Star-time 18:30. A fire broke out at the Hongyun Shipyard.
The whole shipyard sank into a sea of flame.
The first thing Sun Jie did once she’d crawled out was drag her injured body forward and lash her whip viciously at Cheng Qian.
Cheng Qian, however, was fast.
The whip that had been aimed at his head and neck only caught him across the back of the leg.
A bone-deep, gut-clawing pain shot up through his muscles and into his nerves.
A searing, scalding agony.
For a moment he thought his leg had snapped clean off.
But Cheng Qian held onto that one last breath and forced himself, dragging his wounded leg, toward the gate.
Sun Jie was burning with rage, but she noticed that now was not the time for revenge.
She glared hard at Cheng Qian’s fleeing back, like a leopard that had locked onto its prey, coiled and ready to spring.
An Ran and the others were hurt, but it was nothing more than superficial wounds.
Zhao Xin and his side had, after all, gone easy on them for the sake of old colleagues.
The instant An Ran laid eyes on Bai Long, her already pale face turned even uglier.
She seemed to want to say something, but Bai Long gave her no chance, turning on her heel and striding off toward Xu Yunyi.
…
Xu Yunyi shouldered her broadsword, gasping for breath.
Once Zhao Xin’s strength was buffed, he was practically a walking meat shield.
She could swing her blade until it nearly snapped and barely manage to slow him down.
Xu Yunyi’s stamina was no match for Zhao Xin’s.
Using her ability for any length of time burned through her stamina at a brutal rate.
After a few rounds she couldn’t hold on, dropping to one knee on the ground.
Seeing Zhao Xin’s fist come swinging in, Xu Yunyi instinctively shut her eyes, gritting her teeth as she swung her blade up to block.
But the expected pain never came.
Xu Yunyi opened her eyes to see Bai Long, rod in hand, blocking Zhao Xin’s blow for her.
“Up. Retreat!”
Bai Long threw her weight into the strike, knocking Zhao Xin back, then hauled Xu Yunyi up by the arm and bolted for the gate.
Wrapped in flames, everyone ran for the one and only exit.
Stay in the shipyard any longer and you’d be slow-roasted into human jerky.
Chi Zao and a few of the boys had been ready in advance. The moment they saw Bai Long and the others coming back, they triggered the door mechanism.
The stone gate let out a dull, heavy rumble and slowly cracked open a sliver.
A figure shot out through the gap.
Through the towering stone gate, Chi Zao dimly made out that figure staggering off toward the coast.
“Chi Zao, what the hell are you doing?! Run already!”
A boy shouted at him, scooped up the backpack off the ground, and turned to run.
Chi Zao couldn’t spare it another thought either. He stuck close behind the boy, grabbed the last backpack off the ground, and retreated through the stone gate.
In the chaos, Cheng Qian was panting hard, his eyes bloodshot.
A long stretch of desk-job life left him utterly unable to handle exertion this intense.
Cheng Qian felt his throat burning like fire, his tongue half lolling out as he gasped, every drop of moisture in his body about to be boiled away by the flames.
The sweat running off his head, his hands, his neck dried in seconds under the fire’s heat.
The shipyard was packed with machinery, the blaze was impossible to contain and swept through more than half of it in no time.
Cheng Qian caught a figure at the edge of his vision.
He looked up to see Bai Long’s face, perfectly at ease even under the glow of the flames.
“Teacher Cheng, you look like you’re struggling.”
Bai Long had her cloak’s hood up, but there wasn’t a single drop of sweat on her face, not even the flush of being scorched.
She looked like she’d been sealed off from the heat entirely.
Cheng Qian could no longer speak.
The scene before him kept blurring, going black in waves.
“Oh, right, I forgot to tell you something.”
Bai Long pulled out the alarm controller and, right in front of Cheng Qian, pressed the button in the center.
In that one second, Cheng Qian felt his heart stop.
His eyes flew open and he couldn’t help but roar, “Are you out of your goddamn mind?!”
