Chapter 4

It was the scream that woke Jiang Cheng.

The frame-structured building carried sound easily, and Jiang Cheng lived right next door, so she heard it most clearly.

She snapped her eyes open, gasping sharply. Her heart ached for several seconds before she finally regained clarity, slowly pushing herself upright.

What was going on next door? Why was the dog barking like that?

She had taken her medicine and slept—how long had it been?

Jiang Cheng sat on the edge of the bed, catching her breath, while the dog’s barking next door grew eerie.

After a minute or two, she felt her strength return. But the barking next door faded, then stopped entirely.

An unsettling silence fell over the entire complex.

Even more chilling than before.

Jiang Cheng stood up, her legs still a little weak. After a few steps, she felt better.

First, she went to turn on the light.

Turning on the light was meant to chase away fear, but somehow, the harsh, pale glow illuminating her empty apartment gave her an unnatural feeling.

The dog next door had gone completely silent. The way it had barked earlier was definitely wrong. Either something had happened to the dog, or something had happened to the person.

Jiang Cheng picked up her phone and dialed the police. But the emergency number, which should have connected immediately, rang several times without an answer.

She hung up and tried twice more—same result.

She called the property management. No one answered there either.

Jiang Cheng hung up again and glanced toward the floor-to-ceiling window.

At that moment, she suddenly realized why her own familiar home felt so strange now—it was too quiet. Where were the cars on the nearby road? She couldn’t hear a single sound.

Silence so deep it was terrifying.

Jiang Cheng felt that the whole world was off, even vaguely sensed that something was wrong with herself. But she didn’t have time to investigate what was happening to the world. She had to first see what was happening around her—what had happened next door.

Why had the dog’s sound vanished completely?

Jiang Cheng picked up the baseball bat she kept at home for self-defense and opened her door.

It was a small-unit youth apartment building, twenty-four apartments per floor. The hallway was long, more like a corridor in an office building. Looking down it, all she could see were doors.

At this moment, not a single person was in sight.

Even though the dog’s barking had been so agonizing just moments ago, no one had opened their door to check.

Jiang Cheng went to knock on the neighbor’s door. “Hello?”

“I’m from 0306 next door.”

“Is something wrong? Do you need help?”

Actually, the dog next door was quite cute—the only problem was that it barked whenever anyone passed by. But the neighbor was a reasonable person; whenever someone complained, he would apologize, making it hard for the others to stay upset with him.

But now, as Jiang Cheng knocked, the dog that usually started barking at the sound of footsteps was completely silent. Yet faint noises came from inside, clearly indicating someone was home.

She knocked again. “Hello? Do you need help?”

“Are you there?” Jiang Cheng decided to bluff, “I’ve called the property management. They’ll be here soon.”

She suspected there might be a burglar next door.

The neighbor loved his dog dearly. If he were home himself, the dog shouldn’t have been screaming like that. After she knocked several times without hearing a bark, she feared the dog might already have been killed by the intruder.

For safety, she invoked the property management to intimidate whoever was inside.

After she called out, she heard clear footsteps approaching the door from inside.

Jiang Cheng gripped her bat tighter. She had a plan: if a stranger opened the door, she would pretend to have the wrong apartment, acting like she mistook them for the neighbor, to keep herself safe.

If it really was a bad guy, she’d have to wait for the property staff and police to handle it.

Just as she was strategizing, there was a sudden bang against the door, as if something had slammed violently into it, startling her.

Jiang Cheng tightened her hold on the bat, staring at the door. “Hello? Are you okay?”

From inside came frantic pounding, mixed with scraping sounds, like both hitting and clawing.

Then, the doorknob moved.

Not enough to open the door, but it moved again.

Jiang Cheng’s internal alarm blared. Instinctively, she stepped back two paces.

The doorknob moved a third time, and the door creaked open.

Seeing half a face in the gap—it was the neighbor she’d met a few times—Jiang Cheng let out a breath. “What happened, you—”

Her voice cut off abruptly as she took in the neighbor’s eyes: pitch black, with no white visible.

In that instant, the “neighbor” lunged at her!

Jiang Cheng reflexively raised her bat to block, just managing to stop the outstretched arms. But the force of the lunge was shockingly strong, pushing her backward.

