Chapter 252: Don't Leave

After Xie Qingcheng was received by the rescue team, he was immediately taken into emergency surgery, with every machine imaginable hooked up to sustain his vital signs.\n\nThis battle had claimed many lives.\n\nAnd yet, ironically, some people who deserved to die had survived.\n\nAnthony, freed from the mind-control device, along with the few surviving researchers on the island, had been captured by the Dream Breakers.

They were held on the aircraft and brought back, secretly detained pending interrogation.\n\nThe great warship could no longer be used—the Mandela explosion would have a massive impact on the surrounding waters.

Fortunately, there were enough aircraft on board to accommodate everyone for the return trip.\n\nAfter getting Xie Qingcheng settled on the plane, Zheng Jingfeng wiped away blood and tears, then hurriedly sought out Wei Er, the captain of the rescue team.\n\n"Eastern E-zone lab—when we fought our way through, we found a machine, about two meters tall and wide, so heavy it took four people just to move it.

I saw a lot of tags on that machine, all with names on them—Duan Wen, Jiang Liping, Huang Zhilong... many I didn't recognize.

I even saw your name and mine."\n\nWei Er, busy directing the evacuation, froze. "What is that thing?"\n\n"I don't know.

Have someone ship it back.

I'm very curious about what that machine was for."\n\nWith that, Zheng Jingfeng patted Wei Er on the shoulder, then, suppressing his grief, went off into the chaos to do whatever he could.\n\n.\n\nA few minutes later.\n\nOn the largest of the fighter jets, the Dream Breakers' medical team was fighting for every second to save Xie Qingcheng.\n\nThe high concentrations of RN-13 that had been injected into Xie Qingcheng's body so frequently over the past few months meant that, even after an attack of such ferocity, he still had some faint vital signs remaining.

The medical team sealed off the cabin lounge and was performing resuscitation at all costs.\n\nHe Yu couldn't go in.

He knew nothing of medicine, and going into the operating room would only make things more chaotic.

So he was made to sit outside the sealed cabin.\n\nThe moment the plane tore into the rolling clouds, He Yu turned his face, still smeared with unwashed blood, lowered his head, and looked out through the plane's window one last time at Mandela Island—the place that had birthed all that wickedness and conspiracy.\n\nTheir people had been gathered in the underground levels, their evacuation window severely compressed; the rescue aircraft had already climbed to high altitude.

Mandela Island had sunk completely into darkness, like a dead fruit growing on the surface of the sea, not even a match-head's worth of light remaining.\n\nYet, just a few seconds after He Yu's gaze fixed upon it, with a deafening, earth-splitting roar, a blinding flash of golden-red light burst forth from deep within Mandela's core.

The brilliance was so intense it forced one's eyes shut, and then it detonated with a blast that shook the heavens, engulfing everything around it in a furious, screaming sea of fire in an instant!\n\nFrom high above, in that moment, Mandela Island was like a black fruit blooming with a scarlet poppy.

Such a hideous thing, yet giving birth to such vivid, magnificent life.\n\nThick smoke billowed upward, and the spray it kicked up rose a thousand feet high.

The waters around Mandela surged and reversed from the explosion—raging fire and roaring water crashed into each other, tearing each other apart.

In an instant, angry waves towered as the island sank beneath them—Zhurong exhaling flame, Gonggong striking the mountain.

Firelight and giant waves were like two primordial axes cleaving heaven from earth, spraying forth terrifying force as they hacked and slashed at each other without mercy.\n\nAs Mandela Island sank, a colossal whirlpool formed on the sea's surface, as if some leviathan that had slumbered for a billion years was about to burst forth from the depths and ascend into the sky.

The roaring torrent of that vortex was more deafening than the waterfalls where the Five Great Lakes converge, the spectacle even more devastating.

In that instant, it seemed the entire world might be sucked into that enormous, constantly exploding, ferociously burning black hole, civilization itself seemingly destined to be buried within...\n\nHe Yu turned his gaze away.\n\nHe closed his eyes, hands folded, fingertips resting against his brow.\n\nFor every warrior who left that island, this was a perfect ending.

People on every plane should have been celebrating their victory.\n\nBut only on theirs was there deathly silence.\n\nHe was terrified—terrified that the one he loved, the one he hated, the one he couldn't let go of, the one who couldn't let go of him, would all come to a definitive end with the sinking of that island.

He hadn't saved his mother, and he had ruined Xie Qingcheng.\n\nHis mother was beyond saving.

That instant of awakened consciousness must have been a last flicker of lucidity twenty-three years past the thawing of the ice.

