Lu Zhaoming stood beneath the tree, sensing the fluctuations in space around him.
“It’s repairing itself quickly,” he said. “In at most half an hour, this world will send you—and everyone else who wandered in—back to where you originally came from.”
The joy that had just begun to surface on Chen Ping’an’s face froze.
“Then… what about you?”
“I belong here.” Lu Zhaoming glanced at the base behind him and said calmly, “Once the boundary closes, this place will return to its original trajectory.”
He was not someone who had wandered in.
That was why the world would send them away, but not him.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Lu Shiyan stood where he was, his gaze fixed on Lu Zhaoming.
When father and son stood together, their outlines looked as though they had been carved from the same mold.
One was sharp and austere, the other gentle and composed. Now they stood face-to-face, neither speaking first.
Lu Zhaoming’s gaze swept over the group before settling on Lu Shiyan.
“When you were little, you always asked me when you could come on a mission with me.”
“Now that I think about it…” he said, “you’ve done better than I ever did.”
Lu Shiyan’s hand, hanging at his side, curled into a fist before slowly relaxing. His expression eased a little.
“You weren’t so bad yourself.”
A very faint smile touched Lu Zhaoming’s lips.
Qinian turned his head and clicked his tongue softly. “Why does this suddenly feel like a farewell party?”
“Nian Nian, give everyone a little room for sentiment.”
Chen Ping’an couldn’t help letting out a quiet laugh.
The atmosphere lightened somewhat.
Lu Zhaoming looked at Jiang Nuan as if he had just remembered something.
“Little Shiyan once asked me whether that big sister who came to the base for the banquet would let him see the silver bunny one more time.”
Jiang Nuan’s heart softened.
She regretted that she had never gotten to see little Shiyan again.
That boy had seemed far quieter than the children his age. Though he was still so young, he had already learned to hide so many of his emotions.
And yet, the moment he saw the palm-sized silver-white rabbit, he was unmistakably still just a child.
Jiang Nuan knew very well that little Shiyan probably had no time to think about “Bunny Sis” now.
At this very moment, he was likely clutching the stolen access card, his heart pounding so hard it felt ready to leap out of his throat.
An eight-year-old boy had done something he knew would bring enormous trouble.
Was he afraid?
Of course he was.
But he had done it anyway.
Thinking of that, Jiang Nuan felt as though something had lodged in her throat.
She turned her head and glanced at Lu Shiyan beside her—the man who was accustomed to hiding every emotion.
It was hard to imagine that when he was eight, he had also been the kind of child who would dare steal an access card and risk causing a catastrophe simply for the sake of a friend.
But it was precisely that brave choice that had given Number Zero a chance to escape the laboratory.
And given her the chance to become Jiang Nuan.
Just then, an invisible force began pressing in from every direction, as though the entire world were trying to push them out.
Lu Shiyan said in a low voice, “It’s almost time.”
Lu Zhaoming gave everyone one last look.
At that moment, New Year’s fireworks erupted over the frozen lake in the distance, their light illuminating his brows and eyes.
“The countless lights outside are waiting for you to protect them.”
*
When they emerged from the gray mist, the dust raised by the complete collapse of the Sea God Tower was still suspended in the air.
Jiang Nuan glanced at the terminal on her wrist. To her surprise, less than half an hour had passed.
The gray, polluted mist had already begun to dissipate. Nearby special forces personnel carrying out rescue operations were the first to notice them.
One of them stopped in his tracks, as if he could hardly believe what he was seeing.
“Is that… Number Zero Squad?”
At the edge of the dispersing gray mist, Lu Shiyan walked at the front, with Jiang Nuan and the others emerging one after another behind him.
“It really is them.”
The young officer instinctively straightened his back. He looked at the time on his terminal, then at the fading mist, and his voice rose.
“Wasn’t the Investigation Bureau just upgraded the restricted zone’s rating from S-class to SS-class?”
“Temporal distortion, spatial lockdown, and an abnormal energy concentration that couldn’t be estimated. In the worst-case scenario, the entire E District would have to be abandoned…”
The young officer looked at the vanishing gray mist, then back at his terminal.
He swallowed. “They cleared an SS-class restricted zone in less than half an hour?”
