Chen Ci and Chen Nian followed the emergency team out of the garbage dump and got on an ambulance to the epidemic prevention station.
They all carried the strong stench of the garbage dump, but at the moment, no one cared about that.
The nurse drew blood from Chen Ci and Chen Nian and gave it to Fu Tianhe to maintain his vital signs as much as possible.
The elbow was wiped clean with a cotton ball soaked in iodine, the needle was inserted into the blood vessel, and the dark red blood flowed into the bag through the tube.
Chen Ci and Chen Nian sat side by side, both holding tissues given by the nurse.
Fu Tianhe lay in the middle of the carriage, his eyes closed, unconscious.
They were sent to the quarantine station.
This is Chen Ci's third visit here.
The people who had been wailing and crying under the pipe disappeared, and even the purple crystals that had spread along the ground and walls had long been shoveled away, as if nothing had ever happened.
He was only six years old when he was first taken to the quarantine station.
The second time, when he was fifteen, researchers showed him rows of vaccines stored in refrigerators. These substances, extracted from his blood, would be inoculated into newborns to build a precious immune barrier for them.
This is the third time.
Fu Tianhe went to receive emergency treatment, and Chen Ci and Chen Nian sat outside waiting again.
A staff member came and gently suggested that they change their clothes and take a shower.
Chen Ci has not yet recovered from his turbulent emotions.
The emotions that had accumulated for eighteen years finally found a way to release. Chen Ci let his tears flow. The tears were hot and salty, sliding down the corners of his lips. It was a completely unfamiliar feeling.
Something in my heart was washed away by my tears.
Shafley asked Chen Nian about his situation, but Chen Nian was unable to answer for the moment. He held Chen Ci's hand, hoping to give him some strength.
My brother’s fingertips are cold.
Smart Dog lay down tiredly at their feet. After running all the way from the top floor to the recycling bin at the bottom of the beacon, even this dog, who was known for his high energy, was tired.
It closed its eyes, waiting for another master to reappear.
The tuberose stained with blood lay in Chen Ci's hand. It had long lost its original upright and blooming appearance and now looked wilted and rotten.
In less than a few minutes, the flower would be crushed by Chen Ci's subconscious forceful hands.
Where did Fu Tianhe pick the flower? Was it when he was passing by the ecological tank garden? Or was it by chance in a roadside flowerbed? He was covered in wounds and desperately trying to escape, so how could he have the heart to pick an insignificant flower?
"Can I make it into a specimen?" Chen Nian asked softly.
He pried open Chen Ci's five fingers and rescued the bright red flower from his palm, "Cry, you will feel much better after crying."
Gulu Gulu——
Amidst the chaos of thoughts, there was a sudden moment of clarity.
Fu Tianhe realized that he had suddenly surfaced, and his will to survive made him take a deep breath of air.
Even though the accumulated water in his lungs was occupying the alveoli, causing them to tremble in pain and on the verge of breaking under the heavy burden, his chest was still expanding as much as it could in an attempt to grab more air.
Before the brain finishes thinking, the body is already in motion.
Fu Tianhe tried his best to wave his arms to float up, but the river was rushing fast and there seemed to be a mysterious suction force below, which made him float up and down in the deep purple like a duckweed.
Fu Tianhe opened his eyes and saw a severed finger passing in front of him. A tuft of golden hair, along with the scalp, fluttered like seaweed.
Those body fragments belonging to someone or some people surrounded him and flowed with him to an unknown end.
Fu Tianhe didn't know what would happen when he reached his destination, but a voice in his heart kept shouting: I must not just go with the flow.
Fragmented memories gradually returned. Fu Tianhe remembered that he smashed the glass wall of the isolation ward with his bare hands, injured the medical staff who tried to stop him, and ran out of the hospital.
The amethyst that had taken over his limbs drove him, drove him to spread the Ashes to more places.
Reproduction is always the primary need of a species.
These inorganic substances seem to have their own life, parasitizing and growing inside the bodies of the infected, and now want to spread to more places.
