"No—!!!"
Lance Blue let out a heart-rending cry and was about to rush into the blaze.
"Lance! Don’t go over there! It’s dangerous!"
All of a sudden, a strong hand seized him tightly.
It was Jake!
His face was deathly pale, blood seeping from an abrasion on his forehead. The convenience store had been completely destroyed, its interior a total wreck.
Fortunately, he had escaped at the very last second.
"Jake!"
Thank goodness Jake was all right! And Mrs. Carter...
"Mrs. Carter is inside! The pancake stand..."
Lance struggled, tears blurring his vision.
"I know! I know!"
Jake’s voice was trembling too, but he gripped Lance tightly. "Half the building has collapsed, and the fire is too big! You can’t go in! The fire trucks will be here any second! Any second..."
Any second? There wasn’t time!
Lance could feel it. Deep within that scorching, chaotic wreckage were familiar... waves of pain and fear belonging to Mrs. Carter!
She was alive! Right down there!
And... another, relatively distinct emotion of fear came from the other side of the ruins. It seemed trapped beneath a collapsed sign and debris.
Was that... Chloe?!
Had she come to see her mother today?!
Utter panic and worry, along with the guilt that had tortured him ever since Elliot told him the truth, erupted in his heart like lava!
If it hadn’t been for him... if not for his influence, would Mrs. Carter have moved to the safe District Seven long ago?
Would Chloe not have come here today? Would they not have suffered any of this?
This disaster, this senseless calamity, this goddamn collateral damage from a battle between heroes... He could barely protect himself.
But now, right before his eyes, people were trapped in despair because of him!
The price... was this the price?
Was the price of the small kindnesses and warmth he had received that others would be thrown into even greater danger?
"No..."
He broke free of Jake’s grip, and something changed in his eyes.
He was not a hero. He had no power.
He only had 124 Trust Value, and an emotional resonance that seemed useless except for bringing pain.
But he could not just stand there and watch! He could not accept such a price!
The piercing wail of fire engines came from afar, but traffic chaos and narrow streets kept them from approaching.
The surrounding residents were frantically trying to put out the fire and rescue people, but the blaze was too intense, and the collapsed structure was extraordinarily dangerous.
Lance’s gaze rapidly swept across the burning ruins.
Thick smoke billowed upward, and the heat seared his skin. Under the extreme tension and focus, his emotional resonance seemed to be forced to some limit.
He was no longer merely receiving those chaotic emotions. He began actively distinguishing and locating them.
There... Mrs. Carter’s emotional fluctuations were faint and muddled, buried under intense pain and the suffocating sensation of smoke. Her location... was deeper inside the pile of burning rubble where the pancake cart had originally stood. There seemed to be a narrow gap.
On the other side... Chloe’s fear was clearer, mixed with anxiety. She was relatively closer to the outside, but a burning beam and a collapsed metal sign had pinned down her leg, leaving her unable to move.
"Jake!"
Lance abruptly turned around. His face was streaked black and white with soot, and only those lake-blue eyes shone with startling brightness, carrying a decisiveness no ten-year-old should possess.
"Help me! Find water and soak a blanket or some thick clothes! I’ll go check on Chloe! She’s closer to the outside!"
"Lance, are you crazy?! The fire is too big!"
Jake was so frantic he nearly jumped in place.
"The fire trucks can’t get in! By the time they clear the road, the people inside will be dead!" Lance said hoarsely.
"Help me! Please, Jake!"
Jake looked into his eyes. What burned within them shook him. He gritted his teeth.
"All right! Be careful! Don’t go too deep!" With that, he turned and ran back into the wrecked convenience store.
Lance drew a breath of scorching air, covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve, hunched low, and charged toward the direction from which Chloe’s emotions were coming.
Burning debris rained down around him. The heat scorched his skin, while the thick smoke made tears stream from his eyes and sent him into violent coughing.
His small, agile body became an advantage at this moment as he struggled through the broken walls and rubble.
He avoided visibly unstable structures and detoured around the areas where the flames burned most fiercely.
He could feel Chloe’s emotions getting closer and closer.
Finally, behind a heap of fallen bricks and burning debris, he saw Chloe.
She was half-reclining on the ground. The end of a red-hot metal beam and a heavy sign had her left leg pinned down. Her face was covered in black ash, her hair soaked with sweat, and she was futilely trying to push the beam away.
"Chloe!" Lance shouted.
Chloe jerked her head up. At the sight of him, hope burst into her eyes, only to be replaced by even greater terror. "You’re... that child named Lance?! Why are you here? Get out! It’s dangerous here! My mom... my mom is still inside!"
"I know! Jake is figuring something out! Don’t move yet!"
