Xianglan’s Pain and Wishes

That memory held only a single image, a moment perfectly frozen in time.

Ominous clouds pressed in heavily from the distant horizon. The sun, as if unable to bear witness to the hellish spectacle unfolding below, retreated behind thick white clouds, casting down only a few reluctant shafts of light.

Across a city spanning millions of meters, fierce beasts shrieked in the sky and roared across the land. They were countless, overwhelming, and unceasing.

The entire city trembled and wailed.

Skyscrapers crumbled into ruin, combat aircraft plummeted from the sky, and tanks and armored vehicles were crushed and exploded. Strange rays, flames, and lightning ravaged the urban landscape.

People screamed and fled. Beasts rampaged and slaughtered.

The world seemed to collapse in that instant.

On that day, the apocalypse of the pre-human era was replayed.

Captain Xianglan stood before a collapsed building, gripping her long spear. She watched silently as the Man knelt on the ground, his eyes devoid of light.

His head then slumped powerlessly, as if his soul had been ripped away, leaving only an empty shell.

Within that shell, only despair remained.

Not a flicker of life could be seen.

Around them, the fierce beasts continued their rampage, and people still wailed. The guard squad suffered heavy casualties, their shattered bodies barely holding on.

Yet, in Captain Xianglan’s memory, the world seemed to shrink, encompassing only two people.

Her and the Man.

All the surrounding despair and suffering were irrelevant to her; her gaze was fixed solely on the Man’s despair, and his desperate, lifeless form.

The very ground of survival had to be carved out through brutal combat.

Humanity’s counterattack against the fierce beasts had ignited their fury, and so the beast tide came.

The catastrophe descended.

Each time this image surfaced, each time she recalled the Man’s desperate face, Captain Xianglan was overwhelmed by an unbearable agony.

Just like now.

She opened her mouth, a silent scream trapped within. Only broken, guttural sounds, ‘Uh-ah, uh-ah,’ escaped her lips.

It was as if she had lost her voice.

The illusory dream suddenly felt real. The deep-sea water pressed down on her, heavy and suffocating, as if to bind her, rendering her immobile.

But that frozen image was etched into her mind, refusing to fade.

The pain buried deep within her heart surged forth like a flood, engulfing her, choking her.

She struggled desperately, pushing forward with immense difficulty. She yearned to break free from the ocean’s grasp, to escape the torment, to rise to the surface and breathe deeply.

Her father, the Man, had received her as a baby from her mother’s hands, buried beneath the ruins of a beast-infested city.

He had watched helplessly as fierce beasts crawled over the rubble of his home, and rolling stones entombed the woman he loved most.

From that moment on, he vowed to raise the child his beloved had left him. His plan was to return to their original home with his grown daughter, to visit her.

A researcher by profession, he plunged into his work with a fervent madness to see his beloved again. He poured the better part of his life’s efforts into the research and development of armored suits.

His experiments met with one success after another. Returning home each day, he would tell his daughter about his breakthroughs, about her mother, eagerly anticipating the day he could take his daughter back to see his beloved.

The nation was transformed by the armor he developed. Highly mobile guard squads gradually took shape, and humanity’s potential expanded endlessly.

Finally, the time was ripe. The nation decided to reclaim the lost cities and, at the same time, help him return to his original home.

He embarked on the conquest with unwavering confidence, bringing his daughter along as they advanced with the main forces.

The results were promising. They reclaimed city after city, establishing one base city after another.

They were soon to reach the city where his beloved resided.

However, the fierce beasts underwent an unexpected transformation.

No one could have imagined that while they huddled, struggling for survival in the world’s forgotten corners, the beasts outside had awakened an organizational consciousness, and leaders had begun to emerge among them.

Thus, the great slaughter began.

People who had just reclaimed their lost territories, before they even had a chance to rejoice, were met with an unprecedented, organized assault from the fierce beasts.

City after city began to fall. The survivors dwindled, the nation’s population plummeted, and the vitality cultivated over decades gradually depleted.

It was an unprecedented catastrophe, a bloody, tear-soaked attempt by humanity to reclaim its place at the top of the food chain.

The fierce beasts, with their unmatched power, re-established their dominance, once again forcing humanity back into the shadows.

Captain Xianglan’s father, the Man, fell into despair when the last reclaimed city was lost.

After that, his eyes forever lost their light, unable to see hope again.

He had poured half his life into this effort, only to fail.

The power of the fierce beasts was so immense, his research so laughable.

Yet, everything he had done was merely to see his beloved again.

The one he had often neglected due to his busy work, the one who had always stayed by his side through countless moments of physical and mental exhaustion.

The one he owed his entire life to, his most beloved.

He was consumed by guilt. He yearned to see her again, to find a peaceful resting place for her, to plant an endless sea of flowers to accompany her.

Then he would live beside the flower sea, watching sunrises and sunsets each day, seeing his daughter grow up and marry, and beneath the vast starry sky, he would miss his beloved.

However, everything was shattered. This simplest of wishes seemed to offend the gods themselves; fate would not permit it.

He despaired.

From then on, he became listless and withdrawn, isolating himself, no longer communicating with others. Life lost all its color.

Captain Xianglan had grown up watching her father pour his heart and soul into his work. She had grown up listening day and night to his hopes and his longing for his beloved. She had been shaped by her father’s influence.

The Man had once endured immense setbacks, but he had persevered, doing his best to show her a sunny smile.

He had once been incredibly confident, vibrant, witty, and gentle, yet also steadfast and reliable, illuminating her life for half a lifetime.

Now, only despair filled his eyes.

His life was nothing but despair.

He was no longer confident, no longer vibrant, no longer full of laughter and lively conversation. Instead, he suffered from a disease called despair, sitting on a hospital bed, gazing at the sunlight streaming through the window, his eyes devoid of light, filled only with desolation.

He was no longer the father who always made time for his daughter, no longer the man she remembered. He became dejected, no longer communicating with her.

Pain, a suffocating, unbearable pain.

Captain Xianglan struggled fiercely, power surging through her body to break free from the ocean’s shackles.

Her father was still waiting for her; she had to save the Man. She wanted to see light return to his eyes, to see them filled with hope once more.

Tears of agony streamed from her eyes, her body felt crushed by the water, on the verge of shattering. The pain robbed her of her voice, yet her strength began to surge endlessly.

Infinite blue starlight erupted from her body. Filled with boundless power, she slowly, step by step, broke free from the ocean’s hold, ascending towards the surface.

Suddenly, an endless white light appeared before her, warmly engulfing her.

The white light vanished, and in a daze, she saw shattered stones, her broken armor, and her bruised body.

She had returned to reality.