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Temporary public anxiety is permissible, and the Ability Control Bureau is willing to give them time.
Two enormous, gilded cats were lying in the atrium on the first floor. The light shone on their eyes, making them seem to come alive.
It was quietly watching all of this.
Yu Hai watched as the support staff helped the elderly man to the side, gently comforting him. People were then arranged to fill in, and the evacuation operation continued without interruption. Reassured, he looked away. His teammate stood beside him. He checked the time and said, "The vine tunnel is about to give way. We'll rotate in ten minutes, rotate..."
Just as they were thinking about who would be suitable, a teammate chimed in, "Cheng Xin? He's an earth-type ability user; he can use earth to build several tunnels."
Yu Hai nodded in agreement; earth-based abilities were indeed suitable.
The teammate immediately set off. "I'll go upstairs and call him; he's on the fourth floor keeping an eye on things upstairs."
Evacuating tens of thousands of people in poor mental condition is a huge undertaking. The members of the Ability Control Bureau were not gathered together, but were scattered in different places and busy with their tasks.
Yu Hai watched his teammates leave, then glanced at the orderly evacuation of the civilians. His tense heart relaxed slightly, a rare moment of relief. The Bureau of the Ability Control Bureau's exploration mission was far from over. After the civilians evacuated, the team would remain to explore. The core of this mission, the exploration of Origin Energy, was something they hadn't made any progress on yet.
But regardless, finding an exit and returning the people is a joyous occasion worth celebrating.
I owe everything to the Healer.
Before setting off, the bureau's precognitive ability users deduced that the Healer was Giri, the mission's operative, and it turned out to be true.
If it weren't for the Healer, they wouldn't know when they would find a way out.
The person with precognitive abilities said this trip would be extremely unlucky. I wonder if it's because Healer broke the prophecy, because I've been quite peaceful these past few days in the mall.
Thinking of this, Yu Hai slowly looked up. On the 99th floor of the building, there was a small figure in his field of vision. It was the Healer sitting on the railing of the 99th floor.
So, what method did the Healer use to get the toys to cooperate with the evacuation of the people?
99th floor of the shopping mall.
Ye Jiang sat on the railing, her hands gripping the bars, looking down at the retreating crowd, which stretched like a long dragon. The aerial passageways crisscrossed, and she could see the expressions on the faces of every person walking along them.
The Mirror Woman leaned against the railing, dazed. She hadn't expected that the exit she'd been searching for for three hundred years would become so easy after Ye Jiang's arrival. A mix of emotions welled up inside her, and she couldn't help but murmur, "These toys... are they special?"
Her murmur reached Ye Jiang's ears, but Ye Jiang did not turn around upon hearing these words; she simply gazed down below.
Ye Jiang was pondering a serious matter. The toys had revealed their exit strategy to her; how could she help them come to life as a way of repaying them?
She was stumped.
Even though she remembered that she was the creator of these toys, she had no idea how to help them. Identify with them? How? The concept was too abstract.
Her face was tense, her mind blank, and she had no clue what to do.
Actually, she did have a clue at first. For the ten minutes before she sat on the railing, she kept repeating "I agree with you," "I agree with you," "I agree with you" in her mind. She confidently believed this was the method of acceptance, but...
Nothing happened.
This is clearly not the correct way to gain acceptance.
Then her mind went blank, and she couldn't think of any other way.
Stop racking her brains, she glanced sideways at the young man beside her. He noticed her gaze and asked what was wrong. Ye Jiang, expressionless, glanced at him and said, "Are you lying to me?"
The Creator can help his creations come to life—is he just trying to fool her?
Ye Jiang's words seemed nonsensical, but Rong Yin understood them instantly. He seemed to know her well and knew what she was thinking at the moment, unlike the Mirror Woman on the other side, who completely regarded Ye Jiang, who was sitting silently on the railing, as a profound and unfathomable master.
Rong Yin said, "I'm not lying to you."
Ye Jiang tightened her lips. "I can't do it."
Rong Yin keenly detected a hint of dejection in her flat voice; despite his coldness, he possessed this kind of sensitivity, especially towards Ye Jiang.
"It's certainly not easy to find the right method for something that only a few people can do." His comforting words were like a spring night rain, carrying a slight chill, yet nourishing silently.
Ye Jiang, unaware of this secret tenderness reserved only for her, was lost in her worries and wondered, "What if I never find it?"
"That means they're not lucky enough," Rong Yin said, his face indifferent. Indifference is reserved for toys.
Ye Jiang: "."
The two chatted as if no one else was around. Mirror Woman couldn't understand them and stared at them sideways. Ye Jiang, in a bad mood, took it out on her and shooed her away. "Aren't you going to the cemetery?"