Fu Tianhe struggled, using his last bit of rationality to make himself walk to the place with the least people.
When he realized that his mind was unable to contend with these things, Fu Tianhe made up his mind to go to the epidemic prevention station or kill himself directly.
He walked down the street, trying to hide his fist that was cut by the glass inside his clothes so as not to pollute the street with his blood.
He took the elevator to the vivarium, passing by luxurious mansions and rainforest-like gardens. Everything here seemed familiar. Was there someone he knew living there?
He entered the production workshop. The street gave him the same familiar feeling as if he had been there before. Was he here in a dream?
But in that vague dream, there was a vague figure of another boy. Who was he?
He passed through the power room where machines were rumbling, walked along the centralized pipes, and finally arrived at the information processing area.
He lived in Cinnabar's information processing area for a few months, but not in No. 24.
He was going to—
Yes, he is going to the quarantine station.
He stumbled towards that direction with difficulty, but after a few minutes he completely lost control of his legs and was about to turn around and head towards the opposite energy washing area.
The energy mined from the seabed is filtered and tested, then washed in this area and transported to every corner of Cinnabar through pipelines.
If Ashes pollutes that place, it will definitely cause extremely serious spread.
Fu Tianhe slapped himself a few times, barely regaining some clarity in the pain. He changed direction slightly, moved his legs, and ran towards the recycling station below the epidemic prevention station.
There was no one living there, only garbage piled up all over the beacon. Even if he died in there, it wouldn't matter, his body would be treated as non-recyclable material and thrown into the sea.
The small amount of Ashes in his body will not cause a large-scale infection of the ocean, everything will be diluted.
Fu Tianhe could no longer remember what happened afterwards.
Is he not dead?
Or does it mean that the soul has reached the other side?
Fu Tianhe looked at the pieces of meat and bones flowing forward with him. The water seemed to be getting faster and faster. He had to find a way to get rid of it!
Perhaps before long, he would become a pile of soft, rotten meat paste, just like many infected people who were completely melted by Ashes.
He doesn't want to die yet.
He had endured this endless hellish pain since he was six years old, and had survived for more than a decade. He did not want to die.
He and September had only known each other for a few months and he wanted to spend more time with the boy. He also didn't want the pain of death to be transmitted to September through the mark.
Fu Tianhe tried his best to swim perpendicular to the direction of the water flow. The suction under his feet meant that only his mouth and nose were able to emerge from the water. If he was not careful, he would be drowned.
He couldn't tell whether the river had a shore or not, but he had to try anyway.
Fu Tianhe encountered rotten and smelly eyeballs, round and moist toes belonging to a child, and scattered pieces of flesh.
In the purple river and among the broken limbs, he swam to the other side that did not exist.
"Your Highnesses."
The doctor rushed out of the emergency room: "We need more biological factors to suppress the patient's condition."
Chen Nian immediately stood up and said, "Do you want to draw blood? Come on."
It took Chen Ci two seconds to get up, and even now, the surging emotions made him react slowly.
It was so strange, so strange that it even brought about an indescribable fear. It was a monster that was crawling out from the bottom of his heart and was about to swallow him whole.
Chen Ci and Chen Nian were taken to the disinfection room. They changed into designated clothes and underwent full body disinfection from head to toe. The stench of garbage they had picked up at the recycling station was suppressed as much as possible by the pungent smell of disinfectant.
Chen Nian put his arm around Chen Ci's shoulders and entered the operating room with his brother who was still crying silently.
On the other side of the transparent glass wall, a dozen doctors gathered around the operating table, shadowless lights illuminating their serious eyes behind their goggles. Everyone held their breath and concentrated, not daring to relax at all.
There is a blocking drug placed in a small refrigerator nearby. Once their gloves are torn or they come into direct contact with Fu Tianhe's body for other reasons, they need to be injected immediately to prevent being infected by Ashes.
"How is he?" Chen Ci asked hoarsely while lying on the bed.
