Chapter 187
When the sky turned purple for the third time, raging flames engulfed the city, Mo Li transformed into human form, and all water, electricity, gas, and communications were cut off. Humanity was forced to abandon the city and move elsewhere.
Jiang Cheng was confused by these events and assumed that this was the third stage.
It was not until Song Jingshuo pointed it out that she realized the truth.
Sure enough, the moment she steadied her mind and made sure her emotions did not collapse, the extreme cold vanished.
The sun came out. The sky cleared. Spring arrived.
She was being observed.
She was being seen.
She was being watched.
Jiang Cheng sneered.
Sure enough, everything was happening because of her.
Were the people watching from behind the scenes treating her and everyone else here as some kind of entertainment?
Like crickets in a jar.
Like fighting roosters in a cage.
Everyone poured out of the buildings.
The earth-element superpowered individuals dismantled all the covered walkways in the courtyard. The courtyard became spacious again.
People took off their down jackets, padded coats, and cotton trousers, then stomped wildly through the muddy water, laughing, shouting, and celebrating.
Song Jingshuo tossed several saplings into the mud.
Strawberries, grapes, apples, mangoes, and pears quickly took root, grew, and bore fruit.
Clusters and piles of them.
Everyone swarmed over to pick and eat them, juice running down their chins.
They sang, danced, and threw mud.
Then someone came to his senses and warned, “Stop throwing it. There might be shit mixed in.”
Everyone fell silent.
Then an overwhelming barrage of mud flew straight at him!
The collective dormitory in the youth apartment complex was disbanded. Everyone began moving back into the homes they had lived in before.
At Auspicious Garden, everyone was also in high spirits as they carried their mattresses back into the bedrooms. No one had to squeeze together and sleep in the living room anymore.
The windows were opened for ventilation, and the air was fresh and clean. The rooms no longer reeked.
It felt as though they had returned from merely “being alive” to actually living.
From the outbreak of the extreme cold in October to its end in March after the New Year, the population of the Technology New District had fallen from more than thirty thousand to twenty-four thousand.
Half of those lost had committed suicide.
Everyone regretted that those people might have survived if only they had held on a little longer.
But human beings could be weak and fragile sometimes.
Besides, who said that holding on until the end meant victory?
The mysterious man said: “Run! Run! If you don’t get away now, it’ll be too late!”
Uncle Jiang said: “They might as well drive everyone to their deaths.”
Sister Mao said, “What’s coming this time? It sounds like they just don’t want anyone to live.”
That was everyone’s question too. What was coming next?
The mysterious man’s broadcast cooled everyone’s celebration of having “won.”
Everyone was on edge.
Who exactly was this person? A prophet?
If so, what was coming that people would not be able to escape from?
Zheng Junwei and the leaders of several settlements communicated with Jiang Cheng by radio.
Everyone’s mood was heavy.
No one knew where the next disaster would come from or what form it would take.
The unknown was the most terrifying thing of all.
Zhao Yi and Zhang Lesi also moved back into Zhang Lesi’s house.
Zhang Lesi stretched out across her own bed in a starfish position and sighed. “My own bed really is the most comfortable!”
The quality of life in the collective dormitory had been truly terrible.
Everyone had stunk.
Zhao Yi and Zhang Lesi had both gone to the bathhouse to wash today.
The women had scrubbed each other’s backs, and now they were all clean, fresh, and fragrant.
Zhang Lesi and Zhao Yi had also finally been able to have uninhibited sex again after such a long time. Both of them were still bursting with vitality.
They were young, after all.
Or perhaps it was the craziness that came before an unknown danger.
After all, no one knew when death would come knocking.
For example, if the extreme cold suddenly made a comeback right now, the two of them would freeze to death in their own home.
So Zhang Lesi said, “We still have to get dressed. Even if death means the end of everything, I still don’t want anyone to find me dead naked.”
Zhao Yi said, “Actually, when they bury you, they’ll—”
“Shut up!”
Zhao Yi obediently shut his mouth.
The two of them still put on proper clothes before going to sleep. They decided against sleeping naked, just in case they died in an undignified pose.
After lying there for a while, Zhang Lesi asked, “If things really are as you said, then after we die, will we go to another world?”
Before Zhao Yi could answer, she continued, “Maybe aliens will come and capture us all. Right?”
Over the long months, Zhao Yi had told Zhang Lesi all his conjectures and theories.
