Chapter 12 – Giving Up

His tone was void of humour.

The contrast was disturbing—harsh threats coming from such a cute, unassuming face.

Chu Chenli fell silent. He recovered from the shock after a moment and sighed. “Stop it.”

Xiao Bai slowly entered the ward and stopped by the bed. The room was bathed in weak light, casting a dark shadow over Xiao Bai’s face. Looking at that porcelain, doll-like face shrouded in darkness, Chu Chenli felt somewhat uneasy. He blinked and retreated a few paces.

Xiao Bai didn’t come any closer.

“Don’t waste your feelings on him,” Xiao Bai whispered, reaching out to caress the corner of Chu Chenli’s eye, “He’s not worth it.”

Chu Chenli didn’t register the dampness on his cheeks until it was wiped away by Xiao Bai’s touch.

There was nothing to cry over. He wasn’t the type to cry easily.

And yet…

“It’s just the wind,” A random excuse escaped his lips.

“Yeah,” Xiao Bai smiled, “It’s just the wind.”

It was as if he was trying to soothe a child.

Chu Chenli found himself at a loss for words, gaze still locked on Xiao Bai. The tension in the room rose and rose, the question in his throat still unspoken.

During his hesitation, a range of expressions flitted across Xiao Bai’s features, from confusion to disdain, and finally to helplessness.

“So useless,” Xiao Bai muttered softly, just soft enough that Chu Chenli couldn’t hear.

In the end, all that remained was a: “Wait for me-”

Chu Chenli looked up and found himself face to face with a bewildered Xiao Bai.

Abruptly, Xiao Bai realised his position. They were barely centimetres apart, so close he could see how Chu Chenli’s thick eyelashes fluttered, and his own startled reflection in the other’s eyes, complete with a gaping mouth.

His face turned tomato-red immediately. In his haste to get away, the chair behind him fell with a clatter, the cup on the cabinet spilling onto the floor. Xiao Bai slipped, the cold tiles of the floor colliding harshly with his poor tailbone.

Xiao Bai: “…”

Chu Chenli: “…”

Xiao Bai stammered out an apology, “I-I’m sorry. I was downstairs looking for something to eat, and, somehow, I ended up here. But I-I really didn’t mean to…to…”

His face flushed a brighter red, his voice getting smaller, and it took a while for him to force out the word “harassment” that was stuck in his throat.

He didn’t want to think of himself in such a vulgar way.

But staying up all night, going to someone else’s room to touch their face…there wasn’t any other explanation besides harassment. And now he was caught red-handed by the person involved.

Xiao Bai wanted nothing more than to hide in a hole in the ground out of embarrassment.

It took a while for Chu Chenli to make heads or tails of the gibberish Xiao Bai had spat out.

How wicked.

Chu Chenli sighed helplessly, the fleeting moment of sentimentalism disappearing completely. He glanced over at Xiao Bai, so panicked it would be hilarious in any other situation. He grasped for a distraction that would calm him down.

“I was asking for you to help me up.”

“R-really?”

“Really.” Chu Chenli nodded.

With a calm and innocent-looking face like that, it wasn’t hard to trust him.

Xiao Bai soothed his frazzled conscience; clearly rattled, and chose to believe him.

“M-maybe it’s because I’ve been sleeping poorly lately,” Xiao Bai smiled awkwardly. “Or maybe it’s because I’ve recently been forced into new environments and haven’t gotten used to it. I, uh, might have developed the habit of sleepwalking without realising it? Maybe?”

Chu Chenli decided that questioning him would get him nowhere.

Clearly, Xiao Bai wasn’t sure what had happened either.

Instead, Chu Chenli took the chance to observe him.

With his innocent appearance and a docile temperament to match, he looked like a harmless little lamb.

But earlier…even though they both wore the same face, it was clear as day they were not the same person.

“Did you used to sleepwalk like this before?” Chu Chenli asked.

Xiao Bai shook his head, “It only started after coming to the Southern Base¹Base 8 is also referred to as Southern Base . Sometimes I get a little confused…the doctor says I might have a psychological disorder. I can only try to adjust slowly.”

“Were you not part of this base before?”

“Ah, no. I was in a safe zone.” Xiao Bai hesitated for a moment, “There was a period of time before coming to this base where I couldn’t hear, see or smell anything…all I could see was a patch of black and white. And I would struggle to breathe after walking a few steps…The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me, and they said that I just had a disorder.”

