Two hours later, the plane flew over the lava valley.
Lu Xinghe looked down at this last stronghold of humanity, his mind filled with countless thoughts.
He left this place when he was just sixteen, thinking it was just a simple mission, but he never expected that he would be gone for a thousand days and nights.
The outer layer of the lava valley is surrounded by scorching magma zones and steep canyons. Only two bridges lead to the outside world, heavily guarded and covered by heavy firepower. Since humans retreated here fifty years ago, there has never been a successful large-scale invasion by alien species.
An Xiaoruo also stood on tiptoe to look at the world outside the porthole. She had lived outside the base since birth, and every city she had seen was in ruins. This was the first time she had ever seen a city that was completely intact.
"Uncle, is this the base you and Mom talked about before?" she asked.
Lu Xinghe nodded, then squatted down and whispered in her ear, "No matter who asks you anything later, just say that your mother died in the beast tide and that it's just the two of us living together. You absolutely cannot reveal any news about your mother, understand?"
"Why? Why can't Mom come here with us?" An Xiaoru didn't understand. Luo Ning hadn't had a chance to tell this little girl that there was an irreconcilable conflict between the alien species and humans.
"Because it will be very dangerous for her to be here. The people at the base will kill her." As soon as Lu Xinghe finished speaking, someone behind him reminded him and An Xiaoruo to sit properly, as the plane was about to begin its descent.
After a period of turbulence, the plane landed at the base's airport. After getting off the plane, Lu Xinghe saw several medical vehicles parked outside, seemingly waiting for him.
Dai Wanglin walked up behind him: "Let's do a routine check first, then I'll take you home."
Lu Xinghe replied, "I don't remember when the base ever had this 'routine' rule."
Dai Wanglin smiled, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and said, "It's just a routine check-up to see how you're feeling. Don't be nervous, everyone has to do it."
After he finished speaking, he got into a car first and waved to him. Lu Xinghe hesitated for a moment, then pulled An Xiaoruo and followed.
The medical vehicle quickly drove away from the airport and headed towards the city center. Along the way, Dai Wanglin humorously recounted the changes in the base over the past three years, such as the population increasing by 230,000, the magma zone stabilizing and no longer posing a risk of eruption, and the girl who was originally assigned to marry Lu Xinghe now marrying another man and having given birth to twins.
As Dai Wanglin spoke, Lu Xinghe seemed not to hear him. He looked at the buildings passing by outside the window, at the pedestrians walking on the road, and at the huge white angel statue in the central square of the base. It was familiar yet a little strange. The base had changed a lot in the past three years.
Lu Xinghe ignored Dai Wanglin, who then teased An Xiaoruo: "Little girl, how old are you this year?"
An Xiaoruo nervously hid behind Lu Xinghe.
“She’s ten years old,” Lu Xinghe said.
Dai Wanglin said "Oh," and then asked Lu Xinghe with a smile, "She's only a little over eight years younger than you, so why does she call you 'uncle' instead of 'brother'?"
Lu Xinghe replied calmly, "I don't like having other brothers and sisters."
This reason was not convincing to Dai Wanglin, and An Xiaoruo's eyes kept darting away, so he knew things were definitely not that simple.
Lu Xinghe knew that Dai Wanglin must have become suspicious, but as long as he and An Xiaoruo insisted, there was nothing they could do even if they suspected.
He just wanted to buy Luo Ning time to leave that town. As smart as she was, she should have left as soon as she found out that he and An Xiaoruo were missing.
The car stopped in front of the white building of the medical department. Lu Xinghe and An Xiaoruo were led into separate examination rooms. Outside the examination rooms, there were people from the Red Gate and the military, who observed their every move through the one-way glass.
The reason they care so much about whether Lu Xinghe is being raised by mutants is that some of the rescued humans suffer from Stockholm syndrome. They have developed a dependence on and affection for the mutants. As a result, two serious mutant invasion incidents occurred last year, and the inside agents were those rescued humans.
Dai Wanglin did not suspect that Lu Xinghe was being raised until he saw the scars on Lu Xinghe's arm on the plane. They were very fresh blood-drawing wounds, and Lu Xinghe insisted that no third person had lived with them in the past two years. Therefore, he had reason to suspect that Lu Xinghe had also developed feelings for the mutant who raised him.
