Chapter 59

Chapter 59

On their journey, they encountered another hybrid creature.

Unlike the one that had fallen to Lu Fen's gun, this one was slender and grayish-black, resembling an enormous, magnified stick insect. It had large, delicate wings akin to those of a butterfly on its back, and two slender antennae protruding from its forehead. Its eyes were concealed. The creature was over five meters long with six elongated limbs. As they crested a hill, it was feasting on a two-meter-long lizard. The creature's originally smooth exoskeleton had been shimmering in the aurora but, as it consumed its meal, the scales became coarser.

Its lithe and agile body allowed it to move swiftly. After finishing the lizard's head, the stick insect crouched down, then propelled itself forward, snatching up the remainder of its prey before taking to the air with fluttering wings, disappearing into the distance—unaware of Lu Fen and An Zhe's presence.

This might be the intelligent hybrid that Lu Fen had mentioned, one that knew to seek a hiding place after acquiring genes, to shelter from the chaotic period that ensued.

An Zhe gazed at its pristine white wings and sincerely remarked, "So beautiful."

He himself was also white. He liked the color of his mycelium, but he didn't possess such elegant and lovely wings. Even when he transformed completely, he was just a fluffy mass. Ever since that rainy season in his youth when storms and winds had snapped him off, he had lost the appearance a mushroom should have. He was labeled as a "variant deviating from the species' fundamental form," which filled him with shame.

Lu Fen's voice was cold as he asked, "Do you want to eat it?"

An Zhe replied, "."

He denied, "No."

Lu Fen said, "Don't eat randomly."

An Zhe whispered back, "I can't even reach them anyway..."

The corner of Lu Fen's lips lifted slightly.

As an alien, An Zhe felt aggrieved to be restricted from eating by a human; he believed he should have the right to eat freely.

Then, his stomach rumbled.

Lu Fen asked, "What about your food?"

Recalling the remaining supplies, An Zhe realized it wouldn't even suffice for one meal. He replied, "Let's wait."

After some thought, he asked Lu Fen, "Are you hungry?"

Lu Fen replied, "I'm still okay."

An Zhe sensed that the human was being stubborn. He reached into his backpack, took out the remaining half of a compressed biscuit, broke off a piece, and offered it to Lu Fen, feeding him.

The colonel did not refuse.

An Zhe continued feeding him. By the third cookie, he remembered that the compressed biscuits were too dry and should be consumed with water.

There was still half a bottle of water left. He took it out but was unsure how to feed it to the colonel.

He said, "Wait for a moment."

At dawn, An Zhe and Lu Fen shared half of the remaining water behind a large rock. Water brought joy to the mushrooms, so An Zhe licked his lips before Lu Fen stuffed another biscuit into his mouth.

An Zhe held it in his mouth and swallowed slowly. Strangely, he felt at ease despite their dwindling supplies and uncertainty about tomorrow's survival.

He said, "You eat. I won't move."

Not moving meant he wouldn't need much food.

Lu Fen ruffled his head. An Zhe looked up and met his gaze. In the faint morning light, the colonel's usually cold expression seemed to soften slightly.

In that instant, An Zhe had an illusion. Despite being completely different from Lu Fen and having no common language, if the signals never resumed, if one day they were both anomalies or both human, and if they both survived, perhaps they could become great friends.

He wasn't an exceptional human being himself, one could even say he was good for nothing. Yet, the colonel had treated him kindly. Therefore, if Lu Fen were to become an alien, An Zhe wouldn't reject him as long as he wasn't too unappealing.

But such a possibility didn't exist. Unfortunately, he was a mushroom. If he had remained human, perhaps he would never have met Lu Fen. Yet, fatefully, he was a mushroom.

They continued walking. An Zhe felt that his legs weren't as painful after a night's rest. He didn't want Lu Fen to carry him anymore and insisted on walking on his own.

In the morning mist, there seemed to be something indistinct in the distance.

An Zhe said, "I think I see something."

Lu Fen replied, "Me too."

An Zhe asked, "Can we find water and food in the ruins?"

Lu Fen answered, "Yes."

An Zhe pressed, "Really?"

Lu Fen responded nonchalantly, "I often stay in ruins."

An Zhe: "Oh..."

Colonel Lu was someone who could navigate the depths fearlessly.

However, the fact that he wouldn't starve to death was still a cause for joy. His steps lightened, and he ventured a step ahead of Lu Fen.

Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet gave way.

And he began to sink.

He plummeted downward.

