Chapter 5

Cats are the upper limit of what felines can reach in size when kept as pets by humans.

Among animals of the same size, cats rank high in combat ability.

A human simply cannot match a cat's speed.

Jiang Cheng swung a stick, feeling her hand sink as something flashed before her eyes.

Mo Li stepped on the stick for leverage, then shot past her face like lightning toward something behind her.

A thud, crash, and a guttural roar came from behind.

Jiang Cheng turned in horror.

Pinned to the ground by Mo Li was a security guard who had somehow come out of the building and was standing right behind her!

She had rushed out and left the glass door open—the door was wide open.

But hadn't the security guard just been dead?

Jiang Cheng suddenly understood. The killing intent she had sensed from Mo Li earlier wasn't aimed at her.

That little black cat had been trying to save her!

The security guard let out a hoarse, rasping roar just like the mutated neighbor, rolled over, and sat up on his knees. He grabbed the black cat with both hands and bit down!

The composure Jiang Cheng had maintained since first seeing the mutated neighbor finally cracked. She screamed, "No—!"

The security guard turned his head toward her. His eyes were pitch black, and his skin had an eerie, bluish-gray pallor.

Bits of Mo Li's fur, skin, and flesh dripped from his mouth.

Jiang Cheng felt a chill run through her entire body.

This wasn't an isolated case of mutation.

Her mind flashed back to the hallway where no one had responded to her cries for help, the unanswered calls to the police and property management, the silent road.

And she herself had just woken from a feverish, semi-conscious sleep.

A terrible realization dawned on her. Something horrifying was happening, and people hadn't fully awakened yet.

But what was waking up wasn't always human anymore.

She had just killed one monster, and another new one had already been born in its place.

Even though both creatures were still warm-blooded beings, Jiang Cheng was a living, breathing human radiating the sweet scent of flesh and blood. That made that little black cat far less appealing to the security guard than she was.

The guard flung Mo Li aside and tried to stand up.

These thoughts raced through Jiang Cheng's mind in just a few seconds.

The guard had fallen, grabbed Mo Li, bitten her, thrown her away, and was now trying to stand—all within those few seconds.

From the building's glass door to the first step of the stoop was only five or six paces. With a long enough arm, someone could lean forward and reach all the way to Jiang Cheng.

So Jiang Cheng truly had no time to hesitate. The moment she realized Mo Li wasn't attacking her but saving her, the moment she saw the guard had turned into a monster, she swung the stick without a second thought—like swinging a bat—aiming straight for his head!

But she miscalculated.

The neighbor had only been killed because his limbs and bones were already broken from his fall. The security guard was physically whole.

The guard snatched the stick with his teeth as it came at him, grabbed it with both hands, and yanked. Jiang Cheng felt an immense force drag her forward. She was standing at the edge of the steps, and the ground was slippery with the neighbor's brains. The stick was torn from her grip, she stumbled backward, missed her footing, and tumbled from the steps down to the ground.

Luckily, the stoop had only six steps and wasn't steep. The fall hurt, but she wasn't incapacitated.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Jiang Cheng scrambled over. When she looked up, the guard was still holding the mop handle in his mouth.

His teeth had actually embedded themselves into the wood. With a hard yank, he pulled the stick out of his mouth, dragging out several teeth along with it. He tossed it away, and the stick spun through the air with a whistling sound before landing somewhere in the distance.

The guard's pitch-black eyes were fixed on Jiang Cheng from the top of the steps as he stepped forward twice.

After mutation, these monsters gained tremendous strength, but their bodies were no longer very agile. The neighbor had broken his own wrist and arm because he charged too fast and couldn't stop in time.

The guard tried to walk down the stairs but lost his balance and pitched forward, tumbling down the steps.

Jiang Cheng was already on her feet, sprinting for her life. Without a weapon, she—a defenseless girl—stood no chance against a mutated monster bare-handed.

She ran toward where the stick had landed. The moment she picked it up, calm and courage flowed back into her.

She turned around. The guard was staggering toward her, his gait as unsteady as the neighbor's.

Jiang Cheng gripped the stick and stood her ground, muscles tensed.

The moment the guard lunged at her, she dodged nimbly to the side and swung the stick hard, landing a vicious blow to the back of his head!

The guard crashed to the ground. Jiang Cheng stepped forward and hammered him again and again on the back of his head!

Even then, the guard tried to push himself up from the ground, completely unlike a normal human, who would have been stunned after a single blow to the skull.

Luckily, there was nothing funny about "emergency strength."

With a few more whacks, each blow knocked the guard back down as he tried to rise.

After several hits, his skull finally cracked. As his hand grabbed Jiang Cheng's ankle, she gripped the stick in both hands, cocked it upright, and drove it into his skull. She twisted!

At last, the monster listlessly fell to the ground as a lifeless corpse.

Jiang Cheng pressed her foot on the guard's head and yanked the stick out.

His dead hand was still clenching her ankle like a vise. She had to crouch down and struggle for a moment to pry his fingers loose before pulling free.

At this point, she abandoned any thought of going to the property management office.

She now realized that a terrifying wave of mutation had spread over an alarming area. Her neighbors, the property staff, maybe even the entire city, had been affected. Mutated monsters could be anywhere, including the management building.

Nowhere outside was safe.

She decided to go back. In this situation, her best bet for safety was to lock herself inside her own apartment.

And there was Mo Li. She had to go back and check on the little black cat.

That little black cat had saved her life.

If Mo Li hadn't lunged at the guard, he would have been standing just a few paces behind her without a sound, and all he would have needed to do was pounce and bite her to death.