He was already consumed with guilt.\n\nAnd Xie Qingcheng...\n\nXie Qingcheng had broken him completely.\n\nBefore losing consciousness, Xie Qingcheng had been hurt by that word—"substitute." And yet he had still told He Yu he hoped he would keep going.\n\nHe understood that Xie Qingcheng wanted him to return to the normal world.\n\nBut what Xie Qingcheng didn't know was that, for him, he had already found his world.\n\nXie Qingcheng was his world—a world that no person, no illusion, could replace.\n\nHe had never truly loved the real Xie Xue, so of course he had been able to move on.\n\nBut now he had given all of his love to Xie Qingcheng.\n\nIf Xie Qingcheng became bones beneath the spring, he didn't know how to be a man above the soil.

He didn't know how to continue living, let alone love anyone else.\n\nIn this moment, He Yu understood that he truly no longer cared—he didn't care whether Xie Qingcheng cared only for him, whether he had once sacrificed himself for justice.

He had been so fixated on these things before, but now Xie Qingcheng was lying in that operating room with its closed doors, and he felt he didn't care about any of it anymore.

He didn't want to hold grudges over anything.\n\nFrom the moment Xie Qingcheng, drenched in blood, had refused to fight him even at the final edge of death, and instead choked out through sobs, "Let me untie you"—from that moment, he hadn't wanted to care about anything at all.\n\nWhat Xie Qingcheng had untied wasn't just his restraints, wasn't just the blood-gu curse.\n\nWhat he untied was the resentment in his heart.\n\nHis endless suffering.\n\nThe knot inside him.\n\nHe thought, as long as Xie Qingcheng survived this time, it didn't matter how...\n\nPlease...\n\nAs long as Xie Qingcheng lived.\n\nHe Yu's hands trembled.\n\nHe took out the paper rose pressed against his chest, stained crimson by Xie Qingcheng's blood, and he kissed it—like he had once kissed Xie Qingcheng's lips, kissed Xie Qingcheng's eyes...\n\nPlease, as long as he lives.\n\nIt wasn't until the plane landed that the cabin door finally opened.

But what it brought was not good news.

The doctors said Xie Qingcheng needed to be transferred to a major hospital immediately for a second surgery—he was being kept alive purely by machines, and his condition was anything but optimistic.\n\nIt was as if God hadn't heard He Yu's prayers.

As Xie Qingcheng was wheeled into the ambulance, all He Yu could see was a face so pale it was indistinguishable from a corpse.\n\nIn that instant, he felt he could barely stand.\n\n"How much hope is there?" He heard someone asking the doctor, voice breaking.

"How much hope is there?!"\n\nThat voice was so distorted.\n\nIt wasn't until Zheng Jingfeng grabbed hold of him and pulled him away from the doctor that he realized the one desperately gripping the doctor and losing control was himself.\n\nHe Yu seemed to have lost all sensation.

He felt his soul float up into the air, racing forward with that ambulance carrying Xie Qingcheng, with the spinning, screaming of its siren.\n\nHis soul once again became the boy he was at fourteen, chasing after Xie Qingcheng who was dragging his suitcase to leave, sobbing and shouting: "Xie Qingcheng!

Don't go... Can't you stay? Can't you stay with me? ...Dr. Xie... please, stay with me... please..."\n\n"Xiao He...

Xiao He?"\n\nAfter what felt like an eternity, another person's voice finally filtered into his ears, muffled and distant.\n\nHe Yu trembled, turned his dirt-streaked face, and looked at Zheng Jingfeng before him with bloodshot eyes, hot tears brimming, lips quivering.\n\nXie Qingcheng's condition was too dire—the ambulance couldn't hold anyone except emergency personnel.

Zheng Jingfeng had pulled the unresponsive He Yu into a police car, which was now following behind the ambulance, trailing it all the way to the hospital.\n\n"Xiao He, listen to me." Zheng Jingfeng's own mental state was terrible too, but he was more composed than He Yu.

He swallowed, gripping He Yu's hand as if trying to pass warmth and strength into him. "Listen to me.

You have to stay calm, you have to restrain yourself. Things are already this chaotic—you can't lose your mind now, understand?

Xie Qingcheng definitely wouldn't want to see you like this. We'll go to the hospital with him.

Calm down first..."\n\nHe freed one hand and kept patting He Yu's back.

"Calm down, child."\n\n"..." He Yu buried his face in his palms, clutching at his hair in agony.

After suppressing it for a long time, he finally erupted into a heartrending wail of grief—so distorted it sounded like a wild beast mortally wounded.

"Ah... ahhh!"\n\n"I killed him! Uncle, I killed him!" he screamed in anguish. "I killed him with my own hands! I drove the knife...

I drove the bayonet in! It was me!"\n\n"It was me who said 'substitute' to him... it was me who hurt him... it was me who killed him...!

At the very end... at the very end, he only thought I saw him as a substitute!! How devastated must he have been...!

That's why he put down his gun... I ruined him... I hurt him!

I killed him with my own hands!"\n\nZheng Jingfeng grabbed him hard, eyes reddening as well. "You weren't in your right mind then!