As expected, Zhang Lesi could not resonate with him instantly the way Gao Yuxuan had. But she liked his capacity for “imagination.”
Zhao Yi asked, “Don’t you believe me?”
Zhang Lesi stubbornly replied, “I’m just saying, hypothetically.”
“Maybe,” Zhao Yi said.
Zhang Lesi was silent for a while before finally admitting, “I’m starting to believe it a little.”
In the span of one night and one day, they had gone from extreme cold straight into spring.
Zhang Lesi was a medical student, a top scholar. She would never foolishly put her faith in a cult, but she understood very clearly that while the spread of the zombie virus had still fallen within the realm of human capability, the sudden arrival and disappearance of this extreme cold were absolutely beyond human control.
And yet the traces of human manipulation were so strong and obvious.
It was a force beyond known science, beyond the government, beyond this planet—a higher level of power.
The two possibilities Zhao Yi had proposed were both plausible.
Aliens, or a higher-dimensional world.
“Whatever. I’m telling you, if we suddenly croak and wake up in some higher-dimensional world, don’t even think about running away.” Zhang Lesi huffed. “I’ll find you even if you run to the ends of the earth.”
Zhao Yi laughed and turned over to embrace her. “Why would I run?”
He gently kissed her hair and held her tenderly as they fell asleep together.
Everyone was asleep. After months of oppressive, grueling living conditions, everyone had finally returned to their own beds, and they slept more comfortably than ever.
The clock on the wall ticked on.
Tick.
Tock.
At four o’clock, Little Huang suddenly opened his eyes!
Danger!
Danger!
The boy wanted to warn everyone, but his superpower erupted violently.
His ability was to sense danger.
Danger filled the world from every direction!
There was no way out. Everywhere was death!
Death!
Little Huang opened his mouth like a drowning fish. He wanted to shout and scream, but no sound came out.
He died with his mouth hanging open.
If Zhang Lesi had been there, she would have described Little Huang’s death as fear triggering a massive surge of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, accelerating his heart rate and shortening diastole. The heart muscle received less oxygen, eventually causing cardiac arrest.【Note】
In layman’s terms...
He had been scared to death.
At four in the morning, while everyone else slept soundly, Little Huang was frightened to death by his own superpower.
His mouth hung open, his eyes remained wide, and his face was filled with terror.
...
A few minutes later, cement structures cracked and steel bars groaned.
The earth roared like a gigantic beast awakening!
Mo Li opened his eyes only two minutes after Little Huang.
In an instant, he shot upright, scooped up the sleeping Jiang Cheng around the waist, and leaped through the floor-to-ceiling window from the third story!
Jiang Cheng woke the moment he was lifted. The enormous sound of shattering glass and the sensation of weightlessness followed immediately.
The next second, Mo Li landed safely with her in his arms.
Jiang Cheng’s hand sank into the wet mud. She raised her head, just about to ask what was happening, when she lost her balance and fell to the ground.
The earth was shaking so violently that standing was impossible.
The ground tilted, and Jiang Cheng rolled toward the lower side, her body completely beyond her control.
Mo Li sprang lightly into the air, scooped Jiang Cheng up into his arms, and leaped high to avoid the sudden upheaval and rupture of the ground.
Reinforced concrete shattered. Buildings collapsed. The courtyard caved in, exposing the densely packed bones of zombies buried beneath it!
In an instant, the deeper layers gave way, and the zombie remains plunged into the underground parking garage!
Then the depths collapsed again. Bones and private cars tumbled toward a pitch-black fissure with no visible bottom!
Many people were claimed by death before they even had time to wake.
The roar of destruction and the screams of the living merged in the night.
There was no electricity. Darkness swallowed everything.
An unseen god of death harvested lives in the darkness.
No one knew which fire-element superpowered person began conjuring fireballs, but at last there was light.
One fireball after another flared to life, swaying in the air. Some were snuffed out and vanished.
Countless voices cried out amid the rumbling, but no one could make out what they were saying.
The shockwave left people temporarily deaf.
The ground flexed like the plastic ruler they used to bend with a fingertip in school, then release. It trembled and rebounded in waves.
People were flung into the air as easily as though they had lost all weight, smashed against walls, and rolled to the ground, where falling chunks of concrete crushed them into bloody pulp.
The world was being torn apart.
From the tops of skyscrapers to the depths underground.
Screams came from everywhere.
