Chapter 53: Cheers to the Extinction of Humanity

Shang Lu subconsciously wanted to agree immediately.

Shen Jiang was not always so breezy and generous, yet facing this man a few years younger than herself, a whimsical thought occasionally crossed her mind: Why did this kid's eyebrows and eyes look somewhat familiar? Had she met him somewhere before? She was clearly unable to recognize other people's faces, and even if she had truly met him, she wouldn't remember. But this vague, inexplicable familiarity was like a thin red thread crawling out of the darkness in the dead of night, winding back and forth in her heart.

This troubled Shen Jiang quite a bit. It was just like accidentally recalling a fragment of a cartoon she had watched in childhood, or the lyrics and tune of a song she had once heard—vague and elusive. You couldn't even tell whether it genuinely existed or had merely been seen in a dream, which made her want to scratch her head in frustration. Shen Jiang would turn off the light, lie in bed, and toss and turn in thought. The more elusive it was, the more she wanted to untangle the threads, which kept her awake at night.

Therefore, Shen Jiang invited Shang Lu to dinner every single day, observing him closely during the meals.

Shang Lu: "Leader, why are you staring at me?"

Shen Jiang: "Supervisor, tell me, have we met before?"

Shang Lu lowered his head to shovel in his rice: "We have."

Shen Jiang was startled: "When?"

Shang Lu: "Yesterday."

Shen Jiang's face fell: "I mean a long, long time ago."

Shang Lu: "Yesterday was also a long, long time ago. Not seeing each other for a day feels like three autumns. Speaking of which, I haven't seen you in three years, and I've missed you terribly."

Shen Jiang could do nothing against such nonsense from Shang Lu.

Perhaps their astrological signs conflicted and they were natural enemies; whenever these two got together, they were bound to bickering. Strictly speaking, Shen Jiang was a few years older than Shang Lu, yet not a single bit of her age advantage showed. She sometimes wanted to put on the airs of an older sister and a leader to suppress him, but her composure would break within three sentences.

Shang Lu's status as a stationed support engineer was truly obnoxious. In terms of personnel relations, he still belonged to the Science City, while operationally he was under the dual leadership of the Chengdu-Sichuan Institute and the Base Chief Designer. There was a whole stack of people who could give orders to Shang Lu, but they conveniently did not include Shen Jiang. The latter held the empty title of a division-rank giant mecha pilot, but in reality, she couldn't command even a single dog.

"Fine, I won't lower myself to your level. What big scenes has your older sister here not witnessed?" Shen Jiang turned around, held up three fingers, and waved them in front of Shang Lu's eyes. "Even angels, I've taken down three of them. I've been through the gates of hell three times in and out; the King of Hell himself shivers when he sees me. Strictly speaking, everyone in the world owes me three lives, including you—"

"I shall repay your great kindness and virtue in my next life," Shang Lu said.

"Then you'll have to reincarnate three times to repay me," Shen Jiang said with beaming delight, as if she had finally gained the upper hand. "In the next life, the life after that, and the life after the next."

After dinner, the two strolled back slowly.

"Walk along this path ahead, and further up is the old office building of the Mechanical Materials Institute. It moved away last year, relocated to the rear," Shen Jiang said, walking under the streetlamp and pointing forward with her chin. "Now the building is empty, pretty much abandoned, and can only be used as a warehouse."

"Can we sleep there tonight?" Shang Lu asked.

Shen Jiang turned her head and glanced at him. "We can, but the temperature is low at night, so you'll have to build a fire."

"Will the inspection team arrest me?" Shang Lu asked.

Shen Jiang snatched the white safety helmet from his hand and clapped it back onto Shang Lu's head. "You can try to muffle your way through."

"Disguise myself as an inspector?"

"No, disguise yourself as Tang Di," Shen Jiang said. "Supervisor, if you're fast enough, when the inspection team tries to catch you, you can run away while looking back and shouting that you are Director 1047 of the 110 Workshop Accounting Office. Once you shout that, shake them off. Anyway, the terrain in the base is complex, and the inspectors often fail to catch people."

"My humble self is frail and sickly, not skilled at running, and I will definitely not outrun the inspectors. The result of attempting to escape will be a criticism bulletin broadcasted across the entire base tomorrow morning, plus disciplinary action," Shang Lu shook his head. "Unless you can stay and build a fire with me. You're the leader, the inspectors wouldn't dare do anything to you."

