Black Sky - Chapter 12

Before their eyes, the world, which should have been as black as ink, was emitting soft, colorful light everywhere.

At first, they thought they were man-made festive lights, but after careful observation, they discovered that the light all came from various unknown and strange plants—in addition to the blue-glowing “giant dandelions” they had encountered before, there were also vines hanging from the trees that emitted pink light, and clusters of wild grass growing on the ground that emitted pale green light spots, with many small orange flowers swaying in the wind among the wild grass.

Whether it was a carousel, a teacup ride, or even a small kiosk selling ice cream, they were all surrounded by these strange plants without exception.

A gust of wind blew, and all the lights flickered accordingly, the colorful and illusory colors intertwined, dazzling Bai Zi and Meng Yilan.

If music were added, this would be no different from an amusement park that was still in operation.

The wonderful illusion caused Meng Yilan to unconsciously lower the hand holding the gun. She followed behind Bai Zi, step by step, and came to the carousel in the center of the amusement park.

Meng Yilan couldn’t help but approach a vine hanging from the roof of the carousel. She discovered that the luminous body on the vine was a furry substance, like the fluff on a teddy bear, or like the antennae of some kind of insect, slowly wriggling in the air as if it were alive.

Unlike Meng Yilan, Bai Zi turned her head and focused her gaze elsewhere.

The faint pink light cast across Meng Yilan’s face, softening her features and adding a touch of delicate color to the stern, cold mask she’d worn for the past two days.

Her originally high ponytail was slightly messy due to the accidental slip just now, and a few strands of curly hair hung down along her forehead, slightly covering those peach blossom eyes that were carefully looking at the vines. Below her straight nose bridge, her lips, which were always pursed, were slightly curved, which was quite beautiful.

Bai Zi’s eyes seemed to be glued to Meng Yilan’s face, and she didn’t even notice when the other party turned her head and made eye contact with her.

It wasn’t until Meng Yilan coughed that Bai Zi suddenly came back to her senses. She turned her head awkwardly, her body stiff, completely lacking the leisurely attitude she had before. Instead, she was so nervous that even the tip of her nose was sweating.

For some reason, Meng Yilan wasn’t annoyed by Bai Zi’s infatuated gaze. Instead, it made her, who had been harboring some displeasure towards Bai Zi, feel a bit amused, and she even couldn’t help but chuckle softly.

Bai Zi’s cheeks flushed, she scratched her neck, stared at the vines in front of her, and asked with feigned curiosity: “Are there also these glowing plants in Bei City?”

Meng Yilan nodded. While looking at the dimples that Bai Zi squeezed out by pursing her lips due to shyness, she said softly: “I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen them, because the government would send special people to clean up these mutated plants.”

Suddenly, the familiar sound of branches shaking came from the big tree behind the two of them again.

Meng Yilan immediately turned her head, and nimbly raised her gun to aim at the air.

This time, under the surrounding illusory colorful lights, she finally saw a figure squatting on the branches at the top of the big tree. But before she could take a closer look, the figure suddenly jumped nimbly to the branches of another tree. Meng Yilan immediately put her finger on the trigger, but was stopped by Bai Zi next to her.

But Bai Zi didn’t explain much. Instead, she looked up and called out to the figure: “Mao Mao!”

As if in response, the figure made a “goo” sound, but then jumped forward continuously, instantly widening the distance between it and Meng Yilan and Bai Zi.

“Don’t move, I’ll be right back.” Bai Zi said softly, and ran towards the exit of the amusement park, following the figure.

Meng Yilan was once again annoyed by Bai Zi’s actions, and her teeth itched. She held the gun and stubbornly followed.

As if intentionally trying to lead the two to a certain place, Mao Mao would stop after jumping a certain distance, and then continue to jump forward after the two caught up.

Soon, they followed Mao Mao out of the amusement park, but the moment they walked out of the gate, they saw a completely different scene from before.

In front of the two, there was a row of long tin shacks divided into five or six cages by iron railings. The cages were filled with the glowing plants that had been emitting light in the amusement park, but they were illuminating not the pleasant amusement facilities, but stark white animal skeletons.

From the posture of the skeletons, one could infer the situation of these animals before they died. They were either lying in the center of the cage, or crouching on the edge of the railing. Although they were all different, they all revealed a sense of despair brought about by the inability to resist death.

It was not difficult to imagine that a year ago, after the entire zoo fell into chaos, humans scattered and fled, leaving these animals in the cages to wait for death alive.

Perhaps this sense of despair was too oppressive, Bai Zi and Meng Yilan both remained silent by tacit agreement.

Especially Bai Zi.

But what she was thinking in her heart wasn’t the compassionate feeling of “the animals that were starved to death are really pitiful.” Bai Zi believed that she wasn’t worthy of the human’s condescending pity for lower animals.

