Chapter 124: Reading History

“The Syndrome can be inoculated?” Qi Xin paused slightly.

“Since the Syndrome can be inherited, why couldn’t it be inoculated? What difference is there between those so-called talisman waters that needed to be drunk in the past and an injected medicament?” Yue Yunqiu explained. “Essentially, they are the same.”

“I apologize, my expression was inaccurate and caused you to misunderstand,” Qi Xin said quietly. “What I meant was, if inoculation is possible, why was this method deliberately neglected, or rather, concealed before? Doesn’t this also imply that a means sufficient to cure the Syndrome exists? Secondly, inoculating with a vaccine means the higher-ups can actually tolerate the Syndrome’s existence. In that case, why can’t they tolerate the existence of patients? Furthermore, a final hypothesis—if they truly cannot tolerate the Syndrome’s existence, why not just…”

She didn’t finish the latter half of her sentence, but its implication was self-evident.

“…”

Qi Xin’s tone was calm, not like an interrogation but more like a student posing a question to a teacher. Even so, Yue Yunqiu could not answer. His expression wasn’t one of not knowing the answer, but rather of being unable to answer, forbidden from answering.

“Because doing so would be too rash,” a woman’s voice came from behind them, “and we have already paid the price for one rash act.”

Qi Xin noticed Yue Yunqiu’s expression immediately turn grave and serious. He almost stood up with a respectful attitude but was stopped by a hand pressing on his shoulder, not with force, but firmly preventing him from rising to bow.

Qi Xin’s attention was drawn to that hand—it was the hand of a woman clearly weathered by hardship. Lean, almost gaunt, its back was covered with dark, age-worn mottling that mingled with tiny scars, revealing an unconcealable agedness. The skin was like the bark of a century-old tree, interwoven with textures, full of the marks time had engraved upon it. A slender ring was worn on her ring finger, its material unique, looking neither like metal nor gold, but more like specially treated wood.

On this thin, aged hand, a dying aura and a vibrant spirit had reached a paradoxical balance.

When it landed on Yue Yunqiu’s shoulder, he slowly sat down. It wasn’t because of the Syndrome or any power, but because of the owner of that hand. She possessed a calming, steady quality that conveyed depth and substance without needing words.

“I believe you must be Qi Xin. I am very pleased to have such a young new comrade willing to join us.”

The woman extended her hand as she spoke, and Qi Xin could only shake it. Compared to her own icy-cold hand, the woman’s grasp was exceedingly warm. The handshake was perfectly firm—polite without feeling distant—reminding Qi Xin of a winter fireplace.

While shaking hands, she naturally sized up the woman before her, who appeared to be around forty. Due to her age, wrinkles had inevitably crept to the corners of her eyes, but her brows held no hint of decline. She was tall, her hair done up, her attire clean and simple. Her movements were crisp and decisive, no different from a young person. What Qi Xin hadn’t quite expected was her facial features: a high nose bridge, deep-set eyes, sharp and defined facial lines. Although she had black hair and black pupils, her features seemed more characteristic of Eastern Slavic ancestry than Asian.

After a brief observation, Qi Xin found she lacked adequate words to describe this woman’s appearance. Words like ‘heroic’ or ‘beautiful’ felt too frivolous. She was more like a military knife that had seen war, meticulously maintained afterward, adorned with gemstones, and tightly sheathed in an equally exquisite scabbard, placed as an exhibit behind hard, secure glass. Yet even so, the sharp, fierce aura it once held remained as keen as ever, completely unconcealable despite her gentle tone and calm expression.

Judging solely by her bearing, if Yue Yunqiu told her this woman had once served as a military officer, Qi Xin wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. In fact, the civilian clothes the woman currently wore seemed unreasonable; her temperament was meant to be paired with a military uniform.

A person like this was in charge of her review?

This made Qi Xin feel somewhat uneasy. She had never met such a person. That gaze reminded her of the phrase “seeing through everything like a torch,” as if all her thoughts had turned transparent, laid bare before this woman’s eyes. She almost had to forcefully suppress the sensation rising from the depths of her soul, compelling herself to endure, not to directly touch the Lake of the woman before her.

