Chapter 489 - - ’I will love you forever.

Chapter 489: Chapter 486 - ’I will love you forever.[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

It’s been a long time since I last wrote a letter, and I still miss you a lot.

In recent days, the second batch of colleagues passed through the Black Wall and arrived at our laboratory.

Human testing is still at a standstill. There are many from Qiongdi, near the brink of curse outbreak, willing to participate in our experiments and have signed confidentiality agreements. But none of them... none maintained their lives in the end.

After their deaths, the curse spread from their bodies, contaminating the surrounding land. We were forced to destroy one of the laboratories.

However, this allowed the engineering team to start working. Clyde, the foreman, had rested for a long time and finally had something to do, haha.

Some of our latest batch of fruits have rotted. I ate the remaining bananas and accidentally got some on this letter. I really am a slovenly man.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

The experiments continue, but they are still stagnant, and we are all very frustrated.

We once thought this "curse" was a biological virus that could be healed. But now, it seems more like a supernatural element.

...Doctor Li didn’t want to believe this and ran away, mad.

He has been gone for three days and hasn’t returned. We don’t have a Soul Stone to search for him. We are very sad, and the atmosphere in the laboratory has been very oppressive.

...Well, let’s not talk about this now.

Today, the Cursed Fire Flower bloomed.

It’s tiny, like a living fire, dancing in my hands, very beautiful.

I remember that my daughter is six years old this year, right? She must be very pretty, just like you.

I remember her birthday, August 12, just two days after yours, which is August 10, and mine is August 14.

She used to like pulling my beard, so I got into the habit of shaving. But, since entering Qiongdi, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve shaved, and my razor is getting old - it’s time to replace it.

But since the Black Wall only allows entrance and not exit, I can only wait for the next batch of colleagues to bring me some daily necessities. Hopefully, they remember we need razors.]

Su Ming’an continued flipping through, the following letters still filled with trivial words. The writer seemed to have taken up poetry, often writing poems on the letters.

But even those splendid sentences couldn’t hide the increasingly evident despair and sadness, as the experimental situation remained stagnant and the writer’s emotions continued to deteriorate.

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

We did not control the experiment’s intensity well.

...The curse erupted among us.

Zhang, afflicted by the curse, is dying fast; he volunteered to leave this place.

Before he left, he etched all his recorded experimental data onto a stone slab, took off his protective suit, dressed in light clothes, and left with the photo from the wall that belonged to him.

I watched him disappear into the Black Mist as if I saw his soul flying effortlessly to a distant place.

Zhang’s hometown is on the grassland, with soaring eagles and galloping steeds. I guess, he must have become an eagle soaring across the skies.

The number of people in the laboratory has dwindled; some have gone mad, while others, after contracting the curse, chose to leave without burdening us.

Pingping, I don’t know what to say.

Let me recite a poem to you.

"One day, I wrote her name upon the sand,

But came the waves and washed it away again.

I wrote her name once more, but the tide,

Made my efforts futile once more.

’Dreamer,’ she said, ’Why trouble the heart in vain,

To make a mortal being immortal!’

’No,’ I said, ’Let the lowly things devise the paths to death,

But you shall live on through your fame.

Death may conquer the entire world,

But our love will prevail, life everlasting.’"

...Beautiful, isn’t it?

I remember you love poetry; you were beautiful when reciting them.

The people of Qiongdi call us dreamers, believing the curse cannot be eliminated, a fate they bear through generations.

Clyde quarreled with them. He asked, if even those in Qiongdi who are to be saved refuse acceptance, then what are we truly saving?

But as ’Saviors,’ we should be more lenient toward the ’Saved.’ I just hope the suffering of the Qiongdi people can be recognized.

They are not monsters; they are just like us, only living in a different place.

I save them to also eliminate potential hazards that could affect our world.

But as I write this, I still feel very sad.

My hands are still empty.

I miss you so much.]

After that, it’s still page after page of letters.

But the mood of the writer is getting worse and worse.

He no longer records those occasional hot pots or the new razor he got, he no longer details the processes of the experiments. His despair is like a volcano on the verge of eruption, the sorrowful emotions flow in the increasingly sloppy lines, making it somewhat suffocating to read.

