From the moment Ye De felt his chest loosen and was blown away by the explosive airflow until he actually fell to the ground, it seemed that there was only a moment. The time was so short that he couldn't see clearly what happened; it also seemed like dozens of hours.
It was a long time. By the time he landed, he had already begun to doubt himself under the impact of various thoughts in his mind.
Didn't I do something stupid? Ye De got up from the ground, spit out the blood in his mouth, and looked back.
The next second, he ran towards the city wall as if his life was dead.
…He could barely see the clearing.
Just like the severed arm of the middle-aged woman, the limbs that have lost connection with the mutant will not proliferate; the other half of the arm connected to An Ran is being torn apart crazily, spewing out layer after layer, and a group of people.
A swarm of massive arms.
Densely packed, layer upon layer, the raging swaying arms and hands submerged and covered most of the platform in the blink of an eye - as if angered by the explosion, they are still spraying and spreading endlessly, regardless of speed or quantity.
, far beyond the time when a middle-aged woman’s arm was simply cut off.
In Ye De's plan, he should run towards the city wall as soon as he landed, trying to get off the platform before the spreading arms touched him - he didn't want to die with the mutants yet.
He is indeed doing this now, but the open space between him and the city wall is being quickly devoured by the surging mutant human limbs around him, just like a small piece of rock standing in the sea at high tide, which will sink and disappear at any time.
An Ran, who was standing not far in front of the city wall, seemed to have seen a comedy. He was laughing so hard that he was out of breath: "What are you doing? I'm afraid you won't die fast enough or with enough tricks."
How much? You struggled for a long time just for this?"
When Ye De couldn't answer a word and could only fight for speed with the mutated limbs, he said leisurely: "You look like a headless fly, but I can't bear to let you die, because I
I really want to know what you want to do with this. Your little bomb can only explode more of me. Could it be that you——"
Just when his words suddenly stopped, Ye De's feet trembled at the same time.
Just as the earth suddenly decided not to catch his footsteps, it pulled back slightly, allowing Ye De's next step to step into the air. A dull rumbling sound came to life from under his feet, and when he fell to the ground
At that moment, he clearly felt that the ground beneath him finally could no longer hold its strength, and a piece of it moved laterally amid the tremors.
His goal was achieved - but unlike the plan, he didn't have time to escape yet.
"What, what's going on?" An Ran was shocked and realized: "The earth platform collapsed?"
In just a few words, the entire earth platform completely fell apart. At that moment, Ye De's vision was completely blurred by the flying dust, the large number of arms thrown into the sky, and the feeling of weightlessness; he was falling.
As I was going down, I happened to see a clear sight: a large number of arms pouring down from the collapsed earth platform like a waterfall - and An Ran who fell down with them.
Yes, the earth platform collapsed, Ye De thought with satisfaction.
The airflow when the corrugated ball exploded in mid-air, at most, shook the earth platform; what really caused it to collapse was the endless arms that exploded from An Ran's body - to be more precise, it was the weight of the arms.
It seems that even the mutant himself has forgotten that his mutated limbs also have weight. This platform once collapsed because it could not support half a house, so how could it support the mountains and seas of mutated limbs?
An Ran now only has one arm with a large number of limbs exploding. Even if he hurriedly stretches out the other arm to grab the wall above his head, any part he grabs cannot bear the weight - this is what Ye De
The reason why he deliberately wanted to blow off one of his arms: What he was interested in was the uncontrollable weight of the limbs caused by the rapid proliferation of mutants.
He wanted to turn the safely proliferating limbs into a weight that the latter could not resist, and let it fall all the way into the void under the platform, into the haze layer under the void, and finally let the earth under the haze layer swallow him.
Ye De just didn't expect that he would fall down too.
However, maybe this is also good.
An Ran's screams even broke through the dull sound of the collapse of the earth platform; between the earth, rocks, powder and airflow, in the weightless feeling of falling, Ye De found a large mass of flesh-colored flesh below that was as turbulent and twisted as a snake mountain.
The limbs are shrinking rapidly - the mutant's other arm is also rapidly stretching upwards, reaching towards the city wall that is getting farther and farther away from them at the moment.
This guy reacted quite quickly and knew immediately that he had to put away his mutated limbs.
By the way, my heartbeat has stopped, Ye De thought. He has never experienced this level of fear in his life, but the strange thing is that he has never experienced this kind of complete silence in his life.
For example, now, he can feel his hand grabbing another corrugated ball, and his movements are calm and smooth, as if he is still standing on the flat ground; Ye De aims at the group of arms below that have not been completely closed, and again
Throw it out with force.
"I | Fuck you -" An Ran screamed and cursed, but was quickly drowned out by the explosion.
Ye De seemed to hear himself chuckle - but this might also be his hallucination during the rapid fall.
After the explosion, everything returned to the state it had been a second or two before: as long as the mutant's limbs were broken, they would explode involuntarily, and as soon as they exploded, An Ran would fall involuntarily under the weight. The speed at which he retracted his limbs was far away.
It was nowhere near as fast as Ye De could throw the corrugated ball, and besides, Ye De had no intention of giving him another chance - he didn't stop for a moment, and the corrugated balls landed one after another on the big group of arms like a mountain of snakes.
It’s just that he will never have the chance to see the effect of the corrugated ball again.
Even if you fall from such a high cliff, it is only a blink of an eye.
In a daze, Ye De felt someone suddenly grabbed his arm, propped him up, and asked him to sit up. The force was firm but gentle, as if he was afraid that if the grip was too heavy, it would leave traces on him.
