Chapter 9: Ninth Fortress 9

“Treat our wounds,” An He said as she sat back down on the bed, stating her demand calmly.

She didn’t withdraw her Nestsoul. The five red-eyed Ravens loomed menacingly behind Lola.

Lola’s peripheral vision caught the blood on their beaks, a strand of red flesh still dangling from one—her flesh. The Innate Talent An He had just displayed had utterly crushed her Bushcat. Lola had no doubt that An He could order the Ravens to attack again at any moment.

In reality, that wasn’t the case. An He hadn’t recalled the Ravens simply because she didn’t know how.

An He picked up the broken pencil and placed it back on the table. “Since we’re colleagues, we have to keep the fight under wraps. From here on, we need to cooperate.”

“How do we cooperate?”

An He stared into Lola’s eyes. “I want to join Thorn Lamp.” She remembered Asta and added, “The Vanguard Team. Lola, please help dispel Professor Su’s suspicions about me.”

“Is that your mission?” Lola asked.

“It’s just to better achieve our goal. Isn’t that what we both want?”

An He’s tone was calm, but in truth, she was extremely nervous. Lola wasn’t the emotional type, so it was hard to read much useful information from her face.

Thus, An He couldn’t be sure if Lola truly believed her.

But when she’d described the emblem earlier, Lola’s intense emotional fluctuation had shown that few people knew its true shape—and she’d given the perfect answer. At the very least, she could leverage that to gain Lola’s trust.

An He was gambling.

And she won.

“Alright, I’ll handle Professor Su,” Lola said. She opened the locked cabinet in the Research Lab and took out the medical kit. She cleaned the blood from both of them, did some basic bandaging, then used metal splints to immobilize An He’s two broken fingers, wrapping them carefully with gauze.

Lola remarked, “I really didn’t expect to be ratting you out one minute and covering for you the next.”

An He feigned profundity. “We’re walking a tightrope. The unknown and the unexpected are the norm.”

Lola smiled. “You’ve got a point.”

Everything in the room returned to normal, as if the confrontation had never happened.

But in reality, the situation had undergone a earth-shaking change.

After securing the finger joints, Lola grabbed An He’s left hand and felt the raised metal piece on her arm. An He knew her intent and pulled her hand back. “The item stays with me.”

Lola looked up, a flicker of suspicion in her eyes.

An He explained slowly, “You said Professor Su is busy evaluating Thorn Lamp members, but that’s really just a veiled interrogation, right? She’ll trace it back to you eventually. Why not leave it with me for now? I’ll cover for you once, and you can retrieve it after you pass the questioning.”

Lola considered it. An He’s proposal did solve a problem for her. She warned, “The Ninth Fortress has advanced metal detection tech. You’ll be taking a big risk.”

An He lowered her gaze. “That’s exactly why we need to cooperate more. In these extraordinary times, the organization sent me as backup to share the risks.”

She’d said a lot, but it was open to interpretation.

“Extraordinary times,” Lola repeated. “Things have been unsettled lately. Colleagues from the Third Fortress got caught, and the commander’s on high alert after the notice. Gasoline and steel trades between the Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth Fortresses keep getting robbed. An He, has the organization made a move?”

“I haven’t received any such notice,” An He replied after careful thought, choosing a safe answer. “But we can’t rule out changes.”

Lola didn’t press further.

“Right,” An He said, finally tossing out the question she truly cared about. “Where does Ms. Helitanskia live?”

The Bone Erosion Disease issue was urgent—An He had to deal with it first—but her suspicions hadn’t been fully cleared, and she still wasn’t free to act personally.

But asking Lola outright to stop the disease’s spread would scream “doing good,” shattering the hard-won trust.

An He wouldn’t choose such a foolish approach.

And Lola might not obey her orders anyway.

Sure enough, Lola paused in her movements and gave a vague answer. “West District. What do you want?”

An He shifted strategies the moment she heard the response. “I want you to watch her, slow her outbreak, and keep her from contacting others for now.”

“Why?” Lola asked.

An He replied, “It’s not time yet. She’s our bomb—bombs need to detonate at the right moment. You haven’t gotten the attack order, have you?”

Lola hesitated.

But if An He was truly a colleague, there was no need to use Ms. Helitanskia against her anymore. Better to hold off. “Fine,” she said.

An He relaxed.

Heidi had explained the stages of Bone Erosion Disease to her. In the second stage, victims developed fever and rashes but retained self-awareness—they weren’t yet aggressively strong or prone to random attacks.

As long as Lola kept it from spreading, she had time to handle it.

Lola stood and re-secured An He to the metal bed. “Rest for now. I can’t stay too long.” She strictly limited her meal delivery time, picked up the tray, and left.

The Research Lab was left with An He alone.