She just felt that these beasts were so similar to her.

“Bai Zi?” Meng Yilan looked at the gloomy expression on Bai Zi’s face, and felt a sense of unease in her heart.

Bai Zi didn’t respond. She uncontrollably walked closer to one of the iron cages, inside, the skeleton of what appeared to be a large feline was crouching by the railing, one forelimb stretched out through the bars as if, before death, it had desperately tried to escape the cage that had held it captive for so long.

Ever since she reunited with Meng Yilan yesterday, Bai Zi seemed to have completely forgotten the life that had once crushed her to the point of wanting to end her life a year ago.

But now, looking at the white bones in front of her, she didn’t know why, but she remembered the moment when she was sitting by the roadside, awkwardly sucking noodles directly from the bowl with her mouth, and accidentally choked, spilling the entire bowl of noodles on the ground.

That was her last struggle before she decided to end her life.

“Heh,” Bai Zi squatted in front of the cage, and said softly to the skeleton, “It’s useless, how could you possibly escape.”

For some reason, looking at Bai Zi like this, a sour feeling welled up in Meng Yilan’s heart, but before she could speak, the sound of Mao Mao jumping on the trees came from not far away again.

Bai Zi seemed to snap back to reality, turning to look at Meng Yilan—her eyes were clear, without any of the suffocating gloominess she had just had.

Seeing that Mao Mao was about to disappear from their sight, Bai Zi stood up and asked: “Are we going to continue following?”

Along the way, Bai Zi had been carefully listening to the surrounding sounds. The reason why she followed Mao Mao here with such peace of mind was because she hadn’t heard the movements of any mutants all along.

Meng Yilan stared at the scars around Bai Zi’s left eye, thought for two seconds, and then nodded.

The two tacitly abandoned the scene just now, bypassed the shacks, and followed Mao Mao to a more open area.

They used the small flashlights on their guns to carefully observe the surroundings. This place was like a small square, without any luminous plants, but the cracks in the concrete floor were filled with dense, waist-high long grass.

In the center of the square, there was an extremely large dead tree—Mao Mao was squatting on the highest branch of the dead tree.

Bai Zi walked in front, and cautiously parted the long grass, leading Meng Yilan closer to the dead tree.

Just as they were about to walk to the tree trunk, the two discovered that behind the dense long grass, there was a huge mound of earth. To be precise, it should be a huge skeleton buried by the mound of earth.

This was completely different from the skeletons in the cages just now, but it had an extremely recognizable feature—two long and curved white tusks.

This was an elephant.

Behind the two tusks, there was a thick iron chain binding the bones at the elephant’s neck, and the other end of the iron chain was tied to the dead tree.

There was another movement above the two’s heads, and Mao Mao, wearing a blanket, jumped down to a lower branch.

After a while, it climbed down the tree trunk again, but stood behind the tree, poking out its round head, and cautiously looked at the two of them.

Meng Yilan immediately recognized that this creature, called “Mao Mao” by Bai Zi, was a sub-adult female orangutan with a missing right arm. In its left hand, it was holding an empty bag of instant corn kernels.

Bai Zi pulled a silver tag from her pocket, and as she explained to Meng Yilan, she handed it to Mao Mao: “I met her near the restrooms before you came out. She must be a captive orangutan, and her name is Mao Mao.”

Hearing its name, Mao Mao scratched its head, which was covered with sparse hair, and then propped itself on the ground with one hand, and moved to Bai Zi’s leg. But it didn’t take the round tag, but tightened the blanket around its body, and waved the bag in its hand at Bai Zi.

“I don’t have more.” Bai Zi took out her pocket.

The originally shy Mao Mao suddenly bared its teeth, waved its hand and lightly patted Bai Zi’s belly, then pouted, looking sullen.

Meng Yilan, who had been standing behind Bai Zi, took two steps forward, took out a small bag of compressed biscuits from her pocket, and handed it to Mao Mao.

Mao Mao’s eyes lit up, and it moved its butt to Meng Yilan, took the biscuits without any politeness, and skillfully tore open the packaging bag with its feet, but then turned around and came to the tusks.

It broke the only biscuit into two halves, and placed one half next to the tusks, along with a few yellow things – instant corn kernels. Then, Mao Mao leaned against the tusks, squatted down, and enjoyed the remaining half of the biscuit.

This behavior puzzled Bai Zi and Meng Yilan.

Suddenly, Bai Zi seemed to see something. She walked lightly to the dead tree trunk, raised her hand and pushed aside the vines on it, revealing something that seemed to be nailed to the tree trunk.

Meng Yilan walked behind Bai Zi, and saw that it was a photo that had been laminated, and was covered with dust. Bai Zi wiped the dust off with her sleeve, and saw that the photo showed an elephant tied to the tree with a chain, with an orangutan wearing a silver round tag.

