Chapter Three: Riding the Wind

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Qian An’s hand moved instinctively toward her waist, then froze.

There was another person behind her.

No one knew when they had come close; at most they were only two meters away now.

What kind of speed enhancement was that?

Qian An gave up on drawing her gun and said instead, “I was just out for an early morning run. I’m a purifier.”

She raised one hand and extended the other, displaying the blue purifier badge tied to her wrist in the beam of light.

The light in front dipped slightly.

Qian An’s awareness of the person behind her vanished. In front of her, a tall figure approached in the same direction as the beam, sounding surprised. “Doctor Xiao Qi?”

That voice eased the tension in Qian An’s nerves, and she, too, felt a little startled. “Captain Yu?”

This Captain Yu landed without a sound; it was obvious she had been the one who had slipped silently behind Qian An just now.

She stood a full two heads taller than Qian An, with thick, bristling short hair, a slightly dark complexion, and sharply defined features. At first glance she looked like a man, but the voice made it unmistakable that she was a woman.

Beside her stood a man holding a flashlight and a gun, equally long-limbed and upright. His brows were refined, his eyes exquisite, his lips pale as petals, so strikingly handsome that even the flashlight’s beam seemed dull beside him.

These were precisely the subjects of the trending event Qian An had scrolled through half the night before: Captain Yu Shuang of Wind-Rider Team Two, and her deputy, Zhao Bohan.

Meeting them here was truly unexpected. Qian An glanced again at the fire and saw that several yellow sheets of paper were burning in a basin. She immediately understood.

Burning paper offerings, said to be an ancient form of remembrance before the apocalypse.

Seeing Qian An look at the brazier, Yu Shuang did not hide anything, only gave an awkward laugh. “Sorry, Doctor Xiao Qi. It’s dark as pitch, and we both kind of fell back on occupational habit.”

Qian An hurriedly said she understood.

She knew Yu Shuang; in fact, one could say that within the entire base, Yu Shuang was one of the most important people to her.

Yu Shuang had an A-rated bodily enhancement, with speed enhancement reaching 8, a true elite warrior. Zhao Bohan, meanwhile, was said to possess the rare balance of physical and mental enhancement, with both ratings at B.

Yu Shuang and every member of Wind-Rider Team Two except Zhao Bohan were regular patrons of Qian An’s purification room.

Though they knew one another, the night was deep, the misunderstanding awkward, and the three of them standing in the cold wind made for a rather uncomfortable scene.

After hesitating for a moment, Qian An walked over as well and picked up a small stack of thin paper. On closer inspection, she found it was ordinary office A4 paper dyed yellow...

She vaguely felt that the yellow paper burned for the dead before the apocalypse probably had not been made this way, but Qian An kept her expression unchanged and tossed the paper into the brazier.

“May they rest in peace,” she said softly.

Yu Shuang raised one thick brow, then said sincerely, “Thank you.”

Seeing this, Zhao Bohan also offered his thanks, his pistol already holstered.

The three of them crouched around the brazier in a triangle, the atmosphere much eased. Qian An hesitated once more, then finally asked the question she had been thinking about for a long time the night before:

“I’m going to transfer into emergency purification. Will Team Two need to add members later? Do you need a dedicated purifier?”

After those words, silence fell.

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After a long moment, Yu Shuang said in disbelief, “Doctor Xiao Qi means that you want to come to our team as a purifier?”

Qian An nodded seriously.

Zhao Bohan’s gaze skimmed over her purifier badge and landed on the “7” in the mental enhancement column. He pressed his lips together and said nothing.

Yu Shuang looked at Qian An again to confirm. “Not Wind-Rider Team, but Wind-Rider Team Two?”

“Yes.”

Again there was silence. Yu Shuang stuffed both hands into her hair, as though sorting through her thoughts. After a long while, she finally said:

“Today I heard you say this, and I almost thought it was Brother Zhou and the others’ spirits manifesting.

“But there are two problems here!”

She held up two fingers. “First, how would we even make it work for you to join our team as a purifier?

“Before, when our roster was full at nine people, we still didn’t have a purifier. It was always Old Zhao; his mental enhancement was 5, so we only used him as a half-purifier at best!

“And even then, Teams Three and Four were green with envy!

