After autumn, the Xiaoliang River roared forward. Waves rose and disappeared, repeating indefinitely, as if nothing had changed, yet everything had changed. Deschamps wrapped his jacket tightly. The autumn sunshine could not heat the cold air by the river. He shivered.

Not far from the shore, Echo knelt in the middle of the crowd, holding his son Sunny Wang.

The onlookers tacitly left space for the two. Father and son wept and hugged together.

The two turned to look at him.

Their faces blurred, and Deschamps forced himself to smile.

Suddenly, a rumbling sound came from the lower sky, and it was dark and raining heavily all of a sudden.

He opened his eyes with a jerk and sat up, looking around in confusion at the nearby warrior.

The warrior stood up somehow and did not pay attention to him. Instead, she raised her hand and pulled off several small tubes connected to the mask. White gas spewed and hissed. Then Yeh’kull took off the mask with one hand, revealing a face that Deschamps could not have dreamed of: a hard green skull covered with bone spurs arranged neatly along the edge, deep eye sockets, short eyes, yellow eyeballs that made people shudder, and the most incredible feature was the mouth, which was not so much a mouth as some kind of prey machine, with sharp teeth propped up in all directions. Inexplicably, he thought of the word “predator”, and the face was physiologically frightening just to look at. Meanwhile, the warrior’s long hair was tied into a number of small braids, which somehow looked intriguing. Deschamps stared at them.

With the mask in one hand and a silver syringe grabbed from the waist in the other, the warrior inserted it directly into her jaw, which was still oozing green blood. The warrior’s body shook visibly. She put the needle away. And I had the mask back on.

Deschamps felt relief all of a sudden.

* * *

Even after the inhibitor injection, Yeh’kull still felt pain all over her body, and her head was buzzing severely.

She motioned to the human fighting alongside her to check on the alien queen, who had fallen to the ground. The human, despite his frail physique, had helped her kill the adult Xenomoprph earlier and deserved the honor.

The Queen fell among rubble and scrap metal, lying on her back, with an I-beam steel through her upper torso.

Yeh’kull retrieved her retractable spear and approached the huge black monster carefully. There was no other way in this situation; she could only terminate it. Her failure would not be forgotten easily by the elders.

Yeh’kull silently walked up to the Queen's huge head. At this time, the rain was even bigger than before, water washed the queen's black shell, and yellow-green blood rolled around. It was everywhere.

She raised her spear above her head with both hands, ready to deliver a final blow.

With the blink of an eye, the Queen raised one huge hand and hit Yeh’kull in the side, knocking her to the ground.

Just as Yeh’kull was in a daze, the young human male came out of nowhere, holding a brick, and drove the frisbee deeply into the Queen’s head.

The frisbee made a clear sound and pierced its hard shell.

The black monster roared in pain, convulsing violently, then its arm hit the ground heavily and its head drooped to one side.

That human threw away the brick and squared his shoulders: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Deschamps rolled his eyes. “You know nothing, son. This is called All reactionaries are paper tigers.”

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* * *

Bart, who was wrapped in a raincoat, slowly opened his eyes. Echo Wang paid no attention to the heavy rain and gently pressed his face against the boy’s.

“Bart, it’s all right; it’s all right.”

Then the rain stopped unexpectedly, the wind grew stronger, and everyone except the warrior was blown around; the sky turned black, and all of a sudden a blinding white light appeared in the distance. Echo held his son in one hand and used the other to cover his eyes. He thought he saw several tall, dark figures coming out of the white light but could not be sure.

The warrior came up at some point, holding the blackened finger of the beast in one hand. She stood in front of the four humans and drew two lines on the top of the mask with the broken alien finger. The remaining corrosive blood left yellow-green marks on the metal surface, which seemed to be a sign.

Then the warrior approached Echo and said he was going to poke him in the head with that finger.

He took a back step while others were still confused, saying, "We do not do this these days. In ancient times, if words were tattooed on one’s face, it meant he or she was forced into exile.”

