The Last Survivor (Thanks to Taisera's Alliance Leader)

Late at night, Confidentiality Bureau North Mountain District Office.

The moment Wen Wen slammed the office door shut, her phone rang.

Su Zi calling.

"Hello? Wen-jie, I found the files you wanted." The moment the call connected, a voice still haunted by lingering fear came from the other end, threaded with the exhaustion of someone on the verge of dying from overwork.

"Did you find anything?"

"Oh, I did. Very much so. Too much, even!"

Su Zi's tone turned resentful. "This is terrifying, okay? Where did you dig up these two freaks with one shovel? Every single one has something extraordinary about them, every single one has their own unique trick... Next time, could you maybe not spring this kind of surprise on me?"

"Tell me about Lu Feng first."

Wen Wen leaned back in her chair, feet propped on the desk, swinging idly. "He probably wasn't the law-abiding commoner he claimed to be, right?"

"...Law-abiding, he barely qualifies. As for commoner, that depends on how you define it."

The sound of pages turning came from Su Zi's end. "He has two files. One is from Yacheng. Everything in it looks normal—just the ordinary kind of normal.

Adoptive family. His adoptive father ran an Auto Repair Shop. He fought from childhood, caused trouble, and never gave anyone peace of mind. Before coming of age, he lied about his age to enlist. After retiring, he came back and helped out at the family Auto Repair Shop. Because his service attitude was terrible and he cursed people at the drop of a hat, he got a mountain of bad reviews... Anyway, he was just muddling through life like an ordinary guy."

"And the other file, the abnormal one?"

"That one gets scary. Red-sealed, extremely high confidentiality level, directly under Central City Military. It has six confidentiality stamps on it—six fucking stamps!"

Su Zi couldn't help swearing. "I've worked in the Investigation Department for so many years, and this is the first time I've seen confidentiality stamps piled onto a file like someone was collecting postage stamps. I only applied to access it, and I got a warning email from the Military Department."

"Normal."

Wen Wen understood. In fact, from the first time she saw Lu Feng, she had already known—aside from the usual military decorations, the tattoo on his arm bore a symbol that was half lion, half Skeleton.

To her knowledge, there was only one place for people who had been to Central Earth and bore that tattoo. Publicly, it called itself the Airborne Camp, and among the Federation's upper ranks, its existence was no secret at all.

The people inside did dirty work for the Federation.

Including, but not limited to, assassination, kidnapping, inhumane weapons testing that violated the International Human Rights Charter, and even terrorist attacks...

That was precisely why it felt so bizarre.

How had he survived to retire?

In that Mud Pit called Central Earth, aside from the security forces guarding oil fields, it was hard enough for ordinary people in the other warfighting and operational legions to last until retirement. Let alone walk away from the Airborne Camp whole and intact.

He had not died on the battlefield, had not died on a classified mission, and had not committed suicide by shooting himself more than thirty times in the back... A person like that either had luck that scraped the heavens, with anyone who touched him dying, or he had an unbelievably thick thigh to lean on behind him.

Whichever it was, the Dragon Offering Society's lapdogs had stirred up the Military Department's hornet's nest by provoking him.

"It's enough to know he has ties to the Military Department. The Security Bureau's job is to prevent anomalous criminal incidents. Even if he kills people and sets fires just because he's bored, that's for the Military Department to worry about. What the hell does it have to do with me?"

Wen Wen got straight to the point.

"What about the other one?"

"The other one is even scarier."

Su Zi rubbed her brow. "Wen-jie, you only came back these past two years. You must have heard about what happened in Haizhou ten years ago, right?"

Wen Wen fell silent for a moment. After thinking for a long while, she couldn't help but straighten in her chair. "You mean... Sea Burning Day? Could he be connected to the Flame Tide Disaster?"

"Yes. He was a survivor."

Su Zi sighed. "To be exact, Ji Jue was the only survivor of the Flame Tide Disaster."

In an excessively long dream, Ji Jue once again heard the sound of a train striking the rails. It was so familiar.

He opened his eyes, leaned against the window, and stared at the scenes racing past across the distant fields outside: mountains, wilderness, scattered desolate villages, and the crimson evening glow burning at the horizon.

The light of the sunset fell into the child's eyes, its scarlet colors dancing across the vault of heaven.

This had been his childhood.

"You're awake? Rest a little longer. We'll be in Yacheng soon."

Someone stroked his head, gentle in every movement. "After we arrive, how about Mommy takes you to see the sea?"

"..."

Ji Jue remained silent for a long time before whispering softly, "Actually, I don't like the sea. If you look at it too much, it gets annoying."

"When you heard we were moving to Yacheng, you secretly saved money to buy a swimsuit."

The person beside him laughed, pulling him into her arms and tousling his hair, light and gentle. "Don't worry. There'll be new friends and classmates at your new school too. Everyone will play with you."

She said, "You'll adapt. The past will drift far away, and you'll embrace a new life."

"But a new life is so hard, Mom. Too hard. Much harder than I imagined."

Ji Jue leaned against her shoulder and lowered his head. "The food in Haizhou tastes too bland. I could never get used to it. The dialect is complicated too—I couldn't understand it no matter how hard I tried.

The medicine at the hospital tasted awful, the nurses were fierce, and the Old House got damp easily. During the humid season, there was water everywhere at home. If I didn't deal with it quickly, mold would grow. Some of my classmates liked bullying me too, and the teachers were always making things difficult..."

"That sounds so hard." She sighed softly.

"Don't worry, I handled it all, Mom. None of them could stop me. I already got into university, the same one as you—Tianmen University. The scenery there is just as beautiful as you said, except the Braised Pork Rice in the cafeteria is really hard to get."

