Chapter 51: Let her climb out and curse me.
Whoosh—
The cold wind blew through the domino-like gray and white cemetery. Two short-haired women, one in front of the other, walked into the 78th Cemetery, wearing solemn formal attire, holding bouquets of flowers, and a white corsage pinned to their dark blue military uniform jackets.
They left faint gray footprints where they had walked, and the tender grass stems swayed.
It was newly turned earth, not yet fully tidied up.
It sounded a bit hellish, but it was true that the original cemetery was full, so a special place was opened up to bury the public officials who had died in the 78th sea defense incident.
The cemetery was far opposite the Defense Center.
This was twenty—oh no, now it was fifteen kilometers outside the quarantine line.
It was said, in a beautiful name, that the martyrs who had dedicated their lives to defending the land would surely hope to guard the coastline even after death.
But everyone knew very well that the practical meaning was that the land price by the sea was cheap.
Building and maintaining a defense center was too expensive. Since 2143, many official departments had been in serious deficit. It was no exaggeration to say that some coastal local governments might not be as rich as a few medium-sized enterprises.
In the past two months, along with the intensive reconstruction and search and rescue work, the whereabouts of the missing had basically been clarified. The bones or relics that had been swept away by the tsunami were centrally salvaged by underwater robots, and then their biological information was tested to identify them, and their families were notified to claim them.
Many of the remains had been soaked in seawater for a long time and were severely radioactive, so they had to be solidified with cement and then buried deep. From a traditional humanistic point of view, some might even feel that this was disrespectful to the dead.
The so-called “no peace even in death.”
And so, as soon as the two of them had passed through the gate, they heard a commotion at the entrance.
The family members were extremely dissatisfied with the aftermath work of the Defense Center and would not listen to anything about radiation. They had even brought a construction team, threatening to dig up the body.
On a cold day, the person in charge of the cemetery was sweating. He was nodding and bowing, and had worn out his lips trying to persuade them.
The nuclear pollution had been going on for more than thirty years, and such things still happened. There were still people whose cognition had not been updated. It had to be said that it was very incredible.
One of the two short-haired women, Han Xuhua, couldn’t help but turn her head frequently and say, “Will the dead be at peace if they argue like this?”
“The stupid people who think they are smart are always the majority,” Yan Li walked in front, calmly passing by the farce beside her.
Sometimes she really wondered if the Defense Center had been established too quickly, so that more inland people had not really experienced the painful lessons, and the degree of the disaster was far from enough, so there were repeated troubles inside.
Just like after this disaster, while facing the severe test of restoration, the Investigation Department had also captured a group of suspected offline members of an anti-defense center organization. They had taken advantage of the shortage of manpower in various departments and the fact that the quarantine line had not yet been fully built, and had snuck in to obstruct the reconstruction work. When they were discovered, they were enthusiastically dismantling the metal quarantine net.
After being arrested, they would not admit that they were reactionaries and insisted that they were just short of money and wanted to get some ore to sell.
In such a situation where they should have been united against the outside, there were still internal parasites who were fishing in troubled waters and dividing each other, which made the soldiers who had just shed their blood and sweat for the safety of the people feel a sense of absurd division.
Han Xuhua turned her head in surprise and was almost tripped by a stone corner protruding from the ground. She staggered and quickly held the flowers steady.
She complained, “Team leader, you’re getting more and more sharp with your words.”
“…” Yan Li rubbed her forehead. “You’re still calling me team leader. I’ll have to start learning from scratch with you later.”
“You will always be our team leader,” Han Xuhua’s voice lowered.
The Investigation Department was definitely the most basic and busiest branch of the Security Department. The basic combat unit was the group, and each group had 5 to 10 people. When various harmful incidents occurred, they were often the first to notice and take the lead in intercepting. When multiple small groups were dispatched, Yan Li usually had to act as the captain.
And so the team she led often charged at the front, facing the danger of the front line.
In this sea defense battle, the 1st squad was almost completely wiped out.
Today was September 17th, and it was already autumn.
They finally reached the place where the soldiers of the Investigation Department were buried and found the names of their comrades in the vast sea of epitaphs.
The tombstones were like a forest. One after another, people who were important to their relatives and friends were just leaves. When the autumn wind came, they would fall to their roots and turn into yellow earth.
…
Whoosh—
The same autumn wind passed through the stagnant air of the cemetery, brushed past a human body, and blew her hair, making the hair on her temples scatter like a wisp of green smoke.
Qu Ying stood in front of Cheng Ming’s tombstone.
She had no expression, just stood there quietly, silently holding a thin cigarette. There were already a few cigarette butts at her feet.
The return journey was a month later than originally scheduled. By a strange combination of circumstances, she had completely missed it.
She hadn’t seen her for the last time, and she hadn’t even sent her the last message.
The joke before she left had come true in a rather hellish way. Cheng Ming had indeed not gone to the hospital, and she could only come to the cemetery to see her.
The star sand that she hadn’t given her was placed on the dark granite. She hadn’t had time to ask Cheng Ming what style she wanted. It hadn’t been polished, and now it was just lying there in its original state, looking like an ordinary stone in the daytime.
The more she looked at it, the worse her mood became.
Before the research institute sent people to clean up the aftermath, she had gone to Cheng Ming’s apartment first to sort out her “relics”—the most crucial thing was to collect the things that couldn’t see the light of day from every corner.
Of the 20 nutrient and inhibitor supplements she had given her before she left, only two nutrient supplements were left, but the inhibitors were basically untouched.