An Zhe: "AAAAH!"

In the blink of an eye, Lu Fen firmly grabbed his hand. An Zhe dangled in mid-air before being pulled back up by Lu Fen. Just as his leg had recovered, his arm started to throb painfully. He let out a soft gasp. Lu Fen reached out, running his hand from An Zhe's shoulder down to his wrist, and said, "It's not broken."

An Zhe lifted his head to look ahead.

—There was a treacherous three-meter-deep pit ahead, covered with brittle wooden planks that were concealed by sand, indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain. One misstep, and one would fall into the pit.

An Zhe found the situation peculiar.

He noticed Lu Fen's slightly furrowed brow as well.

"Trap, freshly made," Lu Fen remarked.

Suddenly, he lifted his head and scanned their surroundings. "Who?"

A rustling sound came from the side, followed by a muted creak. An Zhe turned to the source of the noise and saw a mound of earth not far away shedding soil, revealing what seemed like a lid—something emerged from it. At first, he thought it was a groundhog, but upon closer inspection, it was a human, a living one, with no apparent signs of mutation. The person was dressed in tattered denim.

It was a slender boy with skin so pale due to lack of sunlight that it stood out. However, his cheeks were sprinkled with freckles.

After crawling out, the boy appeared utterly stunned, staring wide-eyed in their direction.

An Zhe met his gaze silently.

It took a full five minutes for the boy to stammer, "Y-You... You... People?"

His speech was unpracticed, with an odd pronunciation that didn't resemble the common dialect used in the base.

Lu Fen said, "Take us out first."

The boy stared at them intently, his hands trembling by his sides. Then, he dashed over abruptly, "Wait!"

He led the way, guiding them through numerous winding turns. As they walked, he stammered, "S-Sorry, we were scared... scared that the monsters would get too close, so we dug lots... lots of traps. They can't cross, and w-we could observe... didn't... didn't expect anyone to be here."

Hanging his head in regret, An Zhe spoke, "It's alright."

Arriving at the mound, the boy activated some mechanism, causing a creaking sound. A heavy iron gate swung open, revealing a dark hole.

"Y-You're from outside?" The boy turned to them, his tongue tied. He first looked at Lu Fen but seemed startled by his blank expression, then stiffly shifted his gaze to An Zhe and asked.

An Zhe replied, "Yes."

"I-I am..." The boy caught his breath, his face flushed with excitement. If they weren't a meter apart, An Zhe suspected he would hear the boy's pounding heart.

He asked, "Are you okay?"

"I-I am..." The boy finally seemed to grasp the situation, appearing to struggle for air.

"Hello," Lu Fen spoke up. "Northern Base, the Court of Judgment. Do you need assistance?"

"We... We need help," the boy's eyes sparkled like the morning sun as he turned and darted into the tunnel, calling out loudly as he ran deeper, "Grandpa!"

Following him, Lu Fen and An Zhe entered the dimly-lit, winding tunnel. After closing the iron gate behind them, they found themselves in a cool darkness, but a faint light shone ahead. With the path unclear, An Zhe cautiously held onto the wall, only to have his wrist caught by Lu Fen, who led him forward.

They descended a steep staircase that could easily cause a fall. After descending about a hundred meters and turning a corner, the space widened slightly. Faint white light from gas lamps illuminated the cramped cave, casting an endless depth into the distance. Each step echoed continuously within the confines.

Lu Fen asked, "Did you dig this?"

"No," the boy replied. "It's an old mine shaft. Many of us took refuge here a long time ago."

Lu Fen continued, "How many people? How long have you been here?"

"I don't know," the boy lowered his head slightly. "I've been here since I was born. Many people... They all died. Now, it's just me and my grandpa."

Before reaching the spot where the boy said his "grandpa" was, An Zhe heard heavy breathing, akin to an animal's dying gasps.

In a ten-meter square alcove, there was a narrow bed made of wire mesh. Lying on it was an elderly man with silver hair. As An Zhe approached, he saw a grayish-yellow blanket covering the old man's body. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes cloudy, and his whole body trembled as if enduring immense pain. Despite their presence by his bedside, he didn't react at all.

"The man is ill," the boy said.

Saying this, he sat on the edge of the bed, took his grandfather's hand, and announced loudly, "Grandpa, people from outside have come looking for us! They say they're from a base – it's really true, there is a base!"

The elderly man, in his dementia, was not swayed by the joy in the boy's words. Instead, he frowned in confusion and turned his head away, as if seeking refuge from the boy's animated chatter.