"Ashes has entered the patient's brain." The doctor's answer was like a howling cold wind, cracking a frozen heart.
"They grow very fast and have begun to damage the brain areas that control thinking. We are trying to remove the Ashes with the least damage, but the patient's intelligence and behavior may still be affected."
Chen Ci closed his eyes and said no more.
No one knows what he is thinking at this moment.
Chen Nian watched as the nurse quickly rolled up her sleeves to her upper arms. The needle, which was as thick as a toothpick, flashed an icy cold light under the shadowless light.
Just looking at the needle made Chen Nian feel dizzy.
It was too thick, really too thick. He even began to imagine that his blood vessels were pierced into a sieve and burst out like a fountain.
The nurse noticed that he was tense, so she loosened her grip on Chen Nian's arm a little and said softly, "Don't use too much force, Your Highness."
Chen Nian tried hard to relax herself.
——There is no reason why you can't do what Chen Ci has been enduring for more than ten years.
He turned his face away, not wanting to see what was happening.
The pain came from the elbow, it was very painful, after all, it was a very thick needle.
The needle pierced the skin, passed through the flesh, and pierced into a blood vessel.
Chen Nian couldn't help but wonder, would there be any skin and flesh left in the syringe?
Just like a sharpened bamboo pole inserted into the soil, the soil will block the bamboo core. Then, will his flesh also block the syringe?
Chen Ci also completed the puncture. The dark red blood, which came from the two brothers but was exactly the same, flowed silently along two transparent tubes and entered the precision instrument that was rumbling in operation.
It will filter out the special biological factors from the blood and inject them directly into the body of Fu Tianhe in another ward.
Hope this helps.
Chen Nian lay down on the bed. The nurse came to his other side and gave him another injection at the same location on the opposite side. This injection was to return the filtered blood back into his body.
The terminal on my wrist vibrated.
Chen Nian didn't dare to move his hands at all and asked the nurse to help him connect the phone.
Shafulai's voice was hurried and tired. After the aircraft he was driving returned, he immediately underwent a full body examination. Just when he was able to rest for a while, he learned the sad news that Fu Tianhe had escaped.
He tracked Fu Tianhe's whereabouts in the observation room, and at the same time sent an execution team to block all roads that Fu Tianhe passed to prevent the Ashes from spreading.
"Chen Ci and I are filtering the blood." Chen Nian said softly, "Fu Tianhe is rescuing him nearby, how are you?"
Shafley: "I'm fine, but I can't leave the observation room yet."
Chen Nian: "Then you should stay here and provide us with technical support. In this situation, we have to put all our hopes on the doctors. They have worked so hard."
Shaflay hummed, and neither of them spoke for a while.
Chen Nian didn't look at the two lines of blood flowing out of his body and being transfused back. He paid attention to Chen Ci. His brother seemed to have calmed down a lot. Perhaps he felt that it was difficult to wipe away his tears with needles in both arms, so he had stopped crying.
It is difficult to describe what Chen Nian felt at this moment.
He really hoped that Fu Tianhe could survive, but Alpha's miserable condition reminded him how difficult it was.
How could it suddenly become like this? Chen Nian couldn't help but feel sad. When he knew that his brother had an Alpha who could accompany him, he was so happy.
He was delighted that someone was finally able to get close to Chen Ci and accompany him to every corner of the world. He even used a very critical eye to help Chen Ci judge whether Fu Tianhe was a good Alpha.
Now that the four of them have finally been honest with each other and have met each other, they should be getting along well and having fun together. So how did it turn out like this?
"puff--!"
Fu Tianhe felt that he could no longer hold on.
His arms were as heavy as two huge rocks, weighing down his body.
No matter how hard you paddle, you can only expose your mouth and nose once for a few seconds, and you have to breathe hard at the risk of being choked to death.
The purple torrent was so turbid that it was impossible to open your eyes and see clearly ahead like you could in the water.
Fu Tianhe simply closed his eyes and moved forward based on his instinct. No matter how wide he opened his eyes, all he could see were human bodies passing by him, which only made his heart feel colder and heavier.
