Chapter 185

Chapter 185

The Base, Research Lab.

Secretary Tang stood with her eyes lowered, deep in thought.

A sudden commotion behind her broke her concentration.

“Professor Chen! Are you all right?”

The woman addressed as Professor Chen braced herself against a chair and slowly sat down. “I’m fine. Professor Gao, please don’t mind me… It’s an old problem.”

Secretary Tang looked over. The woman was in terrible shape. Her face was drawn, dark shadows lay beneath her eyes, and the anguish between her brows was especially pronounced.

She could tell that the woman wasn’t merely exhausted. Her grief had consumed her. If she kept forcing herself onward like this, she would quite literally torment herself to death.

Secretary Tang walked up to the screen and gave everyone a slight nod before turning her gaze back to Chen Minglan. She wore a gentle yet professionally distant smile, and her tone softened.

“Professor Chen, if I may offer my opinion.”

“In the apocalypse, staying alive… is the foundation of everything. If you collapse, even the deepest attachments will have nowhere left to reside.”

She stopped there, making no attempt to pry, though her concern was clear. As the person in charge of the Base, she had both a responsibility to speak and the discretion to know where to stop.

Chen Minglan stared at her, the hand hanging by her side curling slightly. After a long silence, she suddenly spoke, her voice as faint as a sigh.

“Do you have a child, Secretary Tang?”

The question came without warning.

Secretary Tang’s previously composed gaze froze.

Chen Minglan looked at her. “I did.”

“But now, I don’t.”

The desolation buried deep in her eyes made Secretary Tang’s heart plummet. Every word of advice she had yet to voice lodged in her throat.

She might have been able to tell anyone else, however cruelly, to keep living. But she could not say that to a mother-a mother who had lost her child.

The despair in Chen Minglan’s eyes was simply too profound.

“Do you think she died?”

Chen Minglan’s voice was as soft as a passing breeze, carrying endless bewilderment and sorrow.

“Yes, she died. She died protecting me.” She did not look at any of them. It was as though she were clinging to her final breath as she recounted the most painful memory buried in her heart. “But… after that, no one remembered her. Everyone said I escaped on my own. There was no trace of her in any records or anyone’s memories.”

“She… disappeared.”

“But I know she existed.”

Secretary Tang was stunned. So were the researchers around her.

After a long silence, Secretary Tang finally spoke.

She did not try to comfort Chen Minglan, nor did she say, “I believe you.” She merely asked, “What did she look like?”

It was a small gesture of profoundly restrained kindness beneath her shell of rationality-the most basic respect one mother could offer another.

The woman raised her head and looked at Secretary Tang, her eyes reddening. After a moment, she took a worn, repeatedly folded sheet of paper from her pocket and slowly unfolded it.

It was a hand-drawn portrait of a quiet-looking youth.

Young, composed, with a steely gaze.

“Her name was Qingshui.”

“My daughter.”

Secretary Tang studied the portrait for a long time before saying solemnly, “I’ll remember her.”

Those four simple words carried immeasurable weight for Chen Minglan.

It was as if the woman had finally found an outlet. Her taut nerves snapped, and her face twisted into an expression more painful than tears. Her eyes filled as her shoulders began to shake violently.

She had reported Qingshui’s existence countless times. It wasn’t that the state had refused to believe her. It was simply that every piece of evidence proved that no one named Qingshui had ever existed in this world.

Chen Minglan had long since gone numb, yet the girl’s eyes kept appearing in her dreams, clearer each time.

She remembered her face. She remembered her voice. She remembered the gaze that had always remained fixed on her.

She was utterly desperate.

Secretary Tang did not know whether Chen Minglan’s story was true. In this absurd apocalypse, any bizarre phenomenon was possible. But she could see that Chen Minglan simply needed an outlet-someone else who would remember Qingshui.

“My apologies. I’ll take her to rest.”

A cool female voice suddenly came through the video feed. On-screen, a tall, straight-backed woman in military uniform gave everyone a solemn nod.

She then strode into the room, gently but firmly helped Chen Minglan to her feet, and led her away.

Secretary Tang remained where she was, watching their retreating figures. Her fingertips twitched slightly, the hand-drawn portrait seemingly branded onto her retinas.

Qingshui.

She truly had committed the name to memory.