“This is Senior Lin Xiyun,” Yue Yunqiu quietly introduced. “She is also the comrade responsible for the review today.”

“Rash?” Qi Xin repeated the word spoken by the woman named Lin Xiyun, a look of confusion on her face.

“It’s actually quite normal for younger comrades to have such thoughts, because nearly thirty years ago, many people had very similar ideas,” Lin Xiyun said softly. “For that, we paid a price—a terrible price.”

Qi Xin listened quietly.

“I still remember that day to this very day. It was the spring of 1984…”

The hotel room light was off. Rain pattered against the pitifully small windowpane, leaving the room somewhat dim.

Qi Ran sat cross-legged in a chair, back against the backrest, flipping through a notebook. It was Xie Liang’s—or rather, Xie Liusheng’s—old diary. Jiang Zhique had gone downstairs to the hotel front desk to buy necessities, and Tao Xiao was still sitting silently by the window, quietly watching the trails of water streaking down the glass.

Qi Ran couldn’t tell if she was looking at the water stains on the glass, the rain itself, or the occasional birds flying past. Those clear pupils were like deep wells, so profound one felt they might fall in just by looking.

“Many years from now, should future generations need to summarize this period of history, they will inevitably trace it back to that day in 1960. On that day, the achievement we made was enough to change the entire world—Donald A. Glaser, Willard F. Libby, Peter Medawar, and Frank Macfarlane Burnet. If these poor old fools learned of the miracle we created, they, and those who extol them, would be utterly ashamed of ever having prided themselves on those meager, paltry accomplishments.”

“Firstly, I must express sympathy for them here. It is not their fault; being born in the same era as a true genius is their calamity. But compared to their peers in other eras, they are also fortunate, for they can look up at the silhouette of a true great man… They are not stupid. To put it politely, they are merely somewhat ignorant. Nothing more.”

Qi Ran read very slowly, chewing over every single word carefully, often flipping back to earlier sections for cross-reference. Fortunately, Xie Liusheng’s handwriting was neat and elegant, his grammar rigorous, so reading it was not difficult.

Through those writings, she crossed a span of nearly sixty years, seeing the outwardly humble yet inwardly arrogant youth sitting beneath an oil lamp, writing his diary word by word.

What finally pulled Qi Ran out of the text was the smell of food and a pang of hunger from her stomach.

When she looked up, she realized the sky outside the window was nearing dusk.

“I saw you were reading so intently, so I didn’t disturb you,” Jiang Zhique said, sitting in a chair beside her. She pointed to a bag on the table. “There’s some food left, you can fill your stomach a bit.”

The bag contained two steamed buns and a bag of soy milk. They had gone cold, but driven by hunger, Qi Ran didn’t care about such minor details. Thinking back, she hadn’t eaten a single thing since noon the previous day, surviving entirely on yesterday’s breakfast.

“Did you finish reading?”

“Most of it,” Qi Ran said, biting into the bun. She tossed the diary to Jiang Zhique, shaking her head somewhat helplessly. “I suspect when he recorded this diary, he intended it as material for a future personal memoir or some literary work. Almost two-thirds of the first half of this diary is him showing off his achievements in a flowery manner, like a peacock displaying its feathers. There’s quite a bit of useful information, but you have to sift through it, which is tiring.”

“His achievements?” Jiang Zhique was stunned.

“To be frank, he does have the capital to brag—assuming, of course, that everything in this diary is true,” Qi Ran’s tone was a bit odd. “Guess what year he was born in?”

“Seventy?” Jiang Zhique guessed hesitantly. Based on his appearance, the young man in the shop’s second floor looked to be in his early thirties, and the time at the shop was 2004. Pushing thirty years back, Xie Liang was likely born in the seventies or eighties.

“No, he was born in 1912,” Qi Ran shook her head. “Remember the Xinhai Revolution from your history books? It was the same year.”

“1912?” Jiang Zhique was suddenly stunned. “That person lived for almost a hundred years?”