C4 Despair in the Darkness

After what felt like an eternity, Gu Wenying's voice fell silent in the darkness, a realization settling in her heart.

"No, I don't want to die. I don't want to die here..."

The scent of blood in the air jolted her into action, and she mustered the strength to rise and assess her surroundings.

By feeling around, she discovered a solid blockage behind her, while the pile of rubble in front seemed more pliable.

With determination, she began to pry and pull at the loose fragments, stacking them behind her, hoping to carve a path to survival.

After shifting more than a dozen damp chunks of debris, she had advanced about half a meter when her hand brushed against something horrifyingly familiar—a bloodied hand.

"Ah!"

A scream escaped her lips as a chilling possibility crossed her mind. Steeling herself against the nausea and fear, she cautiously felt the mangled hand.

"It's Mom!"

The recognition came with the touch of a wedding ring on the bloodied hand—it was unmistakably her mother's.

"Mom! Mom, it's me, Ying!"

Her cries echoed in the oppressive silence, but her mother remained eerily still.

"Mom must be unconscious. Yes, that's got to be it."

She whispered reassurances to herself while attempting to remove the heavy chunks of wall pinning her mother's hand.

But the debris was immovable, tightly packed and heavy. Her hands bled, nails torn, yet she couldn't budge the rubble.

"Mom, oh, Mom!"

In the pitch black, she blew on her throbbing, torn fingernails, her sobs breaking the silence.

Her cries, no matter how heart-wrenching, were met with the same deathly stillness from her mother.

As time slowly slipped away, trapped in the dark rubble without food or water, the air growing ever more stale, she clung to her mother's hand, forcing herself to keep talking:

"Mom, the soldiers will be here soon. Just sleep a bit longer; you'll be safe when you wake up."

"Mom, I promise to eat properly from now on, no more fussiness, so I won't ever be this hungry again."

"Mom, there's a boy in my class who likes me. He even snuck some candies into my pencil case. What should I do?"

"Mom..."

"Mom..."

In the enveloping darkness, to quell the terror within her heart, she clutched her mother's mangled, bloody hand with both of hers, ceaselessly talking, ceaselessly calling out.

Yet, the increasingly icy grip of her mother's hand served as a grim reminder of a truth she was reluctant to face, a truth she was slowly coming to terms with.

Her mother... might have passed away.

Despite this realization, she couldn't bring herself to release her mother's bloodied hand. It was as if it were the sole lifeline bobbing on the ocean's surface for her, a drowning soul.

As time ticked away, the air grew thick and suffocating, the confined space increasingly oppressive with heat, drenching her in sweat.

Oxygen deprivation and dehydration slowly plunged her into a delirious nightmare, reminiscent of the feverish dreams of her childhood—stuck in a marsh, desperate for life, yet unable to find release in death.

This memory, deeply etched from her time beneath the rubble, haunted her for years to come, jolting her awake from countless nightmares where she found herself, dazed and confused, still trapped under the post-earthquake debris, clutching a bloodied arm, never having escaped.

As her consciousness began to wane, the pain in her hands fading, the ground beneath her suddenly tremored.

Then, a sliver of light appeared, followed by another, and soon, a myriad of beams pierced through a vast chasm, scattering the surrounding shadows.

Indeed, the massive chasm, the rubble from the buildings that once loomed overhead, the fallen walls and ceilings, the masses that weighed millions of tons, all seemed to defy gravity, lifting slowly, drifting away from the earth.

The light was streaming through the spaces between the floating wreckage.

Once her eyes grew accustomed to the brightness, she saw a towering figure not far in front of her.

He was a man in a military vest, his physique rivaling that of Schwarzenegger, imposing as a mountain.

An invisible force seemed to emanate from him, causing the air to warp and ripple in his presence.

His arms were raised, his posture reminiscent of a weightlifter or the mythic Pangu, who split heaven and earth, his limbs and muscles swollen with seemingly boundless strength, as if holding up the collapsing heavens.

Debris of all sizes, miscellaneous objects, and even a haze of dust orbited him, suspended in midair, forming a loose ring of rubble several kilometers in diameter, like the rings of Saturn, hovering five or six meters above his head.

Helicopter blades sliced through the sky above, their sound mingling with the organized chaos of shouts, commands, and the wailing sirens of emergency vehicles...

"Child, are you okay?"

The voice was mature, steady, and laced with concern, emanating from the broad-shouldered man.

"Mom?"

She didn't respond, but instead lowered her gaze to the ground a short distance away.

There, a body lay like a sack of butchered meat, intestines and brains spilling out, the head grotesquely crushed by a rock.

It was the unrecognizable form of her mother.

Not far off, in a crimson pool, her father and brother lay similarly mangled beneath the weight of a collapsed wall.

The sight shattered something within her that had been holding her together. Heat rushed to her head, darkness clouded her vision, and she collapsed...

But just before unconsciousness took her, she faintly sensed being enveloped by arms strong enough to gallop a horse upon. The man's voice, magnetic and tender, murmured near her ear, "Sorry, I'm late..."

When she came to, jolted awake by the sting of emergency medication, she was cradled in the man's arms, far from the disaster zone.

Perhaps it was his gentle protection that sparked a flicker of warmth in her desolate heart, preventing it from shattering completely.

She would later learn that her savior, the man who had held her until she awoke, was none other than Xia Quanhai, captain of the Flying Dragon Squad within the Cosmic Constabulary, Rasnium's first special forces unit with supernatural powers.

(The backstory and specifics of meta-humans will be detailed later in the narrative.)

Eventually, the army moved her to a hospital for physical and psychological recovery. It took half a year before she could even think of thanking the man she knew as uncle.

She had planned to visit the military district after her high school graduation to convey her gratitude in person. But fate had other plans.

To her dismay, she would find out about his death through the news and newspapers...