He gently took his mother's dangling hand, as though lifting up that dream too fragile to bear:

"Lu Ma has a bad temper, but she treats me very well. She treats me like her own child. Professor Ye is very strict and always says he'll throw me out if I don't do well, but he has never looked down on me. If anyone bullies me, Feng Ge helps me fight. My senior sister takes good care of me too. She has never made things difficult for me over research projects...

They're all good people, and they all like me."

"So don't worry, Mom. I'm doing well."

Ji Jue smiled and promised her, "I'll definitely become someone who accomplishes something... no matter how hard it is."

"Then why are you so sad?" His mother stroked his cheek, so gently that Ji Jue could no longer hold back the sting in his nose.

"I just... miss you so much."

"So do I."

Gentle arms embraced him, like eternal shelter and favor, making this cruel world and all its suffering no longer frightening.

Ji Jue closed his eyes and nestled against her chest.

He no longer looked at the scene outside the window.

The dancing crimson sunset gave off its final light, then was swallowed by black clouds. Later, even the black clouds vanished.

Amid the upheaval of heaven and earth, screams and shouts sounded, just as they had in countless nightmares before.

The black clouds were killed, and scarlet rain fell.

Wherever the rain struck the earth, it planted flames that could never be extinguished. The flames rose into the sky, and when they gathered together, they resembled a tide stretching beyond sight.

Everyone called it the Tide Flame Calamity.

It was a Natural Disaster crowned with the name of Destruction. When it appeared, even the ocean would be Burned to ashes and boiled. Invisible mountains of flame swept past like a flood, reducing everything to ashes.

Ten years ago, it had appeared in Haizhou without warning and surged toward the southeast, Burning to ashes everything along its path.

Mountains, wilderness, villages, even a train that happened to be caught within its aftershock.

Just like that, it took everything Ji Jue had.

Four hours after the disaster struck, Yacheng's search-and-rescue team was the first to arrive. From the shattered wreckage of the train, someone found the only surviving child.

Severely burned, barely clinging to life.

He had been held in his dead mother's arms. He neither cried nor struggled, allowing the rescue team to take him away.

Afterward, experts used endless long-winded arguments to demonstrate in detail how fortunate and coincidental this had been. Everyone looked at the newspaper headlines and called it a miracle of life, rejoicing over it.

But so-called miracles were sometimes no different from curses.

And Ji Jue had never been the lucky one.

Don't know how many times he had dreamed this dream again, but its ending had never changed because of anything he did.

Whenever it reached this point, the dream should have ended.

But this time, he did not wake up.

He raised his head and looked toward the vault of heaven that did not belong to this dream.

Above the shattered night curtain, countless shining stars gradually appeared, revolved, overlapped, and intertwined, turning into vague outlines, as though magnificent gods were manifesting in the mortal world.

One after another.

They, them, or They, were watching him.

Solemn and silent.

Waiting, as always.

The office was silent.

Only a thread of bluish smoke rose soundlessly from the ashtray.

Even in the Federation's disaster-ravaged history, the Flame Tide Disaster ten years ago had been a rare Natural Disaster.

The collapse and fall of a Rift World had driven the disaster rating above the warning line. Burning winds rose from south of the ruins of Quancheng, charging wildly onward and even boiling the West Sea.

Though not a single major city had been destroyed because of it, the losses it caused dealt Haizhou's entire economy a crushing blow, nearly leaving it unable to recover. The tragedies it created were even more countless than the stars.

As the sole survivor of that incident...

Wen Wen didn't know whether Ji Jue's luck had been good or bad.

Before a Natural Disaster, surviving did not mean one was lucky. It was the beginning of misfortune—for people who had faced a Natural Disaster and survived, there was usually another name: Curse Bearer.

When ordinary people became Pulled into a Natural Disaster, being merely unlucky was already a good outcome. Their chances of Sin Mutation were far greater than those of normal people, and almost none met a good end.

The fact that Ji Jue had not spontaneously combusted after all these years was already luck so good it made people furious.

"Wen-jie, why did you suddenly investigate this?"

After a long silence, Su Zi asked curiously from the other end of the call, "Don't tell me he got Pulled into some incident?"

"No."

Wen Wen Shook head decisively. "I just ran into him while repairing a motorcycle and got a little curious, that's all."

"...Eh?"

Su Zi drew out the sound, clearly humoring the lie out of politeness. "Then remember to treat me to dinner later, okay? You're not allowed to make do with the Security Bureau cafeteria."

"Okay, okay."

Wen Wen nodded. After pondering for a moment, she suddenly asked, "Su Zi, you've worked in the Investigation Department for so long and read so many people's files.

If, I mean, if a Curse Bearer received Heavenly Selection..."

"Are you serious?"

Su Zi sounded surprised as well. "Those odds? Without relying on High-level Summoning, independent awakening can't be called absolutely impossible, but it might as well be a daydream. Buying lottery tickets would be more practical.

Ordinary people affected by Sin Corruption have practically already been marked by the Vortex.

To put it another way, it's like walking a tightrope over a cliff with a several-hundred-pound iron ball chained to your ankle. Taking even two steps forward would already be incredible, let alone flying into the sky."

"I see. Thank you."

After hearing that, Wen Wen said nothing more.

After the call ended, silence once again blanketed the office, leaving only the ticking of the clock.

Yet as she looked at the empty report document on her computer screen, she became distracted once again and Looked towards the sky Outside the Window.

If someone who should have fallen into the abyss could one day soar through the sky... then his wings would surely be beautiful, wouldn't they?

Wen Wen smiled.

The sky beneath the night curtain was so clear, with no clouds to hide it.

The stars shone brightly, and the light was gentle.