Lin''s fingers sank into the cracked riverbed, and the fluorescent blue liquid seeping out from between his fingers exuded a fishy sweetness like amniotic fluid. This was the remnant of the strange rain in 1995, which formed a spider web-like uranium mark on the loess after drying up. The yellow sand accumulated in the radiation protection helmet slid down with his panting, and Su''s warning came from the headset, mixed with the howling of the sandstorm: "The weather station data has been tampered with... The rain clouds are flowing back from the Forbidden City in 2024..."
When the first drop of rain hit the mask, he thought it was an illusion. Until the blue light water droplets corroded the protective suit, countless dry hands stretched out from the cracks in the river ditch in the distance - those labor reform prisoners who drowned when building the reservoir were crawling out from the ground, and the tentacles of Yinxu worms drilled out of their empty eye sockets, stretching into pale mycelium in the rain.
"It''s not the drought demon!" Su''s scream pierced the eardrum. The moment Crystal''s left hand inserted into the console, Alena''s stream of consciousness reconstructed the voice line in the circuit board, "Rainwater is the amniotic fluid excreted by the mother... They are activating the corpse to lay eggs!"
The iron sheet of the abandoned sand pumping ship was hit by the raindrops, making a chime-like sound. Lin''s back was pressed against the hull, watching the zombies swell into a tumor in the blue rain. A tumor suddenly cracked, and half of Zhao''s body squeezed out of the pus and blood. His festering right hand held a living compass: "Do you know why 1995 was chosen? The sunspots that year could make the uranium mark crack into a birth canal..."
The radiation meter was beating wildly, and half a page of burnt yellow diary floated out of the pus of the tumor. The handwriting on July 23, 1995 was scribbled like a ghost: "Brother Maocai is going to blow up the uranium mark core under the Forbidden City tonight. He said that Emperor Chongzhen is buried there..." The second half was dissolved by the corpse fluid, leaving only the dragon pattern afterimage swimming in the pus and blood.
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Alena''s glass fingers penetrated time and space, and drew the Loulan star map on the sand: "The thousands of miles of red land are not brought by the drought... It is the drought that the mirror body has poured back from the future!"
The bulletproof glass of the mirror weather station burst. Su was knocked to the ground by the air wave. In the cold light reflected by her crystal left hand, she saw countless of herself repeating the same action at observation stations in different years - injecting cyanide into artificial rainmaking rockets. The young version of Peng suddenly appeared in front of the broken window, his white coat stained with rain from 1995, but the weather balloon in his hand showed the coordinates of 1979: "I sow catalysts in all time and space... Only the rain here can breed mother and larvae..."
As the console screen flickered, the Forbidden City in 2024 emerged in the rainstorm. The mirror body Lin stood on the top of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Every time the Pisces jade pendant rotated a circle, new rain clouds spewed from under the dragon throne. Su''s right hand pressed the launch button uncontrollably, and the rainmaking rocket dragged the purple mist across the night sky, and the poison and rain mixed into a deadly neon.
Mycelial roots grew wildly in the riverbed, and each mycelium had a human face. Lin crushed the nearest tumor, and a baby cried from underground. Countless bronze keys fell with a new wave of blue rain, each engraved with "Made by Chongzhen Emperor". Amid the radiation alarm, he touched the pistol on Su''s waist. The rain in 1995 suddenly changed its texture - no longer water droplets, but tiny bronze keys, taking root as soon as they landed.
"Go to the basement of the weather station..." Alena''s glass body disintegrated in the crystal fragments, "Peng is hiding there..."
Before Su''s left hand completely exploded, Lin saw the last image sent back: his father in 1995 stood in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the remote control of the explosives was connected to the uranium core under the dragon throne; he embedded the Pisces jade pendant into the dragon throne in 2024; Zhao in 1979 took out a beating bronze heart in the mine.
The rain stopped. More dry hands stretched out from the cracks in the Yellow River Basin. This time they held the weather station''s file bag, with the date circled in red printed on the yellowed pages.