Chapter 9

Before the government had made any response at all, netizens had already begun spontaneously pooling information. It was at times like this that the power of the internet became apparent.

Jiang Cheng closed the homeowners’ forum and opened several major national online forums to check the latest firsthand accounts.

Information from all over the country gathered here, and she kept browsing the web until the middle of the night. Sure enough, it wasn’t just S City—this event covered the entire country.

What could cover such a vast area all at once?

A virus? Or radiation?

Jiang Cheng recalled the moment that afternoon when she had felt dizzy while feeding the cats in the garden, and the sky had taken on a strange purple hue. She had looked up then, thinking it was just an unusually early sunset—it was still clearly mid-afternoon.

That night she had developed a fever, taken some medicine, and fallen into a deep sleep.

Now that she thought about it, that hadn’t been ordinary sleep—it had clearly been unconsciousness.

The situation across the country was mostly the same: people waking up gradually, chaos and panic first. Then the unlucky ones died, while the lucky ones survived by beating to death the mutated monsters.

Some people were injured, and many described the mutated creatures as “biting people like mad dogs.”

That was vivid—that was exactly what Jiang Cheng had felt when she first saw the monster in the garden tearing into Shen Wei.

Most people had also reached a consensus by now: stay home, lock the doors, and wait for the government’s instructions tomorrow.

Jiang Cheng closed her laptop and got up again to check on Mo Li and Shen Wei.

Mo Li was burning hot; Shen Wei was icy cold. One cat and one person, both bitten by mutated monsters, yet their conditions were completely different.

Jiang Cheng wasn’t a doctor, but she took a cooling patch from the fridge and applied it to Mo Li to bring down the fever, then shook out a blanket and covered Shen Wei to keep her warm.

She made a silent prayer that she hadn’t mixed up the two treatments.

It was then that she heard a faint siren in the distance. She couldn’t tell if it was a police car, a fire truck, or an ambulance.

But the sound was thrilling.

It meant the government’s forces, after the initial chaos, were able to regroup effectively and were already mobilizing.

Jiang Cheng looked out the window and saw silhouettes in every window where lights were still on. Clearly, everyone shared the same feeling—a relieved, joyful sense of “finally, they’re coming” and “we’re saved.”

Let’s hope so.

Jiang Cheng checked the door again, confirmed it was locked. She left the hallway light on, turned off the main lights, and then, holding the baseball bat against her chest, lay down on the sofa and fell asleep.

Many people at this time were nowhere near falling asleep. Just moments ago, she’d seen that most houses still had their lights on—because many people, after waking up from unconsciousness and realizing something was wrong, never left their homes at all. They’d only peered out the windows at the terrifying scenes in the garden below, then sensibly stayed put in their safe houses.

Their minds were a tangle of chaos—how could anyone possibly sleep?

Jiang Cheng was probably the person in the entire neighborhood who had expended the most physical energy that night.

She even felt hungry again just before sleeping, ate a few biscuits to settle her stomach, and then lay down. She fell asleep quickly.

The moon hung high over the city, pale and stark.

Jiang Cheng slept deeply.

She had no idea that the one cat and one person occupying her bed were undergoing silent, cataclysmic changes—blood, cells, gene strands all transforming beyond recognition.

Mo Li’s paw pads flowered open many times and then closed again; his body twitched slightly in small spasms.

As for Shen Wei, her skin, pale and grayish, was gradually turning a sickly green. If she had changed to this color before Jiang Cheng fell asleep, and Jiang Cheng had seen it, she would have been alarmed—because the mutated monsters she’d encountered had lost the normal color of human skin, which had turned a dark blue-black.

But sadly, right up until Jiang Cheng fell asleep, Shen Wei’s skin had only looked like someone who had lost too much blood.

Jiang Cheng never realized the danger.

Shen Wei’s skin changed little by little—similar to the mutated creatures they’d encountered earlier, but not exactly the same. Her skin was altogether greener, a pale gray-green lighter than the dark blue-black of the others.

Her complexion changed too, gradually losing the texture of human flesh and taking on the appearance of green artificial leather.

This transformation happened without a sound, until Shen Wei’s eyes snapped open.

Her eyes no longer had any whites—they were pitch black entirely!

Humans truly do possess something called “the sixth sense.”

In her sleep, Jiang Cheng’s heart suddenly constricted. She shot her eyes open and immediately met a pair of pitch-black eyes.

Shen Wei stood before the sofa, bent over “gazing” at her, nose nearly touching nose.

Jiang Cheng didn’t know how long she had slept, but the sky was still dark. Moonlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling window cast Shen Wei’s long shadow across the floor and the sofa.

Her green skin gave off a look of dense, thickened toughness.

Her black eyes looked like something straight out of a science fiction film about aliens.

Jiang Cheng held her breath, not daring to move a single muscle.

