With a soft beep, the terminal disconnected.
The wind battered the windows, making the room feel even quieter.
Jiang Nuan was still sitting on the window seat, tears running down her cheeks.
She heard the faint click of Lu Shiyan ending the call, followed by several seconds of silence.
There were no footsteps. He was still standing there.
Jiang Nuan didn’t look up. The exhaustion that followed her emotional breakdown made her head buzz.
A few seconds later, she felt something gently slipped into her palm.
A small, square item in individual plastic packaging.
She froze, then lowered her gaze to her hand.
Lu Shiyan had put it there…
A sanitary pad—the one from the pack she’d left on the bedside table.
She instinctively looked down at her pants and the section of the window seat beneath her.
A small stain was clearly visible in the snowlight outside, so obvious that she wanted to disappear on the spot.
Her face immediately burned.
She didn’t even have time to wipe her tears. Clutching the pad, she jumped off the window seat and ran barefoot across the wooden floor, almost charging into the bathroom.
As she passed Lu Shiyan, he was facing away from her.
He stood before the blank wall, as if it had suddenly become an object of great academic interest.
The bathroom door slammed shut.
With her back pressed against the door, she took several deep breaths. The plastic wrapper in her hand was already crumpled beyond recognition.
Fortunately, there was clean underwear in the bathroom cabinet.
After cleaning herself up, she braced herself against the sink and glanced at the mirror.
Tears covered most of her face.
The tip of her nose was red, her eyes slightly swollen, and there was still a mark on her lips where she had bitten them open.
Just moments ago, she had been trapped between the window seat and his chest, emotionally breaking down as she sobbed, “Isn’t this what you wanted anyway?”
And now she was in the bathroom changing a sanitary pad.
…
This was completely absurd.
Lu Shiyan’s voice came from outside the door, slightly muffled through the barrier.
“I’m going to the basement to interrogate them later. You don’t need to come.”
A brief pause.
“Get some rest.”
His tone was gentler than before.
Then his footsteps faded away.
The bedroom door opened, then closed.
Jiang Nuan remained still in the bathroom for another dozen seconds.
Only after confirming that there was no sound outside did she push the door open and walk out.
Her cotton slippers, which she hadn’t had time to put on, were sitting by the bathroom door beneath the window seat…
Lu Shiyan had brought them over.
The room was empty. The oppressive weight that had made it hard to breathe had left with him.
Jiang Nuan glanced at the window seat. Someone had already wiped it clean with a wet wipe.
There was also a cup of freshly poured hot water on the bedside table.
Lu Shiyan had nearly devoured her just moments ago, yet now he was taking care of all these little details.
Was this what people meant by being a father, a mother, and a tyrant all at once?
Her current mood could probably be summed up in four words:
Damn you, Lu Shiyan.
She took a couple of sips of water. The warmth eased the chill that had seeped through her body.
After changing into a loose sweater, she collapsed onto the bed and drowsily closed her eyes.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when a commotion came from the living room.
“I’m going to see Nuannuan.”
It was Qinian’s loud, unrestrained voice. His footsteps were clearly heading this way.
Then Lu Shiyan’s voice rang out, leaving no room for negotiation.
“Come with me to the basement.”
“Huh? Isn’t the interrogation Captain and Shen Wu’s job?”
Before he could finish, another set of footsteps approached from the hallway in the direction of Jiang Nuan’s room.
Lu Shiyan spoke again.
“Ye Que, you’re coming too.”
Qinian’s voice continued, “Why? I just got back, and my brother still hasn’t been found. I need someone to talk to—”
His words were cut off halfway.
There was the sound of someone being dragged away. It was probably Ye Que.
Qinian’s voice turned into a stream of curses that grew more distant and distant, until the basement door shut and everything fell completely silent.
Under the covers, Jiang Nuan rolled over, the corner of her mouth twitching.
When she woke again, the snowlight outside the window was brighter.
She had probably slept for a little over an hour. It was nearly noon now.
She went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Only after confirming that nothing looked unusual did she push open the bedroom door and head downstairs to the living room.
There was only one person there.
Chen Ping’an was sitting on the sofa with an orange ball of fur in his arms, while the television in front of him played the news.
Beside him sat a huge, bulging kraft-paper bag.
On the television, a newscaster with a poised voice was reporting, “The Lighthouse Team has successfully sealed the abnormal energy source in Area A for the third time. As of today, no abnormal energy fluctuations have been detected in the area for forty-eight consecutive hours. Citizens across the Federation have spontaneously organized celebrations. One commentator has called this ‘the surest dawn before the daybreak’…”
The broadcast then cut to scenes of people celebrating. Children released colorful balloons in the squares, while neon lights glittered along the commercial streets.
