Chapter 35 The Ruins

 

Chapter 35 The Ruins

 

No one believed that Ye Wenjie could climb Radar Peak by herself, but she did it anyway. She didn't allow anyone to help her along the way, only resting a couple of times in the abandoned sentry posts. She consumed her own vitality, the vitality that could not be renewed, without pity.

After learning the truth of Trisolaran civilization, Ye had become silent. She rarely spoke, but did make one request: She wanted to visit the ruins of Red Coast Base.

When the group of visitors ascended Radar Peak, its tip had just emerged from the cloud cover. After walking a whole day in the foggy haze, seeing the bright sun in the west and the clear blue sky was like climbing into a new world. From the top of the peak, the clouds appeared as a silver-white sea, and the rise and fall of the waves seemed like abstractions of the Greater Khingan Mountains below.

The ruins that the visitors had imagined did not exist. The base had been dismantled thoroughly, and only a patch of tall grass was left at the top. The foundations and the roads were buried below, and the whole place appeared to be a desolate wilderness. Red Coast seemed to have never happened.

But Ye soon discovered something. She walked next to a tall rock and pulled away the vines covering it, revealing the mottled, rusty surface below. Only now did the visitors understand that the rock was actually a large metallic base.

"This was the base for the antenna," Ye said. The first cry from Earth heard by an extraterrestrial world was sent from the antenna that had been here to the sun, and then, amplified, broadcast to the whole universe.

They discovered a small stone tablet next to the base, almost completely lost in the grass.

 

Site of Red Coast Base (1968-1987)

Chinese Academy of Sciences 1989.03.21

 

The tablet was so tiny. It didn't seem so much a memorial as an attempt to forget.

Ye walked to the lip of the cliff. Here, she had once ended the lives of two soldiers with her own hands. She did not look over the sea of clouds as the others were doing, but focused her gaze in one direction. Below the clouds, there was a small village called Qijiatun.

Ye's heart beat with effort, like a string on some musical instrument about to break. Black fog appeared before her eyes. She used the last bit of her strength to stay upright. Before everything sank into darkness, she wanted to see sunset at Red Coast Base one more time.

Over the western horizon, the sun that was slowly sinking into the sea of clouds seemed to melt. The ruddy sun dissolved into the clouds and spread over the sky, illuminating a large patch in magnificent, bloody red.

"My sunset," Ye whispered. "And sunset for humanity."

 

 

Chapter 35 Vocabulary Note

 

haze - smoke or dust in the air which is difficult to see through

vine - a plane with long thin stems that attach themselves to other plants, trees or buildings

mottled - covered with spots of light or dark colors of different shapes

ruddy - red