In the afternoon, Jiang Ce was going to take her to see the dormitory.
The corridor was empty.
“Where is everyone?” Jiang Nuan asked curiously.
“They’ve all gone to a meeting,” Jiang Ce had already turned to walk ahead. “The border of the restricted zone in the south city is expanding abnormally. The zone’s rating might have to be reassessed.”
Jiang Nuan followed behind him. “Restricted zones can level up?”
“They can,” Jiang Ce looked back to signal her to keep up. “Just like in a game—accumulate enough experience and you evolve.”
The analogy was simple enough for her to understand in a second. But she didn’t dare to think about how that “experience” was accumulated.
That was when the alarm went off.
A piercing, sharp, long wail.
Jiang Ce’s expression changed.
That face of his—always wearing a smile—lost all its extra expressions the instant the alarm sounded.
His communicator rang. He pressed it, listened, then said, “Jiang Ce received. Understood.”
The next moment, he grabbed her wrist, and she was practically lifted off her feet as he pulled her along.
“Stick close to me.”
His voice was a completely different person now—all traces of amusement gone.
The gray corridor that had been empty moments ago suddenly flooded with a dozen people. Some rushed forward carrying file boxes, others shouted into their communicators, their voices mostly swallowed by the alarm.
“The southern city restricted zone has breached the third monitoring line!”
“All non-combat personnel, evacuate immediately!”
“Helicopters are standing by on Platform E. Move it!”
Jiang Ce shoved her into the cabin door of a helicopter.
There were already a dozen people inside.
The moment Jiang Nuan was pressed into her seat, she saw Meng Lan, the assistant from Qi Sui’s medical office.
Jiang Ce was the last one on. His large frame squeezed into the cabin, making the whole space feel narrower.
“Take off.”
He shouted to the cockpit.
The helicopter shuddered. The sensation of the wheels leaving the ground was unmistakable, and the food in her stomach flipped over.
Jiang Nuan instinctively gripped the handle beside her with one hand while the other went to her neck.
Around her neck was a collar that had been put on after she had been dragged out of the pipeline—it would electrocute her if she went beyond the base’s range.
“Relax,” Jiang Ce glanced at her. “The tracker’s been temporarily turned off.”
Jiang Nuan nodded and looked out the cabin window.
The base shrank rapidly beneath them.
To the south, the skyline was changing color under the dusk.
A dark, thick black, like something was slowly rising from behind the horizon.
That black expanse had a border, but the border was moving, or rather, spreading—and the speed was increasing.
Jiang Nuan’s stomach spasmed violently. Sour liquid climbed up her throat. She bent over the cabin wall and dry-heaved twice, but nothing came out.
She saw people still running on the tarmac. She saw the rotors of a second helicopter spin faster, with several people desperately climbing up the boarding ladder.
Then she saw a figure in a white lab coat.
It was that researcher who had been holding a stack of documents and had quickly avoided eye contact when she looked at her.
Jiang Nuan had briefly scanned her name tag at the time. It seemed to say Zhou Rui.
Zhou Rui had already gotten onto another helicopter, but suddenly, she jumped out of its cabin.
Others beside her tried to pull her back, shouting at her. Jiang Nuan couldn’t hear what they were saying through the window, but she could see their mouth shapes, repeating over and over:
Come back.
Don’t bother with it.
Come back now.
She didn’t come back.
She lowered her head, ran a few steps, and dashed back toward the entrance of the nearby building.
The black border pushed forward another stretch.
She ran out of the building, clutching an iron document box, stumbling.
She fell. The box slipped from her hands and rolled two meters away. She crawled to grab it, not even stopping to pick up her glasses when they fell off.
The helicopter on the tarmac had already taken off.
It hadn’t waited for her.
Not because it didn’t want to—because it couldn’t.
The black border rolled over the tarmac, rolled over the building, rolled over the person clutching the box.
Jiang Nuan pulled her face away from the window.
