Once We Lived in Nanjing

She groped along the internal wall, half walking, half swimming in the chest-deep water, allowing the current to carry her forward. As a southern city, Nanjing boasts a complex and extensive underground sewage system. In the post-apocalyptic era, this vast sewer system was backfilled with seawater, turning it into a perilous subterranean river. It wouldn't be surprising to find sharks patrolling amidst the algae growing on the riverbed.

Not knowing how long she had been soaked in water, Ban Xia finally felt a ladder.

She seized the opportunity to climb, hauling her waterlogged body up step by step, mustering all her strength to push open the manhole cover overhead, and flopped onto the ground like a pile of mush.

After all that, she could no longer move.

All her limbs had lost any sense of control; she couldn't move a single finger. Ban Xia lay there drenched and limp, unable to open her eyes, breathing faintly like a waterlogged sponge. Seawater flowed from her mouth and nose, forming a small stream beneath her chin. It was hard to imagine she had ingested so much water, the girl coughed and coughed, starting to vomit, spewing out nothing but water.

She should make contact with Super Space-Time Communications as soon as possible.

But could her handheld radio still function after being submerged?

Not just the radio, everything was soaked…

Where am I...

The girl thought fuzzily, with her consciousness blurring more and more until she finally passed out.

Super Space-Time Communications went offline during the moment of eluding the "big eyes" chase, the command center knew something was wrong.

It was a serious incident.

Just at the critical moment of escape, communication was lost; it was lethal, not only for Super Space-Time Communications but also for the lives at the command center.

"Lost contact?" Lian Qiao exclaimed, abruptly stopping.

"What's the cause?" Bai Yang asked.

"We're not sure, it's chaos here at the command center, we're urgently troubleshooting," Dad replied on the phone, "Hope we didn't run into a ghost... Old Wang! Old Wang, where the hell are all your scumbag friends? Summon them all! Full channel search!"

"What the hell are you calling scumbag friends?" Wang Ning cursed in the background noise.

"Dog meat friends!" Bai Zhen corrected.

"That's drinking buddies, dammit!" Wang Ning retorted, "You're the one with drinking buddies! I'm making contact!"

No one knew why Super Space-Time Communications had suddenly gone offline, the biggest possibility was colliding with the "big eyes," but it was an outcome no one dared to contemplate.

Twenty years later, the command center could do very little; they could only struggle with all their might, using every means to restore communication.

Zhao Bowen silently prayed in his heart, hoping the loss of contact was merely due to a sudden frequency jump. Super Space-Time Communications depends on the Hei Yue's stretching of time and space, and the mechanism itself is not necessarily stable. If Hei Yue's state changed, then Super Space-Time Communications' frequency might have jumped to another band.

Please, let there not be an accident.

In the agonizingly long radio silence, Zhao Bowen and everyone else repeated this sentence in their hearts.

Ban Xia was awakened by the cold.

She didn't know how long she had been unconscious, but when she came to, all she felt was cold. Her entire body was soaked by the sea, and the wind blowing after nightfall could rapidly steal away her body's warmth. She needed to find warmth quickly or suffer from hypothermia.

Apart from the cold, there was pain. There wasn't a single part of her body that didn't ache. Ban Xia shivered as she peeled off her drenched clothing. Turning over made her groan in pain, so she could only take off a bit at a time, lying on the ground to rest in between, until all the damp clothes were stripped off and discarded on the ground.

Where was this place?

The girl lay on the ground, panting. Looking up, she couldn't see the night sky – every grab brought a handful of broken bricks and rubble.

Ban Xia had completely lost her sense of direction. She didn't know where she was; previously, she had been swept away in the pitch-black sewer, carried wherever the water flowed, with no idea of north, south, east, or west.

Where was this?

Ban Xia propped herself up, trying to stand straight, and exclaimed "Ouch" as she did.

She had bumped her head.

She rubbed her head and reached upwards, touching a thick concrete beam.

The concrete beam was just above her, touching her head as soon as she raised it. Feeling around, to the east was a toppled wall, to the west protruding rebar – all weighing down over her. With bricks scattered all around her, Ban Xia roughly understood her environment: this was a pile of ruins, beneath a collapsed building, and she had just emerged from a well opening under the rubble. Above her head lay millions of tons of reinforced concrete from the high-rise.

Ban Xia now knew where she was.

Life Insurance Square.

She remembered that opposite the Nanjing Library, Life Insurance Square had a huge pit due to severe damage. The Qinhuai District's most damaged site was here, where the entire building had collapsed, leaving only a great expanse of ruins.

So, she hadn't gone far; Life Insurance was just next to the Super Space-Time Square, only three to four hundred meters away.

The walkie-talkie was still clipped on her backpack strap. Ban Xia pulled it out, shook off the water, and twisted the knob, but there was no response.

It was supposed to be waterproof, but even waterproof things fail sometimes.

She shook her head and put the walkie-talkie back.

Half of the backpack was filled with water. She turned it upside down and shook it, letting the water "swoosh" out, then put everything back in, knowing without looking that they were all soaked beyond recognition. Ban Xia, sitting naked in the dark, gathered her sopping wet hair and tried to wring it out but stopped, taken aback.

Her hair was shorter.

It was cut shorter, her hair which used to reach her back now only stretched to her shoulders. Another touch confirmed the ends were neatly cut straight across.

What had happened? When had her hair been cut?

Ban Xia was puzzled. She twisted her short hair dry, then scooped up the dry dust to rub over her body, covering herself head to toe, vigorously rubbing her frozen hands and feet.

Knowing her location made things easier; she could crawl back if necessary. Resting until she regained some strength, Ban Xia dragged her backpack and climbed out from beneath the ruins, just as the moon peeked out. The silver moonlight illuminated a large shallow pit in the square right in front of the girl – it was indeed Life Insurance Square.

The Big Eyes creature wasn't nearby, which allowed Ban Xia to breathe a sigh of relief. At this time, it should be back in Xinjiekou, right?

The girl, covered in mud, lugged her dripping bag, barefoot on the hard debris, limping across the large pit. No one knew when this pit had formed, and the perpetrator that created it was still buried in the ground, burned black, over a meter tall – most likely the wreckage of a crashed fighter jet or an unexploded aerial bomb.

Ban Xia didn't give it a second glance. Nanjing City was filled with pits of various sizes – foxholes dug during battle, craters from bomb blasts, impact holes from plane crashes, all shapes and sizes – in this world, two-legged people were hard to find, but holes on the ground were aplenty.

Her teacher once warned her not to approach these things recklessly, as unexploded ordnance was unstable, and it could explode at any time.

The ground was littered with broken glass, cutting her feet and leaving them bloody, but Ban Xia didn't feel the pain much. She fought her way out of the pit, nearly tripped by a ball halfway through.

Ban Xia, oh Ban Xia, are you really the protagonist's fate?

Ban Xia said inwardly.

If this is what being a protagonist is, then the author is truly despicable.