This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 127: Finding Something and Returning Home

"I'll go." said Tan Xuan.

Before anyone else could speak, he asked, "Are you better at finding things than me?"

Everyone was silent.

"So I'll go." Tan Xuan said with a smile.

"But, radiation sickness..." Tang Hui raised her voice.

"Do we have any choice?" Tan Xuan asked back. Perhaps because he had made a decision, his expression relaxed and his shifty temperament faded. "We are here, and we are destined to get radiation sickness. But even if we don't get it now, we will still get sick if the mission succeeds. If the mission fails, we will be killed by the Golden Angel."

"It's also possible that he got sick after the mission was successful and was killed by the Golden Angel..." Yun Bowen whispered.

Nie Weiyang pressed the butt of his gun against his face, forcing him to bow his head and apologize silently. But this didn't even shake the army's morale; after all, these were things everyone knew, and the threat of death also fell on Yun Bowen.

Xilia sat silently beside Nie Weiyang, holding the nuclear bomb. She sobbed softly, death approaching this strange child prematurely. Liu Qiuxian hugged her tightly, gently asking if she was okay—but Xilia only whispered, "Sister Jiang Meng... is dead. They're all dead, so many people... and I'm dying too."

Liu Qiuxian lowered his head silently and gently caressed Xilia's hair.

“We will all die one day,” she said softly. “When a door opens, it’s not about ignoring it or closing it—it’s about how we walk toward it.”

"Yeah, I told you!" Tan Xuan laughed. "Captain, if there's no problem, then it's settled then?"

Nie Weiyang narrowed his eyes quietly, staring at Tan Xuan. Was it suspicion? Worry? Melancholy? Sadness? No one could tell what he was thinking. After a long pause, he said, "That's settled."

He turned around and said to the people beside him, "Eat something. We still have to go on the road tomorrow."

Tom and Liu Qiuxuan silently got up to cook. This time, the food conditions were not so good, so they could only dissolve the compressed biscuits in water and drink it as porridge.

Xilia cried for a while longer, until Nie Weiyang took the nuclear bomb from her arms. She hugged her calves with both hands, resting her face on her knees, and stared at the baby-sized source of destruction with her red eyes.

After a while, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Captain... I won't cry again," she said.

"It's okay to cry. There's no one else here." Nie Weiyang said. He didn't look at Xiliya, nor at Tan Xuan who was packing his equipment against a rock not far away. He just said: "Crying is human instinct. A person's life is from nothing to something, from crying to understanding the meaning of crying.

"If this were a peaceful time, you would learn a lot along the way. You would understand why we laugh, why we cry, why we laugh at others' laughter and cry at others' sorrow..."

"I've never seen peace," Xilia whispered. "I was born after the Golden Night. My parents came here for a trip and conceived me on that Golden Night. They couldn't go back, so they died shortly after giving birth to me. That's what the instructors said."

Nie Weiyang didn't say that he had no parents, but smiled.

"This proves they love you," he said. "A baby can't survive on its own. You're still here today because they protected you in the beginning...isn't that right?"

Xilia was stunned. She looked up at Nie Weiyang, who had already stood up to survey his surroundings. Silently, she touched her chest, her fingers moving lower. The sound of her heartbeat echoed with the blood of her parents. She sat there blankly, as if she were thinking about a lot, yet also as if she was thinking about nothing.

……

Tan Xuan died in great pain. He was only wearing an undershirt and handed something to Nie Weiyang. It was a core wrapped in a combat suit, with a small instrument embedded in it. Nie Weiyang took them out; both items still had water stains on them.

"The radioactive dust may not penetrate them deeply, so I washed them with water, which should at least... cough... make them safer." Tan Xuan said with a smile, coughing violently as he spoke, vomiting large amounts of blood and fragments of completely destroyed internal organs. "I feel like my lungs are melting, and so are my bones. My blood has become very heavy... Stay away from me, I'm a radiation source. Oh, or you can stay closer to me..."

His irises gradually became blurry, turning grayish-white, and then his entire eyeball became a blur. His bones softened, his flesh becoming like a pool of mud. His mumbling voice became increasingly garbled, neurological dysfunction rendering it unrecognizable. His chaotic voice began to mumble, and gradually even the mumbling disappeared, just as his facial features began to become unlike his own. Soon, he closed his eyes, then struggled to keep them open, staring intently in the direction of Nie Weiyang.

Nie Weiyang squatted not far from him, looking down at him. The sunlight shining through the dark clouds outlined the figure. Tan Xuan's blind eyes seemed to be looking at something distant through this scene. After a while, he realized that the scene two days ago when he returned home appeared in his mind.

In that strange, deserted home, he sat at the door as he had done when he was a child, lying in the place where his relatives had died. At that time, he tilted his head to look at the crack in the door, expecting someone to come in like his relatives, but no one did.

Always no.

This is a fact, just like he just remembered now that his captain actually has no white hair.

Tan Xuan began to laugh. He died laughing.

No one knew what he was laughing at, including Nie Weiyang.

After this, everyone continued on their journey. But one day, upon waking, Nie Weiyang discovered Wenjun dead. Severe radiation sickness had caused his genes to collapse, quickly killing him. Then came Tom Payne and Liu Qiuxian, who perished in battle. Before dying, the former shouted to Nie Weiyang in his native tongue, "You will succeed!" The latter smiled gently, "I'm going to find him, Captain. I wish you victory."

Tang Hui died under the attack of the Golden Angels. Her old injuries ultimately affected her movements. Before she died, she stared intently in the direction of Nie Weiyang until he and his men disappeared into the distance. Only then did she gradually close her eyes.

"I wish you success..." she whispered.

That was her last voice.

However, in just half a month, only Gong Hanchuan, Xilia and Yun Bowen were still moving forward together.

Along the way, they also met people from other teams, most of whom were dead, and a small number were half-dead. Only two broken teams said hello to Nie Weiyang and others, and then continued to move forward, each carrying their own nuclear bomb.

A month later, the four people, who were so dirty that they looked unrecognizable as human beings, crossed a mountain.

They saw the sky in the distance.

It was a huge crack, under which sat a giant tower reaching into the clouds. Beneath it, a complex of buildings like golden mountains spread in all directions, with an endless stream of golden angels floating out from them.

The sky was broken, and the haze came from this - the automatic weather adjustment function had long been ineffective on that cloudy day.

The four of them gazed at the sky. It was a gentle, pale golden hue, occasionally punctuated by hues of brown and white. Its hues were so tranquil and beautiful, juxtaposing with the golden earth. A warm yellow enveloped the world, evoking memories of home and hometown.

"Huh." Nie Weiyang let out a light breath.

"It's quite cozy. Let me take a rest..." he said. "Tomorrow, I will go and die with them."

　A copy will be released tomorrow!

　　I can't help but want to write that the second administrator is doing something wrong in the enemy's lair x
　　Also, it seems like today is the last day of the month-end sprint monthly ticket event?
　　If you are interested, could you please vote for it? Thank you very much!!!

　　If you don't have it, I won't force it. I'm very happy if you are willing to read my article.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)