“Second, Doctor Xiao Qi, why do you want to come to our team at all? Haven’t you heard about the lawsuit between us and Team One? The captain of Team One, Zhou Yang—that bastard—his aunt is the logistics minister of the Army Defense Force! His own blood aunt!”

Qian An was not frightened.

After listening in from the corners of the hospital to the purifiers’ gossip day after day, after gathering a little network of connections, after scrolling through her phone until half the night, she knew Zhou Yang’s aunt was indeed the logistics minister, named Liu Hui, a woman of high rank and great authority.

Qian An looked at the two people before her and simply threw the question back at them. “I know about Team One’s backing, and I also have some idea how to transfer into your team.

“It’s just that my evaluation from above is not low. If I go to your team, there’s a good chance you won’t get any further additions of team members.

“The difficulty of your missions afterward may also increase.”

With a precious professional emergency purifier, the odds of surviving the battlefield would rise dramatically, and Wind-Rider Team Two’s weight within the whole army would no longer be the same.

They would become the only ultra-elite special operations unit, and the difficulty of their missions would be unlike anything before.

And then there was the feud with Team One.

It was obvious that Team Two had lost the lawsuit. Had they completely backed down? Would they still dare to expand their strength under Team One’s nose?

Yu Shuang and Zhao Bohan exchanged a look, both falling silent for a moment.

Qian An knew her question had force; their silence made her heart sink a little.

But after a moment, Yu Shuang smiled.

“Ah, Doctor Xiao Qi, the way you put that makes it sound like asking whether a soldier wants to become a general.

“Harder missions mean more chances to earn merits; greater strength means we can stomp those cowards and parasites hard beneath our feet!

“Who wouldn’t want that?”

When she said “become a general,” Yu Shuang’s eyes shone and her smile gleamed bright. But when she said “cowards and parasites,” she ground her teeth, and Qian An thought of the dull rasp of some beast sharpening its claws.

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Qian An could not help shifting back a little, but she also curved her lips.

Team Two had not backed down.

Qian An still remembered that after the great battle on February 9, every surviving member of Team Two had a dangerously high contamination level. Yu Shuang had been sent to her.

The contamination was too high, the emotional fluctuations too severe, and Qian An had been forced to perform a deep purification on her.

The term “deep purification” was one Qian An herself had coined; she had never heard any other purifier mention it.

During deep purification, she could see the memories of the person being purified.

Those intense emotional memories, and those important memories buried deep in the subconscious that even they had forgotten, which shaped their personalities, all appeared in Qian An’s mind as if she had lived through them herself when their minds resonated.

That day on the battlefield, before Team One withdrew, they threw a miniature pulse bomb into Team Two’s position, destroying all their electronic equipment.

Originally Team One had been arrogant and at odds with Team Two, and the leadership had forcibly thrown the two teams together for a joint mission in the name of easing tensions.

Team Two had been on guard. From the moment they discovered that contaminated group, to the discussion with Team One over whether to fight, to the two teams’ tactical planning and the battlefield’s progress, Zhao Bohan had recorded everything on video.

When Yu Shuang came to be purified, apart from grief and indignation, she kept thinking about whether the memory card storing the video could be repaired.

Judging from the court’s verdict, it probably had not been repaired, or only partially so.

But from the fact that neither of them now seemed particularly afraid, perhaps they still had something in reserve.

Qian An stood up. “Then it’s settled. The transfer paperwork won’t be handled until tomorrow. I’ll go back and write the application now.

“I can’t promise it’ll definitely succeed, but I’ll do my utmost to try to join Team Two.”

She extended her hand to Yu Shuang and smiled. “I hope that by tomorrow I’ll truly be able to call Captain Yu ‘Captain’!”

After shaking hands with both of them, Qian An continued her morning run.

By then the sky had already begun to brighten faintly, but Qian An was heading west, her small figure gradually swallowed by the morning mist.

Yu Shuang and Zhao Bohan both seemed a little dazed.

“It feels like a dream,” Yu Shuang murmured.

But Zhao Bohan said, “Did she choose to join our team to repay you?”

If Yu Shuang had had soda in her mouth, she would have sprayed it several feet away. “Repay what kind of favor?”

“You and Tang Long both boasted at the dinner table that three years ago you found a very young purifier with enormous potential out in the wild, and brought her back to the base.

“For that, each of you received a third-class commendation.

“That purifier was Doctor Xiao Qi, wasn’t she?”