An He’s taut nerves finally eased a bit. She steadied her emotions with long breaths, and as she calmed, the five Ravens in the corner gradually vanished.

An He lay there staring at the white fluorescent light overhead, its iron housing showing signs of rust. Her gaze fixed on a curled edge, deep in thought.

Lola doesn’t fully trust me, An He concluded.

This woman was extremely sharp and skilled—she wouldn’t fully believe An He’s identity just because of what happened.

How much of what Lola promised she’d actually do was uncertain.

An He knew she couldn’t let her guard down.

She’d originally thought following Heidi into the Ninth Fortress would mean a peaceful, stable life, but none of the rosy picture Heidi painted had come true. Instead, she’d walked into the most complicated situation—

Now, she had to earn both Lola’s trust and Thorn Lamp’s, while handling the Bone Erosion Disease without exposing herself.

The good news was, her abilities were stronger than she’d imagined. She’d never thought her mind could turn so quickly—like an instinct awakened under pressure, her long-dormant brain finally kicking into gear.

Some details were still clumsy, but she’d get smoother.

At the same time, An He finally understood Innate Talents. In that moment of striking, she’d felt her time flow out of sync with her surroundings. Her Talent let her move at high speed while enemies couldn’t—like bullet time in photography, and she was the high-velocity bullet.

She didn’t know the name for it yet, but Thorn Lamp surely needed a Talent like that.

An He analyzed her situation carefully. Besides the unreachable Ms. Helitanskia, she had two urgent tasks.

First: Quickly dispel Thorn Lamp’s suspicions, learn to control her Nestsoul and Talent.

If Lola kept her word, she’d handle the trickiest part—Su Ling—and that would solve most of it.

But if Lola reneged, it led to the second task: Make Lola trust her completely.

Trust was costly and hard in the short term, so An He chose the unorthodox path. She’d seize Lola’s weakness and put her under control.

Locked here, her options were limited, but she had one mysterious “friend.”

Gu Xianqing—the well-informed “intelligence dealer,” her dream contact.

An He only hoped this dream woman wasn’t her enemy.

With that thought, An He began to act. Lola had deliberately loosened the restraint on her right hand for some mobility. An He twisted, grabbed the pencil from the table again, and tore half a blank sheet from the files.

She bit off the wooden tip and scrawled two lines with one hand.

She had to find a way to get Gu Xianqing’s help.

…

A wind kicked up on the Wasteland, whipping dust into the sky and back down, visibility dropping to near zero.

Two armored vehicles studded with barbs sank into the yellow sand, their drivers long dead.

Five Stage Four Bone Eaters dragged one driver from the seat. Red mycelium spread, trying to integrate the corpse into the right-hand position.

“Time to close the net!”

From the sand came the buzz of a motorcycle generator. A battered bike sped through with two figures aboard, hurtling forward and kicking up a massive plume of sand.

The riders had already leaped off, landing on the stalled armored vehicle.

A streak of vivid red stood out sharply against the yellow sand.

Gu Xianqing drew her dagger from her belt, strode to the front in a few steps, and slashed through a Bone Eater’s spreading mycelium.

As she sheathed it, boom—a bullet whistled past her ear, slamming precisely into the Bone Eater’s body. It exploded, scattering bone fragments and casings into the sand.

“Grandma Yan, aim a little better—you almost hit me,” Gu Xianqing said. Her chestnut curls were tied back simply with cloth—only for Wasteland raids did she bother.

Grandma Yan behind her was a nimble old lady wrapped in burlap, only her face exposed. She blew on the gun barrel to cool it physically, and in the meantime, admonished, “Just drive them off. No need to fight.”

“Of course. I just want the driver’s gear—I’m not robbing their bones.” Gu Xianqing swiftly stripped the driver’s equipment and slipped into the cab.

The vehicle roared back to life and shot forward.

The Bone Eaters didn’t pursue. The survivors milled blankly for a moment, then vanished into the sand.

Gu Xianqing gathered the spoils: two barrels of gasoline, a crate of rifles, a barrel of salt. She inventoried the supplies and recognized it as a Seventh Fortress vehicle.

Grandma Yan grinned ear to ear. “Nice haul. Quick, back to the Oasis.”

Gu Xianqing turned, the feral edge of battle fading as she resumed her usual soft, radiant smile. “Elderly lady, the Oasis fell long ago.”

“Oh right!” Yan Qiong slapped her forehead. “I’m senile… Then why rob this stuff? We don’t need it.”

“We do.” Gu Xianqing cut her off, decisively dumping the salt barrel into the Wasteland. She kept only the gasoline and rifles, then drove off.

They stopped in a Withered Forest—not the one where they’d met An He, but closer to the Ninth Fortress.

