In Jiang Jianming's later memories, he walked out of that dilapidated house at the age of twelve and started to make a living in the wild.

As a handicapped child, it goes without saying how hard it is to survive.If it is targeted by new humans, it can be said that there is no resistance.

He imitated his mother to wipe his face dirty, and sewed a large cloak with the rags he picked up to cover his body.Thick skins were cut from the corpses of dead alien creatures and sewn into bracers to cover the bones of the wrists.

Just try to hide the sense of existence as much as possible, wandering in the wild like a ghost.

Sometimes he picks up other people's leftovers, and sometimes he digs the roots of wild vegetables.

Occasionally, will use knowledge or skills to help others solve their troubles. If the other party is a good person, they can exchange some daily necessities such as food and clothing.

But the days are getting harder and harder.

Helga's physical condition worsened by the day, and the line between mental sobriety and sickness blurred.Jiang Jianming refused to stay away from his mother, and was injured more and more often.

Even in this situation, when a woman is sober, she still wants to live.

She longed to spend more time with her son, at least until Ming Ming was older, and taught him all the knowledge she had.

In order to slow down the progress of chronic crystal disorder, Helga performed surgery on herself under the simplest environmental conditions.

With a strip of cloth in her mouth, she cut open the skin with the tip of a burnt knife, picked out the crystals condensed in the flesh or attached to the surface of the bone, and then sterilized and sutured with needles and threads.

After every time, her face was covered with physiological tears and sweat, and the woman collapsed on the blood-stained floor like a fish fished out of the water, and it took a day or two for her to recover.

In order to fight against mental illness, she will recite the program of the white pigeon Akaba Club aloud every morning, even though this organization has expelled her many years ago;

She repeatedly reviewed the basic cultural knowledge she had learned when she was a teenager, and asked Jiang Jianming to test her. If she made a mistake, she would be punished until late at night like a primary school student.

Both the mother and the child are running with all their strength, wanting to stay away from the scythe dropped by the god of death, and stay away from the doomed yin and yang.

I don't remember how many desperate cold nights, Helga held Jiang Jianming in her arms, and said softly in a weak voice: "Mingming, let's hold on for a while, shall we?"

She said that the darkest night is always before dawn, but no matter how dark it is, there is always a moment when it is dispelled.

It's like spring blossoms after winter, as long as you persevere, life will always get better.

But fate was not merciful.

In the late winter and early spring of the following year, when the warm wind had not blown away the lingering power of the severe cold, the mother's crystal bone pierced the child's chest.

Jiang Jianming just let out a small "ah".

The moment he fell down, the inertia caused the thin young boy to roll half a circle and fell out of the house.There was a trail of blood on the dirty ground.

Inside, Helga's eyes were red and her hair was disheveled.She was crying and screaming wildly, with chilblains all over her bare feet.

Jiang Jianming lay on his back in the snow, blood gurgling from under his body.

He suddenly found that he no longer remembered what his mother looked like when she was healthy and beautiful.

It hurts.

The manic foreign crystal particles made his whole body scalding and painful, like being scorched by fire, and he couldn't tell where the wound was for a while.

He opened his eyes in a daze, and saw a tiny black bird flying across the sky.

I suddenly remembered that there was an evening when the twilight was burning.

That was before they came to the Z2 wild area, the two wandered and fled in the neighborhood of Blue Mother Planet, sleeping in the slums.

The owner of a grocery store felt sorry for the mother and son, so he gave his mother a red blanket that could not be sold.

This became the luckiest moment for them in recent years.Mother's joyful face was illuminated golden by the setting sun, and her black hair brushed her eyelashes when she looked back.She pinched the corner of the red blanket and let it dance in the wind.

Before sunset, Helga put the blanket over him with a smile.She said it was like a flag, the red flag of the white dove Akaba Club.

Jiang Jianming knew that his mother was happy when she saw the kindness in the world, and she would think of the days when she was the leader of the rebel army.

