All the way back to Bai Ling's temporary residence in the Hub District, Talulah kept those two inhibitor injectors clenched in her hand—like she was holding hope itself.
Bai Ling, meanwhile, wasn't thinking that deeply.
He just wanted to get back and drink a couple bottles of soda.
Even though he could return to the Dijiang now, he had no intention of doing so. He'd asked Qin Jiangchi to reserve him a place in the Hub District instead—near the communications station, and very close to the Integrated Industrial Core.
The apartment wasn't big: a living room with a kitchenette, one bedroom, one bathroom, no balcony.
Chen Qianyu, Little Penguin, and Perlica had gone to coordinate the resource situation. Only Bai Ling and Talulah were here.
Talulah sat on the couch, silent for a long time.
The Valley Corridor had dumped too much information on her at once. She needed time to process.
Oripathy wasn't truly beyond saving.
The infected weren't fated to die in misery.
The world… could have a gentle solution.
If this medicine could be brought back to Terra…Or rather—if she could learn its composition, and why it worked like this…
The material differences between the two worlds were almost negligible.
And this world even had symbols she recognized.
Yan. Or, here, what was called the Hongshan Academy of Sciences.
Talulah didn't know the exact relationship, but she was certain: there was one.
"Want something to drink?" Bai Ling asked.
He opened the fridge, casually pulled out a bottle of soda, and turned his head toward the gray-haired girl still lost in a storm of thoughts.
"Anything that's not too cold," Talulah said.
"Then have what I'm having."
He took out a second bottle, shut the fridge, sat down beside her, adjusted his posture—and set the soda on the coffee table in front of her.
Talulah didn't stand on ceremony. She picked it up and took two bold gulps.
The carbonation prickled in her throat, and her expression flickered with surprise.
She'd been raised as a noble. Things like this were practically forbidden.
It was usually water or tea. She didn't like alcohol, so she never drank it.
But sweet fizzy drinks had a way of making people happy—Talulah wasn't an exception.
"Ha…"
She drained half the bottle in one go, exhaled, and the heavy gloom on her face loosened. Even her brow relaxed.
"…So," Bai Ling asked, capping his own bottle and holding it without drinking, "what are you thinking about?"
It was a habit of his: don't eat or drink while someone's talking. If they say something lethal, whatever's in your mouth becomes the weapon that kills you socially.
"This world is… incredibly gentle to the infected," Talulah said.
She tugged up the sleeve on her arm.
On her pale, flawless wrist sat a black Originium crystal—like a blooming rose—its energy fluctuations unmistakable.
Talulah hadn't originally been infected.
She had chosen to become infected—just to buy time—so that after she came of age, she could personally deliver a "gift" to her adoptive father.
His physical death.
Even while fleeing across the tundra, she could still hear his voice. Still feel it tempting her, coaxing her, trying to make her accept him.
A joke.
The moment she escaped that place, she would never accept him.
The education she'd been given was poisonous and deranged—brimming with aristocratic arrogance, the horror of power, the obsession with domination.
In Ursus, the infected weren't people. They were cargo—batch after batch.
Who gave them the right to decide that?
The newly adult Talulah didn't know. She only knew this: if she wanted truth and direction, she had to escape—and she had to live.
But the endless snowfields nearly broke her. She couldn't see even a sliver of dawn, a sliver of hope.
Until—
She arrived here.
Power restored her to her peak, and she unconsciously followed someone's expectations: destroy the rift in the sky, crush the monsters on the ground.
Here, she had time.
Time to heal her mind.
She didn't know how long she could stay, but… even a little while was better than none.
"…It's not that this world is gentle to the infected," Bai Ling said, setting his soda down and staring up at the white ceiling. "It's that in this world, 'wanting to live' is allowed."
"You're right." Talulah didn't deny it.
Ursus was a nation that ate people. For the infected, wanting to live wasn't permitted.
From the roots, it severed every road an infected person could walk—just like it had done to her.
From the day she willingly became infected, everything she had in Ursus was slowly stripped away. Even with Kashchey's concealment, the moment she dared reveal she was infected, she would be met with the entire world's malice.
But she'd chosen this path. She had nothing to complain about.
"Ursus is a rotten country," Talulah said lightly. "Even in a world that's generally hostile to the infected… it still manages to stand out."
She turned to Bai Ling, her eyes glinting with something hard to name.
"A country ruled by brutes and evil—where everything is treated as consumable, where expansion is built on endless oppression."
"You seem to know it well," Bai Ling said.
"I wouldn't say 'know,'" he replied. "I just know a place like it."
He stopped there. Talulah didn't force him. She simply took another sip of soda.
"I don't know when you'll return," Bai Ling said, "but I have two things I want to tell you."
"Watch your refuge on the tundra. Not everyone longs for order. Your mercy may be repaid with a butcher's blade—if you don't want your best friend to fall under that blade."
"And while you're fleeing across the Ursus tundra, there are countless mines where the infected are being abused. You need to find a child named Yelena. She'll be your greatest help."
Talulah nodded, committing the words to memory.
She picked up the two inhibitor injectors again.
After a long silence, she finally spoke.
"I need help, Bai Ling."
"I've been waiting for you to say that," he said.
....
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