanity always seemed to be one step behind. The time this world had left for humanity was perhaps truly running out.

“Let’s go,” she heard Chu Ci say softly behind her.

It was time for them to go. Before everything came to an end, they would, in the capacity of humans, fight back against this world with all their might one last time.

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