Chapter 195: Chapter 157: The Undying Flame and the Sky Dome Shieldl
Translator: 549690339
It was February, 2521.
Deep winter, extreme cold.
Heavy snow was falling, white fluff filled the sky, like drifting goose feathers.
Lanterns twined together.
The night was cold and quiet.
From time to time, fully armed disinfection vehicles passed by on the damp and quiet road, honking and driving along the icy and slippery ground, while anti-skid chains clanked on the pavement.
White fog followed the disinfecting truck, rising into the sky like a giant dragon turning over.
On the balconies of the residential buildings beside the road, red lanterns hung.
New Year’s had arrived.
In the midst of busyness and panic, with the help of continent-spanning walls and barbed wire, as well as the thousands of guards clad in isolation suits stationed atop the walls, humanity managed to welcome a rare peaceful New Year.
People hung up lanterns they didn’t have time to hang last year.
A family of three, dressed in rubber suits, adjusted their face masks and respirators as they stood on their balcony, lighting fireworks they didn’t have time to set off the year before.
Crack!
The fireworks exploded in the sky.
People started counting silently, their hearts extinguishing a few more of their own stars.
Those disappearing faces in memories, the gradually fading calls, the vows of determination and grit during times of self-encouragement, such complex emotions were like the fireworks in the sky, fleeting, leaving only courage to face the darkened night.
Singing resounded across the building.
It was Carrie Thomas’s “The Fire.”
In such a desolate and helpless moment, humanity sought brief peace, needing a song like this to ignite the flame within that refuses to be extinguished.
Yet on the other side of tranquility, countless people were still fighting on the front lines.
Re-entering their home, the family passed through a decontaminating mist corridor and turned on their communicator.
“Family communication request, waiting for response…”
Five minutes later, the call connected.
A woman, wrapped in a fully sealed isolation suit, appeared on screen.
Her clothing resembled a wetsuit, complete with a glass dome over her head.
Despite the automatic ventilation system, she was still sweating profusely.
She was a nurse fighting on the front line, and she had five minutes of rest and communication time.
She worked at the 626 Isolation Treatment Center Hospital located on the edge of the quarantine zone, about 1,300 kilometers from this city.
The hospital covered nearly 2,000 acres and was completely shielded with a Mars Base-grade Sky Dome Shield, making its protection virtually flawless and keeping the pathogen completely isolated outside the shield.
Here, tens of thousands of critically ill patients were treated; unable to be cured, their suffering was alleviated as much as possible, eased into a peaceful death.
She smiled at the camera, “Dad, Mom, little brother, you all doing okay?”
The family started talking, discussing their daily routines, encouraging each other, mentioning how someone lost a loved one or a nurse lost a comrade, and so on.
The conversation was sometimes dull and sometimes lively.
Having seen so much, people gradually became numb.
But this numbness did not signify weakness; instead, it revealed a newfound strength within each individual.
As the family continued chatting, frantic shouts suddenly pierced the background behind the nurse.
She turned her head and listened before turning back, her face pale.
“Mom, Dad, little brother! Leave now! Hurry up and go!”
The father in the family asked, “Where should we go?”
The nurse thought for a moment, then said, “Go deep into the continent, as far away from the isolation wall as you can!”
The mother asked, “Where is the endpoint? Should we come get you? What’s happening?”
“The S Bacteria have mutated again, they’ve evolved and can now use rats as hosts and spread through the rats’ breath in the air. Just now, we received news from the surveillance hospital in the hinterland that a seemingly uninfected residential area suddenly experienced a large-scale outbreak of illness. That hospital is even deeper into the safe zone than your residence! Even our central hospital’s residential area had a concentrated outbreak, caused by an infected rat. The leaders are currently screening the data from the central air conditioning system for signs of infection, and the results will be out soon. I don’t have time to explain more, you need to leave as soon as possible.”
Because of the S Bacteria’s extremely covert incubation period, early testing was difficult, and its infectiousness was terrifying. The method for screening patients now was quite crude.
Whether they had been exposed to infected air or not.
If yes, then they were definitely infected.
If no, then they were still safe.
The mother sobbed and shook her head, “No, we need to come get you.”
The nurse looked back at her family and slowly, yet firmly, said, “It’s already out of control, beyond help. There are too many rats on Earth. Although the conditions at the central hospital are good, it’s already become an isolated island in a short period of time, and we’ve lost our supply line. Coming here would mean certain death.”
As she spoke, the young nurse suddenly shuddered, as though she’d received some message.
“What’s wrong?”
Her family asked in quick succession.
She shook her head, “Nothing. Mom, Dad, you need to leave right now, or it might be too late. Once you’re in the rear, someone will find a solution. You have to survive, don’t let my sacrifice be in vain!”
Click!
She turned off the call and then walked back.
Through the intercom, she spoke to the head nurse: “Miss Brown, I’ve breathed in the infected air in the residential area. I’m confirmed to be infected and won’t hold on to any illusions of luck.”
Yes, once it was confirmed that you had breathed the infected air, it was as if a death sentence had been announced – you only had two months left to live.
On the other end of the intercom, there was a silence from the head nurse, Miss Brown.
Before long, the middle-aged woman’s voice finally answered, “Me too.”