Everything looked so beautiful, filled with hope for the future.
“Jiangjiang?”
Only after she came closer did Jiang Nuan recognize the orange cat in Chen Ping’an’s arms. “Why is it here?”
Chen Ping’an looked up at her and smiled. “You’re awake! Jiangjiang was brought over with Ye Que. Ye Que seemed to be getting ready to go upstairs and see you.”
He paused, his expression becoming difficult to describe.
“But Captain Lu dragged him to the basement. There are two people from the Cleaners locked down there now.”
“Jiang Ce was sent to the Investigation Bureau.”
Jiang Nuan nodded and sat down on the other side of the sofa.
Jiangjiang immediately jumped down from Chen Ping’an’s lap, nimbly crossed the coffee table, and burrowed straight into her arms. A deep, rumbling purr vibrated in its throat.
Jiang Nuan stroked its head, her fingers sinking into the soft, warm fur.
At last, the tension in her shoulders began to ease.
The cat’s fur brushed against her palm, warm and comforting.
Across from her, Chen Ping’an muttered, “I just wasted an entire sausage feeding it.”
Jiang Nuan curved her lips into a small smile. “It’s more attached to its owner.”
The words had barely left her mouth before she remembered that Ye Que had told her the same thing.
Jiangjiang had acted like this then, too, burrowing into her and refusing to leave.
Ye Que had said that it recognized its owner.
Now, curled up in her arms and purring, the cat seemed to be proving him right.
She scratched behind its ears. “Why didn’t you go to the basement?”
“I think I’ll pass…” Chen Ping’an waved a pale hand. “I already got a taste of it yesterday when I followed Captain Lu at the Investigation Bureau. That scene…”
He drew in a breath.
“‘Blood raining from the sky’ would be an understatement.”
He glanced toward the basement and lowered his voice.
“Besides, when I saw Captain Lu just now, his expression looked even worse than it did at the Investigation Bureau last night. Those two people who were brought back are probably in for a very bad time.”
Jiang Nuan didn’t respond. She lowered her head and rubbed Jiangjiang.
An even worse expression than last night…
She had a pretty good idea why.
The basement was clearly soundproof. Sitting in the living room with Chen Ping’an, Jiang Nuan couldn’t hear any screams or other noises from below.
“Oh, right—” Chen Ping’an suddenly remembered something. He picked up the enormous kraft-paper bag from beside him and handed it to her. “This is for you.”
Jiang Nuan took the bag and opened it.
A full bag of snacks: potato chips, plums, nuts, gummy candies, chocolate wafers, sandwich cookies… It had everything, packed so tightly the bag was bulging, with enough food to keep an entire squad alive.
Sitting right on top were several bags of tomato-flavored potato chips.
She picked one up. It was the same brand of chips she had said tasted good on the helicopter.
“Captain Lu bought these for you on the way back.” Chen Ping’an’s expression was strange, as if he had witnessed something so unbelievable that he simply had to tell someone.
“They passed through the commercial district on the way home, and the captain suddenly told the driver to pull over.”
“I immediately tensed up, thinking something had happened. My hand even went to my waist.”
His voice was full of disbelief.
“Then he got out and walked into a snack shop.”
“Once inside, he told the owner, ‘Give me a few of everything on the bestseller list.’”
A scene instantly formed in Jiang Nuan’s mind.
Lu Shiyan, dressed in a crisp uniform, walking into a brightly colored snack shop and saying that expressionlessly.
…It really was surreal.
“He also took a few extra bags of these from the shelf.” Chen Ping’an pointed at the tomato-flavored chips in Jiang Nuan’s hand.
“When he paid, the owner recognized him as the Governor of Whale Harbor City and nearly dropped to his knees. The whole thing only took a few minutes.”
“Once we got back to the car, he put the bag on the passenger seat, and then…”
Chen Ping’an paused, repeatedly checking that his memory had not failed him.
“He seemed to smile. It scared the hell out of me.”
Jiang Nuan lowered her head, her gaze falling on the cat in her arms.
“Only afterward did I realize he’d bought it for you.” Chen Ping’an scratched the back of his head. “When we got home… well, he seemed to hear something and went upstairs without even changing his shoes.”
“I wanted to call out, ‘Captain, you haven’t changed your shoes,’ but he didn’t look like someone who could be stopped.”
He glanced cautiously at Jiang Nuan.
“Did you two… have a fight?”
Jiang Nuan was silent for two seconds.
“…Yes.”
She pushed the large paper bag to the side of the sofa and frowned at it.