What was more strange was that when she went to the bathroom to check, she found that there were mirrors on both walls of the shower.
Shower, mirror…
Hmm…
Under what circumstances would you put a mirror in a place like this?
Was Cheng Ming observing the parasite that had occupied her body?
Qu Ying had stood outside the glass door at that time, staring at the various details, and had not moved for at least three minutes.
It was the first time she had felt that her ability to find abnormalities was so terrible.
She really didn’t want to be aware of the faint realization that the relationship between Cheng Ming and the parasite inside her seemed, possibly, probably… not normal.
Regardless of the real situation, it at least showed that Cheng Ming was not wary enough of it.
She didn’t know what had happened during this period, and she didn’t know if it was related to this accident.
The person was gone, and there was nothing she could do.
The smoke was curling.
The wind blowing from the coast was as if it were mixed with rain and fine snow, cold and damp.
Qu Ying was brought back to her senses by the cold wind. She stared at the words carved on the stone, and sadness slowly welled up.
The person who had been lost seemed to always jump out at some unreasonable time and say to you, I’m not here anymore.
And the living person didn’t know how to communicate with her and tell her, I already know, don’t repeat it.
Don’t repeat it…
…
“Here, there should have been a place for me.”
Standing among the orderly tombstones, Yan Li said quietly.
“Don’t, team leader.”
Han Xuhua was usually not a very emotional person, and her relationship with her colleagues was only a few months old. But they had gone through life and death together, and their friendship was far from being measurable by time. Seeing these moments, she felt as if her throat was stuck with a stone, and she was so oppressed that she couldn’t breathe, let alone Yan Li.
She wanted to try to lighten the atmosphere, but unfortunately, her smile was not very good-looking. “I can’t live without you.”
On the day of the unexpected accident, she hadn’t had time to learn how to use the new weapon. Her teammates had unanimously agreed that she was inexperienced and had chosen to leave her inside the wall to clean up the fish that had slipped through the net.
But everyone knew the real reason. She was still too young.
It seemed to be a consensus of everyone to protect the new generation of vital forces.
Therefore, Han Xuhua had avoided the danger of the mutated creatures collectively going crazy, which had not been seen in thirty years, and had also avoided the subsequent tsunami.
Yan Li had also been swept away by the waves. It was only on the second day, when the follow-up troops were cleaning up the battlefield, that she was found on the coast.
She had been in the critical care ward for more than a month, and had undergone various scans and screenings. Her body was actually not seriously injured, but her brain had been greatly impacted, and there were some problems with her memory.
After sweeping the grave and laying the flowers, the memorial was over. Han Xuhua still had a bunch of daisies in her hand and said that she was going to the other side to have a look.
Yan Li understood and took the initiative to say, “I’ll go with you.”
Passing by the cemetery gate again, the scene had returned to quiet.
The family members had been sent away, and the person in charge was on the phone.
A few scattered and irritable conversations floated over. From the meaning, it was probably that the family members were demanding double the compensation.
Money.
So it was for money.
The two of them, who had just made a sharp comment on this not long ago, now fell silent as they looked at the stooped figures in the distance.
Exchanging a deceased relative for money, it did sound very shameless.
But what could they say.
The dead were gone, and the living had to go on.
Many people have asked what the meaning of life is, but more people have practiced that living itself is the meaning.
On the other side of the pine and cypress forest passage was the cemetery of the fallen from the research institute.
Hanging with the newly planted green pines was a lonely figure.
A loose, apricot-white top, black long pants. Compared to their solemn and solemn attire, this one was much more casual.
Someone had arrived before them.
Qu Ying had one hand in her pocket. She turned her head and glanced at them, nodded, her posture unchanged, her attitude lukewarm.
Han Xuhua went over to lay the flowers.
Seeing the other person walk straight to her side, Qu Ying, who had already stepped aside, spoke, “Team Leader Yan, do you know Cheng Ming?”
The Investigation Department was a basic department, and they had cooperated once, so they were acquaintances.
“Not very well,” Yan Li replied subconsciously and pointed to Han Xuhua with her chin. “I’m here with Xiao Hua.”
A part of her gaze was always on Qu Ying, as if it were there and not there. She said, “My condolences.”
Qu Ying frowned, as if she felt a little strange. She nonchalantly put the cigarette back in her mouth and stared at Han Xuhua, who was fiddling with the tombstone over there, and did not speak again.
But Yan Li didn’t seem to be very good at reading people’s faces.
Seeing her smoking in silence, she gestured to the tombstone again and said nonchalantly, “I remember, she didn’t like the smell of smoke.”
The latter flicked the cigarette ash. “Let her climb out and curse me.”
The person next to her: “…”
“Oh, it’s empty inside,” Qu Ying said flatly. “She doesn’t even have bones, she can’t climb out.”
Her voice was tinged with a breathy sound, as if she were scoffing.
But her eyes were dark and rich, making her face seem particularly pale.
Most of the victims’ bodies could not be found. Only some clothes or fragments could be salvaged, and their identities were confirmed through the remaining biological information. Cheng Ming was one of them.
The atmosphere at the scene became stagnant, and only the cold wind quietly swept between them.
“This is a rare opportunity. You can curse her now,” an excited voice sounded in her head.
Xiao Ming was instigating with ill intentions.
Yan Li—ah no, Cheng Ming, who was disguised as “Yan Li,” retorted silently, “You shut up.”