He covered that red blanket for a long time afterwards.

Now……

Where did you put it?

...

"Obviously——Obviously!!Obviously!!"

When Jiang Jianming woke up, Helga was holding him.

The black-haired woman screamed heart-piercingly, and with her bloody hands, she pulled out the tiny crystal thorns that had pierced the child's body one by one.

The dark red liquid, tick-tock, smudged in the snow.

Can't stop for a long time.

Helga raised her veined neck, and burst into a mournful cry, "Ah...my child...my child!!!"

... In this era, there is no cure for the loss of control of crystal particles.Even if there was, it would be the same as not having it for the untouchables in the wild.

For young and weak disabled humans, the consequences of being directly pierced into the body by a crystal bone are irreversible.

"It's okay, Mom."

Jiang Jianming was chuckling, his eyes looked like freshly burnt ashes, there was no light at all, but there was still warmth that hadn't dissipated.

He was lying in Helga's arms, struggling to reach out and hook the corner of his mother's clothes, just like when he was a child.

The children's fingers were covered with plaster, snow particles and blood.The strong wind in the field passed through those fingers with a vulture-like scream, taking away the little remaining body heat.

"If you really get sick...it's obviously the same as your mother, and it's fine."

Jiang Jianming murmured softly, "So..."

"Mom stays with Mingming, let's be together forever."

"I am very blessed."

After saying this, he lost consciousness again and knew nothing.

Coming to the sixth year in the Z2 wild area.

Jiang Jianming was thirteen years old and suffered from chronic crystal disorder.

There is no light to drive away the darkness, no spring wind to blow away the winter.

He couldn't wait for the days to get better, maybe he didn't last long enough.

Thinking about it later, it was this hopeless and long childhood experience that created Jiang Jianming's seemingly contradictory personality throughout his life.

On the one hand, he has an extremely deep obsession with what he believes, even though it is often accompanied by self-destruction.

But on the other hand, his desires are extremely low.It is said to pursue and pursue, but he seems to be just chasing, not seeking anything.

Subconsciously, he had already decided that he had nothing to ask for.

Good things happen a long time later, and hope and happiness are not without. It's just that one's life is too short to witness it with one's own eyes.

——If you don’t think so, how can you get through this long winter night?

seventh year.

Helga was dying.

After personally causing her son to suffer from chronic crystal disorder, the former female leader quickly dried up from body to spirit.

She became skinny, with a layer of wrinkled skin sticking to her bones, and she could no longer see her former beauty.I fell asleep for two out of three days, and when woke up, was also insane, talking nonsense that no one could understand.

Sometimes, the woman's voice would become high-pitched, her palms would be scratched in the air, and she would stare hard at the dust and cobwebs all over the eaves, with a strange light in her eyes.

Helga was so ill that the only breadwinner was a fourteen-year-old cripple with crystal disorder.Jiang Jianming has to take care of his mother, and also has to live in a place like the wild area where people cannibalize. Every day is miserable.

This winter, the mother and son almost starved to death.After surviving with neither human nor ghost, Helga also went completely insane.

"Mom, don't hit anyone."

Inside the dilapidated house, the boy pressed his mother's fidgeting hand, and said in a gentle voice, "I said it many times, but why did I forget it?"

Helga smiled dumbly: "You... who are you..."

Jiang Jianming talked to himself: "I have read all the chips and notes you left this year. There are still many things I don't understand. I may have to think about it slowly."

"I want to keep the knowledge before I die. But it may be a bit difficult to find people who are willing to learn. If it doesn't work... there is no other way."

Helga couldn't understand the boy's words.She was leaning against the broken wooden planks, her eyes were wide open in a daze, and the peripheral light flickered in her brown pupils.

Suddenly, as if she remembered something, she tugged on the boy's sleeve, and lowered her voice mysteriously:

"...you... have you ever been to... the glorious area of Star City in Eternal Paradise..."

