Chapter 146 - 117: Visiting the Patient

Chapter 146: Chapter 117: Visiting the Patient

"You..."

He wanted to give her some advice, but looking at Huai Yu’s innocent and delicate face, she really seemed completely naive to the ways of the world. Forget it. There was no need to say anything.

For a young girl to hide herself so well while living by the Rose Corridor, she had to know exactly what she was doing. He even recalled the Ice Sculpture left behind by Lin Xuefeng—had he already known about the slight peculiarities she possessed? He should have been on guard, but Lin Xuefeng had already...

Looking at Huai Yu’s fluffy hair, he couldn’t help but smile. In certain moments, they had both chosen to protect her.

After a thought, he reached out and patted her head. "It’s fine. I have a large sum of compensation money coming my way. When I recover, I’ll take you to the market. Towels, basins, buckets—I’ll buy you whatever you need."

Huai Yu thought about it and agreed with a bright smile.

But she still had one question to ask. "Why... why are you being so good to me? Even offering me your belongings..."

"About that..." Zhou Qian leaned back against the hospital bed, a rare, faint smile appearing on his face. "I don’t have anyone else to care for.

"My comrades are brothers-in-arms, but they can take care of themselves. Being in the military so much, I don’t really have any friends on the outside anymore.

"As for my family... you should know. The boss is so gossipy, he must have mentioned it to you, right? I’m not a qualified soldier. Six years ago, I violated regulations and almost got someone killed. Now, six years later..."

He turned his hands over and over, staring at them with an inexplicably relaxed expression. "I know no one blames me, but if I didn’t risk it all, I would never have been able to find peace."

He looked at Huai Yu with an inexplicable gentleness. "My younger sister loved planting flowers. Her biggest wish used to be buying a house with a garden so she could plant all the flowers she liked.

"But housing prices in Flower City were too high, and we could never fulfill that wish.

"She planted a lot at home and loved collecting different varieties. When the cataclysm first began, she had just received an Alien Spider Orchid that I had asked a friend to order from abroad.

"That orchid wasn’t actually expensive—just over a hundred dollars—but she bought too many flowers, so I told her it cost seven or eight hundred..."

They had depended entirely on each other. Zhou Ning always felt bad about him being in the military and was actually very frugal with her spending.

In the early stages of the cataclysm, no one thought it would be so serious; they only vaguely detected pollution levels in the air. Because of this, the city administration warned everyone to be wary of all plants in their homes. All the flowers in the entire building were temporarily moved to the rooftop terrace—after all, many flower enthusiasts couldn’t bear to throw them away. The only exception was the Alien Spider Orchid she had just unboxed, which couldn’t be exposed to the sun.

So...

"So," Zhou Qian looked at Huai Yu, his eyes revealing a faint nostalgia. "She was only a college freshman at the time. Actually, all the flowers placed on the roof didn’t cause any major issues. The only exception was the one she kept inside the house. The moment it mutated, it parasitized her."

A plant required a massive amount of nutrients the moment it parasitized a host. She died the very second it latched onto her, but her limbs were still being controlled.

"The correct protocol would have been to dispose of her on the spot, but I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t want to admit she was dead. I kept feeling like our lives had some kind of plot armor—

"I wanted to take her to the Wilderness."

Huai Yu listened silently, only curious about one thing at this moment. "Did the Rose Corridor exist back then?"

"No," Zhou Qian shook his head. "The Rose Corridor only grew a year after the cataclysm started. So, do you understand? I restrained it and hid it for a year."

Over that year, Zhou Ning’s body gradually withered, but he still clung to a sliver of desperate hope.

It just so happened that the Rose Corridor divided the Wilderness and Flower City. The Wilderness was filled with large numbers of mutated plants that had either been expelled or chose to remain there. Zhou Qian planned to take her away...

"But the Rose Corridor won’t let any threat pass.

"At the time, I was like a madman carrying a bomb. I really had gone mad. Even knowing that Zhou Ning was already dead, I still insisted on taking her to the Wilderness. My teammates noticed something was wrong and intercepted me along the way, but they almost ended up being parasitized themselves..."

Zhou Qian looked at Huai Yu. Even though there was still a placid smile on his face, every word he spoke carried a heavy weight. "The Rose Corridor stopped me, and it stopped the mutated Alien Spider Orchid. It strangled that mutated plant to death, and then buried Zhou Ning deep underground..."