He didn't know how long he had been swimming, but when Fu Tianhe felt he was about to give up, his feet stepped on something hard.
His spirit suddenly shook, and he stomped his feet heavily on it, and his whole body floated up a lot. With this momentum, Fu Tianhe slid forward several meters. He obviously felt that the water had become shallower from the change in flow rate.
Fu Tianhe stepped on the hard ground, moved upwards step by step, and finally saw the protruding thorns.
It was an extremely huge cluster of purple crystals, as high as two stories, growing on the edge of the river, like mangroves on the Gobi beach, spreading towards the endless distance and becoming the bank of the purple river.
Fu Tianhe was very familiar with this thing, because a miniature version of it existed in his eye sockets.
He calmed himself and tried hard to climb up until his feet left the liquid surface. Fu Tianhe looked back and saw countless human tissues still floating in the river and being carried away.
He carefully climbed up along the crystal. His feet were slippery and his palms had difficulty gripping because of the wetness. Fu Tianhe simply took off his clothes, tore them in half and wrapped them around his hands to increase friction.
After crossing the cluster of purple crystals, his vision became slightly wider, and Fu Tianhe was surprised to find that all the space was occupied by them, and he was in a fierce purple forest.
He stopped where he was and rested for a while, using his feet to push against a crystal that was sticking out diagonally to prevent his body from going limp and sliding down.
Instead of waiting here, it is better to move forward and find a way out.
Fu Tianhe slowed down a bit and continued to climb between different purple crystals.
Every step he took was extremely cautious. If he misstepped, he would be pierced by the sharp crystals, like a freshly-made lamb kebab, with his whole body pierced through it. Then, under the influence of gravity, he would slowly slide down and watch helplessly as the holes in his chest and abdomen grew larger and larger until he died of excessive blood loss.
Fu Tianhe didn't know how long he had been walking.
Maintaining a state of absolute concentration was actually quite mentally taxing. He walked and stopped, and finally saw an open area after climbing over a purple crystal flower more than five meters high.
It was a lake sunken in the crystal jungle.
The lake water is neither the normal clear light blue nor the dreamy purple that symbolizes the Ashes, but rather a light red.
The light red that Fu Tianhe was very familiar with.
That was the color of the gene suppressants he had been injected with for many years.
Previously, he didn't know what this mysterious banned drug was made of, but now Fu Tianhe understood that both the vaccine and the so-called gene inhibitor were extracted from September's blood.
Fu Tianhe slid down the long oblique crystal and came to the lake. The sky was reflected in a purple-red by the crystals and the lake, a color that made people feel depressed and fearful.
He took a deep breath and stood at the edge of the lake. Even though it seemed like something that could save his life, Fu Tianhe still maintained the most basic vigilance and did not rush in with joy.
He squatted down, stretched out his hand, and gently touched the lake water with his fingertips.
It was actually warm.
Ripples spread out from his fingertips. Fu Tianhe withdrew his hand and waited patiently for a while. It seemed that nothing special happened.
He then slowly walked towards the lake, letting the warm light red liquid submerge his ankles and legs.
It is as refreshing as a hot spring, as if all the pores in the body are stretching out in the warm current.
Sleepiness spread, making his eyelids heavy. His right eyelid was already prickly to pieces. Fu Tianhe scooped up some lake water and gently poured it over his eyelid.
It hurt a little, but it was nothing compared to the pain he had endured for more than a decade.
Fu Tianhe looked around and found a vague figure in the center of the lake.
Like a dead tree inserted diagonally into the lake, the part above the chest was exposed above the water surface, with long light golden hair floating, so that Fu Tianhe could not recognize that it was a person at first.
Besides him, is there anyone else here?
While being surprised, Fu Tianhe couldn't help but feel happy. Did this mean that besides him, there were other infected people who survived the Ashes?
He took a deep breath, suppressed his overly excited mood, stepped on the sand and stones at the bottom of the lake, and moved step by step towards the figure in the center of the lake.