His mind flashed instantly to an image of zombies swarming in. His already pounding heart felt like it was about to explode, and he completely lost the steady, composed front he’d kept up before.
He reflexively lunged to snatch the alarm from Bai Long’s hand, but she dodged it easily.
A whole sequence of moves later, Cheng Qian belatedly registered something.
There was no shrill siren…?!
Cheng Qian froze, his mind going blank, unable to process what was happening.
Before he could brace himself, he heard Bai Long laugh softly. “Such a shame. I was just messing with you.”
“You looked like you really wanted this, Teacher Cheng, so I’ll give it to you.”
Bai Long raised her hand and tossed the alarm straight at him.
Like throwing out a piece of trash.
The alarm smacked Cheng Qian in the mouth, a sharp sting.
It dropped with a clatter.
He caught it on reflex, his mind snapping back into focus.
“Bai Long!”
Cheng Qian roared.
How dare she?!
From all the long gasping, his raw throat came out hoarse the moment he opened it, the flesh and sinew of it aching as it pulled.
But all he could see was Bai Long’s back, growing smaller and farther away.
Cheng Qian crushed the alarm until it gave a grating, grinding screech.
Hurled hard into the flames, it shattered with a crackling pop and crumbled into ash.
Bai Long scooped up Xu Yunyi and Chi Wan and led the rest of the students in a sprint for the shipyard’s exit.
Time was tight. Even though Chi Wan tasted a salty-sweet tang in her mouth and felt a dull, repeated ache in her chest, she didn’t dare let up for a second.
“I’m so damn done! It’s the apocalypse and I still have to run a marathon!”
Xu Yunyi pelted along at full tilt, arms and legs spinning so fast she was about to take off like a top.
Chi Wan’s head wasn’t entirely clear.
For some reason, she kept feeling that something was off.
Was it that the flames were just too hot?
Sweat kept dripping down without stopping.
But running was rapidly burning through the oxygen in her body, leaving her brain no spare energy to analyze the situation.
She could only fix her whole mind on chasing after Bai Long.
The stone gate’s exit was right in front of them, Bai Long trailing a vast crowd of people behind her.
The students gritted their teeth, faces twisted with effort, adrenaline surging.
Every one of them was running the fastest, with more endurance, than they ever had in their lives.
Almost there!
So close!
The exit was right ahead!
“Crap! The fire’s closed in around us! What do we do, there’s no time!”
Chen Lei really did live up to being an athlete, he could even still talk.
Tongues of flame drew together in front of them, creeping up the stone gate inch by inch like a strangling vine.
The gap in the exit grew slimmer and slimmer.
Were they really going to die here?!
In nearly everyone’s heart rose grief, fury, and refusal to accept it.
They were so close!
Just that little bit short!
The flames were a cage, climbing little by little over their hope of survival, roaring as they prepared to trap this whole group inside the shipyard.
“It’s over! The fire’s sealed the gate! There’s nothing but fire behind us, no way out!”
“And we can’t punch through the front either!”
At the critical moment, for some reason, Chi Wan instinctively looked to Bai Long.
Everyone looked to Bai Long.
Meeting all their eyes, Bai Long’s expression didn’t change, her steps never slowing as she kept running toward the gate.
Chi Wan and the others didn’t dare stop either, they could only fix their minds on following close behind her.
Right now, other than trusting Bai Long, they had no other options.
But she wasn’t entirely calm inside either.
Bai Long pressed her palms together, feeling a cold current surge between her fingers.
“We’re charging right into the fire!”
…
Chi Zao and the boy in charge of the door had been close by and had run out of the shipyard a step ahead of Bai Long’s group, now waiting anxiously on the outside.
Chi Zao had already spotted Bai Long, Chi Wan, and the rest.
So close he could almost touch them, yet it was as if a galaxy’s worth of distance lay between.
He could only watch as the crimson flames, like a merciless wall, blocked the path between them step by step.
“Water! Go find water, fast!”
“Don’t let the fire seal the gate!”