Lance rushed over and tried to examine what had trapped her. The beam was far too heavy for him to budge. The sign was wedged firmly in place as well.
"My leg... I can’t move it..." Chloe said, her voice full of tears and pain.
Lance forced himself to stay calm. He looked around and spotted a broken but fairly sturdy concrete pillar leaning against the rubble nearby. A wild idea flashed through his mind.
"No matter what happens in a moment, you have to listen to me!"
Chloe froze for a moment. Looking at his soot-covered yet exceptionally resolute face, she instinctively nodded.
"When I count to three, brace your hands against the ground and try to move your body to the right! Even just a little!"
After saying that, Lance ran to the concrete pillar without waiting for Chloe’s response. He was small and not very strong, but he had judged the angle carefully.
Using every ounce of strength in his body, he fiercely shoved the concrete pillar toward the other end of the beam pinning Chloe down! He was not trying to pry up the entire beam. He was trying to use leverage to lift the end pressing on her leg by even the tiniest gap!
"One! Two! Three!!!"
Lance roared. His young arms erupted with unprecedented strength, veins standing out on his forehead.
The top of the concrete pillar pressed against the beam.
Creak— A teeth-grating sound rang out. The red-hot end of the beam lifted an incredibly tiny amount, perhaps only one or two centimeters!
But that one or two centimeters was enough!
Chloe felt the pressure on her leg ease. Though the pain was still excruciating, she seized the chance and used every ounce of strength to roll her body to the right!
Her leg slipped free from the gap! But her lower leg was a bloody, mangled mess, and the injury was clearly severe.
Almost the instant she escaped, Lance’s strength gave out. The concrete pillar slipped away, and the beam crashed down with a boom, sending sparks flying.
"Move!"
Without even pausing to catch his breath, Lance rushed over and strained to support Chloe, who could barely stand.
Enduring the agonizing pain, Chloe hopped on one foot, leaning against Lance’s thin shoulder as they desperately made their way toward a relatively safe area outside the blaze.
Every step was unimaginably difficult.
Thick smoke obscured their view, heat scorched them, and the rubble beneath their feet was uneven and treacherous. Lance felt his strength draining rapidly, but he gritted his teeth and held on. He could feel Mrs. Carter’s emotions growing weaker and weaker.
Jake rushed over, dragging a soaked old curtain. Seeing them, he quickly came to support Chloe from her other side.
"My... my mom is still inside..." Chloe sobbed, weakly pointing toward the heart of the inferno.
"I know... I know..." Jake choked out, staring at the all-consuming flames with despair written across his face.
"Why did this happen... She only just promised me she’d move in a while... Why did something like this have to happen today?!"
Lance looked at the flames too.
Mrs. Carter’s emotional fluctuations were like a candle flame in the wind, ready to go out at any moment.
The fire engines’ sirens were finally closer, yet the completely jammed streets and chaotic crowds kept them outside.
High-pressure streams of water began shooting in from afar, but they could not immediately cover the heart of the fire.
There was no time.
The building was burning looser and looser, at risk of collapsing at any moment... Once that happened, anyone inside would truly be condemned to death!
The world in Lance’s eyes seemed to slow down. Fire washed over his pupils.
"Being able to eat is a blessing! You’re far too skinny, child."
"If you get hungry tonight, come back. I’ll save you some batter."
"Why the rush? I have lots of regular customers here. How could I just leave whenever I wanted?"
The memories lingered before his eyes.
...
Unshakable determination flashed in his blue eyes.
Lance let go of Chloe and let her lean against Jake.
He snatched up the soaked curtain, turned around, and faced that hellscape once more.
"Lance! What are you doing?!"
Jake cried out in terror. He shouted frantically to stop him and even tried to grab him, but Lance easily slipped past him.
So fast! Jake was shocked.
Lance did not answer a single word.
His gaze was fixed on the depths of the blaze, in the direction where Mrs. Carter was.
124 Trust Value... what could it do?
He did not know.
He only knew that he could not leave.
This was not a hero’s resolve.
"Believe in me." He calmly spoke those three words.
He looked toward the blazing flames and thick smoke.
Then, beneath the horrified gazes of Jake and Chloe, beneath the eyes of rescue workers steadily arriving in the distance and ever more onlookers filming with their phones—
The skinny blue-haired figure used the soaked curtain as a scarf to cover his mouth and nose, lowered his head sharply, and charged without hesitation into the burning ruins!
"Lance—!!!"
Jake and Chloe’s desperate cries were drowned out by the roar of the flames.
Firelight swallowed that tiny figure.
On the roof of an untouched building in the distance, Elliot had just climbed up, panting for breath. He happened to see that heart-stopping sight, and his eyes instantly went wide with fury.