"We can go somewhere with lots of people!" The boy, seemingly accustomed to the old man's gloominess, spoke with heightened enthusiasm, his tone filled with anticipation.

In that moment, the old man's withered lips moved, uttering a few indistinct syllables.

His grandson asked, "What?"

An Zhe listened attentively as well. The elder's lips moved, repeating those few syllables once more.

"The time...," he croaked, his voice hoarse and breathless, like the whistling of a worn-out wind, "the time... is almost here."

The boy turned apologetically to Lu Fen and An Zhe. "Grandpa always says that. He thinks his illness is worsening, and he's close to the end."

With that said, he informed the elder, "We'll go where the humans are. There must be medicine there."

The old man, however, persisted in his words, leaving them no choice but to give up. As they left the place, the elder still muttered, "The time is almost here." An Zhe felt that the phrase sounded familiar, but he couldn't recall where he had heard it before.

Subsequently, the boy led them to a slightly more spacious square room connected to three dark caverns branching off like a labyrinthine heart. Yellowing maps and safety instructions for the mine were tacked onto the uneven walls, while a small square table stood in the center, flanked by two old couches whose leather had been eroded by excessive moisture.

Lu Fen conversed with the boy.

The boy's name was Xi Bei. According to him, during the unprecedented disaster, the mine had collapsed. However, due to the absence of lethal radiation, some people survived within and continued to live until now. They scavenged for necessities in nearby ruins, only to occasionally fall prey to the monsters outside. Xi Bei was an only child, and as time passed, the few survivors dwindled down to just him and his grandfather.

"I always knew that everyone must have survived and found a new home somewhere. But we couldn't find you. My grandpa used to say that when we finally found another exit from the mine, the world outside had changed. There wasn't a single living soul," Xi Bei said, his voice quivering with excitement. He retrieved a stack of worn, thin books from a small compartment on the wall.

"Two years ago, we found a car outside. Apart from a dead person, there were these books. I knew then that there were still others out there. I... I've been waiting for you all this time. We... our fellow humans must have been searching for us," he looked at Lu Fen, his eyes filled with hope.

Lu Fen spoke softly, "The base welcomes you."

Meanwhile, An Zhe reached out. The top book in the pile was illuminated by the dim gas lamp, revealing its title: "Base Monthly." These four words stirred fragments of memories stored in his mind. This was a publication distributed by the base to the public.

This manual, alongside pornographic novels and weapon guides, had been produced by a distant human base and carried away by mercenaries or soldiers in armored vehicles. It had traveled a long journey before being permanently abandoned in the wilderness. Eventually, survivors of the desert era salvaged it from the wreckage of the vehicle, passing it around day after day in the mine, aware that it held news from their far-off human homeland.

The yellowed cover bore a small inscription, "May our future be bright." Flipping further, he reached the table of contents.

An Zhe's hand trembled slightly as he turned the pages. His gaze paused on a line in the directory, two incredibly simple words.

"Winter."

Ellipses stretched across the page towards the right margin, ending with two more characters, signifying the author's name.

An Ze.

An Zhe's breath hitched momentarily. In the corner of his eye, he caught the next line beneath "Winter," the title of the piece: "A Day in 2059."

2059 was a distant era in history, and thus the title hinted that this was an essay delving into the past.

Its author was named Poet.

—The two names stood side by side on the page, in tranquil coexistence.

An Zhe's fingers landed softly on the paper. They had once held An Ze's shoulders in that cave overgrown with vines, and been grasped by Poet in the darkness of a train carriage. Now, they gently traced those two names, reviving their vivid images in An Zhe's mind. He turned to that page—the adjacent two-page spread. "Winter" was a short poem, depicting the snowfall on the supply station square during that winter. An Ze had described the accumulation as soft as the white wings of doves.

Every detail of An Ze's voice was etched in An Zhe's memory; it was as if An Ze himself was recounting their history to him in that brief moment, reviving the poet before his eyes with a smile on his face. He insisted on sharing the story of the base – the record they had left behind in this world.

Haze blurred An Zhe's vision, yet the vivid images of the two men were still right before him, despite how long it had been since he last thought of them. Just hours ago, he had criticized humanity's stubborn efforts to preserve their will, imagining that he wouldn't disdain Lu Fen even if he became an Other. That conviction wavered slightly at this very moment.

He knew the base was beyond redemption, and that humanity was at its end.

Yet, their legacy endured, immortal.