If the final result is as such, Lu Xinghe and An Xiaoruo will have to undergo memory stripping treatment.
"Please take off your coat," the inspector said to Lu Xinghe.
Lu Xinghe took off the clothes that Luo Ning had altered for him, revealing his strong and well-proportioned body and the scars on his chest and arms, especially the wound on his arm where he had blood drawn. Although the wound was not deep, it was very clear because it had happened in the last few days.
The machine scanned his body, he glanced at the mirror on the wall, then his eyes returned to calm. He knew he was now under observation and surveillance.
He felt something was wrong. Even if they suspected he had been raised by mutants, things should have ended now that he was back. Why was there such a big fuss?
"The wound on your chest has completely healed, but what happened to your arm?" the doctor who examined him asked.
Lu Xinghe replied, "I got a little bored being outside for so long, so I cut myself a few times."
The doctor looked at him with sympathy, assuming that he had become depressed and self-harmed due to the terrifying environment outside, which was exactly what Lu Xinghe hoped they would understand.
"What do you think?" Dai Wanglin asked.
"It's probably self-harm due to high psychological pressure. Many people who have been outside experience this. It usually resolves itself after a period of psychological counseling," said a staff member from the medical department.
"Shen Ni, what do you think?" Dai Wanglin looked at Shen Ni. He was Lu Xinghe's instructor and should know Lu Xinghe best.
“He’s lying.” Shen Ni’s eyes were piercing.
"How did you figure that out?" Dai Wanglin asked with great interest.
Shen Ni said, "Intuition."
Intuition cannot determine whether Lu Xinghe should have his memories stripped, but An Xiaoruo's side has a big flaw. As a ten-year-old girl entering the human world for the first time, she is no match for these adults. With just a few casual questions, Dai Wanglin and the others determined that there are mutants.
Lu Xinghe knew he couldn't fool them. He just wanted to buy Luo Ning time to get her away from that town. But he didn't expect that these inspections and surveillance were not aimed at Luo Ning at all, but were designed for him.
Dai Wanglin was preparing to call Lu Xinghe's father, General Lu Zheng, to explain the situation. If it were anyone else, he would have directly issued the separation order, but Lu Xinghe was no ordinary person; he was Lu Zheng's only surviving child.
While he was on the phone, Lu Zheng appeared at the door of the examination room. Dai Wanglin put away his nonchalant attitude, saluted, and reported what had happened to Lu Zheng.
After listening, Lu Zheng did not give an order directly, but pushed the door open and went in. When Lu Xinghe saw his father, he immediately turned around and put on his clothes to cover the scars on his body.
"Father," he called out, but there was no intimacy between father and son. This man had always been the one who held the whip in his life, not his father.
When Lu Zheng saw that his son was still alive, he was filled with emotion. He thought of his deceased wife and other children, but he was not good at expressing himself, so he just nodded and walked out.
“Let’s peel it off,” Lu Zheng said to Dai Wanglin.
Dai Wanglin hesitated for a moment: "General, the removal has side effects. Besides what happened in the past three years, he may also forget some things from the past. Shouldn't you reconsider?"
"No need to consider it anymore. As for that little girl, after separating them, help her find a good family to adopt her, and make sure there's no more contact between them," Lu Zheng instructed.
"Yes." Dai Wanglin turned around and gave the order.
In the examination room, after receiving orders, the doctor led Lu Xinghe to another room: "You may have carried other germs while you were away for three years. After another injection of antibiotics, you can go home."
Lu Xinghe knew this was standard procedure and didn't suspect anything: "What about the little girl who was with me? Does she need an injection too?"
"It's right next door, she wants it too. You came back together, right?" The doctor smiled nervously.
Lu Xinghe wanted to finish his treatment quickly so he could go and take care of An Xiaoruo, who had never had an injection before and might be scared.
He sat in the chair, looking at the blue reagent the doctor brought over. The pure blue reminded him of Luo Ning's eyes. Although they were separated now, he had made up his mind to go on more missions outside the base. He believed that even if the world was vast, he and she would definitely meet again.
The medicine was slowly injected into Lu Xinghe's veins. At first, he only felt a slight headache, but gradually he found that his memories of Luo Ning were becoming blurred, like a butterfly that had been set ablaze and shattered in the wind.