High in the distant sky, the battle between heroes that had caused this entire disaster seemed to have just come to an end. Two points of light fled in separate directions, leaving devastation across the ground.
And a ten-year-old child who had rushed into a sea of fire.
A chaotic scene, a burning neighborhood, shrieking sirens, terrified crowds.
And... cameras gradually focusing in to record it all.
Few among them knew who the blue-haired child rushing into the blaze was.
With the rise of the FOMO platform, anyone could have their own social media account. Thus, as soon as the fire and plane crash occurred, they drew widespread attention from across society, because this was the first disaster to occur under the hero system since the Union era began.
At this moment, there were no fewer than millions of people watching the livestream.
But at the instant his figure vanished into the flames, a small thought filled with shock and prayer rose simultaneously in the hearts of countless witnesses:
[Save them!]
[That child ran in!]
[Oh my God—!]
[He has to make it out alive!]
[What are the firefighters and heroes doing?!]
These faint thoughts seemed to be silently drawn together and gathered by some invisible force within the enormous emotional vortex stirred up by the disaster...
[124] → [5,000] → [100,000] → [300,000]
The numbers soared wildly. A faint yet cooling current flowed into his nearly exhausted body, supporting him as, in that desperate situation, he forced open eyes stinging from the smoke.
He desperately reached toward that increasingly faint pulse of life...
Closer and closer. Almost there, just a little more!
"Mrs. Carter..."
He called out hoarsely, but his voice was drowned in the thunder of the flames.
At last, he saw her.
The metal frame of the pancake cart was crushed beneath a massive collapsed concrete slab, twisted and burning.
Between that concrete slab and a cracked wall that had not yet completely fallen, there was a triangular space not yet fully consumed by the flames.
Mrs. Carter was curled up in that corner.
Fallen debris had buried her lower body. Her face was smeared with soot and blood, and the hair she normally kept neatly pinned up had come loose in disarray.
Her eyes were half-closed, her breathing faint and rapid. Every breath came with a painful gasp.
Yet one of her hands was tightly clutching something—an old cloth bag she usually used to carry change and miscellaneous items, one corner already burned away.
"Mrs. Carter!"
Lance threw himself forward, dropping to his knees on the scorching ground as he used his bare hands to pull away the stones and charred wood pinning her down.
His fingertips instantly blistered from the heat, pain stabbing through them, but he paid it no mind.
Perhaps hearing his call, Mrs. Carter’s eyelids trembled a few times before she laboriously opened them a sliver.
When her hazy gaze focused on Lance’s small face, blackened with soot and twisted with worry, an incredulous light burst into her clouded eyes—only to be replaced by deeper fear.
"Lance... ?"
Her voice was so weak it was almost inaudible. "You... why... Go... go!"
She tried with all her strength to push him away, but her hand only lifted feebly.
"We leave together!" Those three words completely silenced Mrs. Carter.
Tears mixed with soot streamed down Lance’s face as he desperately dug and clawed.
His small palms were soon covered in blood from the rough fragments and intense heat.
But there was too much debris burying Mrs. Carter. A larger block of concrete was wedged tightly in place, impossible for him to move with his strength.
The fire drew closer.
The cracks in the wall continued to widen under the intense heat, releasing ominous groans.
Above them, a burning beam gave off a terrifying creak, while dust drifted down in a steady shower.
[400,000] → [700,000] → [1,000,000]
The Trust Value continued climbing. The cooling sensation pouring into his body supported him, but it did not give him the strength to move the enormous rock.
Lance was so frantic he felt he might go mad.
He could feel Mrs. Carter’s life force rapidly draining away. Her emotional fluctuations were growing weaker and weaker, meaning death was drawing ever closer to them.
"Move... move! Please, move..."
He incoherently begged the concrete block, pushing at it with his shoulder and using every ounce of strength. Great beads of sweat dripped from his forehead, mixing with blood and ash.
But the concrete block did not budge.
Despair—cold despair, colder than the flames around him—began to consume him.
Then Mrs. Carter seemed to gather a little strength. The hand clutching the old cloth bag slowly, tremblingly lifted a little and pushed the bag, burned at one corner, toward Lance.
Her lips moved. Lance leaned closer before he could hear her threadlike voice:
"...Give it to Chloe... inside... there’s a key... I kept it... the new home... Tell her... Mom... agreed... to move..."
The broken words struck Lance’s heart like a hammer.
She had agreed to move.
How laughable those words were in the face of catastrophe and disaster!
Lance stared at the cloth bag, at Mrs. Carter’s eyes that were gradually losing their light yet still held a strange relief and concern, and something seemed to explode in his chest.
"No—!!!"