Jiang Nuan was waiting for Lu Shiyan to confirm the next steps with the Investigation Bureau. When she heard the discussion nearby, her eyelid twitched.
Solving an SS-class restricted zone in half an hour certainly sounded impressive.
It was just that this half hour had been a little long—more than a year had passed before they knew it.
The veteran officer beside the young man stared at the figures emerging from the mist, his voice filled with undisguised reverence.
“Otherwise, why do you think the Federation has only one Number Zero Squad?”
More and more people nearby turned to look.
There were survivors who had not yet had time to escape E District, as well as investigation teams and special forces personnel carrying out rescue operations.
After a brief silence, someone was the first to come to attention and salute them.
Then a second person stopped what they were doing, followed by a third.
Those who had just experienced the collapse of the Sea God Tower and watched the gray mist swallow the streets raised their hands in salute across the rubble and dust.
Just then, a middle-aged man, covered in grime and looking utterly disheveled, stumbled out of the still-undissipated mist.
He fell to his knees amid the ruins and stared blankly at everything before him. It was not until a tearful cry came from the arms of a special forces officer that he suddenly raised his head.
A little girl of only a few years old broke free of the officer’s grasp and ran toward him, crying.
“Dad!”
The man stared at her in a daze.
The next second, he opened his arms and pulled the girl tightly against him, sobbing so hard he could barely breathe.
“Yaoyao…”
“Daddy’s here. Daddy’s alive!”
More and more people emerged from the gray mist.
Some discovered that only a brief instant had passed in reality and embraced one another in tearful joy.
Some stood among the crowd, repeatedly asking what year it was. When they received the answer, they simply stood there for a long time without reacting.
Then a woman burst out of the mist and immediately turned around, desperately trying to force her way back inside.
“Let me go back!”
“My husband and child are still in there!”
Two special forces officers hurried to stop her.
The woman collapsed to her knees before the gradually vanishing mist, weeping as though her heart were being torn apart.
But she could never go back.
That world had accepted them and given them a real life.
Now that the boundary had closed, it had sent out only those who did not belong there.
Those who had been born within it, and all the attachments that could not cross the boundary, were left forever in another stretch of time.
Jiang Nuan watched the scene, her heart filled with conflicting emotions.
But at least she had returned.
She was not Number Zero.
She had a name, companions, and a real path home.
“Meow.”
A cat’s cry came from behind her.
Jiang Nuan thought she must have misheard. She stood frozen for two seconds before abruptly turning around.
From the last wisp of gray mist, a large orange cat shaped like a gas canister crawled out.
Its fur was mussed with dust. Its four paws stepped gingerly over the rubble as it looked around with wide, round eyes.
The moment it saw Jiang Nuan, it immediately raised its tail.
“Meow!”
“Jiangjiang?”
Jiang Nuan could hardly believe she wasn’t hallucinating.
The orange cat had already come running toward her, bumping its head against her ankle and meowing incessantly up at her.
Jiang Nuan quickly bent down and scooped it into her arms. Its familiar weight settled against her.
Jiangjiang wrapped both front paws around her arm, burrowing its head forcefully into her embrace as a loud purr rumbled in its throat.
Jiang Nuan stroked its warm ears and squeezed its dust-covered paw pads, unable to keep from laughing.
“Ye Que, it was sent out too.”
She lifted Jiangjiang a little higher, looking it over from every angle.
“Jiangjiang wasn’t created by that world. Like us, it accidentally wandered in from outside the restricted zone.”
Ye Que lowered his eyes to the orange cat in her arms and scratched beneath its chin with a crooked finger. “At least it knows its way around. It knew who to come back with.”
Jiangjiang narrowed its eyes and familiarly rubbed its head against his palm.
Jiang Nuan was already imagining what life would be like after bringing it back to the base. There probably wouldn’t be any cat trees to buy in the apocalypse, though, and she had no idea whether she could build one herself.
She hugged Jiangjiang tighter and couldn’t help looking back again.
The last wisp of gray mist had vanished.
All that remained was the rubble left behind by the collapse of the Sea God Building. There was no trace that world had ever existed.
And yet Jiangjiang still remembered them.
They, too, remembered the lights of ten thousand homes that had been left behind in the depths of time.