"What did you inject me with?" he asked, gripping the doctor's arm tightly and looking fierce.
The doctor took a step back in fright: "No...it's nothing, just antibiotics."
Lu Xinghe pushed the doctor away forcefully. He realized that there was something wrong with the medicine. His memories were fading away like the receding tide, and he couldn't hold on to them no matter how hard he tried.
For the first time in his life, he felt fear and ran towards the door without thinking, but the mechanical arm in the room held him firmly.
"Dad, no." He finally called out to that man as he had when he was a child, his eyes pleading, hoping that he would not take away his memories.
Lu Zheng was deeply moved upon hearing this. His child hadn't called him "Dad" since he was ten years old, but he still steeled himself and said, "Continue."
He has his responsibilities and cannot violate human rights regulations just because of his own child.
Lu Xinghe was pulled back into the chair by the cold mechanical arm. The drug continued to flow into his veins. His body tensed, and the veins on his forehead and neck throbbed violently. He desperately wanted to hold onto the memories of Luo Ning: her laughter and anger, her eyes and fragrance, those thousand hazy nights they spent sleeping together, and her last words to him with a smile: "Wait for me to come home..."
But in the end, her appearance blurred, her voice disappeared, and his world changed from color to gray until it was completely black...
After a long while, he heard someone ask him in the darkness, "What's your name?"
“Lu Xinghe,” he replied blankly.
"Your code name."
"17"
Who are your parents?
"Lu Zheng, Liang Xia."
Who is the woman you like?
"I don't have a woman I like."
The person asking the question seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and the world fell silent again, leaving only the coldness of breathing.
Six months later.
In the upscale restaurant in the central square of the base, a young couple sat by the window. The light shone on the young girl's face, and her eyes were filled with a sweet smile. She really liked the handsome man her parents had introduced her to today; he was a world apart from the men she had met before.
"What are your plans after dinner?" Le Yao asked shyly.
Lu Xinghe did not answer. He stared out the window at a little girl asking people if they wanted their shoes shined, seemingly ignoring her question.
Although the base's distribution system can guarantee that everyone has food, there is a class system wherever there are people. Even in the apocalypse where humanity's fate is hanging by a thread, some people still sit in high-class restaurants and enjoy extra delicacies, while others toil day and night to earn an extra bite to eat.
Le Yao felt a little embarrassed. As the daughter of the Minister of Materials, no one had ever dared to ignore her like this before.
"How about we go for a walk by the river? I heard there are fireflies there." She looked at the man expectantly, her heart pounding, afraid he might hear her.
Lu Xinghe finally turned around and looked at her: "I have to go back to the military headquarters. Goodbye."
Le Yao hurriedly followed, saying, "That's on the way, let's go together."
As soon as the two stepped out of the restaurant, the shoe-shining children surrounded them: "Sir/Madam, would you like your shoes shined? It's very cheap, only ten points."
People around Le Yao came over and blocked the children away. Lu Xinghe walked forward with his head down. His duty was to kill aliens, and the living standards of ordinary people were not within the scope of his duties.
Just as he was about to leave the square, he heard a timid voice from among the children behind him: "Uncle, can you shine my shoes? I only need eight points."
He suddenly stopped and turned around, only to see a dirty little girl holding a shoe-shining box, looking at him cautiously. Her face and arms were covered in bruises, clearly indicating that she had been abused.
He didn't recognize the child, but a sadness and anger he couldn't understand welled up inside him. Seeing the girl's injuries, he even had the urge to kill the person who hurt her. He walked up to the little girl and asked, "What did you just call me?"
“Sir…” An Xiaoru looked up at Lu Xinghe. She felt that this gentleman was very familiar, but she couldn’t remember him at all.
"No, she just called you uncle. She's a liar. She came back from outside the base and has been corrupted by those aliens." The children mocked mercilessly, their eyes filled with contempt and disgust.
An Xiaoruo's adoptive mother rushed over. Upon seeing Lu Xinghe's extraordinary demeanor, she immediately apologized to him, then pinched An Xiaoruo's arm hard and scolded, "You blind fool, I'll beat you to death when we get back."
After saying that, she raised her hand to slap An Xiaoruo's face, but before it could fall, Lu Xinghe lifted her up and threw her to the ground.