Chi Zao bellowed, frantically searching around for any container and water to fight the fire.
His sister and the others still hadn’t made it out!
If only there were a little more time!
“It’s too late! The fire’s too big!”
“Wait, Chi Zao, are you insane?! Get back here!”
The boy watched, wide-eyed, as Chi Zao staggered forward and picked up a battered scrap of iron off the ground.
The iron sheet, near the blaze, was already scorching hot.
The instant Chi Zao’s hand touched it, his face contorted beyond his control, but he gritted his teeth, scooped a ladleful of water from the channel, and flung it with all his might at the stone gate.
The blistering iron plunged into the water, kicking up a thick cloud of white steam.
The hand gripping the iron was burned past feeling, numb and searing all at once.
The boy couldn’t bear to watch, and in one burst of resolve he too picked up a piece of iron from the ground to help Chi Zao fight the fire.
Their strength was small, but they refused to give up hope.
…
“It’s no use, Chi Zao… the fire’s completely sealed the gate now… they’re…”
The boy’s voice broke into a sob despite himself.
Chi Zao’s hands had long since gone mechanical and numb.
He kept repeating the motion of scooping water and throwing it.
Skin and iron had fused together, the slightest movement could peel off a whole patch of flesh down to the sinew.
Blisters formed and burst, blood-tinged water mixing into the channel and spreading without a trace.
“Chi Zao!”
The boy reached out and grabbed Chi Zao’s arm to stop him.
“Let go…”
“I said let go!”
Chi Zao yanked free and went on fighting the fire.
“The gate’s blocked! Do you have a death wish?!”
The boy tried to snap him out of it.
“My sister’s still in there!”
Chi Zao’s eyes went wide, his voice tearing raw.
In his daze, Chi Zao seemed to hear a faint rustling sound.
…was it just his imagination?
But the next second, both Chi Zao and the boy froze, staring blankly at the stone gate sealed off by flame.
From within the blazing, scorching firelight, a wisp of white steam was born.
The white steam grew thicker, larger… until it threatened to blot out half the sky.
The threads and wisps of white steam were like a great dragon spiraling up into the air, soaring toward the unreachable heights.
“BOOM!”
A huge, muffled blast came with a sudden burst of white steam, and the flames in the stone gate were forcibly split open in a breach.
“Cleansing Spring Slash!”
Bai Long’s voice pierced through layer upon layer of flame and water-mist, falling with a massive sword of water.
“Go, go! Charge out!”
“Don’t stop! Run! We can definitely make it out!”
“Charge! Follow Boss Bai Long!!”
Faces flushed red by the flames, smeared filthy with ash, yet their eyes shone brighter than the fire.
The light of hope burned in their eyes!
Within the towering, raging flames, a crystalline blue light suddenly burst out through the inferno.
Like a colossal sword between heaven and earth, cleaving the flames and treading the fire as it came!
Water condensed into a blade as tall as the stone gate, slashing resolutely down.
Water and fire merged, the rising glistening-white steam billowing upward, making the figure leading the way through the firelight look like a heavenly deity.
Chi Zao and the boy were dumbstruck.
They couldn’t believe the movie-special-effects scene before their eyes was actually real.
Chi Zao stared blankly. “Holy crap… that’s badass…”
“What are you standing around for? Waiting to become some zombie’s new buddy? Run!”
She’d just charged out of the fire’s scorching heat, yet Bai Long’s face was a few shades paler than before, all color drained from her lips.
Chi Wan, Xu Yunyi, and the rest stuck tight behind Bai Long, charging out of the cage of flames in one go.
Not until they felt the faintly cool air and saw the deep, dark night sky could they still hardly believe they’d truly escaped that great fire.
“Sob, I’m not dreaming, am I… did I already get burned to death…?”
“Quick, pinch me, see if I’m dead, otherwise how would I have seen water suddenly burst out of the fire? A waterfall plunging straight down!”
“Ow! Damn it, are you pinching that hard out of some personal grudge?!”
“We, we really made it out!”