It was obvious that the orangutan was Mao Mao, and the elephant had now turned into the skeleton on the ground.

Meng Yilan looked at the photo, and her heart ached.

“You should have save the biscuits,” Bai Zi didn’t feel any emotion for the friendship and experience between the orangutan and the elephant. All she could see in her eyes was Meng Yilan. “This monkey has been living in the wild for a year, it definitely knows where to find food, but you, you didn’t eat anything last night.”

“Orangutans are apes, not monkeys,” Meng Yilan corrected, and then shook her head, “I’m not hungry, you didn’t eat either?” As soon as she finished speaking, she turned her head a little guiltily – these words exposed the fact that she had been staring at Bai Zi in the gas station.

Bai Zi didn’t notice the other party’s embarrassment at all: “I’m not the same as you.”

“How are you not…” Meng Yilan, who was about to retort, immediately closed her mouth after seeing Bai Zi’s torn sleeve.

Bai Zi turned her head, and found that Meng Yilan was staring at her elbow with a surprised expression: “What’s wrong?”

Meng Yilan didn’t reply, she pulled open Bai Zi’s torn sleeve – the bright red bloodstain had disappeared.

“Where’s your wound?” Meng Yilan asked incredulously.

Bai Zi looked down, and said indifferently: “Oh, it’s healed.”

Meng Yilan was furious: “What do you mean, ‘oh, it’s healed’? You’re…” It just disappeared!

At this time, Mao Mao climbed onto Bai Zi’s back, hanging on Bai Zi like a giant backpack. It rested its head on Bai Zi’s right shoulder, chewing on the biscuit in its mouth, and stared at Meng Yilan with a curious expression.

The gaze of this person and ape made Meng Yilan suppress all the questions in her heart – even being bitten by a mutant could allow her to live as usual, so why care about a disappearing bloodstain?

Bai Zi was right, she was different from me.

Meng Yilan took a breath, and said in a low voice: “We, have to go back.”

“Back to the gas station?” Bai Zi was still looking down at her torn sleeve, and the few bloodstains on her elbow.

“It will take three days to get back to Bei City from here,” Meng Yilan explained, “But the things we need for the journey are all at the gas station. If we don’t go back and take the things with us, we won’t be able to go far…”

As she said this, Meng Yilan thought of the disappearing bloodstain again.

Did the current Bai Zi really need her “escort”? Who was escorting whom? It wasn’t Bai Zi who needed to go back to the gas station, but herself, right?

After all, she still had to rush back to Bei City, and find a way to rescue Lin Quwei within a month.

But Bai Zi didn’t object to the arrangement to go back to the gas station: “We shouldn’t be far from the gas station, but we just don’t know the direction.”

Meng Yilan took a deep breath, and sat down under the dead tree as if she had lost her strength: “I didn’t bring the communication device with me.”

Without the communication device, there was no way to determine the direction of the gas station, but Meng Yilan didn’t feel depressed because of this.

Looking at Meng Yilan’s pale face, Bai Zi comforted her softly, a little at a loss: “It’s okay, although this place has been abandoned for a year, it’s still a zoo after all, there must be a lot of road signs nearby…”

Meng Yilan shook her head: “More than half a year ago, a gang that specialized in robbing passers-by appeared in this area, and they removed all the road signs and signposts.”

Bai Zi closed her mouth, not knowing what to say.

“The last time I went to the zoo, it was probably seven or eight years ago,” Meng Yilan began to say to herself, “At that time, it was to write a report about the zoo abusing tigers.”

Bai Zi stood quietly to the side, listening carefully.

Mao Mao jumped off Bai Zi’s body, sat next to Meng Yilan, and leaned against the tree trunk, continuing to eat the biscuit in its mouth.

“That tiger was locked in a cage that was less than three square meters,” Meng Yilan continued to say faintly, “I stood in front of the cage for three hours, and it turned around in the cage for three hours. I could feel the pain of it being trapped.”

The current Bai Zi was no longer an ordinary person. Returning to Bei City and contacting more people would probably only bring her more trouble.

Suddenly, Meng Yilan turned her head to look at Bai Zi: “Do you want to go back to Bei City?”

Bai Zi didn’t answer immediately, she lowered her head.

As if she had expected it, Meng Yilan curled the corners of her mouth, and was about to speak, when she heard Bai Zi say: “I want to go back.”

Meng Yilan opened her mouth in surprise. Before she could ask, Bai Zi raised her head again, her eyes clear, and said with a smile: “Like you said, send me back to Bei City, and let me settle down – that way, we can completely sever ties.”

These were originally words that came out of Meng Yilan’s mouth, but for some reason, after only a day, she felt a dull suffocation because she heard these words again.