"How dare you hit her?" Lu Xinghe said, each word distinct, his eyes as cold as sharp knives. Everyone was so frightened that they stepped back. Le Yao didn't know why he was so angry; it was clearly a trivial matter.
The adoptive mother didn't know what she had done to offend this young man. She abandoned her child, got up, and pushed through the crowd to escape.
Le Yao looked at Lu Xinghe: "What do we do now? If this child goes back, he will definitely continue to be beaten. Why don't we send him to a nursery?"
"Sir, please don't send me to the orphanage. They say the children there will be fed to the aliens when they grow up. I don't want to be eaten by the aliens," An Xiaoruo cried.
Lu Xinghe squatted down and reached out to wipe away An Xiaoruo's tears: "Then would you like to come with me? But it might be very hard and tiring."
An Xiaoruo nodded without any hesitation. She knew that she had just called him "uncle," but she didn't mean it. It just slipped out of her mouth, as if she had always called him that, as if it were ingrained in her bones.
Lu Xinghe touched her disheveled hair, then took her hand and walked into the darkness.
Seeing that she was not even as good as a shoeshine boy, Le Yao stomped her foot in anger, but still quickly followed after him.
Four years later.
Luo Ning wandered aimlessly along the abandoned highway. Since Lu Xinghe and An Xiaoruo were taken away by humans three years ago, she had stayed because she was worried that they would come back to find her one day. However, two months later, a volcano erupted, and she had to leave, beginning her life as a wanderer.
In the past four years, she has seen many awakened mutants, mostly humanoid mutants, followed by mutants that interact with animals. However, she never associates with them and always keeps her distance whenever she sees them. The mutants are a small society, and they are not bound by laws or morals. Killing and abuse are things that happen every day.
When night fell, she saw a gas station and went in to rest there for the night. Once inside, she found some empty cans and a fresh fire on the ground, indicating that someone had rested there.
She picked up a can and looked at the familiar packaging. A pang of sadness shot through her heart. For the past few years, she had been thinking about An Xiaoruo and Lu Xinghe, wondering how they were doing now and whether they would ever meet again.
Exhausted, she leaned against the wall and lay down. In the middle of the night, she suddenly felt something approaching. When she opened her eyes, she saw more than a dozen fully armed humans surrounding her from four directions.
Oh no, humans have discovered us.
She immediately jumped out of the window. These people were not like Lu Xinghe, who would show her mercy. They would kill any mutant they saw, and any lone mutant would only be slaughtered by these soldiers.
"Over here, don't let her get away." Someone spotted her, and several bullets whizzed past her.
She immediately changed direction and used her speed to break through the encirclement. She was extremely fast and was about to escape through the gap in the encirclement when she heard someone shouting, "Song Pei, shoot! She's a female mutant, we can't let her get away!"
She was stunned for a moment. Wasn't Song Pei the male protagonist of the novel?
In that instant of distraction, she felt a sharp pain in her neck, and her body began to fall uncontrollably downwards. She knew her death was imminent.
"Hit! Hit! Where's the car? Bring the car over here quickly. Song Pei, go check it out again. If it's not working, fire another shot."
She lay on the ground, straining to open her eyes to see what Song Pei looked like. He was her Xiao Ru's future husband, the one who would save the world with An Xiao Ru. If possible, she also wanted to ask An Xiao Ru and Lu Xing He about their recent situation and whether they were doing well.
A tall, slender figure squatted down in front of her. Although Song Pei's face was covered, his eyes were very beautiful.
"Song Pei..." she called out weakly.
The young man ignored her completely. Seeing that she was still conscious, he pressed a gun against her neck and pulled the trigger, but instead of a bullet, the gun contained a blue drug. Her consciousness began to blur, and the others moved closer to her.
Someone turned her face over and looked at her: "She's so damn pretty, she doesn't look like a mutant at all, she's clearly a human."
"If all mutants look like her, then I wouldn't rule out breeding with her."
"You can apply when you get back, and maybe they'll arrange it for you."
As Luo Ning listened to these words, she realized that she would not be killed but would be sent to breed with someone. She tried hard to get up but couldn't move her fingers. The mutants had no ability to reproduce. She was afraid of what she would face next.
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