Her hands were trembling. Uncontrollably.
Meng Lan’s voice sounded beside her ear. “Zhou Rui. From the pathology research group.”
Jiang Nuan opened her mouth, but couldn’t bring herself to ask, “Why did she go back?”
Because she already knew.
That box contained something—probably important research data that might affect the lives of even more people.
So Zhou Rui had gone back.
So Zhou Rui was gone.
It was that simple. That absurd. That... matter-of-fact.
Matter-of-fact.
Those words circled through her mind once. She looked down at her own hands.
Her voice was hoarse. “...What the hell is this? Why did it happen so suddenly?”
Jiang Ce sat beside her, one hand unloading a magazine, checking it, then reloading it with smooth motions.
His brows were tightly knit.
“The southern city restricted zone,” he said. “Originally rated A-class, estimated to be heading for S-class. After it swallowed the entire C District Seventh Squad—all nine members—we suspected it had already advanced to S-class. Lately, we’ve been preparing to have our team deal with it.”
Nine people.
A weight sank in Jiang Nuan’s heart.
That was the one. The squad whose vice-captain had been killed by the captain after the captain had been corrupted.
Jiang Ce tilted his head and glanced out the window at the still-expanding blackness. His thumb unconsciously rubbed along the gun’s body.
“But this rate of expansion...” His mouth tightened into a thin line. “It’s skipping straight past S-class. Could be SS-class.”
Jiang Nuan heard her own voice trembling. “Restricted zones can skip grades?”
Was there even a way to survive this?
“Extremely rare.”
“Then why did it—”
“Playing possum.”
Jiang Ce finished her sentence, his tone low. “It kept suppressing its level the whole time, making everyone think it was still A-class. Even after eating those nine people, it didn’t reveal itself immediately. It held back, waiting until it had conserved enough energy...”
He didn’t finish.
He didn’t need to.
Jiang Nuan’s mind was racing.
An A-class restricted zone advancing to SS-class—skipping two whole tiers in between.
How long had it taken? When had it started pretending?
Before those nine people were devoured, had they believed they were facing only an A-class zone about to reach S-class?
The sounds from the tunnel and the old city streets surged back to her.
Wet chewing sounds. Crushed bones.
Those hadn’t even been S-class.
What was inside an SS-class?
She didn’t dare imagine it.
“Zero Squad...” She bit her lip, biting too hard until she tasted blood. “What about the others?”
Jiang Ce looked at her.
That look was different from all the others he’d given her before. It held something complex, something like surprise.
He probably hadn’t expected that someone who had been captured by this group would ask, “What about them?”
“They’ve gone to take care of this restricted zone.”
Jiang Nuan turned her head and glanced out the window again.
The entire city was shrouded in black mist, deathly still.
If she hadn’t run into Zero Squad, she would probably be in that black mist right now.
No, maybe she’d already been torn to pieces in the tunnel. There were too many restricted zones in this world.
Jiang Nuan opened her mouth. “...But aren’t their corruption values already extremely high?”
“Yeah. But right now, only Zero Squad can handle this zone. Any other team that goes in will just end up like C District Seventh Squad—becoming its experience points.”
"You're not going with them?" Jiang Nuan swore she didn't mean it like "Why don't you go die," she was just asking out of curiosity.
"The captain told me to stay and protect you."
Jiang Nuan fell silent.
Protect her.
Five people were going into an SS-level restricted zone, and one was staying behind to protect her.
But she wasn't moved to tears over it, because it wasn't about her being important.
It was about her ability being important.
Meng Lan sat in the seat across from her, face pale, lips pressed tightly together.
She suddenly spoke, almost to herself.
"The original plan was to have Zero Squad fully purified before handling it... we were almost at the judgment line. Damn this restricted zone."
The judgment line.
This was the first time Jiang Nuan had heard that term.
"Jiang Ce, what's the judgment line?"
Jiang Ce was silent for a few seconds.