The ground tilted, and floor slabs snapped one after another.
People clawed at the concrete until their fingernails split and bled, but there was nothing for them to grip. Floors buckled upward, gravity dragged bodies across them, and people screamed as they slid into the cracks and fell.
One after another, like dumplings dropping into a pot.
“Hold on tight! Tighter!” Su Yu shouted.
Because of the mysterious man’s rambling prophecy, she had felt uneasy and had taken the initiative to sleep with the little ones that night.
Everything happened too quickly. In the instant they opened their eyes, some of the children had already lost their lives.
There was no time. There simply wasn’t.
The protective barrier she threw up in an instant could shield only four girls.
They clung tightly to Su Yu in a single bundle because the barrier had an “inside” and an “outside.”
From the “inside,” they could pass freely through the barrier to the “outside.”
But if they were thrown away during the massive quake, they would leave the protection of the barrier.
Su Yu alone could not be forced out of it, so everyone held on to one another. No matter how violently they were tossed about, none of them would be flung free.
Su Yu glanced up.
A massive concrete floor slab came crashing down, ready to flatten them into bloody pulp.
Su Yu stared at it without blinking.
White light burst in every direction, illuminating the night.
Song Jingshuo also lived on one of the upper floors.
The shaking was so violent that he could not even crawl. He struck his head, and blood streamed down his face.
Song Jingshuo slapped his left hand against the blood dripping onto the floor. The vine bracelet around his wrist, patterned with a single green leaf, absorbed the human blood and suddenly grew explosively.
Roots as fine as threads shot toward every planting container in the room, burrowing into them and drawing out their nutrients.
The vines thickened until they were as large as dragons. With a thunderous crash, they tore through the already-crumbling walls, wrapped around Song Jingshuo, and carried him out of the building as they spread wildly downward.
Zhao Yi dragged Zhang Lesi along as he ran!
He knew he could not let go. Zhang Lesi could not see!
In truth, he could not see either. The stairwell was pitch-black. But the darker it was, the more tightly he had to hold Zhang Lesi’s hand.
The reinforced concrete twisted and writhed.
Humans were as helpless as leaves caught by the wind.
The two of them were hurled against the ceiling, then slammed brutally back onto the floor.
Zhao Yi’s head rang. His shoulders, back, chest, and knees all throbbed with pain. He instinctively tightened his grip, but his hand closed on empty air.
“Lesi!” Zhao Yi opened his eyes and looked up. “Lesi!”
There was light now. Fireballs of every size floated above, below, and outside the building, their glow spilling in through the gaps.
The building had split vertically. He was on one side, Zhang Lesi on the other, with the middle collapsing between them.
She lay facedown at the edge of the break, as though she had lost consciousness.
“Lesi—!” Zhao Yi shouted.
He struggled to his feet and activated his superpower. The concrete floor rapidly extended toward Zhang Lesi, forming a bridge.
Amid the violent shaking, Zhao Yi ran toward her. “Lesi—!”
Zhang Lesi had followed Zhao Yi as they fled for their lives, and she hated herself for it.
Why couldn’t she see yet? Why had she become a burden to someone else?
The tremendous force sent waves surging through the ground, tossing her and Zhao Yi against the ceiling before hurling them back onto the floor.
Zhang Lesi was battered to the brink of unconsciousness.
She heard someone shouting her name.
“Lesi—! Lesi—!”
Zhang Lesi struggled to raise her head and saw light.
Everything shifted from a blur into focus.
The man she loved was screaming her name with all his strength. He had built a bridge of concrete across the gap and was racing toward her.
“Lesi—!”
It was exactly like the love she had always imagined.
Love was supposed to be grand and earth-shaking.
Zhang Lesi smiled.
Then she watched, eyes wide open, as the half of the building behind Zhao Yi tilted and collapsed.
The concrete bridge broke apart.
Zhao Yi ran, leaped, and launched himself into the air.
“Le—si—!”
He reached out toward her.
Zhang Lesi pushed herself up and reached out toward him as well—
But in the end, their hands never met.
Everything seemed to slow to a crawl. Zhang Lesi blinked once.
Zhao Yi fell.
Then time suddenly sped up again.
The next instant, Zhang Lesi jumped after him.
Without the slightest hesitation.
If they were going to die, then so be it. It was worth it.
She had always said she had excellent taste in men.
[Note: The medical descriptions in this passage are based on information gathered from online sources.]