All of these things that were strange, should not have happened, and exceeded the limits of human understanding and science combined, giving An Zhe a certain impression—just like wax being melted by fire, the world was gradually blending together.
Xi Bei returned to the living room. He dumbly sat on the floor and picked up Grandfather's body, lifting it from the chair before getting far away from that place with Grandfather, as though the chair was the most frightening monster, as though in the very next moment this body would be one with the chair. After getting far away from the chair, he put Grandfather on the floor, but the muscles in his cheek immediately twitched with nervousness—after all, the floor was a monster, too.
He gave a start and suddenly took a few rapid steps backward, for his own existence was also a source of contamination.
Seeing his panic-stricken and helpless appearance, An Zhe stepped forward, but just as he took one step, Xi Bei looked at him with terrified eyes and retreated a few steps.
Supposing everything in the world would pollute each other, then only by staying far away from everything would one be able to preserve oneself.
An Zhe could understand his fear, and he distanced himself, unbidden, from Xi Bei again.
"Sorry, I…" Xi Bei's teeth chattered. "I have to… calm down a bit."
Lu Feng led An Zhe into the bedroom.
After stepping into the bedroom and seeing the flowing chandelier once more, he stopped in his tracks. An Zhe looked at the Colonel and saw that his green eyes seemed to have frozen over.
The next moment, Lu Feng took out his communicator from his coat pocket and held it tightly, his knuckles white.
An Zhe simply watched from the side. Xi Bei had already fallen apart, and as a human, he knew that Lu Feng's state would not be much better than Xi Bei's. In fact, the Colonel had experienced even more things than Xi Bei. While enduring the fear brought about by this mad world, he still needed to think about the distant human base.
He needed to stay strong, for the human base if for no one else.
If the engines in the plane had broken down due to the mutual contamination of substances, the communicator would as well. There was a screwdriver in the drawer of the bedroom nightstand. Lu Feng picked it up and loosened the screws on the communicator's chassis.
The chassis, intricately lined chips, crisscrossing circuits, and countless small parts were laid out on the bed. Lu Feng picked them up one at a time and examined their minute structures in the light.
The communicator had many parts. After looking for a while, An Zhe also picked up a few components with relatively simple structures from amongst the pile of parts and checked whether they conformed to the clear-cut standards of humankind's machinery.
After closing the bedroom door, it seemed like only the two of them were left in the world. Neither of them spoke. In the rain, apart from the sounds of them going through the parts, nothing could be heard. Lu Feng's speed was very fast; those parts seemed all very normal.
But An Zhe was suddenly stunned.
He looked at a small chip board in his hand. Upon it were two parallel red copper wires, both consisting of several dozen strands of fine copper wire twisted together. They originally should have been parallel to each other, with a few millimeters of distance in between. But now they were all loosened up and bent into strange arcs. The two copper wires had gotten close to each other and were mixed together, which was definitely not ordinary.
At this moment, at least for a brief moment, An Zhe suddenly thought that if even the communicator was thoroughly broken due to the distortion of matter, if Lu Feng could never return to the base, what would they do?
But he was not such an evil mushroom.
As he looked at the chip in his hand, he bit his lip. Amidst the slight pain, in the end he still tugged on the edge of Lu Feng's sleeve.
On the inner side of Lu Feng's military boot, there was a hidden buckle, and tucked inside was a sharp dagger that was now removed. An Zhe lit the chip with a flashlight that had been taken from the mine, then watched Lu Feng pick apart the tangled copper wires with the tip of the dagger bit by bit. Signs of adhesion had already appeared between the copper wires, but fortunately it had been discovered in time, so they could still be separated.
When it was finally cleaned up, however, An Zhe's mental state was slightly strained. But he also felt a slight dizziness in his head, as though he were sick. Ever since the spore started showing signs of maturity, his body had weakened more and more.
Lu Feng examined the remaining parts one more time, then assembled them in the proper order and pressed the button to turn on the communicator.
But what came out was not the "I'm sorry, but due to the effects of the solar wind or the ionosphere, the signal has been interrupted…" that An Zhe was accustomed to.
"Beep—"
"Beep—"
"Beep—"
The rain got louder again. Thousands of big raindrops pelted the window like bullets, making ceaseless thudding noises. This was a rainstorm that would only occur in midsummer, and outside the window, it had become a gray waterfall.
The raindrops seemed to strike An Zhe's very soul.
In a trance, he vaguely heard the soft mechanical female voice come out of the communicator, but the dizziness became more severe. Before his eyes, the world turned into colorful lights—and in the following second, he pitched straight forward.
Before losing consciousness, he had only one thought.
I hope the spore won’t fall out so soon.