Xiao Bai used to belong to another base, arriving half a year before Huang Shuyin.

Though he wasn’t awakened, he had medical skills he had learned from his grandmother, who was a doctor. In the previous base, he had worked in the medical team, taking care of the wounded.

A year and a half ago, their base was invaded by a hoard of mutants. It was brutal and sudden. Xiao Bai witnessed his grandmother, his sole caretaker, being bitten, losing half of her body. Although they had managed to retrieve and reattach the bitten part, they had still lost her. She died in extreme pain, blood loss and the toxins in her bloodstream sealing her fate.

During this period, Xiao Bai had remained by his grandmother’s side, feeling helpless but unwilling to leave.

Afterwards, Xiao Bai’s world lost all its sounds and colours, and he nearly lost the strength to stand up again.

Ye Lanzhou and his team rescued the survivors from the wreckage. Xiao Bai was placed in the safe zone, relying on the kindness of a neighbour’s grandmother to bring him food, preventing him from starving.

He might as well have been comatose for the year after that. He had only started to recover recently.

After helping to treat two injured patients in the safe zone, Xiao Bai, following a neighbour’s suggestion, sent a letter of self-recommendation to the Medical Department of the base, expressing his desire to contribute. After a simple assessment, the doctors allowed him to intern in the medical department.

All this happened barely days before Chu Chenli woke up. Looking at him now, there was almost no trace of the tragedies he had experienced, the only evidence that anything had happened being a slight downturn in his mood when he talked about his grandmother.

To him, all other events happened in the blink of an eye. And miraculously, more than a year of disconnection from the outside world hadn’t stripped him of his ability to communicate with others or his positive mindset.

Absorbed in his passionate rant, he misses the expression on Chu Chenli’s face. Chu Chenli sympathised with him, his own struggle to remember anything beyond the blank fog in his memory still ongoing.

He’s gradually becoming aware that he’s missing a part of his memories. A significant part.

He can’t help thinking that he should know the reason for Xiao Bai’s symptoms, somewhere inside the void that is his memories.

Suddenly, Chu Chenli asks, “Do you have any special abilities?”

“Special abilities?” Xiao Bai pauses for a moment before shaking his head. “Are you talking about awakened abilities? I don’t think so. I haven’t been on the frontlines. And when I tested my awakening factor in my previous base, it was very low, so I’ll probably be an ordinary logistics personnel for the rest of my life…”

While he spoke, Xiao Bai went into detailed explanations about the awakening factor value testing process.

“Did you get tested after your recovery?” Chu Chenli asked.

Xiao Bai shook his head.

He awkwardly scratched his chin. “I’m not very athletic. No matter how hard I train, this is as good as it gets…if I headed into the battlefield I would just be dragging the team down. I can’t even outrun others in a retreat. It’s better for me to stay in logistics.”

He had a good understanding of his own capabilities. Even if he did awaken, he thought he would still lose in a fight against a mutant. .

Chu Chenli didn’t pry further. Clearly, he had no such intentions.

Before parting ways, Chu Chenli asks, “Do you feel alright? Are you hurting anywhere?”

Xiao Bai shakes his head without hesitation, then stands up and hops around a bit to demonstrate that he is, in fact, in excellent health.

Chu Chenli finally relaxed.

Their conversation was still on Xiao Bai’s mind later that night. For whatever reason, the casual mention of the test just kept niggling at his mind. Slightly disturbed, he paused briefly at the hospital’s testing area before entering.

The receipt on the self-service machine indicated that the results of the test would be available in three days. Xiao Bai sighs while looking at the slip.

Maybe he’s overthinking this.

He smacks his forehead a couple of times. Crumpling the receipt, he shoves it into his pocket. Then, he turns around and returns to the dormitory.

He still needed to arrive early tomorrow to check on Chu Chenli.

–

On the other side, in Ye Lanzhou’s dormitory.

Xiang Renxi walked in holding a checkup report and spotted Ye Lanzhou at the table looking at the inspection report, noting down information with a pen.

“Still preparing for tomorrow’s new protective shield experiment?” Xiang Renxi asked, grabbing a chair and sitting next to Ye Lanzhou.

“Yeah, I’m undecided on if I should change the location. It’s too close to the laboratory and training ground,” Ye Lanzhou responds.