Do you understand?! He just wanted to save you!! He wanted to save you, and he wanted to save me too!

He wanted to save us!"\n\nHe Yu lifted his head, face streaked with tears and snot, staring at Zheng Jingfeng with a hollow, wooden gaze.

Just as Zheng Jingfeng thought he had gotten through to him, He Yu's Adam's apple bobbed, and he said something in a barely audible, hoarse whisper.\n\n"Then what about him..."\n\n"..."\n\n"Who's going to save him..."\n\n"..."\n\n"Who's going to save him!

Why has he never once thought of himself?! Why does he always think of others and never himself?!

Who's going to save him... who's going to save him!"\n\nZheng Jingfeng could hold back no longer.

He pulled the hysterical, screaming He Yu tightly into his arms, like a father comforting a child, like one survivor comforting another.\n\n"He's been like this since he was a child... you don't know... when he was little... he always wanted to be a police officer.

He said he thought the uniform looked cool, but I knew he wanted to be a good person who could help others... He's kind by nature.

No matter how many chances you give him, he'll always choose this way... Xiao He, you mean too much to him...

He could never just abandon you. You have to be well, understand?

You have to be well and wait for him to come out..."\n\nHe Yu was already sobbing so hard he couldn't breathe.

He stared out the window at the churning clouds in the sky, and through his gasping sobs, he suddenly remembered the words Xie Qingcheng had said while holding him at the very end.\n\nXie Qingcheng had said—\n\n"I've lost a lot of things, given up a lot of things, but...

I don't want to give up on you...

I've never given up on you..."\n\nHe remembered the blood-tears that had streamed from beneath the gauze as Xie Qingcheng spoke—\n\n"Don't think about those cruel words I once said to you... don't remember that I once wished you dead... and especially... don't remember... that I lied to you during the naval battle... okay?"\n\n"I didn't mean to."\n\n"I'm sorry...

I really didn't mean to then..."\n\nSuddenly, a flash of insight struck He Yu.

He gripped Zheng Jingfeng's hand, almost frantically, as if sensing the heavens themselves were about to collapse.

"Uncle Zheng..."\n\n"What is it?" Zheng Jingfeng straightened, wiping at his cloudy tears.\n\n"You—can you tell me about the Guangzhou naval battle three years ago?

The Huzhou Command Headquarters... The chief commander and the others always said it was classified and wouldn't tell me anything...

Please... Tell me, what really happened that day? Why did Xie-ge say he didn't mean it? Why did he say he didn't mean to deceive me?

Tell me, please?"\n\nHe Yu stared at him with wide eyes, so desperate, yet carrying a sliver of hope.\n\nZheng Jingfeng actually knew the whole story behind it.\n\nHe had always been a by-the-book officer, even rigidly so—and this was a Class-A classified file.

But...\n\nBut this time, he looked at the young man before him.\n\nHe thought of the inhuman things that had happened on Mandela Island.\n\nSuddenly, he didn't care about rules or regulations anymore.

Sometimes, in the face of certain things, rules could be broken.\n\nHuman life. Human dignity. The truth of things.

Those mattered more than anything.\n\nEven if he were held accountable—disciplined at his age, or even fired—he didn't care anymore.\n\nZheng Jingfeng pressed his dry lips tightly together, then spoke in a hoarse voice.\n\n"Alright..."\n\nhe said.\n\n"Calm yourself down, and I'll slowly tell you everything that happened that day, as recorded in the file."\n\n...\n\nThat conversation didn't take long—it was really quite simple.

Director Hu, having made certain sacrifices for the case, had used Xie Qingcheng's phone to send He Yu that message.\n\nXie Qingcheng had gone to the police station that day to cooperate with them, not because he had chosen Chen Man over He Yu.

It was precisely because he trusted He Yu and wanted to protect him that he went to the police station—to stop He Yu from making a mistake.\n\nZheng Jingfeng finished his account.\n\nSilence filled the police car.\n\nHe Yu had stopped crying.\n\nHe rested his head against the cold glass window, face pale, staring numbly at the sky over Huzhou outside the police car.\n\nFor a very, very long time... his lips still moved soundlessly, but no words would come out.\n\nThe sky was dark.\n\nSo dark...\n\nNot a single star.\n\nHe closed his eyes, and one last hot tear rolled silently down his cheek.\n\nXie Qingcheng.\n\nIt's my fault...

I shouldn't have been angry with you...

If I hadn't been angry with you... if I could have trusted you just once, if I could have told you everything sooner...\n\nWould you have told me everything too?\n\nXie Qingcheng...\n\nGe.\n\nI glued our little fire dragon back together.\n\nDid you ever see it?\n\nI never truly hated you...

I could never learn to truly hate you...\n\nDid you see it...\n\nDid you see my heart?\n\nI could never hate you.