Not at the flames, not at the ruins, but at fate—at the rage of his own helplessness!
No! He refused to let that key become a keepsake!
If 124 Trust Value was not enough...
If 300,000 Trust Value had only allowed him to crawl this far...
If miracles truly required a price...
Could he afford to pay it?
He was not a hero. He had no earth-shattering power.
But at this moment, he had the trust of countless people gathered upon him!
They shared the same wish—that those inside would live, that the child who had run in would create a miracle.
Live!
This vast and pure wish silently collided and merged with his determination to give everything, within the furnace of despair!
Lance no longer tried to push with brute force.
He extended his bloodied hands and gently placed them against the cold, heavy concrete block.
He did not chant any spell. There were no dazzling lights or special effects.
He merely closed his eyes and poured every belief he could feel—hundreds of thousands of thoughts believing that he could do it, believing that there would be a turn for the better, believing that a life should not end here—
—together with the last scrap of strength and hope wrung from his marrow, all into it!
[Move aside!]
"Crack... sizzle, sizzle, sizzle..."
A faint yet distinct sound of breaking came from where the concrete block met the rubble beneath it.
Then, before Lance’s disbelieving eyes, the concrete block—which he had been unable to shift even a fraction despite exhausting all his strength—suddenly tilted to one side and rolled halfway over!
Though it moved less than thirty centimeters, it happened to clear the main weight pressing down on Mrs. Carter’s legs, revealing a gap wide enough to pull her through!
"!!"
Lance had no time to think about this impossible phenomenon. The instinct to survive and wild joy drove him to act at once.
Seizing that fleeting chance, he used every bit of strength he had just regained and desperately dragged her out of that triangular space!
Mrs. Carter’s body was heavy. Her legs might have been injured, making it exceptionally difficult to drag her out.
Burning fragments constantly fell around them, and the cracks in the wall grew wider and wider.
But Lance did not care. He clenched his teeth and, inch by inch, dragged Mrs. Carter out of that corner of death and into a somewhat more open passage not yet fully surrounded by flames.
The very next second after he had pulled Mrs. Carter completely away from that spot...
Boom!!!
The cracked wall and burning beam above finally could no longer hold. They came crashing down, completely burying and devouring that triangular space and all the debris inside it!
They had only just made it!
Lance’s heart pounded wildly.
But he dared not stop. The fire was still spreading, and the smoke was even deadlier.
Half dragging and half carrying the barely conscious Mrs. Carter, he followed the relatively safe route he vaguely remembered from the way in, staggering toward the light outside the fire.
Outside the blaze were countless people whose emotions were filled with hope. Under Lance’s emotional resonance, their emotions were like the brightest lighthouse in an endless ocean.
Lance desperately moved toward hope.
Every step weighed as heavily as lead.
Mrs. Carter’s weight, the searing heat, the suffocating smoke, and his depleted strength... all were mercilessly crushing the last of his will.
The numbers on his wrist continued to flicker and jump, offering faint but steady support, like fireflies in the dark.
He could hear the clearer sound of water cannons spraying and people shouting outside. The light of the exit grew closer and closer.
"Hold on... we’re almost there... Chloe is waiting for you outside... the new home..."
As he dragged his feet forward, he spoke in broken fragments beside Mrs. Carter’s ear, not knowing whether he was encouraging her or himself.
At last, he stumbled out of the most intense heart of the blaze. The searing air receded slightly, becoming a little cooler.
Several firefighters in protective gear, who had just broken through the obstacles and rushed inside, saw them and shouted as they ran over.
"Over here! There’s another child and an injured person!"
"Quick! A stretcher!"
"Kid! Let go! Leave her to us!"
Lance felt several strong hands take Mrs. Carter’s weight from him, while he himself was held up.
The taut nerves and the outside force supporting him seemed to vanish in an instant. Extreme exhaustion and searing pain from all over his body engulfed him like a tsunami.
His vision began to blur and spin. Before he completely lost consciousness, the last thing he saw was Mrs. Carter carefully placed on a stretcher and swiftly carried away, along with Jake, Chloe, and Uncle Elliot breaking through the crowd and sprinting toward him, their faces full of shock and wild joy.
Chaotic noise, flashing lights, blurry figures... everything rapidly drifted away.
In his haze, he seemed to see, in the direction of the plane crash site, an enormous mass of blue emotions, all filled with hope for life.
Lance wanted to look a little longer, to see what it was.
But before he could make it out clearly, darkness descended over his blue eyes.
"So this is the price of a miracle..."
"It’s not much, is it..."
With his final glance before passing out, he smiled.
And on his wrist, that blue glimmer finally slowly settled on a quiet number.
[1,197,651]
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