Ban Xia turned off her radio and stepped backward carefully.

One step, two steps, like walking a tightrope.

She slowly backed away from Pin Da San’s entrance. The ground was covered in a thin layer of soft mud, silent under her feet. The weeds in the greenery had grown taller than a person. Along the street edge beneath CFC Plaza Building C was a strip of entertainment venues. The fifty-meter street was lined with seafood, crayfish, and skewer shops, banquet halls, card rooms, and mahjong parlors. The dilapidated storefront signs bore traces of scorching. Ban Xia backed away while keeping low, finally crawling along the ground across the street, through the pitch-black night, her clothes and backpack rustling the yellow-green dead grass.

“Where are you—I found you—”

“Wonderful fruit—”

The voice was just around the corner, within arm’s reach, separated by a single wall.

Ban Xia finally heard that thing speak again.

Her limbs trembled, terrified to the point of tears, but she couldn’t cry. Though her eyes were red, she had to keep the tears welling in their sockets. This was truly terrifying—why did she have to face such a monster alone? Ban Xia used every ounce of strength just to steady herself, slowly increasing the distance: one meter, two meters, five meters, ten meters…

It seemed not to have noticed her.

Ban Xia saw hope.

She could escape!

Ban Xia, heaven is watching over you, you’ll turn misfortune into a blessing! Everyone in the world died except you—in BG’s words, you have the protagonist’s luck!

Protagonists never die!

Ban Xia shouted in her heart.

She crawled backward slowly on the ground, gradually moving away from Pin Da San’s corner. The big eye truly hadn’t discovered her—it hadn’t even peeked around! Just one peek would have finished her, but it hadn’t looked!

The joy of survival began to sprout in the girl’s heart.

She estimated she’d created about thirty or forty meters of distance; the alley should end soon.

Ban Xia looked up to see a white “Yu Mi Xiang” sign overhead—indeed, she’d backed up to the end of the alley. Yu Mi Xiang was a restaurant at the entrance corner of the alley. Looking back, there was a road crossing behind her. She’d retreated to the alley entrance, while the big eye remained by Pin Da San, not pursuing.

This gave her some relief.

Ban Xia quietly got up, changing from crawling to kneeling, then from kneeling to crouching, and finally turning to inch along the wall on tiptoe, preparing to leave this alley and take another route back. The girl moved with extreme caution, backing against the wall at the corner, not rushing to move but first peering out to check the road conditions—

Ban Xia poked her head out, and it poked its head out too.

The girl saw her reflection in an enormous red pupil.

What kind of eye was it? The deep red pupil was like flowing blood, liquid, but instantly solidifying when locking onto a target. It was a vortex, a black hole—anyone gazing into it would feel they were staring into an abyss. The moment Ban Xia met its gaze, it seemed to suck away her soul, reconstructing a Ban Xia within its eyeball. In a Planck instant, the big eye had acquired all of Ban Xia’s information.

For a moment, Ban Xia’s mind went completely blank. A tenth of a millisecond later, extreme terror destroyed all reason, and she turned to flee with a scream.

“Ah—!”

The scream lasted only half a second before being cut off.

Ban Xia had barely taken two steps when her foot met empty air. Her body dropped sharply, her waist and abdomen slamming hard against the rigid ground, the pain so intense she couldn’t make a sound despite her gaping mouth.

The remaining rationality in her brain immediately told her she’d fallen into a manhole—there must have been an uncovered sewer opening in the road. This wasn’t her first time falling into a hole, so she had experience, but before Ban Xia could react, cold, briny water flooded her throat, then submerged her eyes, ears, nose, and all senses. The feeling was like taking a fierce blow to the head—instantly everything spun and darkened, her final consciousness bubbling out with the air from her lungs. She couldn’t understand why there was rushing water in the well, such violently rushing water—it was practically an underground river.

Ban Xia was swept into the current, immediately losing consciousness in the pitch-black deep water where she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. It was like being thrown into a water-filled washing machine on a spin cycle—her head alternately above and below the surface, only knowing she was still alive but not far from death.

In such chaos, the human brain can’t collect any effective information or make any judgments. You can’t think anything, can’t even save yourself. Most people’s brains remain crashed from the moment they’re swept away by water until they drown. Ban Xia’s brain was similarly crashed, filled only with gurgling sounds.

She was swept deep into the well shaft, likely to become a pale floating corpse eaten by fish before long.

Her backpack saved her life.

The backpack caught on something in the sewer, suddenly slowing her drift with the current, allowing the girl to struggle to raise her head above water and cough.

She tried to grab something to stabilize herself, but the cement inner walls she touched were wet and slippery, covered in moss and algae. Nothing could be seen in the pitch-black sewer, not a hint of light, only the thundering sound of water in the darkness.

Ban Xia carefully tested with her toes and found she could touch the ground.

She tried to steady herself. The water reached her chest, but the current wasn’t as rapid as before, possibly because the flow had entered a main shaft with a larger diameter.

She carefully felt her way forward along the inner wall, half-walking half-swimming in the chest-deep water, letting the current carry her forward. As a southern city, Nanjing had a complex and massive underground sewage system. In the post-apocalyptic era, this huge sewer system had been backfilled with seawater, becoming an extremely dangerous underground dark river, with algae growing on the bottom and invisible currents surging—it wouldn’t be surprising to find sharks prowling within.

After soaking in the water for who knows how long, Ban Xia finally found a ladder.

She seized the opportunity to climb up.

Dragging her water-logged heavy body up step by step, using all her strength to push open the manhole cover above, breathing fresh air again felt like returning to the world of the living, finally escaping the pitch-black, terrifying underground waterway.

She dragged herself onto the ground like mud, and after all this, could no longer move.