…
After escaping the shipyard, Bai Long and the others didn’t linger.
“The starship will dock at the transfer station on the shore.”
Xu Yunyi forced out her last bit of strength to point Bai Long and the rest in the right direction.
She had only just awakened her ability to begin with.
The ability she’d spent holding off Zhao Xin was already an overdraw for her, her body trembling, she’d have collapsed if Xie Yinyin and the others hadn’t held her up.
Bai Long felt like the ground was floating beneath her feet, her vision swimming in waves of dizziness.
That water-sword move just now really had drained her too much.
On top of that, her body had been frail to begin with, and now it was salt rubbed into the wound.
Her hands swaying at her sides, all ten fingers were pale, and a closer look showed them still trembling faintly.
There was a faint, warm, salty-iron smell at her nose.
Bai Long reached up and her hand came away bright red.
“Boss, why are you getting a nosebleed?! Was it too hot in there, did it get your blood up?”
Chen Lei was struggling too, but being an athlete, he still had the spare energy to fan Bai Long.
“Want to rest a bit?”
Chi Wan looked at Bai Long with some worry.
“Can’t stop. A commotion this big will definitely draw zombies, and then it’ll be even more trouble.”
Bai Long casually wiped away the nosebleed and bit down hard on the tip of her tongue.
The sudden sharp pain cleared her vision, restoring her clarity for a brief moment.
She had always been like this.
Whether back in her school days or at work, even when she was sick with a fever and weak all over, she’d always gritted her teeth and pulled through alone.
This time was no different.
“Boss, how about I carry you on my back?”
Chen Lei worked up the nerve, staying at Bai Long’s side.
Mainly it was that Bai Long’s presence was so commanding, and with the fight not long ago, it all made him feel she could do anything.
But seeing her now, drained of color, Chen Lei and the others suddenly realized that Bai Long looked to be about the same age as them.
In fact, she might even look younger.
But because of how strong she’d seemed before, they’d all instinctively overlooked her age and relied on her for everything.
“No need.”
Bai Long didn’t like, and wasn’t good at, overly close contact with people.
As a child, no one had come near her.
As an adult, because of work, no one wanted to spend time with her, and she didn’t want much contact with others either.
Turned down, Chen Lei wasn’t discouraged. He and a few classmates sped up a few steps to get ahead and clear the rubble from the path for Bai Long.
Chi Wan and the other classmates gathered near Bai Long, at a distance that wouldn’t crowd her but would still let them rush in to catch her at a moment’s notice.
They wanted to shoulder a little more of the burden for her, as much as they could.
The hearts of these young people were pure, they showed their gratitude to Bai Long through their actions.
Bai Long’s eyes flickered, her lips parted slightly, but in the end she pressed them shut and said nothing.
She… didn’t know what to say.
Chi Zao, Chen Lei, and the rest didn’t overthink it. They did their janitor work quite happily, even feeling they’d gotten one step closer to Bai Long.
The group drew farther and farther away toward the transfer station, never seeing the other batch of people emerge from the shipyard behind them.
“Is he still alive?”
“Still breathing, he’s not dead yet.”
“We’ve come this damn far, the food and everything’s gone, no matter what he says, he can’t die. We still need him to get us out of here!”
The shipworkers were in rags, their work uniforms scorched beyond recognition by the flames, hanging off them in tatters.
Among them they carried a man whose life or death was uncertain.
Half of Zhao Xin’s face was covered in blood, smeared over his right eye.
It was a wound he’d carelessly taken when he first clashed with Xu Yunyi.
His one remaining left eye was clouded and unfocused.
Glancing back at the shipyard, blurred in the great fire, Zhao Xin felt a weight settle over his heart.
All gone, food, weapons… every bit of the supplies they’d had was gone!
Zhao Xin looked at Cheng Qian, his body covered in blisters, great patches of skin festering, and said in a low voice, “Wake him up!”
His tone carried more menace and less calm than before.
Time was tight, the shipworkers had long since stopped caring about professor-this and professor-that, throwing every method they had at Cheng Qian.