The warrior stopped, seemed to think for a moment, then put away the finger and turned to stride away.

The four of them stared at each other.

“Just like that, ha? Not even a thank-you; not cool, dude, not cool!” Byron shouted at the warrior’s back.

“You are an idiot; that’s it”, Deschamps said. “Besides, it’s not a dude, anyway.”

“What are you talking about?” Byron looked at Deschamps angrily. “Do you think I can’t see that he’s not one of us?"

“I mean, look at her breastplate. No matter where she comes from, the warrior’s a female.”

Yeh’kull went back then, and both of them shut up.

She approached Byron first and solemnly took out an iron-gray, three-edged bayonet. He took it without thinking.

“Na... Your name?”

“Big B.”

“Big... B... “ She nodded. Then she went to Deschamps Ma and took out her spear, which had already retracted to a short one. Deschamps caught it with both hands and found it was much lighter than expected.

“Captain...Ma?”

“He is Marlowe." Byron interrupted and was kicked hard by Deschamps.

“My name is Deschamps Ma.”

The warrior put her right fist in front of her and nodded.

Finally, she came to Mr. Wang.

“Echo Wang. Echo like it’s from the past." He said it first.

The warrior hesitated for a moment, nodded, then took a small object from her neck and put it in his hand.

“When in danger... press the mark.” The warrior looked at him and then at Bart Wang.

“Thank you. On behalf of my family and the peace-loving people of Earth, I express my heartfelt thanks and sincere welcome."Said Echo, holding the warrior’s big hand with both his and shaking it up and down.

* * *

It was quite late when Byron Gong got home. Downstairs, he waved goodbye to the green cab; his strength disappeared after that, all of a sudden, and he could not even lift his arms. Fortunately, he looked up and saw the lights on at his small but cozy home. Byron went upstairs in the rain.

With the door open, Byron found a teenage girl who he had never seen before sitting at the table. Just as he was about to ask, Lila poked her head out of the kitchen and said, “Oh, you are back, Big B. What were you thinking? The rain never stopped.” Then she brought out a steaming bowl of soup and put it on the table. “This is Lulu, my colleague’s daughter; she’s in junior high school. Her mom did night shift today, and I took her in for dinner.”

“By all means. Lulu, suit yourself, please. I was starving all the time in college and would eat anything when I came back home”. Byron hung up his raincoat and sat at the table without changing his shoes. ”What’s so great about having children? Parents are worried for their children, like, constantly! It is not as good as pigeons.”

The girl, Lulu, seemed to focus on eating with her head down and not paying attention to the conversation between the couple.

“How about that, Lila? Why don’t we decorate first? Didn’t you say that the old house is suffocating, like all the time? So we decorate the hell out of this place; you will be over the moon.’

Lila did not take off her apron and stood at the kitchen door, with a bowl in hand still. “So we are not going to...do the thing?’

'Love is like a lamp, and at the same time illuminate two people. It never diminishes. As long as we have each other, everything will be fine.’

She smiled reluctantly and sat down at the table, trying to eat.

She did not notice that at this time, Lulu looked at Byron with a blush.

Byron, on the other hand, was looking at Lila with a smile, but she felt sad in her heart somehow. She was going to figure out how to open her own beauty clinic, starting Monday.

* * *

The next morning, Echo Wang woke up early.

He didn’t get much sleep last night; his mind was full of black monsters with sharp teeth and claws, fires and explosions on the blast furnace, and mysterious warriors cleaning up the scene like a magic show.

The rain had stopped, and autumn was getting colder by the day. Echo looked out of the window, and a single golden leaf came from nowhere, spinning and flying away. He watched as the leaf fell to the ground, got up, and went into his bedroom. Echo put the amulet presented by the alien warrior in a small wooden box where Mistle Luo, his late wife, stores her jewelry, together with important documentation like their real estate certificate, and two voided ID cards.

He took out a handsome green-cover notebook, looking through it with such love and admiration that he thought he had forgotten. At the end, Echo wrote a sentence on the last page.