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

The disaster broke out.

We are far less resistant than the people of Qiongdi; when the night’s Black Mist began to seep into some of the labs, we were powerless to resist.

Many people died.

I miss you so much.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

The situation with the experiments is still at a standstill, more and more test subjects are dying in agony. Seeing the look in their eyes before they die, I always feel that we, who cannot save them, are sinners.

I watched a little girl die in front of my eyes; her hand pressed against the glass of the Purification Chamber, her body melted, blood spilled everywhere.

Our daughter should be about her age by now.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia. Sёarᴄh the Novelƒire(.)ne*t website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

This morning, I saw the photo wall, and the photos are getting fewer and fewer.

Everyone who dies takes their own photos to rest with them, and as I watch the wall become increasingly empty, my heart feels hollow.

While digging for new experimental soil, a Curse creature bit Clyde. He said just this morning that he would share the canned beef he’d been saving for a year to treat himself tonight.

We said goodbye to him.

He left holding his canned beef.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

The lab is filled with a deathly silence; some colleagues have already started to enter prolonged sleep. I understand them, in such a sunless place, failing day after day, it’s easy to go mad.

But I haven’t gone mad yet because I miss you every day.

My beard has grown a bit longer; let me recite a poem for you again.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

A new batch of colleagues has arrived, and they tell us that the plan has changed, our experiments are terminated, we can go back now.

I asked them about the new plan, it’s called "The God Creation Plan." It seems to have been in operation for two hundred years, with breakthroughs in recent years.

The content of the plan appears to be, in Qiongdi, to fake an oracle and organize a series of decimating competitions to stir up people’s emotions, aiming to craft a deity called "Bai Shen."

I don’t understand what the upper levels are doing, but it has nothing to do with me anymore.

Over these years, I wrote you hundreds of letters; although these letters couldn’t be delivered to you, I pasted them together one by one, packed in a cardboard box under the bed. When I bring this box back, we can read them from the beginning together.

If... I can still make it back.

A natural disaster has struck Qiongdi, and we are trapped in the lab.]

The situations described in the letters gradually become dire.

The writer begins to use complex poetry to cover his messy thoughts and feelings.

Towards the end, his ink becomes fainter and his sentences shorter.

He just keeps, in various ways, incessantly, incessantly repeating,

"Pingping, I miss you so much."

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

Qiongdi fell into a period of natural disasters long ago; the volcanoes erupted, we can’t get out, the ground is covered with scorching soil and high temperatures.

I’m a bit hungry; the next group of people hasn’t arrived, and our supplies are running out. I am now eating only one steamed bun a day, spending the rest of the time sleeping under the blanket, which makes it a bit easier.]

I composed a new poem and read it to you, hoping you would like it.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

Today, Dr. Markwen died.

He died of an illness, with a high fever. We no longer have any fever medicine here, and wet towels were of no use. He passed away in his bed, clutching his wife’s photo.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

Today, it seems there is something wrong with my eyes. I can’t make out your face in the photo.

But it’s all right. I can still clearly see the blue sea and the red rose you gave me, the color so vivid.

It’s okay, I remember what you look like. It doesn’t matter if I can’t see you anymore.

The lab is very quiet. We are all too hungry. Even the genuine leather sofas have been gnawed away, leaving only the cloth cover, haha, I didn’t get my share.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

My body is getting weaker. It has been too long since I last ate.

I can hardly walk anymore.

Dr. Charlie has died.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

The photo wall is gradually emptying.

Captain Karl has died.

I don’t want to hear anything, even the heartbeat and breathing seem too noisy.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

The Cursed Fire Flower is beautiful, it has bloomed for more than a decade without wilting. I’ve wrapped it around my wrist.

We don’t plan on dying in the lab beds. The next batch of colleagues may still come. Our corpses would contaminate the lab environment.

We plan to die in the underground tunnel, so the soil will cover our bodies.

I saw old Zach from next door off; he died in the underground tunnel.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

My beard now resembles that of a homeless man under a bridge, and I even feel like eating toothpaste.]