The momentum drove her back several rapid steps until bang, her back slammed into the door of the neighbor across the hall.

Quick-thinking, the moment her back hit something solid, she let go of the bat and slid down, slipping out from under the attacker.

The “neighbor,” slower to react, kept charging forward even after losing its target, crashing loudly into the door across the hall.

The bat clattered to the floor.

Jiang Cheng scrambled up and turned to look. The “neighbor” turned its head to stare back at her.

Those eyes had no white—completely black.

Drool dripped from its mouth.

A guttural whimper came from its throat.

Then, with a hoarse roar, it opened its mouth wide, exhaling a foul, stinking breath.

Jiang Cheng ran.

“Help!” she screamed as she fled. “Someone, help!”

Shouting for help when a single woman is in danger is the right thing to do. The last time she encountered a pervert, her cries had summoned many kind neighbors.

But this time, the empty hallway was met with not a single open door.

Only her sharp screams echoed back at her.

Jiang Cheng didn’t realize that she and the neighbor were among the first to wake up.

The tragedy was that she had woken up still human, while her neighbor had become something inhuman.

She now understood what had happened to the dog next door. Though she had only been shoved against the door briefly, she had glimpsed the flesh and fur in the neighbor’s mouth, and the large crimson stain on its T-shirt.

What she couldn’t understand was why.

She remembered that on Wednesday, when she came home, she had run into the neighbor heading out to walk his dog. Everything was normal then. How had he become something so terrifying?

Behind her came the sound of heavy thumping footsteps, along with hoarse roars, chasing her.

Her mind racing, she had already reached the end of the hallway.

Running too fast, she nearly crashed into the fire door leading to the stairwell. Jiang Cheng slammed to a halt, yanked the fire door open, slipped inside, and immediately pulled it shut, holding it tight.

The next second, she heard a loud thwack as the “neighbor,” unable to stop its momentum, slammed into the door.

Jiang Cheng even heard what sounded like bones breaking.

The stairwell fire door opened outward from the other side, unlike the apartment doors, which swung inward.

The neighbor, stretching its arms like a zombie, had been chasing her, and the sound of snapping was likely its wrist or arm hitting the fire door and breaking.

Jiang Cheng bet that in his current state, he wouldn't open that door.

A sound like a body slamming into the door rang out—

Jiang Cheng's bet paid off.

Her neighbor, clearly lacking coordination, couldn't manage the motion of pulling the door open.

But Jiang Cheng didn't linger. A fire door that couldn't lock didn't offer her any safety. She turned and ran downstairs.

She had chosen a lower floor because she thought it would be easier to escape in case of a fire or something similar. What was happening now wasn't a fire, but the "easy escape" had certainly proven true.

The first-floor lobby had a security guard on duty 24 hours a day.

Jiang Cheng pushed open the ground-floor fire door, about to call for help, when she immediately spotted the familiar-looking security guard lying motionless on the floor, face down.

Her cry for help caught in her throat. She ran over and turned the guard over. "Hey? Hey? Are you okay? Wake up? Wake up!"

The guard's body was still warm, or rather, the heat hadn't yet faded entirely.

But his face was an ashen gray.

Jiang Cheng felt that her neighbor's face earlier had also had that same ashen quality, a kind of dark green.

Everything upstairs had happened so fast. In her brief exchange of looks with the neighbor, her gaze had been caught entirely by his pitch-black, pupil-less eyes and his drooling, bloodied mouth.

Recalling it now, the rest was blurry, but his face had indeed been a dull grayish-black, even more green than the guard's.

Jiang Cheng reached out and felt the guard's nose. Her heart went cold—no breath.

The warmth of his body was indeed just residual heat.

The guard was already dead.

Jiang Cheng clenched her teeth, her breathing rapid and heavy.

Thankfully, she still kept her wits. She grabbed the walkie-talkie on the floor. "Hey? Anyone there? Anyone? Hey! Hey!"

But the walkie-talkie, just like the silent stairwell, got no response.

Realizing this, Jiang Cheng didn't hesitate. She dropped the walkie-talkie and stood up, planning to head straight to the property management office.

Because the office had security guards, and a few things that looked like stun batons, and even that big fork with the half-moon-shaped head.

Best-case scenario, she'd find people. Even if she didn't, she could at least find a usable weapon.

