Volume 6 - CH 100.3

While the Missiontakers are listening to the radio static on the fifth floor of the library, He Shujün successfully left the Museum and are hurrying back to the library.

The old Director still wanted to show them around, but He Shujün said she still wasn’t feeling too well, and so she’s going to get a medical check-up at a proper clinic, and asked to leave.

Perhaps because they haven’t started their tours, so the Director let them go without another word.

When they left, they saw the box truck that was used to transfer the relics leave the side door as well.

They wonder where it is going to. Maybe it’s another scene in the Nightmare.

Ding Yi and He Shujün are heading back along the road the bus carried them on.

Yet not too far in, they’ve run into the company of a huge crowd of mad people. They’re pretty distracting and disorienting, besides simply blocking their way forward, forcing them to take detours.

Here, He Shujün says, somewhat exasperated, “how long is it until we’re at the library?”

She finally realises now, that since they came through on a bus, which was even speeding through its last leg of the journey, they have vastly underestimated how long this road actually is.

They’ve been walking for more than ten minutes without seeing the stop of the bus before the Museum, the Art Gallery. Never mind their original spawn point of the library.

He Shujün can’t help but sound dispirited.

Then she thinks about it, and says, “let’s just give these shops on the way a look as well. We were on a bus when we came, so we didn’t check them at all.”

Ding Yi agrees.

So they slow way down too, to check on the shops along the streets.

So many mad people – is what He Shujün thinks after actually paying attention.

She is already vaguely aware of what’s going on here thanks to the doctor’s explanations, but they didn’t personally run into any such insanity along the way to the Museum.

On the bus, while the drivers and passengers there are also ‘insane,’ they didn’t really seem to be that dangerous. The same can be said for the staff of the Museum.

Their insanity still seems manageable and harmless enough.

What they are encountering here, though, is completely different.

He Shujün is watching the scene happening through a huge glass window with astonishment and disgust.

This seems to be some cram school, helping secondary school students with their homework after classes.

What is surprising is that, even when the world is like this now, this place is still packed.

Parents and teenagers have filled the space to the point of suffocation. Most of them are queuing up to have lessons, and only lucky few are inside the rooms to be ‘educated’ by the cram school teachers.

That room has glasses on both sides that face the street on the one hand and the parents waiting in the school on the other.

The parents and kids waiting to get in all look at the people ‘studying’ inside with heavy jealousy.

The room didn’t just have the students, either, but also the parents. In this special cram school, the teenagers are accompanied by their parents in their studies.

And the parents are accompanying not to provide emotional support or to keep an eye on their own children, but…

He Shujün’s brows are furrowed looking at what is playing out in front of her.

The parents all have their arms outstretched, with tubes inserted onto their arms. Blood is removed from their bloodstreams, and gathered into a little bowl on their child’s desk.

The students all have fountain pens, calmly and attentively focusing on writing. Occasionally, they dip the tips of their pens into their parents’ blood, and then keep writing.

The parents all look exceptionally pleased to see their children working hard.

Even though they all look unhealthily pale, exhausted and weakened, but they are proud – they are a part of the hard work and result evident on their children’s work.

He Shujün can feel goosebumps all over her. All the little bowls of fresh, crimson blood, makes her nauseated and unwell. Her lips are trembling, muttering, “madness? Madness…”

Ding Yi quietly averts her gaze from the scene.

He Shujün then shuts her eyes close, disgusted, and stamps her way away from the window of this cram school.

When Ding Yi has caught up, He Shujün complains to her, “it’s insane!”

Ding Yi says, “these types of insanity seem to have some form of connection with their experiences before they went mad.”

He Shujün retorts, “my mom and dad were never like that,” she then pauses, thinking, before continuing, “nor was I like any of those children. Could this madness really have originated from something in their lives?”

Ding Yi gives a somewhat sad smile.

She can see that, even if she’s ended up in the Tower, but He Shujün has clearly managed to hold onto some semblance of her probably optimistic, amicable self back on Earth.

It really is hard to imagine how such a straightforward and kind young woman could have survived for so long in the Tower.

Or perhaps, life and luck has managed to spare her the worst so far?

She doesn’t answer He Shujün, nor does He Shujün pose any more questions.

They’re going to keep going.

Yet that is when they hear some low rumbling coming from afar.

It must be some kind of collapse, destruction or even explosion.

Looking up by reflex, the two of them suddenly discover the skies ahead to have already turned grey and dull. The brilliant azure sky has suddenly been covered up by dust, smoke and other things.

Ding Yi is in shock, and murmurs, “wha-, what’s…”

Then a wave overcomes her and knocks her to the ground. It was some massive gust of wind. She hears the sound of many things crashing, knocking, falling around her. Her consciousness is drifting.

Then, she hears something next to her… It’s some kind of terrifying, indescribable, heavy squelch.

What?

Ding Yi turns her head around almost subconsciously, while her pupils narrow massively.

All the way until the Nightmare restarts, she can do nothing but stare at this scene burning her eyes, that she will most likely never forget for the rest of her life.

A giant piece of rubble flying through the sky from afar, has crashed and buried He Shujün under it alive. The lively young girl has perished in an instant without another word. Blood is flowing down to Ding Yi’s gradually.