[Pingping:

Zhan Xinjia.

My body is growing weaker and weaker... I might be going to the underground tunnel soon.

I recall myself from over a decade ago, the first time I used soil to bury a colleague’s body.

Back then, I probably didn’t think I’d die this late, die in the underground tunnel, without even someone to bury me.

I miss the Mapo Tofu you used to make, Pingping.]

Su Ming’an continued flipping through the pages.

The rest were notices of the deaths of the letter-writer’s colleagues, one after another.

The last page contained a short passage, the ink very faint.

[Pingping:

There are still no signs of the natural disaster ending.

I am not going to make it, I... am going to the underground tunnel.

Yet how much I wish, that when I open my eyes tomorrow morning, it would be the journey home.

Willow branches, lilacs, and the evening breeze.

I want to be with you, forty-eight years old this year, and our twenty-three-year-old daughter, in a beautiful spring day.

My love for you is more enduring than diamonds, more solid than bedrock.

Thinking of you fills my heart with a secret joy, my wife.]

No.

My widow.

I do not regret coming here.

Pingping.

I go against my nature, defy my instincts, and will always love you.]

——Zhao Weidong’s last writings in Qiongdi]

Su Ming’an closed the letter.

Through this family letter, he had learned about the events that had taken place here.

Beyond the Black Wall, there indeed existed a technologically advanced modern world.

Zhao Weidong and other researchers had come from the outside world, attempting to eliminate the curse of the Qiongdi people. Unfortunately, they failed, the experiment was terminated, and they were even trapped here by a natural disaster when they were about to leave.

The people of the outside world also deliberately faked the existence of "Bai Shen," forging the oracle of Bai Shen, and staged the hundred-man battles in Qiongdi.

By falsely claiming "out of a hundred people, the last one standing can leave the Cursed Land," they incited the Qiongdi people to fight among themselves to eliminate those who were too powerful, and then killed the final victor of each session to silence them.

The outsiders still hoped for the true arrival of the deity, so that they could gain the deity’s power and eliminate the curse of Qiongdi.

Five years ago, as they wished, due to the intense faith and emotions, Bai Shen truly descended.

But He quickly turned into a shield against the sky’s curse and died, leaving behind only three major authorities.

The curse did not disappear, nor did the Black Wall fall; the hundred-man battles were still ongoing. And the outsiders were awaiting the next descent of Bai Shen.

It was an endless waiting.

It was a war that could not be terminated.

Su Ming’an found it all to be ironic.

The people of Qiongdi had built their own cage, voluntarily erecting the Black Wall to seal the curse within Qiongdi, so it wouldn’t harm the outside world.

Yet the people of the outside world deliberately used the ignorance of the Qiongdi people, inciting cruel hundred-man battles and enforcing faith-based rule.

The malice in their blood was never restrained; kindness was never rewarded.

Su Ming’an stood up, walked out of the room, and suddenly saw the empty photo wall.

The photo wall that could hold a hundred photos now had only four remaining. They hung emptily on the wall, coexisting with hundreds of dangling nails.

He suddenly remembered the words on Zhao Weidong’s letter.

Xiber once said that they are the side of "Salvation," it was they who erected the Black Wall, isolated the curse, thus preventing the outside world from being contaminated.

And Zhao Weidong said that they were the side of "Salvation." They were attempting to shape a deity, eliminate the curse, and had willingly come here, enduring decades of loneliness, researching healing methods for Qiongdi people.

Su Ming’an stood still.

He remembered the corpses he had just passed all along the way, each holding a photo.

Those were the corpses of the outsiders.

...They didn’t have to die in Qiongdi.

The outsiders were not entirely evil.

They were also carrying out "Salvation."

Although the results were not satisfactory.

Although it left only death and tragedy.

He walked through a small door in the corner.

At the moment he pushed the door, he discovered a body wrapped around with a flower on its wrist.

It lay in the dirt, its posture not painful, its head tilting towards the earth above, as if gazing into the distance.

The white coat and work badge on the body had decayed from the soil, leaving only a bright red Cursed Fire Flower on the wrist.

The Cursed Fire Flower was blooming beautifully.