RotA – Chapter 73

The night was still, and the night wind poured into the open side hatch.

Deep in the Fog Zone, the human military officer stared intently at the map in his hands, his brow furrowed in deep thought.

The notebook was old; neither the paper nor the handwriting looked like something that could be forged.

Maps of the Old World could only be accessed from the Base’s database, and there were indeed few people in the Base who could retrieve such data at will.

If the notebook was real, the map was from the Base, and the markings were made by Yi Shuyun, then Chai Yuening and Chu Ci’s true mission was indeed not to help the Floating City locate the Fog Zone Base—they were going to find the Ecological Mother Flower that Zhang Hanqing spoke of.

“That’s just the ravings of a madwoman.” His reason wouldn’t allow him to believe such words.

But in truth, for humanity to maintain its sanity in a world like this was nearly an impossible feat.

The wind was strong outside. Chai Yuening climbed back up the ladder into the cockpit and, once seated, retorted, “If we don’t believe in this, what else can we believe in?”

“Are we supposed to believe that our weapons can fend off the beast tides that will come, again and again, each one larger than the last?” Chai Yuening said, letting out a heavy sigh. “After the Old World was destroyed, people fled into the deserts and out to sea to escape the black vine ecosystem. To escape the danger, they even took to the skies and burrowed into the earth. But what happened in the end? The deserts and oceans fell one after another. The mutated beasts became increasingly indescribable, and increasingly immense. Now, it’s the Floating City’s turn to make an emergency landing. How much longer can humanity hold on?”

“If there’s no hope left to see, if risking our lives won’t change anything, then…” Chai Yuening asked, as if muttering to herself, “why not go crazy for once and believe that a miracle can truly happen?”

As she said these words, she herself could hardly believe them. She didn’t even know how she was supposed to persuade the man before her.

“The world is so vast. Even if everything in the notebook is true,” Liu An asked, “can we really find it, just by ourselves?”

Chai Yuening froze for a moment, her gaze turning to Chu Ci.

She saw Chu Ci looking at her quietly, a faint glimmer seeming to flicker in her eyes.

In that instant, Chai Yuening suddenly felt the sense of confusion and helplessness in her heart fade considerably.

“In early spring, the Floating City lost contact with the Underground City. The Floating City dispatched a scouting team across the Fog Zone to try and locate the Underground City, but the entire team was lost without a trace.” Chai Yuening paused, then mustered her courage and continued, “And then I met her. On a day I never should have gone to the surface, in a dangerous place I never should have been—I met her.”

Back then, she hadn’t known the world was collapsing. She had thought that if she could just survive one more Growth Season, everything would return to normal. She had believed that as long as she worked hard to earn money and contribute to the Base, she could earn the right to live in the main city and have a better life than before.

She was supposed to be an ordinary person.

If she hadn’t met Chu Ci, ordinary as she was, she would have likely died long ago.

She would have died on the night they were supposed to help each other walk until dawn, or else in the control room of the District Six ventilation system.

If she were lucky and lived a little longer, she probably would have died in confusion on the day the Underground City Base’s main city fell.

She would have died without ever flying into the sky, without seeing the archipelago fall, without any possibility of knowing what desperate changes were happening to the world. And she certainly wouldn’t have, while struggling in despair, met a steadfast person who refused to give up moving forward, no matter what.

But the fact was, the world was so vast, and yet she had met her.

Just like every miracle she had ever witnessed, it was clearly so coincidental, yet it felt like an inevitability—an encounter fated in the great unseen.

“She had originally gained her freedom, but for my sake, she returned to a cage. I waited for a long time, what felt like centuries, until I could finally take her to wander far away…” Chai Yuening’s eyes curved into a smile, her heart feeling more and more at ease. “The world is so vast, so vast that if humans used only their two legs, they could never traverse it all in a lifetime. And yet, two fugitives just happened to encounter the Fog Zone Base, and a flying mutated beast just happened to carry them back to the Floating City with the Base’s research findings.”

Chai Yuening said, “The world is vast, but haven’t we encountered all these seemingly impossible things?”

So what if the world is vast?

Before the world destroyed humanity, she was willing to believe one last time that “heaven never seals off all paths.”

Inside the fighter jet’s cockpit, a brief silence fell.

Chai Yuening was a little anxious, but she didn’t say anything to rush him.