In the silent air, all that could be heard was the crisp slap of flesh on flesh, over and over.
Cheng Qian was slapped awake.
The moment he opened his eyes, he saw a group of grimy, savage-faced people staring at him.
“Which way now?”
Zhao Xin held a fist the size of a sandbag in front of Cheng Qian, the threat unmistakable.
“The… the transfer station…”
Cheng Qian’s face was swollen from the slapping, his voice slurred.
Looking at those savage, gloomy faces, he realized the situation had changed.
…
Maybe it was because the shipyard fire had drawn most of the zombies’ attention, but as Bai Long’s group walked along the shoreline, they actually didn’t run into many zombies.
There were still zombies blocking the way, but the students, their courage soaring, ganged up and beat them all down.
None of it even required Bai Long to lift a finger.
Bai Long was happy to take the break.
This way she could also make sure these students had the basic ability to protect themselves in the apocalypse.
The students hadn’t yet realized that, over the course of walking with Bai Long, both their nerve and their fighting strength had become a world apart from not long ago.
From once trembling in fear at the sight of a zombie, to now smashing in skulls with a brick.
Along the way, Chi Zao couldn’t hold the question in and asked Bai Long, “Boss, so why, if you have an ability, did you still blow up the shipyard to save Sun Jie and them?”
He’d voiced the thing the others had been puzzling over too.
Bai Long’s ability was so strong she could even carve a path through fire, so why hadn’t she just led them charging out from the start?
Counting Xu Yunyi, they were a team with two espers.
Zhao Xin alone was no match for two espers.
Bai Long said matter-of-factly, “I’ve always thought you lot mythologize me a bit too much. My ability isn’t what you imagine.”
“If we’d gone head-to-head with them, even if we got out of the shipyard, we couldn’t have avoided them dogging us the whole way. It’d never end.”
“Our numbers are too far below Cheng Qian’s group. There was a good chance you’d have been ambushed.”
She put it very bluntly.
Chi Zao and the others understood the reasoning.
No matter how formidable Bai Long’s ability was, in an environment like that, there was no way she could look after every single one of them while also keeping herself safe.
If some shipworker had circled around and ambushed them, the ones who’d die would be themselves.
They couldn’t demand that Bai Long save all of them.
That would be moral blackmail.
In the apocalypse, just running into someone willing to shelter a bunch of helpless students who couldn’t fight to save their lives was already an incredibly lucky thing.
“That fire could draw away a huge amount of their attention, and with Sun Jie holding them back, just getting free would cost them a lot of time. Naturally they wouldn’t have the energy to chase us.”
As she spoke, Bai Long looked over at Chi Zao.
“Did you bring everything I told you to bring?”
Chi Zao patted the backpack on his back, and the not-yet-healed wound on his hand split open.
He bared his teeth with a hiss, then tipped his head up, rather proud. “Grabbed it first thing.”
A few of the other boys with Chi Zao also bounced the backpacks on their shoulders and gave Bai Long a thumbs-up.
“Leave it to us, Boss, don’t you worry!”
“They’ll never guess we carried off more than half the supplies too. Boss really had the foresight, she had us pack up the supplies and get ready to run ages ago.”
Chi Zao had completely turned into Bai Long’s fanboy, unable to say a single sentence without praising her.
Bai Long felt her face heat a little.
Having them bring the food had been a subconscious instinct of hers.
The truth was she hadn’t eaten her fill and was planning to have another meal later.
Eating well also eased the pain in her body.
She was the type who could forget anything but never forget to eat.
Bai Long had noticed that flinch of Chi Zao’s just now.
She followed her gaze along his hand and saw a patch of red, swollen skin.
There was even blood-tinged fluid half-congealed on Chi Zao’s cuff.
She could picture how grisly it had been at the time.
Bai Long said nothing, just reached back into her pocket and pulled out anti-inflammatory medicine and a wound-repair fluid.
Interstellar medicine had advanced fast.