"Let me tell you a secret, our White Dove Akaba Club, just... right there..."

Jiang Jianming hummed earnestly: "I haven't been there, but I know. My mother told me about it."

Helga gestured with her bony hands: "We have...a big flag..."

Jiang Jianming: "Yes."

"We still have... there is a small... small house... hidden in the underground passage, and the imperial soldiers can't find it..."

Helga said earnestly, "All the people inside...are good people, brave people..."

"Well, I know that, Mom."

The young man wrung out the veil, wiped his mother's face, and said in a low voice, "It's okay, it's also very good. Just like this... stay with me."

The woman shut up, her eyes rested in a trance for a few minutes, and suddenly she said in a dazed way: "Have you ever seen...my son..."

"His name is Jiang Jianming... the name means...he will see the dawn at the end of the long night."

"Have you, have you seen him..."

While talking, the woman started to shed tears, "If you can see him, help me...help me save him, okay..."

The young man was silent for a long time, wiping away her tears.

"Okay, Mom."

eighth year.

Helga's life was visibly coming to an end.

Like a candle that burns to the end, everyone knows that it is about to burn out, it's just the difference of one minute or the next.

Before she was about to die, the woman breathed out clouds of white mist while panting, and the mist spit out intermittently from her thin lips that had faded from blood, and quickly faded and dissipated before Jiang Jianming's eyes.

It's time that passes, life that disappears, or something else that never comes back.

...Obviously.Helga opened her lips, she was softly calling out, Mingming, my Mingming.

Perhaps because of the flashback, the patient who had been mentally disturbed for many years actually regained his sobriety.

Outside the dilapidated house, the night quietly extended to the sky.

"Ok."

The pale-cheeked black-haired boy sat next to his mother, responding to her call with a warm voice, "I'm here."

Helga's throat hissed, it seemed to be choking, and it seemed to be a sound of swallowing suffering.

She said with difficulty, "Obviously..."

"Give mom a gun... okay..."

In this short lucidity, she has realized her state.

She has fought against fate to the last moment, and now it is time to end.Continuing on is not persistence, it is just harming others and yourself.

"Okay, you wait."

Jiang Jianming stood up and quickly fetched the pistol.He put the cold metal object in Helga's palm, "I saved the last two bullets."

For two patients with chronic crystal disorder, just right.

Helga frowned and smiled sadly.She waved to Jiang Jianming, leaned over when the boy was leaning over, and kissed the boy's forehead.

"Obviously, don't..."

She choked up and said, "Don't just say that you are happy..."

"Happiness, light, justice... Don't belittle these concepts, don't belittle yourself... Mom knows that living like this will be very painful, it will be very sad, but..."

"There must always be someone in this world who remembers what our civilization should have been like..."

Helga could not go on.A trace of confusion flashed across Jiang Jianming's eyes, but he quickly closed his eyes and nodded, "Okay, I understand."

In fact, the young man didn't understand it very well, but he thought that there would always be a long time for himself to think in the future.

But at this moment, he just wanted to hug Helga, the dry and cold woman's body.And he did.

He leaned against his mother's chest, counting the tiny heartbeats.Looking at it calmly, the mother raised the gun with trembling arms.

Arrived at the temple.

The boy said softly, "Mom, good night."

When he closed his eyes, Jiang Jianming thought to himself - it would be great if time could die before the next second.

If only he could hold his mother like this forever.

If you can go back to the old days.

if……

If the dawn could come at this moment.

A gunshot broke out, shaking his eardrums with severe pain, and he temporarily lost his hearing.

The warm liquid splashed on the boy's cheeks, and a drop fell just under his peacefully closed eyelashes, replacing the tears that should have flowed out.

In the 48th year of the old imperial calendar, Wen Helga passed away on the Blue Mother Planet.

Jiang Jianming was fifteen years old when he lost his mother.