There were bruises - he turned around and saw those familiar, bright eyes again.
"Yei," he heard himself call.
He was already quite an adult, but his voice sounded like a cry of grievance.
"Sit tight," Ye Jing treated him now as if he were still treating him when he was four years old. She put her hand under his armpit and asked him to sit down against the soft quilt. She
After looking at Ye De's face carefully for a while, he gently pushed his hair to the back of his head, then sat back again and asked with a smile: "How old are you this year?"
"Thirty-four." He said like a child, swallowing his grievance.
Ye De didn't understand why he could only sit leaning against the quilt. He hoped that he could crawl over and crawl back into Ye Jing's arms. Even if he heard her complain that "the child is so hot", he could slowly fall asleep——
But Ye Jing was sitting half a meter away from him, always separated by a distance so that he could not touch her.
Ye Jing nodded. "We are all adults. It has been so many years...so, you survived well back then?"
His voice seemed to be choked by this question.
After all these years, Ye De never dared to think about what happened after that day - he squatted next to Ye Jing's chair and asked her softly if she still wanted to evolve.
He wanted to go back to the afternoon before taking out the haze water, lean against her legs, and quietly bask in the sun with her for a while. He thought that due to various reasons, he could not bask in the sun with her so much.
It was an afternoon that could never be repeated.
"I'm sorry..." he whispered, "I regret it very much. But I don't regret it either. If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would still collect the haze water, and I would still give it to you and ask you what you want.
I don’t want to evolve. I just want to give your life back to you.”
"I know," Ye Jing still looked at him as before and said with a smile, "I know everything. I'm very happy."
She paused, tilted her head, and when she was looking for the next sentence, time filled her skin again. "I never thought that I would spend my life in this way, and I never thought that I would get this kind of
The reward in form...I am very satisfied.”
"No... this is my fault." Ye De said again. He stretched out his hand to her, but Ye Jing remained motionless and seemed to have no intention of holding his hand. "I don't know... I don't either.
I didn’t know that I had been infected during the collection process.”
Ye Jing still looked at him very softly.
"If I could do it over again, I would definitely go far,"
Ye De thought he wanted to cry, but maybe it was because everything had come to an end. He finally reunited with Ye Jing, and there was nothing to cry about. He just murmured, as if recalling: "I am in my mind
I have imagined many times that after I give you the Haze Water, I will leave Fanjia City immediately. Unless you evolve successfully, I will never come back. In this way, you will never know that I am infected...
"Actually, there's nothing terrible about me being infected. I'm just an ordinary person with no potential and can't withstand the haze, so I won't evolve or become a fallen species. I'll just get sick and die from time to time.
That’s it. There are so many people who will die in one day, and one more of me is nothing.” He looked at his fingers and said, “How did you find out that I was sick in the first place? Even I didn’t realize it... I
I thought it was just that I was too tired from work those days."
"I raised you little by little," Ye Jing said with a smile, "How could I not see it?"
"But I'm not afraid," he said as if arguing: "My only wish is to let you evolve and let you truly live for yourself. My life was given to me by you, and I am willing to use it to do something for you.
.”
"I didn't expect that in the end, not only did I accomplish nothing for you," he smiled bitterly, and continued: "In addition to the life you gave me, you also gave me your potential. All of this is just
...Just to let me, an ordinary child like me, live."
Just like years ago, Ye Jing would roll his eyes when he heard something he didn't like.
"I don't even know what you did, how many difficulties you went through, and where you found new doomsday factors before you finally delivered the potential value to me." When Ye De spoke, he wished he could hold her in his hand. He held his hand, but Ye Jing remained motionless. "I could only lie on the bed and let you run around in a daze, waiting for you to save me... If I had known at that time, the price you paid for saving me was your potential value, The cost of losing your potential value is..."
"That's all in the past." Ye Jing interrupted him and said softly, "What about now? Do you have any satisfaction or regrets now?"
Ye De thought about it carefully.
"I saved Anna," he suddenly felt a bit proud like a child, and said, "She is safe. You must be very happy to know that."
Ye Jing smiled. "I'm very happy."
"When I think about the middle-aged people I saw in the city, they may have had drinks with you; the old people I saw may have given you food before... The most important thing is that when the children you raised grew up, they After having a child, any young person I see may be born from you, because you are alive and breathing..." Ye De looked at her and said: "I clearly know that they are not related to you by blood. Relationship, but it's strange, it feels as if you are still there, your life continues with theirs. I tried my best to protect them, and I did my best.
"As for regrets... I'm sorry for Lin Sanjiu. I clearly promised her that I would send out a missing person message for her afterwards, but I seem to be breaking my promise. The person she can't find seems to be very important to her... This is My regret."
"Really?" Ye Jing tilted his head slightly and asked, "Are you really going to break your promise soon?"
Ye De didn't quite understand what she meant and just looked at her blankly.
"Think again." Ye Jing pointed to his hands and said, "You have always been stubborn as hell. You walked all the way to the dark side, but when I thought you were about to hit the south wall, you happened to be able to do it again. Find a way to escape at the last minute."
I don't know when it started, but his hands became red and white, with bulging veins, as if he was exerting all his strength.
"No," Ye De was startled, raised his head and said, "You - I want to stay -"
"When the day comes when you really arrive, I will wait for you here," Ye Jing said with a smile, "I promise, I won't go far."
This chapter ended up being longer than I expected...