"Command has a periodic inspection system for investigation squads." He spoke, his voice dropping half a tone, his gaze fixed on the gun in his hands. "When the corruption value hits a certain threshold, the judgment procedure kicks in."
"Judgment of what?" Jiang Nuan asked.
He lifted his eyes to look at her.
"Judgment of whether you're still considered human."
The helicopter jolted, and the seatbelt pressed into Jiang Nuan's collarbone, stinging slightly.
"And if the judgment result is... that you're not?"
"Locked up," Jiang Ce said, "or eliminated on the spot."
Eliminated on the spot.
Such a clean, neat phrase.
"But..." Jiang Nuan's voice caught. "If the corruption value is high, shouldn't they just find a purifier to cleanse it? Why go all the way to judgment?"
"Jiang Nuan," Jiang Ce looked at her, "do you think people who reach the judgment line haven't tried purification before?"
She froze.
The things Shen Wu had said came rushing back—how all the S-class and A-class purifiers assigned to Zero Squad ended up.
Jiang Ce's hand opened and then closed into a fist.
"When someone reaches the judgment line, it means all of humanity's available methods can't save them anymore."
Among those methods, only one grade was missing.
SSS.
Jiang Nuansuddenly felt like the walls of the helicopter were pressing in on her. Not literally, but the weight in her chest was so stifling she couldn't breathe.
She forced that thought down hard.
They had gone into an SS-level restricted zone, and everyone's corruption value was already dangerously close to the judgment line.
In this state of combat, every second they stayed made the corruption value rise even more.
Even if they came out alive, Command would launch an inspection immediately.
The judgment procedure would begin.
There were only two outcomes:
Human, or not human.
If Zero Squad disbanded, what would happen to her?
Sent to a new squad?
Or sent to the experiment table?
A wave of chill crawled up her scalp. She took a few deep breaths to shove it down.
Then a thought surfaced, so clear it surprised even herself.
She wanted Zero Squad to walk out alive.
Two hands suddenly pressed down on her shoulders.
The force was so strong the whole helicopter seemed to lurch with it.
Jiang Ce locked eyes with her, all trace of amusement gone, replaced by something she had never seen on his face before—something almost like pleading.
"Jiang Nuan."
He said her name.
"So you need to figure out the way to perform purification as soon as possible."
His fingers tightened on her shoulders.
"Please."
Jiang Nuan looked into his eyes.
There was no threat in them, no command, no "you have no choice."
Only someone about to lose all his companions, saying "please."
Jiang Nuan felt like a string snapped inside her head.
"I understand," she said.
Her voice was soft, mostly swallowed by the engine noise, but Jiang Ce heard it.
He took his hands off her shoulders.
"Don't be scared," Jiang Ce leaned back into his seat. "They're not that easy to kill. Zero Squad is still Zero Squad after all."
"I'm not scared."
"You're trembling."
"It's because it's cold."
Jiang Ce looked at her for two seconds, then shrugged off his coat and tossed it to her.
The jacket was so large it could wrap around her twice.
Jiang Nuan huddled inside it and caught the smell of sweat mixed with gunpowder.
Strange.
Normally, that smell would make her frown, but now she felt nothing at all. She just breathed it in seriously, and it gave her a strange sense of safety.
This was the scent of a living person. Someone alive.
She thought about herself before the time travel. A college student, whose biggest worries were final exams and what to eat for lunch.
Six days ago, she opened her eyes in a stinking abandoned warehouse with a bullet wound on her head that miraculously healed as she regained consciousness.
One day ago, she went out looking for food, starving, and was dragged into a restricted zone full of monsters. Then Ye Que carried her out on his shoulder.
Today, she watched a city get swallowed by a restricted zone, leaving not even bones behind.
Jiang Nuan buried her face into the jacket, as if escaping.
She deliberately avoided thinking about the purification method.
Avoided considering what "deep physical contact" really meant.
She just wanted to survive.