Everything Lu Shiyan had done made it seem as if that suffocating control and possessiveness did not exist—as if he really were nothing more than an ordinary man who smiled when something crossed his mind.
But he was not an ordinary man.
She could not explain what she was feeling. Did she hate him? It seemed that things were not quite so simple.
Jiangjiang had probably smelled the food in the paper bag. It jumped off her lap, went over to the bag, and began pawing at it.
“Hey!” Chen Ping’an quickly reached out and grabbed the cat. “Don’t rummage through that. There’s nothing in there a cat can eat.”
Even after being lifted off the ground, Jiangjiang kept stretching its paws toward the bag, struggling wildly with all four legs.
For some inexplicable reason, Jiang Nuan’s mood improved a little.
Lu Shiyan was guilty, but the snacks were innocent.
She pulled the bag back in front of her, tore open the packet of tomato-flavored chips, and popped one into her mouth.
The crisp crackle rang through the living room.
Jiang Nuan sat on the sofa, sharing snacks with Chen Ping’an while casually putting on an old movie on the television for background noise.
She did not really want to watch the news.
For someone who knew how things would end, words related to Dawn were simply too painful to hear.
“Speaking of which, how did you end up falling into this Restricted Zone too?” Jiang Nuan asked as she ate her chips.
Chen Ping’an pulled a long face and began describing what had happened outside the Restricted Zone.
Based on the timeline, the original-world time when he entered the Restricted Zone was almost the same as when Jiang Nuan and the others had entered.
But Jiang Nuan and Squad Zero had launched an offensive of their own, deliberately choosing the place with the highest concentration of gray mist as their breakthrough point.
So they had not known that, shortly after they entered, the gray mist had begun spreading explosively.
“The gray mist spread too fast. The entire edge of Sector E descended into chaos.” Chen Ping’an’s voice lowered. “I was evacuating with my grandmother and my mother, but the Federation rescue vehicles had limited capacity.”
“There weren’t enough seats.” He shrugged. “So I gave mine to them. I’m young, I’m healthy, and I have an A-rank ability. I figured I could survive somehow.”
“But I didn’t make it out. The gray mist swallowed me.” He sighed.
Jiang Nuan stopped eating and glanced at him. He looked a little clueless, but when it mattered, he was actually quite dependable.
“A whole lot of people were swallowed up at the time,” Chen Ping’an continued. “When we landed, I was with several other people, but those people…”
He paused for several seconds.
“They were either killed by the Cleaners or taken away by the Investigation Department.”
Jiang Nuan’s hand stopped midway as she ate a chip.
“The Investigation Department in Sector A is far too bloodthirsty,” Chen Ping’an said in a quieter voice. “A lot of people were executed on the spot without even being questioned. I suspect some of the people who were native to this world may have been killed by mistake. In any case, as long as their identities didn’t match, they were treated as heretics.”
Jiang Nuan sighed. “The Investigation Department in the timeline we’re in now is completely different from the one in our original timeline.”
Here, the Investigation Department was the absolute power that ruled this land without challenge.
The various Federation departments could do little more than eke out an existence in administrative affairs. There was no room for any meaningful balance of power.
Whale Harbor City was especially so. As Governor, Lu Shiyan held almost absolute power over everyone’s life and death.
Everyone in the room knew how history would unfold. The Investigation Department’s grotesquely inflated power would not last.
After the Lighthouse Squad sealed the Restricted Zone and triggered that devastating apocalypse…
After the heroes fell and the lights of countless homes were buried in the abyss…
Only then would the Investigation Department lose its authority because of that catastrophe, allowing the Federation to devour it piece by piece.
In the end, it would become the blade it was in Jiang Nuan and the others’ era: a weapon restrained and controlled by the Federation.
Even though this was a utopia created by someone and forcibly infused with anomalous energy, everything had still returned to its original course.
As if nothing had ever changed.
Jiang Nuan put the last chip from the empty packet into her mouth and swallowed it.
Suddenly, she wanted to see Lu Zhaoming.
She wanted to tell him that dealing with anomalous energy this way would lead to disaster.
But the thought survived for only a few seconds.
So many people had been swallowed by the gray mist. Among them, it was impossible that not a single person had said this path would lead nowhere.
It was impossible that none of those words had reached Lu Zhaoming’s ears.
But those people’s words had probably either been treated as heretical sedition or dismissed as the ravings of madmen.
They had not even made it out of the interrogation rooms before dying inside them.
Jiang Nuan crumpled the empty chip packet into a ball and casually tossed it into the trash can beside the coffee table.
Jiangjiang jumped back onto her lap and curled itself into a warm little ball, its purring even and steady.
Outside the window, snow began to fall again.
