Haidu: Top of the Tower

Chapter 2 Wings Folded
No, it's okay—it's okay, Mommy's still breathing.

When Milady put her finger between Idan's nose, but she didn't know if there was any heat, she almost fell to the ground in fright; but she looked around and came up with an idea, and hurriedly picked up a piece of shattered light from the ground. Blue crystal, put it under mother's nose.

In the few seconds that seemed to last as long as a year, a white steam floated shallowly on the crystal plate, like a hallucination, fleeting.

The world suddenly became clear and stable again, and light and color returned to Milady's field of vision.

She threw the crystal piece away, hugged her mother, and dragged her towards the trail.She didn't know where the nearest decontamination point was, and who was cleaning the decontamination, so she could only call for help repeatedly; her voice echoed among the undulating light blue icebergs, and was blown far away by the sea wind .

The sea breeze never brought anyone's response.

"Mom, did you hear my voice?" Milady didn't dare to look at Edan, who was unconscious, but she could feel her mother's body was surprisingly heavy—not just heavy; It even made her think of a cloth bag containing iron pieces.

Suppressing trembling and tears, Milady turned away her thoughts.She said in a trembling voice, "I'll take you out right now, if you persist for a while...I'll find someone to see you right away."

On the winding artificial path, Milady dragged her mother half-carrying, dragging her body slumped on her shoulders, and moved towards the entrance of the crystal pollution zone step by step.

She walked this road for 10 minutes when she came here, but now it seems that it will never end.

Her hoarse cries for help echoed in the air, and her heavy panting occupied her ears, as if Milady was the only one breathing; walking on the road that turned and turned, but was still leading people into the depths of crystallization, she Suspected that he was having a long, absurd nightmare.

When she finally took her mother out of the crystal pollution zone, her memory and perception seemed to be washed away by tears and became blurred and shaking fragments.Vaguely, a few strangers came up to her, "What's wrong?" "Is it crystal disease?" Questions like Milady fell on Milady one after another, but she couldn't find a voice to respond. The fire is burning.

"They are members of the Gaota family," a middle-aged woman quickly ordered after Itami was carried into an emergency care shed, "Find the sub-organs of the Gaota family and untie them quickly!"

Another young man rummaged through several boxes for a while, and took out the communication sub-organ of the Gaota family: a round box about half the thickness of a palm.

This is one of the extremely developed and diverse means of communication in Haidu. As soon as the sub-organ is unlocked, it will take the message or small items on its body and fly straight to the location of the parent agency following the signal-wait for it to return to the emergency When he was in the nursing shed, he was brought back by the doctor of the Gaota family.

At least, that's how the middle-aged woman comforted Milady.

"Itami is usually so healthy, maybe it's just anemia." She repeated to Milady, "We don't have enough conditions here, just wait, the doctor will be here..."

In a daze and bewilderment, Milady raised her head in a daze, realizing who she was.She was a good friend my mother made when she came here to clean up the pollution, a nurse who was arranged outside the pollution zone, and she had been a guest at home several times.

"Hai... Aunt Hailan?" She whispered, "My mother, clean up..."

"It doesn't look like crystal disease." Hai Lan immediately understood her unspoken worry, "I checked, and there is no crystal on her body."

Milady wondered if this was good news.

"You are from the Gaota family." Hailan was obviously trying to find words to comfort her. "The doctor hired by the Gaota family must have better medical skills, and they must be able to see what's going on..."

Milady vaguely thought of the small clinic where her mother would line up to see a doctor occasionally when her mother was unwell.There is always a light that is not on, and the room is dark and cool, with a smell that belongs to the old people at the bottom of Haidu all the year round.Even the smell is full of urgency and fear: I look down on better doctors, so I have to desperately hope that this one in front of me can relieve my pain.

Milady didn't know who the doctor of the Gaota family was, because they had never had the qualifications to call a family doctor if they wanted to.

"The news from the crystal belt should make them send a family doctor," Hai Lan seemed to see her thoughts, and said softly, "After all, they should take care of the clean-up families in the clan... In Hailan Unwritten rule."

"Yes, yes, they are responsible," Milady found her voice trembling as soon as she began.

She was taken aback by the panic and weakness she showed, subconsciously stopped talking, and pressed her lips tightly—she had never been so flustered before; even when she was a child, she found that the mechanism borrowed from the clan suddenly disappeared When I was there, I never panicked.

Hailan pulled a chair and sat down beside her.

On the makeshift hospital bed, Yidan was still lying motionless, his complexion was more livid and frightening than before, and even his lips were dark purple.Even with her hands on her mother's chest, Milady could hardly feel the rise and fall.

After realizing that Yidan seemed to have a breathing problem, Hailan installed a small mechanism for her to forcefully dilate her throat to allow air to flow into her trachea more smoothly.It’s just that Milady still needs to be very focused, so that she can feel that there really is a thin air that seems to be about to dissipate, flowing through her mother’s nasal cavity and chest very slowly and with great effort.