Gu Xianqing selected a large tree and piled the rifles. “We can’t go back to the Oasis or into human fortresses, so I’ve decided to set up our own camp. Weapons are always necessary.”

“Here?” Yan Qiong was stunned. “The Ninth Fortress’s Iron Wall is just twenty kilometers away. You want to camp here?”

“Why not?” Gu Xianqing arched a brow. She sat cross-legged and wiped the mycelium from her dagger with yellow soil. Disgusting stuff.

Yan Qiong hugged a rifle barrel and sat beside her, eyeing her sideways. “Did you use your Talent last night to find An He?”

“Not just her.”

“Others don’t matter—they forget you after waking. An He’s different.” Grandma Yan spoke earnestly. “Watch out for her coming after you later.”

“That’s what makes it fun. The targets I choose need some real skill to catch my eye.” Gu Xianqing lifted the dagger, inspecting the blade. “I’ll help her become the leader of the human faction—best if she clashes with the other fortresses. Then we can snag some benefits in the chaos.”

The dagger’s cold gleam flashed, and behind the blade, Gu Xianqing’s azure eyes gleamed.

She always spoke with a smile, but those seemingly clear depths held little mirth.

“Y’know, I’m like this fungus—one that invades others and draws nourishment. But looking at it, I just find it so gross.” Gu Xianqing set the dagger down and fetched a lighter from the spoils, heating the blade.

Osteophagic Fungus was invisible without its mycelium, and it needed high heat to sterilize. It was harmless to them, but Gu Xianqing hated dirtying her blade.

“Let’s move everything here today, Grandma Yan. Handling the gasoline is up to you.” Gu Xianqing sheathed her blade.

“Me?” Yan Qiong hunched her back. “You don’t respect your elders at all. Do I look like I can haul gasoline?”

“You can. You’re tough as nails.” Gu Xianqing smiled gently.

The old lady grumbled, “I’ve told you before, you’re such a control freak.”

“How could that be? You’ve got me all wrong.” Gu Xianqing let her hair down.

Gu Xianqing showed zero self-awareness, so Yan Qiong had no choice but to get up and briskly haul the gasoline. She rode the motorcycle into the woods while she was at it. This was one of their spoils too—on the vast Wasteland, a means of transport like this made things a lot more convenient.

Yan Qiong parked the bike and, after some hesitation, tried to dissuade her again. “Aren’t you afraid An He will suppress you one day?”

Gu Xianqing was counting bullets at the time. She paused to think it over.

“I’m afraid,” she said seriously.

Yan Qiong had expected her to say “I’m not,” but Gu Xianqing threw her off, leaving all her prepared arguments unused. She could only sigh. “Sigh, who knows if that’s truth or lies coming out of your mouth.”

…

Gu Xianqing spotted the difference in An He right away that night. She was still lying motionless on the metal bed, but clutched in her palm was a scrap of paper.

When invading someone else’s dream, Gu Xianqing rarely bothered weaving elaborate scenes. She needed to grasp her Lock-On target’s real-time status, so she usually pulled directly from their subconscious to recreate the current scene—unless she couldn’t access it sometimes.

Her Innate Talent was as unique as she was: Dream Erosion.

On the metal bed, An He’s wrists bore fresh wounds, her expression weary. Her eyes were open, fixed on Gu Xianqing, looking all docile and pitiful. Gu Xianqing couldn’t help leaning down to stroke An He’s hair.

Ah, what a cute little creature.

“You’re hurt?” Gu Xianqing brushed her fingertip over the wound and pressed lightly. “Who’d you fight? Su Ling? Nah, that doesn’t fit—Su Ling rarely lifts a hand herself, not with Ide around… Let me guess, Lola then.”

Gu Xianqing blinked, catching An He’s wary yet hesitant gaze. She couldn’t suppress a smile. “Got something to say?”

She knew full well but played dumb, leisurely prying open An He’s palm to retrieve the note. As she unfolded it, she exaggerated her praise. “Clever girl. You knew I’d come find you and left me a message.”

The paper bore just four bold characters: Let me speak.

“Too bad, no can do.” Gu Xianqing chuckled, crumpling it up. “Speaking means your mouth can move. I’m afraid you’ll bite me.”

Getting chomped by those sharp teeth would be no joke.

Her response dimmed the light in An He’s eyes. The little lamb looked deeply wounded, the hope in her gaze snuffed out in an instant. It tugged at Gu Xianqing’s heartstrings a bit.

But she wouldn’t soften.

A moment later, An He’s gaze drifted downward, fixated on the crumpled paper in Gu Xianqing’s hand. She still had something to say.

Gu Xianqing obliged, unfolding the wrinkled scrap again and glancing at it. She noticed three small characters on the back.

Please.