Her entire body was beyond control, couldn’t even move a finger. Ban Xia lay there soaking wet and limp, unable to open her eyes, breathing weakly, like a waterlogged sponge. Seawater flowed from her mouth and nose, pooling into a small stream under her chin. It was hard to imagine she’d swallowed so much water. The girl started vomiting between coughs, bringing up nothing but water.

She should quickly establish contact with BG.

But would the radio still work after being soaked?

Not just the radio—everything was soaked…

Where am I anyway…

The girl thought hazily, her consciousness growing increasingly fuzzy until she finally passed out completely.

When BG4MSR went off the channel, Command knew something had gone wrong.

Wrong.

To lose contact at the crucial moment of escaping the big eye’s pursuit was deadly—not just for BG4MSR’s life, but for the lives of everyone at Command.

“Lost contact?” Lian Qiao stopped abruptly in shock.

“What’s the reason?” Bai Yang asked.

“We’re not sure either, Command is in chaos, conducting emergency checks.” Old Dad answered on the phone. “Hope she hasn’t run into a ghost… Old Wang! Old Wang, what about all your pig and dog friends? Call them all! Search all frequencies!”

“What the hell do you mean pig and dog friends?” Wang Ning was cursing in the background.

“Meat friends!” Bai Zhen corrected.

“That’s called drinking buddies, damn it!” Wang Ning said. “You’re the drinking buddy! I’m contacting them now!”

No one knew why BG4MSR had suddenly lost contact. The greatest possibility was an encounter with the big eye, but no one dared think about that outcome.

After twenty years, the Command’s options were very limited. They could only do their utmost, using every means to restore contact.

Zhao Bowen prayed silently, hoping the lost contact was just due to a sudden frequency jump. The trans-temporal communication relied on Black Moon’s stretching of time and space—it might not be a stable mechanism. If Black Moon’s state changed, BG4MSR’s frequency might jump to another band.

Please don’t let anything happen.

In the unbearable, long radio silence, Zhao Bowen and everyone else repeated these words in their hearts.

Ban Xia was awakened by the cold.

She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious. When she woke, she only felt cold. Her whole body was soaked with seawater—in the deep night, the wind quickly stole her body heat. Without warming up quickly, she would develop hypothermia.

Besides the cold was pain—every part of her body ached. Ban Xia shivered as she removed her soaked clothes, groaning in pain with every movement. She had to rest after removing each piece, recover, and then continue stripping until all her wet clothes lay discarded on the ground.

Where was this place?

The girl lay breathing on the ground, looking up but unable to see the night sky, her hands finding rubble and debris wherever they reached.

Ban Xia had completely lost her bearings. She didn’t know where she was, having been swept along by the water in the pitch-black sewer, carried wherever the current flowed, with no sense of direction.

Where was this?

Ban Xia propped herself up, trying to straighten—”Ow!”

She’d hit her head.

She rubbed her head, reaching up to feel a thick concrete beam.

The concrete beam pressed right above her head, touchable with just a slight lift. Feeling around further, she found collapsed walls to the east, protruding rebar to the west, all pressing overhead, with scattered bricks covering the ground. Ban Xia roughly understood her environment—this was ruins, beneath a collapsed building. She’d emerged from a manhole under the ruins, with thousands of tons of reinforced concrete high-rise pressing above.

Ban Xia knew where she was now.

People’s Life Plaza.

She remembered the large pit at People’s Life Plaza opposite the South Library. The plaza was severely damaged—the most severely damaged place in Qinhuai District. The entire building had collapsed, leaving only a vast ruin.

So she hadn’t gone far—People’s Life was next to CFC Plaza, only three or four hundred meters away.

The radio was still attached to her backpack strap. Ban Xia pulled it out, shook off the water, and twisted the switch, but there was no response.

It was supposed to be waterproof, but it had failed when needed.

She shook her head and stuffed the radio back.

The backpack was half-full of water too. She turned it upside down and shook it—”splash!”—water poured onto the ground. She put everything back, knowing without looking that they were all ruined. Ban Xia sat naked in the darkness, gathering her wet hair to wring it out, but paused as she touched it.

Her hair was shorter.

Her hair was cut short—the length that had reached her back now only reached her shoulders. Feeling further, she found the ends were cut perfectly straight.

What happened? When was her hair cut?

Ban Xia was puzzled. She wrung out her short hair forcefully, then gathered dry dust to rub all over her body, scrubbing her frozen hands and feet vigorously.

Knowing where she was made things easier—she could crawl back if needed. After resting to recover her strength, Ban Xia dragged her backpack out from under the ruins. Just then the moon emerged, its silver-white light revealing a large shallow pit in the plaza right in front of the girl—indeed, this was People’s Life Plaza.

The big eye wasn’t nearby, which made Ban Xia sigh in relief. It should have returned to Xinjiekou by now, right?

The girl, muddy as clay, carried her dripping bag, walking barefoot on the hard rubble with a limp across the pit. No one knew when this pit had formed, and its creator still lay buried in the ground, burnt black, about as tall as a person—probably another crashed fighter jet’s remains or an unexploded aerial bomb.

Ban Xia didn’t give it a second glance. Nanjing’s urban areas were covered in pits of all sizes—foxholes dug during the war, bomb craters, crash sites, and all sorts and kinds. While two-legged people were hard to find in this world, holes in the ground were plentiful.

Her teacher had once warned her not to approach these things rashly, as unexploded ordnance was unstable and could detonate at any time.

Broken glass was everywhere, cutting her feet until they bled freely, but Ban Xia didn’t feel the pain. She struggled to climb out of the pit, nearly tripping over a ball on the way.

Oh Ban Xia, Ban Xia, is this the protagonist’s luck?

Ban Xia said in her heart.

If you call this being a protagonist, then that author must be truly damned!