"Perhaps she is tired of cleaning up," murmured Milady, as if she were praying.

"It's possible. What does the pollution have to do with Itami? These families really... well, they work together." Hailan looked at her friend, her voice was tight, as if it was squeezed out of her throat.

The sudden four words had already made Milady understand what she was referring to.

The several families that make up the Wave Concerto are not equal.

Everyone knows that, including the Gaota family, the so-called "Arkana Movement" old families that were once glorious in history but have long since fallen, are now able to re-squeeze into the Sea Wave Concerto, and even get a share of Haidu's business. The right to operate is all thanks to the nod of the trial family.

The uncrowned king of Haidu, the Judgment Family, has always ruled Haidu alone: ​​every commander of Haidu in the past hundred years has come from the Judgment Family.

It's just that in the past ten years, their smooth and stable rule has finally been overshadowed by the increasingly serious crystal pollution.Every time the crystallization zone invaded by one meter, the layers of reactions and endless questions aroused by the people were like a turbulent undercurrent, bumping and shaking the trial family like a small boat on the top of the water.

Faced with uncontrollable public anger, the trial family simply restarted the historical "Sea Wave Concerto" model: It is very simple, when the old family that has lost power and decline, after the patriarch is selected through the "Prosperity Reappearance Trial", the patriarchs They will be welcomed into the "Sea Wave Concerto", and while gaining status, business rights, and political power, they will also be allocated a large pollution zone.

The patriarch of Gaota—and several other family patriarchs—divided the clean-up zone into many small areas, and then allocated them to lower-ranking members of the family. He did not touch it at all.

"I don't care what they do, but cleaning up the pollution is dangerous and hard work. After my mother recovers, I will never let her come again." Milady said in a low voice, "The big deal is, let's move to Chang'an, or go to sea to find a small island The village... I'm already this big, I can call the shots."

She steadied the trembling breath in her throat.

"Yes, it's a good idea." Hailan nodded.She seemed to want to let Milady relax through small talk. After thinking about it, she asked again: "Are you seventeen this year? In another year, you will also be old enough to participate in the trials."

Milady stared at her mother and said absently, "Yes. They won't ask me to cooperate. I'm not good enough."

"Will the current patriarch continue to compete next time?"

"No, he is getting old, and his son will go next year."

Milady's answer seemed to be entirely determined by her throat, lips and tongue, and her mind was in a trance, only floating in the air. "Anyway, no matter how many trials Hai held, the position of patriarch will always belong to their family, and I don't care."

Hailan nodded again.There were not many topics she could find.

"When it's autumn, you can—"

"Why hasn't the family doctor come?" Milady felt something snap in her body, and this kind of small talk suddenly made her unbearable. "How long has it been?"

Hai Lan looked up at the clock, paused, and said, "The clock may be slow."

She lowered her head to look at her friend on the hospital bed, and said, "At this time...there are many locomotives on the road. Don't worry, I'll feed her some brandy."

Milady was clear-eyed, and suddenly stood up.

After the patriarch's family received the notification, the family doctor should have been sent over immediately. According to the time, the doctor should have arrived long ago.Is it because the person in charge of communication at the patriarch's family was negligent and didn't take it to heart, or was the doctor unwilling to come at all?
Both feet were clearly on the ground, but Milady felt that the one or two steps she took as she approached the hospital bed would cause her to fall into the cliff if she was not careful.Enduring waves of fear, she bent down and looked at her mother carefully for a while.

Through the mechanism covering Idan's face, Milady could clearly hear the urgent, feeble gasp in her throat, hoarse and sharp, as if Idan's windpipe was struggling in vain to cry for help-this would be What disease?

Milady closed her eyes, and desperately searched her not-so-abundant disease knowledge, but she couldn't find a disease with the same symptoms as Itami at this time.

Even Hailan admitted defeat. "I don't understand either," she said softly, "how can she be so hard to breathe... She has no other underlying diseases."

Difficulty breathing... These four words kept spinning in Milady's mind.

Mom is definitely not tired, she just wants to comfort herself, but she is not stupid enough to believe in self-comfort.She still remembers the strange feeling of a sack full of iron when she carried her mother on her back...

"I'm going to a place," the words slipped out of her mouth suddenly, making Hailan startled.

"Where are you going? Do you have to go now?" Hailan looked worriedly at her friend and then at her friend's daughter. She wanted to say something she hadn't said, as if she was hovering under a thin cover, and she was about to put it into practice. When she was speaking, she pressed it back again and changed it to: "Don't go, or when your mother wakes up, you won't be here..."

"If mom wakes up, let her wait for me for a while." Milady turned around from the hospital bed, and walked step by step to the door of the emergency care shed.Her legs were so stiff that she looked down to make sure they hadn't crystallized. "If she... also ask her to wait for me for a while."