After an unknown amount of time, the person in the pilot’s seat let out a soft sigh.

He said, let’s take the gamble then; it’s not like there’s anything left to lose.

The cockpit hatch slowly rose and sealed shut. Liu An turned his head and said, “Alright, let’s scout the immediate vicinity first, then decide on our next destination.”

The fighter jet flew into the air, its fog lights illuminating the dark night.

They skimmed past the enormous black vine flower atop the tall building.

Liu An joked with a smile, “You think that Ecological Mother Flower thing from the ten-thousand-meter abyss can grow legs and run around? This big fella couldn’t be what we’re looking for, could it?”

Chu Ci looked back for a long time, until the black vine flower blooming in the night sky gradually faded from her sight in the thick fog, before she quietly uttered, “It’s not.”

Chai Yuening had a feeling she might have sensed something.

She brought the map before Chu Ci again and said tentatively, “Do you want to pick the next target point?”

Chu Ci’s outstretched finger hovered in mid-air, hesitating for a long while before finally tapping one of the locations.

“Here?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll know when we get there,” Chai Yuening comforted her softly. “It’s okay if we’re wrong. We still have other chances.”

Chu Ci nodded, leaned against Chai Yuening’s shoulder, and gently closed her eyes.

The human fighter jet flew low through the city at a safe speed.

Time passed slowly. They didn’t find any place that looked like it had been a drilling project site. The sky remained pitch-black as the jet ascended to a high altitude once more, flying toward another direction Chu Ci had chosen.

Flying at full speed at high altitude, getting from one city to another was only a matter of one or two hours.

After arriving at a brand-new location, the plane once again descended to a low altitude, scouting the four corners of the city.

As the sky began to lighten, the fighter jet, having found nothing, flew toward the third marked point.

Sleepless all night, fatigue washed over their eyes. Liu An landed the plane back on the ground and, as if racing against time, closed his eyes to sleep.

Chai Yuening saw that the fuel gauge showed very little fuel left. What remained was enough to get back to the Floating City from here, but if they continued searching like this, they probably wouldn’t be able to make it back.

But the man who had fallen into a deep sleep hadn’t mentioned a single word of worry before closing his eyes.

It seemed he truly had no intention of going back. Just like them, he had already made up his mind before they even set out: if they couldn’t find the Ecological Mother Flower, they would die together in the Fog Zone.

Chai Yuening couldn’t help but wonder, was humanity’s resolve to face death always this calm, yet so turbulent?

Because in that moment, her heart was suddenly in turmoil.

She thought of the chief security officer in the District Six train station whose name she had forgotten. She thought of the soldiers and police who held their ground inside District Seven as the quarantine wall slowly rose. She thought of the person who, after death, left behind only a gun for their loved ones.

She thought, there were so, so many people in this world who defended it with their own flesh and blood, yet would never leave their names behind.

She suddenly wondered, how was the Underground City Base?

Had You Lan returned to District Seven to be its little boss? What kind of lives were her long-unseen teammates living now? Was the old doctor in the main city’s research institute overjoyed by the discovery of the inhibitor?

And what about the Floating City Base?

Had that enormous city landed successfully? Was their firepower enough to survive the beast tide? How many would live, and how many would die?

And the Fog Zone Base?

Was everyone’s mutation level there still stable? Had Mr. Shi’s research, following the deterioration of the ecosystem, made new, positive progress that still couldn’t fundamentally change the situation?

Humanity was engaged in a desperate struggle with the world. She didn’t know where the strength came from, but the more trapped they were in a hopeless situation, the more fiercely they roared out the unwillingness in their hearts.

Humanity was truly trying so hard to find a path to survival for itself.

Perhaps that was why human civilization was so unique, irreplaceable, and impossible to replicate.

But where was that path to survival?

She closed her eyes but couldn’t fall asleep no matter what. The more she tried to tell herself not to think, the more awake she became, unable to drift off.

This deathly silence lasted for an unknown amount of time before she suddenly heard a very, very faint sound beside her.

The hatch seemed to have been opened by someone, but only by a tiny crack.

Something, like a long snake, rustled as it slipped quietly out through the gap.

Chai Yuening opened her eyes. A new line of text had appeared on the map beside her hand.

—I can feel its presence now. Thank you for bringing me here. I can walk the rest of the way myself. You should go back.

Always like this…

Wanting to bear everything on her own.