Soon the lake water reached his chest and he could no longer find the bottom.
The lake water seemed to have the ability to heal the body and restore strength. Fu Tianhe felt that his whole body was filled with power. Or perhaps it was because of the unknown existence in the center of the lake that gave him unprecedented power.
As he swam closer, he could see that the person was probably a young adult woman. She had long hair as light as moonlight, her eyes were closed, her face was pale, and some wrinkles ran along her neck, extending from her collar and spreading to her cheeks.
For some reason, Fu Tianhe thought of the door he saw on the outer wall of Moonlight, which also had similar carvings on it.
The patterns were a dead grey colour, and looked more like exposed blood vessels or twisted worm carcasses than beautiful tattoos. There was no aesthetic appeal at all.
Even so, that tranquil face, as if outlined by a brush, still exudes a breathtaking beauty.
There was a thin vertical mark on her forehead, light silver in color.
Fu Tianhe pushed aside her long hair that was as wet and cold as water grass, and was finally able to observe her closely. There seemed to be no wounds on her body, and there was no sign of Ashes breaking through the surface of her body, unlike himself, who had become a monster with bloodshot eyes.
Fu Tianhe stretched out his hand, wanting to check if she was still alive, or try to wake her up.
His fingers lightly touched the woman's cheek, and a crack appeared where he touched.
The tiny cracks quickly spread in all directions, like a giant spider's dense web or the twisted roots of plants, covering the entire face in a blink of an eye.
Fu Tianhe was so shocked that he immediately withdrew his hand, only to see that the tip of the crack was still moving down along her neck, interweaving with the gray lines to form a dark and light pattern.
He heard a series of crunching sounds, as if someone was biting into a crispy cookie.
The cracks quickly spread under the collar, where Fu Tianhe could not see.
Then they grew bigger and bigger, until Fu Tianhe could see through the gaps what was flowing under the woman's cheeks.
It broke and cracked.
The whole person was like a broken ceramic doll, turning into pieces and falling into the lake.
The light hair completely lost its luster and became the scalp with hair in patches that Fu Tianhe had seen in the purple river before.
The golden substance flowed out like quicksand. In the past ten years, Fu Tianhe's left eye was the same golden color.
He wanted to reach out and grab it, but he couldn't touch anything.
Suddenly, there was a violent earthquake all around. The lake began to tremble and rise and fall. The surrounding thorn bushes shook violently. Something was constantly hitting them, causing them to break and shatter.
Large chunks of crystals fell into the lake, making a thumping sound and quickly sank to the bottom of the lake, while the powder fell down and floated on the water surface.
Fu Tianhe struggled to keep his body steady. His fingers were entangled in the wet long hair. He immediately remembered the disgusting sticky feeling when cleaning the sewer entrance.
He saw a hole appear in the strange-colored sky above his head, as if a sharp knife cut through it vertically, and then the two sides were pushed open, making it appear like a dark shuttle shape.
Suddenly, he seemed to hear a sound coming from the horizon.
——No, they are already grown together. If you take it out forcibly, he will die immediately!
Drops of light red rain fell from the crack, hitting the lake surface with a rustling sound. Countless ripples seemed to erupt from tens of millions of sound waves, interfering with and canceling each other out.
And Fu Tianhe, who is in the center of the lake, has to endure the impact of countless ripples.
The figure that was beside him before had disappeared, and the fragments sank to the bottom of the lake. Only a small strand of hair entangled on Fu Tianhe's finger and an eyeball bobbing up and down in the water waves were within Fu Tianhe's sight.
It was a light golden eye.
Fu Tianhe had no idea what to do.
He couldn't get close to the shore because the crystals that kept falling might hit him, and the center of the lake would be affected too much.
He reached out and grabbed the eyeball that floated in front of him.
The lifeless golden eyes just lay in his palm, staring at him silently.
Fu Tianhe raised his head and looked at the crack in the sky again. A few drops of pink rain fell into his eyes.