The moment Hu Bugui’s hands touched the net covering Su Qing, he felt the energy leaking from the silver arteries—his hands were immediately scorched. 

“We can’t determine the level of danger, everyone withdraw. Technician, come here!” 

The technician who had come with the unit scrambled over, holding up a stack of equipment. When he was nearly there, his near-sighted eyes at last saw clearly that the heap lying at Su Qing’s feet was his late superior. He was instantly scared half-paralyzed and fell forward, flying two feet ahead. His glasses even fell off. Blinking his hazy eyes, he shivered as he groped all over the ground for his glasses. 

Hu Bugui looked at him, then looked at Xu Ruchong, with blood leaking from his face and his pupils dilated. Nothing showed on his face. He only averted his gaze and pushed the technician’s glasses with his foot, pushing them up to his hand. In a heavy voice, he said, “You have thirty seconds. Tell me what that this thing on him is.” 

“Oh…yes, sir!” This four-eyed brother scrambled over on hands and knees, then couldn’t resist taking another look at Xu Ruchong’s corpse. He subconsciously swallowed. 

Hu Bugui’s voice exploded in his ear: “Don’t look, that isn’t him.” 

His words were like a spell, and perhaps they gave the new technician some hope. His eyes instantly lit up, and his hands stopped shaking. He lowered his head and didn’t look anymore. He began to focus single-mindedly on the net covering Su Qing. The blood was slowly leaving Su Qing’s face. It was turning grey with extreme speed. 

Hu Bugui carelessly wiped his bloody hands on himself and lowered his eyes as much as possible, not displaying his anxious expression—they had one dead and one wounded. If he as captain let his feelings become unstable, what were the others supposed to do? 

“Captain Hu, my initial assessment is that this is a two-directional medium. Evidently the energy source at one end has broken off now, so it has begun to automatically absorb energy from the other end. If this goes on, he’ll be drained dry.” 

Now that Su Qing had no more surplus energy to repair his injured leg, the blood was flowing out like a small waterfall. One of his pale fingers was still on the net’s lattice. The knife between his fingers had nicked the edge of his sleeve and caught. The blade was cutting a small wound in his hand. 

“Can you block it?” Hu Bugui asked. 

“Yes, but…” 

“No time?” Not waiting for him to finish, Hu Bugui bent down. He turned his head to the technician and said, “Move away.” 

The despondent technician didn’t understand, but he reflexively obeyed the command, obediently standing up and moving away. Then he saw Hu Bugui simply use his bare hands to grab the net covering Su Qing. Su Qing, like a marionette, was lifted along with the net. 

All the veins stood out at the edges of Hu Bugui’s forehead. The technician, who was closest to him, opened his mouth wide and didn’t close it. He smelled a scent of barbecue. 

Sizzling sounds came from the places where skin touched the net. Some places even stuck. He wanted to free up a hand to hold Su Qing by the shoulder, but he couldn’t tear his hand away at first. Hu Bugui lifted his hand by force, and the technician clearly saw a big piece of flesh tear off his palm. Blood poured from the burned skin. 

The technician was only a frail scholar. He had never in his life seen such a bloody scene. He felt his legs turn into noodles. He took two steps back, his eyes rolled up, and he jumped into another dimension. 

Hu Bugui ignored him. He grabbed Su Qing by the shoulder, took a deep breath, then gave a yell, tearing the stubbornly clinging net off Su Qing. Su Qing had no strength left, and he had stabbed himself in the leg. He fell right onto Hu Bugui. Hu Bugui wanted to hold him up, but he found that blood and burned skin had stuck his hand to Su Qing’s clothes. He took a step back and tripped over the instrument cover that the technician had tossed aside. The two of them fell heavily to the ground. 

Hu Bugui opened his arms, raising his hands, which were a sight too ghastly to behold, to carefully shield Su Qing. Su Qing’s chin bumped against his chest. Bone struck bone, extremely painfully. 

He sighed in relief, but when he saw Su Qing’s face, his breath tensed once more. Just then, the car containing the second wave of the RZ Unit’s people arrived. Fang Xiu jumped out before the car had even come to a full stop. He leaned down to pick up an enormous medical kit, then ran over with Lu Qingbai. 

Lu Qingbai pried open Su Qing’s eyelid. Without another word, he gave him a high energy nutritional injection. Then, directing the others, he said, “Hurry, hurry, hurry, get him up—what? Which one? The dying one first! Let the little four-eyes faint.” 

Hu Bugui felt his body lighten as Su Qing was lifted up. Only then did Lu Qingbai see Hu Bugui’s hand, still stuck to Su Qing’s clothes. He gave a miserable shriek. “Who the fuck did this! This chicken leg is obviously overdone! It’s sticking to the pot!” 

Hu Bugui: “…” 

Lu Qingbai gave him a cold look and had the people carrying the stretcher squat down with him. Maintaining his very saddened movements, he carefully began to deal with this instance of a tie as close as bones and flesh. 

Hu Bugui wanted to tear his hand off Su Qing just as he had before. Then Lu Qingbai pinched somewhere with his tweezers, causing so much pain he nearly cried. Lu Qingbai said, “If you move again, we’ll all have roasted bear paw as a snack tonight.”  