She asked, “Miss Brown, what should we do?”Miss Brown thought for a few minutes and then initiated a hospital-wide broadcast, delivering the famous “626 Declaration.”
“We have no choice but to hold our ground! We cannot take off our isolation suits before we die! All infected medical staff should periodically go to the disinfection area to change their isolation suit power packs and filter compartments. Infected and uninfected personnel should eat and live separately starting now.”
“As long as we don’t remove our isolation suits, the bacteria cannot escape from them, and no more people will be infected! We can still move, so we can still work! In the intensive care unit, several patients show signs of improvement, which is unprecedented.”
“We must prove that our treatment plan can improve the survival rate of critical cases. Our hospital’s research results are crucial to humanity’s confidence in persevering! I will work, continue working until I cannot move, until we use up our last bullet. I hope all of you will join me! We, fight to the death!”
All the medical staff who heard this speech, both infected and uninfected, pledged their loyalty in unison.
“Fight to the death!”
The words of this nurse, known only as Sister Lin, whose name was not recorded in the history books, inspired all the medical staff and volunteers stationed at the border, the isolation zones, and everywhere in between.
Everyone roared in their hearts: “Fight to the death.”
The infected people no longer undressed; they wore only their battle armor and burned their last drop of blood.
Or, they charged out of the hospital, killing every visible mammal with the weapons in their hands, hoping to relieve the pressure on their comrades.
With no panic, the uninfected people remained quietly at their posts, doing their duty stoically.
A research institute was wiped out instantly due to an oversight.
Everyone had a countdown clock to the end of their lives ticking above their heads.
Strangely, no one panicked. Instead, they returned to the lab calmly and diligently to continue their research.
Even the tedious and meticulous process of collecting and analyzing samples became simple—just spit into a container for a large number of live samples.
In this quiet atmosphere, the research institute, with thousands of members, witnessed everyone’s journey through their last two months of life and provided a wealth of research references for future studies on why S Bacteria had become so monstrous.
Two months later, a fire blazed from the heart of the base, incinerating everything. It was ignited by the last researcher pressing the self-destruct button.
The war became even more brutal.
The S Bacteria humans faced once again became more ferocious, cunning, and difficult to defend against.
Later research showed that at that time, the carriers of the S Bacteria were not only limited to rats but all mammals!
What was even more appalling was that after the S Bacteria infected other mammals, although they would become ill, they would not die. Instead, they would become more aggressive and restless.
Bats could fly, rats could burrow, whales could cross the ocean, and high walls that once provided solid defense now served no purpose.
It was as if the bacteria were sentient, with the sole purpose of exterminating humanity.
Once again, humankind’s battle lines retreated.
Yet chaos did not ensue as expected; in such a devastating defeat, humanity remained orderly while continuously retreating.
When everyone realized that there was nowhere left to retreat, those who were infected did not panic but rather felt relieved.
Batch after batch of infected people abandoned their protective measures, left the ever-shrinking safe zones, and entered the ever-expanding isolation zones.
With the embers of their lives, they accomplished many things.
Manually digging isolation trenches and constructing canals.
Igniting the fire to create insulating barriers across the land.
Infected engineers returned to factories, recalibrated the slightly buggy automated systems, and set the autopilot to run indefinitely.
Infected assembly line workers, exhausted, returned to the automatically running enterprises, replaced half-depleted nuclear fission battery packs with new ones that could last for another 20 years.
Or they installed new solar panels, wiped rust off the machines, and applied fresh lubricant…
Teachers returned to abandoned schools, rummaging through desks to find final exam papers that had been prepared but not yet handed out to students.
Traffic police returned to their posts, informing the infected hunters driving around in search of mammals.
Then, having completed these familiar tasks, each of them picked up weapons, packed simple bags, and set off on the road of slaughter.
Sorry, Earth’s neighbors.
In the past, we protected you.
But now, we have no choice.
Human beings are always selfish.
If we had to choose between human extinction and the destruction of the Earth, everyone would, without a doubt, choose the latter option.
Countless heroes used the last two months of their lives to construct a lifeline between the isolation zones and the safe zones.
Another year passed, with winter giving way to spring.
In that year, humanity lost two-fifths of its population and a third of its territory.
Compared to the time before the catastrophe, only half of humanity and less than a third of the land remained.
But in the end, humankind held on, relying on the High Heat Insulation Belt that could melt rock.
The High Heat Insulation Belt ignited an inextinguishable flame in humanity.
New safe zones were established under the protection of the ultra-high Magnetic Field, stretching to the stratosphere.
The Magnetic Field propped up humanity’s last Sky Dome Shield.
Accompanied by the never-ending, heart-stirring “Morning Wind.”
Humanity continued to struggle in hibernation, hoping for a new life.
However, the objective situation had indeed become more dangerous.
Nearly eight billion people crowded into less than a third of the territory, causing a rapid increase in population density.
Once abundant resources and energy gradually became scarcer.
If the super bacteria mutated again during this time, given humanity’s current population density, it would truly spell the end.
However, after two years of retreating and enduring hardship, the willpower of those still alive had grown incredibly strong.
Humanity decided to fight back.
There was no choice but to find a solution before the super bacteria evolved again.
Otherwise, it will mean extinction!