“There aren’t many people on the training ground these days; most are out on missions,” Xiang Renxi remarks.

“True, the laboratory is more important,” Ye Lanzhou agrees, glancing at what Xiang Renxi is holding, “What’s that?”

“I just came from Dr Du’s place. Xiao Hu’s injuries are fine now. If everything goes well, he should be discharged and able to return to his dorm tomorrow night.”

As Xiang Renxi spoke, he handed the examination report to Ye Lanzhou, saying, “This is Chu Chenli’s latest examination report, from today.”

Ye Lanzhou takes it and flips through the pages one by one. Not much had changed since the first day, with only minor fluctuations in a few test values. The only constant was the awakening factor, which remained stubbornly at zero.

If this were before, he might have considered other possibilities. However, after today, he found himself agreeing with the doctor’s diagnosis—Chu Chenli probably didn’t have the potential to awaken.

Awakened individuals, at the very least, experienced an improvement in physical fitness, but there was no sign of that in Chu Chenli’s case.

Ye Lanzhou furrows his brow slightly as he reads the report from start to finish.

“I’ve just informed Huang Shuyin that Chu Chenli will be in her care for a while,” After a pause, Xiang Renxi adds, “Do you want to meet her as well?”

Ye Lanzhou shook his head, “No need. You know how her temper is. She hates unnecessary words the most. If I say too much, it will seem like I don’t trust her.”

Xiang Renxi nodded and hesitated a little, before finally asking, “What about Chu Chenli?”

Ye Lanzhou was silent for a while. Finally, he sighed. “Let’s leave it as it is for now. He’s not the type to cause trouble. Let Shuyin focus her attention on his recuperation, and then… after we finish our tasks, we can send Ah Li to the safe zone.”

He closed the examination report and set it aside.

The discussion ended there, and they moved onto talking about the experiment scheduled for the next day.

The dormitory’s lights stayed on for most of the night.

–

Outside the base, in a distant mountainous area.

A rugged off-road vehicle, with what’s left of its exterior barely hanging on, rattles along a mountain road.

The young man sitting in the passenger seat looks rather pale, and in danger of vomiting.

Hua Jin, struggling to hold back the urge to vomit, said through gritted teeth, “Couldn’t you have picked a better car? God, the wheels for this thing have fallen off so many times already!”

In the driver’s seat, He Ziyue shot back a reply without hesitation, “Would you prefer riding in a tractor?”

At this rate, I might actually prefer that option, Hua Jin thinks frantically. Another violent jolt forces him to swallow the rest of his words.

He had no say in these matters since he didn’t know how to drive.

Hua Jin squeezes his eyes shut. He envies Mu Yanshen so much right now. The guy had entered something like a meditative state after he had gotten into the car, and was now peacefully passed out like a silent corpse in the backseat. Oh god, he would give anything to be him. Anything to escape this torture.

Completely ignoring Hua Jin’s internal pleas for salvation, He Ziyue continues her commentary unbothered. “You should take notes from Xiao Mu. Look at him. He’s so calm in every situation. So unflappable. You know, with him around, this trip has been so much quieter…”

BANG—

The wheels passed over a pile of rubble, and Hua Jin’s face turned a few shades greener. But before he could speak, Mu Yanshen finally stopped his regular routine of pretending to be a corpse and sat up. The rearview mirror, cracked in three places, perfectly reflected his handsome yet eerie smile.

“Ah, you guys messed up again.” His tone carried a hint of hoarseness and laziness, as if he had just awakened from a long slumber.

It sounded like a joke, but Hua Jin and He Ziyue, having been deceived by him countless times before, had, over time, developed a bullshit detector and a healthy amount of doubt.

But now, as both of them registered this sentence, the same thought occurred to them—

Mu Yanshen wasn’t joking around.

Author’s Note: Added a part in the second half. Felt a bit redundant to put it in the next chapter, so moved it here. On another note, regarding the title, I noticed many dear readers discussing it. Mainly, I’m not great at coming up with titles. I tried changing it yesterday, but after the change, the number of bookmarks didn’t increase at all. QAQ So, I changed it back. At least this way, it’s slightly more noticeable on the rankings and accurately captures the core (：3＿ヽ）＿ Anyway… let’s stick with this title for now. If I think of something more suitable later, I’ll change it. Thanks for the suggestions, mwah!

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  Base 8 is also referred to as Southern Base ↩︎