He had just said it casually, but to his surprise, Shen Jiang thought about it with her hands behind her back, turned her face slightly, and said, "Alright."

The old Mechanical Materials Institute was a small white building with mottled and peeling exterior walls, only three stories high, nestled at the foot of the mountain. Unattended for over a year since its abandonment, the surrounding lawn quickly grew lush with thriving weeds that reached an adult's waist. As the two passed by on the road, they peered inside through a row of glass windows, but everything was pitch black.

The weeds and shrubs of late withered autumn were parched. Shang Lu gathered a large handful, folded them repeatedly, and piled them on the concrete floor of the building's porch. Shen Jiang took out a lighter and ignited them—she didn't even smoke, yet she carried a lighter with her.

Bright flames leaped up, and Shen Jiang happily added firewood to the fire. Building a fire outside was a novelty to her; if not for Shang Lu's sudden whim, she would never have thought of it. Coughing to avoid the thick smoke, Shang Lu swept the floor with some dry grass, used his backpack as a cushion for his seat, and found a spot to sit down.

"Back at the Science City, we often built our own fires to roast sweet potatoes," Shang Lu gazed at the crackling campfire, the warm firelight flickering across his face. "We always got off work at three in the morning. Everyone else was asleep, and after working all day we were starving, so we'd ask the kitchen for a huge bag of sweet potatoes and roast them downstairs in the dead of night."

"What did you use to make the fire?" Shen Jiang asked.

"Whatever we could burn," Shang Lu said. "Discarded materials, logs, dismantled wooden tables and chairs—as long as it could catch fire."

"Didn't the Science City care?"

"They cared. If you got caught, you'd get a bulletin of criticism. We got criticized several times," Shang Lu said. "The institute director looked at us in heartbreak and asked if we were starving ghosts reincarnated, or if we were short of that one bite to eat. He asked if pigs were supposed to eat the sweet potatoes we burned. He even named and criticized us at the Science City's safety production meeting, stating that the Chengdu-Sichuan Institute's RCBI team had violated fire safety regulations by secretly roasting sweet potatoes within the park."

"And then?"

"Then the other teams also learned how to secretly roast sweet potatoes."

Shen Jiang burst out laughing.

The fire burned brighter and brighter. The dry grass and shrubs burned quickly, and every few minutes Shang Lu had to go pluck more dry wood. Soon, he had completely cleared out all the burnable stuff in a large circle around the porch. Shen Jiang sat cross-legged with her chin propped in her hands, watching him add wood with an air of profound composure.

"Life at the Science City isn't as interesting as you imagine," Shang Lu said. "Like I said, it's a place where the suicide rate exceeds seventy in ten thousand. For a long time, I heard news of people jumping from buildings or hanging themselves every single day. If you ask which place in contemporary human society has the highest pressure, it's bound to be the Science City. Many people become psychologically distorted and neurotic under heavy pressure... It's a good thing the Science City doesn't research nuclear weapons, otherwise someone definitely would have detonated them to take everyone down together."

"So the future of humanity actually rests in the hands of a bunch of lunatics," Shen Jiang said.

Shang Lu looked at Shen Jiang across the fire, nodded, and said, "Yes."

Shen Jiang stretched out her legs, leaned against a pillar, rested her head on her hands, and sighed, "This world is really small."

"The Sichuan Basin has an area of 250,000 square kilometers."

"But it's still just a bathtub," Shen Jiang shook her head. "I'm hungry. Is there anything to eat?"

"No food, but there's something to drink." Shang Lu pulled two cans of soda from his backpack. "Leftovers from dinner tonight, do you want them?"

"Yes." Shen Jiang took one, twisted off the cap, took a sip, and extended the hand holding the soda. "Here, cheers."

Shang Lu clinked his can against hers.

"May humanity perish soon," Shen Jiang smiled.

Shang Lu was slightly stunned.

"When all of humanity is wiped out and I'm the only one left in the whole world, I'll drive the Red Lotus to Antarctica all by myself," Shen Jiang said. "Then I'll stand at the South Pole, facing the endless white ice sheet, and just look into the distance, keeping my gaze fixed right there."

"Looking at what?" Shang Lu asked.

"Looking at the distance," Shen Jiang said.

Shang Lu took a sip of his soda, nodded, and then raised his can again: "Alright, may humanity perish soon."

"Cheers!"