The vast majority of external wounds could be quickly healed with repair fluid, and drugs had developed to be far more efficient than in the past.
Fortunately it was the very start of the apocalypse, and these medicines hadn’t been hard to find at Ren’ai Hospital.
Bai Long had deliberately scrounged a lot of them earlier.
She put the repair fluid and anti-inflammatory into Chi Zao’s hand.
“Take care of that. It’ll be trouble if it gets infected.”
Her tone was a little stiff.
If Chi Zao and the others hadn’t already grown familiar with Bai Long, they’d surely have thought she genuinely couldn’t be bothered.
Chi Zao didn’t expect that in just that one instant, Bai Long had noticed his wound, and even taken out the precious medicine she’d found and given it to him to use.
Quickly patching up his wound, Chi Zao bounced along happily with the pack on his back, practically running on a giddy breeze.
Like he’d gotten his idol’s autograph.
The corners of Bai Long’s mouth tilted up faintly, she couldn’t quite help it.
What a goofball.
…
After escaping the perilous environment of the fire, Chi Wan’s thoughts gradually returned to normal.
She belatedly realized what had been strange back in the blaze.
They’d all been in that ultra-high-temperature environment, and the sweat on Cheng Qian and his people had evaporated almost the instant it surfaced, yet she had never been much affected by the heat the whole time.
Her sweat hadn’t evaporated.
In other words, the environment she’d been in had been cooler than Cheng Qian’s group’s.
Earlier, not knowing Bai Long had an ability, Chi Wan hadn’t thought much of it.
Now she realized almost instantly it must have something to do with Bai Long’s ability.
She thought it, and so she asked it.
The Chi Wan and Chi Zao siblings had one very similar trait: when they had a question, they liked to ask it to your face.
After that escape just now, Bai Long trusted these students a little more in her heart, too.
After all, they were a bunch of straight-shooting college kids.
Bai Long confirmed it. “It was my ability. It’d be even more trouble if you all passed out from the heat.”
As she grew more familiar with her ability, she’d tried channeling the power between her fingers and, with the smallest possible expenditure, coated a thin film of water over a few key spots on Chi Wan and the others’ bodies.
It wasn’t much, but the cold water was enough to offset part of the flames’ heat.
Getting that confirmation, something stirred in Chi Wan’s heart.
Time and time again.
Bai Long talked about not being able to save all of them, about not wanting trouble and so on, yet in so many ways she was always protecting them.
From the hospital, to the shipyard, to now…
Chi Wan looked at Bai Long’s perfectly normal face and couldn’t keep the corners of her own mouth from lifting.
She has a sharp tongue but a soft heart, Bai Long does. Chi Wan thought.
Thinking of something or other, Chi Wan quietly made a decision in her heart.
…
“Is the tide coming in?”
Along the way, Chi Wan had noticed the seawater on the outskirts of the water-city churning and slapping against the metal railings.
The seaside scenic promenade that should have been dry was soaked by the waves, the sea breeze carrying the salty tang of seawater into their noses.
“But I remember it shouldn’t be high tide yet.”
Yue Li frowned.
She’d grown up by the sea, and had a rough sense of the timing of the tides.
The current height and state of the tide was very clearly wrong.
“The water-city is water everywhere. If the tide keeps rising at this rate, the whole ground floor will soon be flooded.”
Yue Li suddenly had a bad feeling.
The water-city was built on the water to begin with.
Once the tide came in, moving around would become even harder for them.
“Wait.”
Chi Wan thought of another serious problem.
“After the tide comes in, the starship… won’t it be unable to land?”
For a moment, an anxious pressure hung in the air.
“No time to dawdle! Pick up the pace!”
The very second the words left Bai Long’s mouth, a towering wave reared up out of nowhere and roared straight toward them on the shore.
Reflected in their pupils was a vast expanse of deep, rich blue, the snow-white crests of foam like clouds falling from the edge of the sky.
The light vanished from their field of vision all at once, and in an instant everyone could only stare blankly as the waves rose to touch the heavens.
The tsunami had come…