Chapter 1225: Parting

Beneath the dim clouds.

Yang Xiao slowly opened his eyes...

The steady drizzle hit his cheeks, cold and damp. He lay in the corner of some stone ruins, staring at the sky above in a daze for a full ten seconds before he finally regained his senses.

Coughing, he sat up and looked around.

"You're awake?" Su Zhiwei's voice came from the side. "How do you feel?"

"Where... am I?"

Yang Xiao recalled what happened before he lost consciousness and asked anxiously again, "What about the nuclear strike? Was it deflected? Did it not cause too many casualties?"

Su Zhiwei sat on a broken step nearby, looking at a half-broken branch in her hand, and fell silent.

Just as she was about to say something, Lu Xun's voice rang out from afar:

"If you hadn't deflected the nuclear trajectory, there wouldn't be any survivors here today... You saved almost everyone."

Hearing this, a smile finally tugged at the corners of Yang Xiao's pale mouth, and he leaned back against the stone wall, relieved.

Lu Xun walked between the two, glanced at the despondent Su Zhiwei, and let out a long sigh.

"Su Zhiwei... you can't blame yourself for what happened to Chu Changqing. That monster was simply too strong; we didn't have any time to react."

"What monster? What happened to Chu Changqing?"

Lu Xun briefly told Yang Xiao what had happened afterward, and the latter was stunned on the spot.

"Chu Changqing was dragged to another world?" Yang Xiao couldn't believe it. "Then we have to find a way to save him!"

"It's almost impossible."

Chen Ling, draped in a bright red opera robe, walked slowly toward the three of them. "The two worlds haven't officially intersected yet. To enter the Gray Realm, we would need to find another special nuclear weapon and enter during the brief window while the wake is still active... Besides, the Gray Realm is too vast. Even if we did open another breach, it would likely lead to the territory of some other World-Ender."

"With our current strength, entering any of those World-Ender territories would be suicide."

"...So we're just going to abandon him?"

"We can't abandon him... but at least, not now." Chen Ling looked at the three Lords before him who had yet to fully grow. Until they reached the Ninth Rank, they had no qualifications to face a World-Ender head-on.

Everyone fell silent.

*Hum—*

Above the deathly silent ruins, the roar of fighter jets streaked past rapidly.

At the end of their long trails, several black shadows were skimming across the sky above Wushan Town, seemingly assessing the casualties after the nuclear strike. The sound pulled everyone's thoughts back to reality.

Although they had endured two nuclear strikes, the disaster had only just begun...

Beyond Wushan Town, other military bases and major cities must have also been attacked. No one knew what the world outside these mountains had been reduced to, nor when the war would end.

The moment the nuclear weapons took to the sky, the fate of humanity became like willow catkins, drifting uncertainly in the gale of the apocalypse.

Yang Xiao froze for a few seconds, then suddenly stood up from the corner.

"No... I have to go back."

"Go back? Go where?"

"My research institute." Yang Xiao's expression was anxious. "My fiancée is still there, waiting for me to return..."

Lu Xun seemed to remember something, and his gaze toward Yang Xiao became complex... He had almost forgotten that Yang Xiao had a fiancée.

Yang Xiao had escaped disaster by hiding in Wushan Town, but his fiancée's fate was still unknown. Most signal towers were destroyed, and communication equipment was unusable. There was no telling where she had hidden, and contacting her would be as difficult as ascending to heaven.

But given Yang Xiao's personality, he would never leave her to her fate.

"But unless something unexpected happens, planes and rail transport are out of commission. Your institute is hundreds of kilometers away; how are you going to get back?" Lu Xun asked.

"There will be a way," Yang Xiao replied without hesitation.

Lu Xun knew that nothing he said could stop Yang Xiao from taking the risk; that was just the kind of person he was... Just then, Su Zhiwei also spoke up.

"I... might need to leave for a while, too."

"Where are you going?"

"I still have a... younger brother. I'm a bit worried about him." Su Zhiwei hesitated.

"You mean Yao Qing?" Chen Ling nodded slightly. "Yao Qing is currently in the 7012 Underground Project... and he might indeed need you right now."

Yao Qing had watched Xiao Chunping rush into battle, and now that Xiao Chunping had died in action, Yao Qing was completely alone and helpless. Chen Ling couldn't imagine how broken and self-reproachful he must be; the only person who could offer him some comfort at this time was Su Zhiwei.

Lu Xun was silent for a long time.

"Alright... then I'm going to the United States."

"You? Going to the US now?? Are you crazy??" Yang Xiao looked at him in shock.

"Wu Tongyuan is still there." A flash of self-reproach crossed Lu Xun's eyes. "At the time, Bureau 749 was hunting for the nine of us everywhere, and I was the one who personally put him on a plane to the US, thinking it would help him avoid the trouble. I never expected the situation to turn out like this... He should be trapped there now. Everything started because of me, so I have to be responsible for bringing him back."

"But it's a world war now. Even domestic flights are probably gone, let alone international ones... How are you going to get to the US?"

"The stars will take me there."

Chen Ling looked at the three of them and sighed inwardly.

For Chen Ling, keeping all Nine Lords by his side would be the best choice. But the Nine Lords were not tools; they were living, breathing people. It would have been fine before, but now that the world war had broken out, they were each deeply concerned for the people they cherished. It was impossible to force them to stay by his side, ignoring the lives of those they held dear...

Now, they had to go their separate ways.

"No matter what happens, you must protect yourselves first." Chen Ling gave his final instructions, emphasizing them especially to Yang Xiao and Lu Xun.

"If you encounter any trouble you can't solve, do everything you can to get a message to me—whether by communication signal or the stars. As long as I receive it, I will come to help you immediately."

"Thank you, Director Chen," the three said sincerely.

"Remember, we are always on the same front." Chen Ling seemed to recall something and turned back to Su Zhiwei. "Dr. Su, do you remember our code?"

Chen Ling had previously agreed on a code with Su Zhiwei to use for meeting up, no matter which era they were in. He could have set a code with Lu Xun and Yang Xiao too, but the problem was that in Chen Ling's era, both of them were...

Therefore, the only person who could verify Chen Ling's conjecture was Su Zhiwei.

Su Zhiwei was startled, then immediately nodded. "I remember."

"Meeting in the red dust."

"A faint smile through the long years."

Chen Ling nodded. He was about to say something else when his peripheral vision caught a figure flickering past a street corner in the distance.

A flash of doubt crossed his eyes, then he looked back at the three people before him.

"...Everyone, take care."