Please, little black cat. Don't be dead!

But just then, she heard a girl's scream. "Help! Somebody, please help! Aaaaaaah!"

Jiang Cheng stopped mid-stride back toward the building.

She couldn't ignore a girl's cry for help. The youth apartment complex had more male residents than females, but the building was marketed as a community for young people. Most of the tenants were around her age.

Jiang Cheng sprinted toward the sound, heading into the complex garden.

Under the streetlamp light, she saw a man pinning a girl to the ground. At first glance, it seemed like an assault.

But it wasn't.

He was tearing into her with his teeth!

A mutated monster!

Jiang Cheng cracked her stick across him, knocking him off the girl. Without even checking the mauled victim, she swung the stick again and again at the man's skull until she heard the crunch of his head cracking.

That sound was like music to her ears.

It meant she had put down another monster.

A few more whacks, and as the skull splintered and brains spilled everywhere, the monster finally stopped moving.

But Jiang Cheng couldn't afford to relax. Just because it was dead now didn't mean it might not come back. In horror movies, some monsters kept reviving and couldn't be killed.

She mustered every ounce of her strength for one last, brutal blow.

CRACK—the stick snapped in two. The broken piece flew back, nearly hitting her.

The mop handle wasn't made from good wood, but it wasn't thin either. In the past, Jiang Cheng would never have believed she had the strength to snap a mop handle like that.

Come to think of it, a human skull shouldn't crack so easily either.

Was her strength greater now, or had the bones of those turned into monsters become brittle?

There was no time to dwell on that. She dropped the broken stick and rushed to check on the girl on the ground.

The girl's shoulder was torn and bloody, chewed raw. She trembled with pain and terror, gasping between sobs.

"Can you get up?" Jiang Cheng tried to haul her to her feet.

But the girl couldn't seem to move. She gasped frantically and begged: "Call an ambulance! An ambulance! Save me!"

Yet the surroundings remained eerily quiet. No sound of cars on the road.

It meant Jiang Cheng, the three mutated monsters, and this injured girl were among the earliest to wake. Most people were still unconscious.

The world was still silent, brewing.

No one knew whether the next person to open their eyes would be human or monster. The longer she stayed outside, the greater the danger.

She let go of the girl.

The girl screamed: "Don't go! Don't leave me! Help me!"

Driven by the terror of abandonment, the girl somehow forced herself upright into a sitting position.

But Jiang Cheng wasn't abandoning her. She walked over to the monster she'd just killed and crouched down to strip the clothes from its corpse.

The man had been wearing a shirt. Jiang Cheng yanked it open, popping the buttons off, then pulled it free from the body. She folded it into a long strip, went back to the girl, and crouched: "Lift your arm."

Seeing the girl crying, tears and snot streaming, Jiang Cheng simply took her arm, threaded the shirt under her armpit, and tied it tightly around the wound to stop the bleeding.

The shoulder was mangled from bites. Jiang Cheng knew it would hurt, but the girl wouldn't die immediately. Stopping the bleeding was urgent—she was losing too much blood.

The girl flinched in panic, also from pain and fear: "What are you doing! No! What about infection! Call me an ambulance! Please, call an ambulance!"

"Shut up and listen!" Jiang Cheng cut off her cries. "I don't know what's happening, but everyone's passed out. I tried calling the police and the property management—no one answered. Everyone must be unconscious. Listen—there's not even a single car on the road."

"You and I woke up early. But not everyone who wakes up is still human. Some turn into these monsters."

Black eyes, grayish-blue skin, immense strength.

But poor balance—as if they hadn't mastered their new bodies yet.

"This is the third monster I've killed!"

"There are still many people unconscious. We don't know if they'll turn into monsters when they wake!"

"Right now, we have to get back inside a building immediately. Out here, anything could happen—someone might wake up and mutate. We need to get inside right now!"

The girl was stunned into silence.

Yes, she had seen it with her own eyes—the person who had attacked her like a wild beast really did have altered eyes and skin.

And she herself had just woken up after collapsing in the garden at night.

Everything Jiang Cheng said was true.

"Then... then..." the girl stammered.

Jiang Cheng finished tying the knot, stopping the bleeding: "I'm heading back. You need to get up and go home yourself. Be careful."

The girl grabbed her sleeve: "I can't get up... help me, please."

She wasn't faking it. The pain was excruciating. Where she'd been lying, there were shreds of flesh from the monster's savage biting—it was horrible to look at. Terrifying and revolting.

Her shoulder bone was exposed, and the blood loss made her dizzy.

Jiang Cheng put the girl's uninjured arm over her shoulder and pulled her upright.

But the girl, weak from injury and fear, trembled and could barely stand. She begged: "Can you walk me back?"

Jiang Cheng asked: "Which building are you in?"

The girl told her the building number.

But it wasn't the same one as Jiang Cheng's, and the garden lay between them. Right now, the garden felt like a nest of unknown monsters—any shadow could hide a creature ready to attack.

Jiang Cheng thought for a second and made a decision: "Come with me. To my place."

She lifted the girl's other arm, ducked under it, and propped the girl's weight on her shoulders as they headed toward her building: "Going to yours and coming back is too dangerous. First, come to mine. Forget everything else—we both need to get inside right now."

The girl understood the urgency: "Okay. Let's go to yours!"

But even with Jiang Cheng supporting her, every step jostled the wound, making her hiss with pain, her body shaking and legs buckling.

Jiang Cheng dragged her toward her own building.

There, a little black cat lay, alive or dead unknown.

Please don't die!