“But he…”

Lu Qingbai interrupted him: “This brat won’t die. I’ve given him a nutritional injection. With nothing absorbing his energy, he’ll recover in a while. The wound to the leg is a bit of a problem. It seems that the bullet is still stuck inside. RZ Unit… Hmph, the Gambling With Your Life Unit. This Su character seems proper enough, but essentially he’s still a…” 

At this point, for some reason, the word “gorilla” stuck in his throat. Lu Qingbai’s gaze froze. He lowered his eyes and didn’t speak again. 

Hu Bugui looked and found that Su Qing’s face was indeed no longer as frighteningly grey as it had been in the beginning. Only then did he recover from his extreme anxiety and feel the pain—his hands hurt, his ribs hurt, and his chest hurt. 

Fang Xiu stood beside him in silence, his eyes aimed directly at Xu Ruchong. Hu Bugui followed his gaze, and a rare confusion appeared on his face. Cause and effect flooded his mind. He had many questions. But for a time he didn’t know where to start. 

Xu Ruchong—the bookworm who yelled every day that nerds would save the world. While he talked a lot of nonsense and was sometimes unreliable, he was still a very good person, pure and enthusiastic. 

Many betrayals were happening in this world, every day, every hour, every moment, but there was nothing more bewildering that this kind—the betrayal that had existed from the beginning. 

Fang Xiu slowly walked over and bent down without a word. Then, in a squatting posture, he strained to twist his neck back at an angle—he wanted to see what had been the last sight of this world to enter Xu Ruchong’s eyes. 

What he saw was the boundless, pale sky. 

“There was something I’ve always wanted to say, and I hadn’t said it yet,” Fang Xiu thought. He silently put his hand over Xu Ruchong’s face and gently closed his eyelids. He sighed and quietly said to no one, “Don’t look anymore.” 

Not far away, someone was the first to start crying. Perhaps it was a new recruit who hadn’t yet become accustomed to life and death and betrayal. 

Fang Xiu lifted Xu Ruchong’s body in his arms. “Don’t cry,” he said. Then a tear rolled down from the corner of his eye. They passed by Lu Qingbai, but Lu Qingbai still had his head down, as though someone had stuffed lead into it, and it was so heavy that he couldn’t lift it. 

The little four-eyed technician had at some point woken up. He looked at all of this blankly, then suddenly drew back his lips and began to wail. “Captain Hu…didn’t you tell me it wasn’t Engineer Xu? Didn’t you just say…” 

Hu Bugui’s voice seemed to be pressed down in his throat. He quietly said, “I was lying to you.” 

When Su Qing woke up, he was in his own bed. The wound on his leg was bandaged, and there was an IV in his arm. Clear liquid was flowing steadily into his body. 

Light footsteps approached. Su Qing raised his eyes and saw Tu Tutu carrying a towel that hadn’t been wrung out. He twisted it clumsily, and right under Su Qing’s eyes, he went on tiptoe to put the towel on Su Qing’s forehead. 

Then, as though he had completed a sacred act, he let out a long breath and quietly said, “Imperial Uncle, you’re usurping the emperor’s authority, and you’re a good-for-nothing, but don’t die.” 

Su Qing smiled faintly. 

Like a little grown-up, Tu Tutu brought over a chair and sat by his bed. His feet didn’t quite touch the floor, hanging a little over it. Unusually serious, he said, “Listen, why do people die?” 

Su Qing thought about it for a while, then quietly said, “If a person is alive, he has to die sometime. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.” 

Tu Tutu nodded earnestly, an apathy that didn’t agree with his age appearing on his face with its baby fat. “That’s true. My mom and dad just croaked all of a sudden one day. What can you do about it?” 

Su Qing looked at him and suddenly asked, “Do you still remember your mom? Before, you always used to imitate what your mom said. Why don’t you do it anymore?” 

Tu Tutu gently kick a corner of the bedding hanging off the bed. “Oh, I don’t remember so clearly anymore.” 

Su Qing suddenly didn’t know what he should say. In the grey house, Tu Tutu had been only six. Then he had grown older, and his memories had become vague. In the end, time had wiped everything away. He couldn’t even remember his parents’ faces. 

What could you do about it? 

While you couldn’t hide from life and death, if a person was sufficiently powerful, he could perhaps decide how he would live and how he would die. But the vast majority of people couldn’t even accomplish this little bit. They only spent a whole lifetime drifting in confusion through the sea of people, now pushed this way, now pushed that way. Then one day a wave would hit them, their eyes would roll up, and they would bite the dust. 

Sometimes, the only wish a person had in life was in fact to live according to his wishes, or to die according to them. 

These words stuck in his chest, but he couldn’t say them in front of Tu Tutu. 

Just then, the door opened. Hu Bugui, his hands thickly wrapped in bandages, walked in. He stood in the doorway and said to Tu Tutu, “Come here, child. Go play with your Grandpa Cheng for a while. We have some things to talk about.” 

Contrary to Su Qing’s expectations, Tu Tutu immediately jumped off his chair without a word of protest and ran off. 

Hu Bugui closed the door, pulled up the chair, and sat at his bedside. “Su Qing, I need to have a talk with you.”