This is obviously impossible.

All the children in the world know that their parents will leave one day; but all the children in the world feel that their parents will always be there.

When Milady ran wildly among the light blue crystal icebergs, she completely forgot to take less breath.

She inhaled the scorching air near the crystal into her chest; her footsteps hit the path quickly, and she jumped over the broken bridge, her palms directly pressed on the blue crystal, supporting it Crossing the shortcut, I had long forgotten that it was the crystallization of pollution that would cause disease, not ordinary mountain rocks.

If she doesn't run wildly like lifeless, she can't help being afraid.Only when the skin on her cheeks were so painful from the wind, she felt a little better.

It only took her twenty minutes from rushing into the Crystal Mountain to the time she rushed out of the pollution zone like a whirlwind and strode towards the emergency care shed. When looking at Hai Lan, who was staring at her neck, her heart sank.

As soon as she saw Milady's shadow, Hailan's worry and reproach almost turned into reality; she rushed forward a few steps, and was about to open her mouth, but Milady cut off the conversation first: "She is still alive ?"

She worried about missing something in her absence, and Milady knew that.

Hai Lan was taken aback, caught off guard by the question. "Still breathing. But it's getting weaker and weaker, I'm worried..."

After all, she was not as decisive as Milady, and she still did not dare to put the reality into her mouth.

Hailan's eyes turned in her arms, and he was puzzled. "what is this?"

"You'll know it when you look at it," Milady didn't have time to explain, and hurried past her into the nursing shed, and rushed to Yidan who was on the hospital bed—she wasn't surprised at all, there was no doctor in the shed.

She had never thought that such a heavy color could appear on a human face.

Hailan stood at the entrance of the nursing shed, was it because she had to wait for her return, or did she not dare to look at her mother anymore?
Milady took a deep breath; and at the same time it occurred to her that her mother could not do such a simple thing at this moment.

Since she was sitting by the bed waiting for the doctor, she had been tossing and turning, observing and thinking about Itami's symptoms.Thinking of the end, there was only one doubt left in her heart, which rolled bigger and heavier like a snowball, rumbling against her mind.

"Mom," Milady softly comforted Itan, who was barely breathing, "I haven't told you what this mechanism I won can do. Let me demonstrate it to you now, okay?"

Hailan, who followed her into the shed, slowly sat down on the chair with her arms tightly held.

Milady raised the square gray organ with both hands.When it fell on the trail in the pollution zone, it was fortunately not damaged; according to the guidance of the uncle Chang'an, she pointed the bottom of the mechanism vertically at Yidan's chest, and turned on the light beam—several pale lights fell on him immediately. On Itami, disappearing under her skin.

"Look," she said as calmly as possible, "the beam it casts can pass through barriers... the end of the beam will sense objects behind the barrier..."

In order not to let the trembling hands affect the operation of the mechanism, Milady pressed her hands on the mechanism so hard that her nails turned white from the force.

If it can penetrate the barrier formed by leather, it may also penetrate human skin and muscle.

She was very grateful that Hailan just watched silently without questioning what she was doing.

Just like at the "New Mechanism Promotion Conference", the mechanism also swam around Itami a few times.The middle-aged uncle said that even if there are more than one objects behind the barrier, they will be projected at the same time... Milady never thought that one day she would peek into the appearance of a human body, and she didn't know the shape of organs. , but fortunately Hailan is a nurse, she will know.

Perhaps because the human body is much more complicated than all other barriers, Milady has been holding the mechanism and walking for nearly 10 minutes. It was not until sweat began to appear on her forehead that she finally saw the white light beam retracting into the mechanism, and then An image jumped up from above.

Hailan suddenly stood up from the chair. "This... this is..."

"Mom," Milady didn't look at the image in mid-air, but called Itan first. "Look, it can reproduce the image of objects behind the barrier... It can even be used for human internal organs, isn't it amazing? I won it, if only you saw it at that time."

Hailan stared at the image, walked over with a bit of staggering footsteps, pointed to the human body organs floating in mid-air, and whispered: "This is her heart... The image doesn't move, does it? The heart isn't beating... ...This is her stomach and kidneys, they should be fine..."

Her gaze turned several times on the internal organs, and then stayed in one place.

Milady followed her gaze and landed on the two images—they were on Idan's chest, on both sides of the trachea, like a pair of folded angel wings.

Even if she doesn't know the structure of the human body, she can see it.

Although the other organs are also images condensed by shadows, light lines, folds and channels can still be seen, and the texture looks thick and soft.

Only these two folded wings are not of such texture.

If you look carefully, you can still see their straight edges and corners; the blood that should have flowed through the organs has faded away from them, leaving a pair of crystallized, shallow, hard, Indifferent crystalline lungs.

Accompanied by her daughter and friends, Itami finally stopped her struggling to breathe at eleven o'clock that night.

(End of this chapter)