Jiang Cheng pushed open the glass door of the building and stepped out.

But there was a huge crash from above, like a thunderclap. Broken glass rained down like a shower, and with a heavy thud, a "person" fell from the midair onto the empty ground below the stairs leading to the building entrance.

The "person" didn't groan or cry out in pain. Instead, it lifted its head.

Pitch-black eyes.

Still holding the glass door handle, Jiang Cheng froze completely.

The thing that had fallen onto the steps wasn't any "person"—it was the neighbor she had just locked out on the stairwell with the fire door.

He had smashed through the glass window at the end of the hallway, and followed her by jumping down from upstairs.

Or maybe not jumping. It was more like a "fall."

His feet were clearly injured from the fall. One ankle was bent at a 90-degree angle, and the other leg was twisted from the knee. When he saw Jiang Cheng on the building steps, he tried to stand up but failed. Then he started crawling upward, clawing at the ground.

His wrists and arms had already been broken upstairs from slamming into the wall without braking.

He crawled in a grotesque, misshapen way.

It was even more horrifying to watch.

Jiang Cheng took a step back and closed the front door of the building. Through the glass, she watched the monster neighbor slowly crawling toward her.

All she could hear was her own labored breathing.

Don't panic, she told herself. You can't panic.

She had already experienced the neighbor's monstrous strength. She knew that even with his damaged wrists and arms, this glass door might not be able to hold him back.

She couldn't just wait to die.

Heaven helps those who help themselves.

Jiang Cheng quickly scanned the first-floor lobby and saw the cleaning supplies the janitor had left in the corner.

She spotted an old-fashioned cloth mop.

The mop handle was a sturdy wooden stick.

Jiang Cheng grabbed the mop and swung it. The heavy, cloth-woven mop head seriously affected her ability to generate force.

She rushed over, pulled open the security guard's desk drawer, found no scissors, but spotted a set of keys inside. She glanced back through the glass door—the monster neighbor was still crawling upward.

While twisting her head to keep watch, she used the jagged edges of the keys to cut the rope holding the mop head.

Thank the property management's stinginess for never buying the janitors new mops. This one was already old and tattered, and the binding rope was already heavily worn.

After a few cuts, Jiang Cheng severed the rope, removed the mop head, and was left with a smooth, bare wooden stick.

She turned her head to look again. The neighbor's head and shoulders had already crawled past the highest step. His broken arms flailed against the glass door.

Jiang Cheng gripped the wooden stick tightly, took a deep breath, and suddenly pushed open the glass door, charging out. Mimicking what she'd seen in TV shows, she raised the stick high and slammed it down viciously onto the monster's skull.

The sound of a skull cracking was not pleasant to hear.

It even set her teeth on edge.

But those pitch-black eyes made Jiang Cheng starkly aware that the person in front of her was no longer a "person," but a monster mutated by some unknown cause.

Suppressing all her discomfort, she clenched her teeth and struck a second time!

Attacking the head was effective!

The monster's movements clearly stalled.

Jiang Cheng gritted her teeth and brought the stick down again and again, until the monster's head was cracked open, and disgusting liquid and bits of solid debris splashed onto the steps.

She had killed someone.

So what.

When facing a monster, you have to protect yourself first.

When the police came, she would say exactly that.

The muscles in her arms were cramping slightly from the burst of strength.

Jiang Cheng stood there, panting, holding the stick smeared with disgusting fluid.

She thought she'd at least get half a minute to rest and feel safe, but then a sharp, piercing screech came from the bottom of the steps.

Jiang Cheng immediately shifted into a defensive posture and looked down.

This time, it wasn't a human, but a very familiar black cat.

Its eyes were an eerie, glowing green in the darkness.

Its fur was bristled, and it let out a piercing scream at her, as if it were a challenge or a declaration of war.

Jiang Cheng breathed heavily, gripping the stick tightly, and aimed it at the cat at the foot of the stairs. "...Mo Li?"

Even the cat had turned into a monster?

Jiang Cheng clenched her jaw.

Mo Li let out a harsh cry, turned into a black streak, and with incredible speed and leaping ability, lunged straight at her!

Jiang Cheng felt her heart tighten, as if an electric current had passed through her, a wave of danger—or maybe murderous intent—washing over her.

She gritted her teeth, swung the stick, and struck hard—