The Mirror Woman didn't care about her attitude. Holding a shard of mirror in her hand, she idly twirled the piece. Since the exit had appeared, she felt more relaxed than ever before.
With a relaxed and nonchalant air, she replied, "What would I go to the cemetery to see?"
Without warning, Ye Jiang blurted out a name: "Go see Song Cen."
Look at the skeleton in the cemetery, that of a former hero.
The Mirror Woman's relaxed demeanor vanished abruptly, nearly crushing the shard in her hand. Ye Jiang glanced at her, then calmly withdrew her gaze, saying in a straightforward voice, "Once the Ability Control Bureau has evacuated everyone from the building, they'll definitely go down to the cemetery immediately to retrieve Song Cen's remains, and then send someone to return them to the Ability Control Bureau. If you don't go see them now, you'll never have the chance again."
The Mirror Woman fell silent.
She paused for a few seconds before finding her voice, her thoughts drifting elsewhere, becoming hoarse. "That's precisely my purpose, to send the hero home."
She said, as if she were merely an observer, one of the millions watching the dazzling hero, "All I need to know is that he'll be removed from the mall. Watch him? What would I do there?"
After she said that, no one around her spoke. The Mirror Woman glanced over unintentionally, her gaze unexpectedly meeting a dark pool. The pale, mysterious woman, inexplicably adored by all the toys in the building, was looking at her. The dark pool reflected her image, as if it had already seen through her insincerity. The Mirror Woman was disheveled...
"Oh," Ye Jiang said indifferently, having said all she needed to say, and no longer concerned whether the toy went or not. She fiddled with the railing beneath her, racking her brains once more, trying to find a way to help the toy.
Suddenly, a flash of silver light came from the side. She turned her head and saw that the Mirror Woman had turned into countless fragments and left from the 99th floor, disappearing to who knows where.
No, she knew where she had gone.
The Mirror Woman went to the cemetery.
must.
Ye Jiang stared at the spot where the Mirror Woman had disappeared for a long time.
After a moment, someone spoke up, "She is Polluted."
She seemed a little strange as she said that.
The Mirror Woman is Polluted.
Three hundred years ago, Song Cen, an executive officer from the Special Affairs Office, single-handedly stormed into a town attacked by A-Rank Polluted. He killed the Polluted, searched for several days, and found the last survivor. The girl survived for only a few seconds before becoming a Polluted herself.
Three hundred years later, the Polluted still remembered the moment she was saved; that was her hero. So even if it meant selling herself, she wanted to send her hero home.
Ye Jiang saw through the Mirror Woman's identity and, through this identity, glimpsed the story hidden behind it.
She was touched by other people's stories.
Beside her, the young man caught her words, preventing her from falling into despair, and said, "Mm."
His gentleness went unnoticed by anyone, despite the simple, understated word.
Basement level, Toy Graveyard.
In the gloomy and desolate world, faded toys are scattered everywhere, and the cold light is like a hazy mist, seemingly flowing shallowly.
A ray of light suddenly appeared, shimmering silver, cleaving through the darkness, gradually coalescing into a human figure with a cold, beautiful face and empty eyes. The Polluted walked into the shop.
A skeleton sat against the wall, its empty eye sockets silently gazing at the cemetery.
The Polluted looked down at the skeleton, as if looking through the bones to the distant past, to see that flesh-and-blood figure.
He came against the light, the thin, bony girl's eyes shining brightly. Hunger had eroded her vision, and she couldn't actually see anything; she only thought the light was shining on her.
It is light.
She didn't know how long she had been trapped in the darkness, but finally she saw the light. She couldn't help but reach out her hands, and then they were grasped, held tightly. In an instant, her gaze and warmth returned to her withering body.
Before my grandfather passed away, he said that the heroes of the Special Affairs Office would not let any civilians go unpunished; they would roam the battlefield and steadily support the suffering of the world.
When the girl was trapped under the rubble, she couldn't believe it. It was so quiet, so very quiet. No one would know that she was trapped here, about to die here. Heroes were writing their legendary stories on a brighter stage, while this was just a small, cramped landslide, destined to go unnoticed.
When the rubble was lifted, the girl realized she had made a mistake.
She hugged the person in front of her tightly, her eyes shining brightly.
"I... I believe it..."
These were the girl's last words before she died.
She regained the faith she had almost lost.
The light disappeared from her eyes, and she passed away peacefully.
The Polluted sat down next to the skeleton, tilted his head back, and leaned against the glass wall.
Her eyes were filled with an endless darkness, just like when she was trapped and died under the rubble; the world was shrouded in darkness.
Two toys caught her eye: a small dinosaur and a big, fat bear. They sat close together, like best friends who could talk about anything.