Strangely, though Shen Wei had already mutated into a monster, she didn’t immediately attack or bite her. Shen Wei seemed to be “staring” at her. After a moment, her face drifted slowly from Jiang Cheng’s nose down toward her chest, over her heart.

Jiang Cheng couldn’t tell if Shen Wei was actually “looking” at her, or “smelling” her, or even... “listening” to her?

Just then, the neighbor upstairs got up to use the bathroom and pressed the flush button. The loud, gurgling rush of water suddenly echoed overhead.

Shen Wei snapped her head up, staring toward the ceiling.

Now!

Jiang Cheng hurriedly sat up and shoved Shen Wei away! Then she sprang to her feet and swung the baseball bat over her head with full force!

Shen Wei stumbled backward, and as the bat whistled toward her, she dropped her center of gravity in an instant, narrowly dodging the blow.

Jiang Cheng’s swing hit empty air, and her balance wavered—she stumbled a step sideways before steadying herself, gripping the bat tightly and staring at Shen Wei in shock—that dodge just now had been so precise, so swift and agile that most normal living humans couldn’t have pulled it off.

Shouldn’t a person who mutates be uncoordinated and unstable?

The hallway light wasn’t very bright—a soft, warm yellow that only reached a small area near the entrance.

Jiang Cheng had deliberately not drawn the curtain before sleeping, so moonlight and the lights from outside filtered in as well.

You could make out faces, but the overall room was still dim.

In that split second, the bat had swept across the crown of Shen Wei’s head, and she had dodged by crouching low—but then she didn’t stand back up, the way a human would.

Instead, Shen Wei remained in that half-crouched pose, her black eyes locked on Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng, white-knuckled around the bat, also held her position, afraid to move.

Through the dim light she could now clearly see that Shen Wei’s skin differed from the four variants she had encountered before.

In that instant, Jiang Cheng realized that Shen Wei was a more advanced existence than the earlier mutated creatures. Her limbs were coordinated and agile—something the four monsters Jiang Cheng had killed were nowhere near matching.

One person, one monster—locked in a standoff inside the dimly lit room.

Jiang Cheng felt sweat begin to bead on the back of her neck, gathering into a drop that slid along the dip of her spine down toward her waist.

Shen Wei stayed in that half-crouch as if it cost her no effort at all. But Jiang Cheng, holding her baseball bat, found she couldn’t stay completely still for any length of time.

Whenever Jiang Cheng shifted slightly, Shen Wei’s face tracked her movement.

When Jiang Cheng froze again, Shen Wei would too. But she seemed to grow irritated by this, and suddenly she opened her mouth and let out a sharp hiss of air.

It looked like the prelude to a cat fight.

But when that breath was exhaled by a “person,” it was enough to make one’s skin crawl. The hairs on Jiang Cheng’s arms stood on end.

Jiang Cheng suspected that Shen Wei couldn’t actually see her clearly. She seemed to be relying on her hearing to pinpoint Jiang Cheng’s location.

Jiang Cheng lowered her gaze to the floor. The trash can was right at her feet.

She slowly shifted her foot, ever so gently, until the tip of her shoe touched the trash can. In the next instant, she pushed off with her foot and sent the trash can skidding out. Or rather, it couldn’t really be called a “kick”—she essentially used her foot to “shove” it forward.

The advantage of this was that the sound produced at the moment she applied force was minimal, far quieter than the sound of the trash can hitting the ground a split second later.

Sure enough, Shen Wei lunged in the direction where the trash can landed.

The moment Shen Wei moved, Jiang Cheng moved too, swinging the baseball bat in a whistling arc aimed at the back of Shen Wei’s head.

Amazingly, Shen Wei dodged again with startling agility, twisting her body and leaping straight at Jiang Cheng.

But Jiang Cheng had already anticipated this outcome when she swung. The moment her bat met empty air, she didn’t hesitate—she swung again, striking at the air in front of her.

Her prediction was right! Shen Wei, mid-pounce, seemed to slam straight into the bat as if she had thrown herself onto it. She was knocked off course by the blow and missed her target.

Shen Wei turned and lunged back, but Jiang Cheng’s bat never stopped. Blow after blow, she beat Shen Wei back.

Thankfully, although Shen Wei was more agile and flexible than the previous mutants, she didn’t have any “surprise tactics.” As long as she could locate Jiang Cheng, she would simply keep attacking in straight lines.

So for Jiang Cheng, reading her trajectory wasn’t difficult—every strike could land on Shen Wei. But Shen Wei’s strength was simply overwhelming.

When Jiang Cheng had faced the four earlier mutants, their uncoordinated limbs had allowed her to dodge flexibly and use her technique during both attack and defense. In truth, Jiang Cheng had never engaged in prolonged strength-based struggles with those four.

But now, in this cramped space, as Shen Wei launched one straight-line assault after another, every swing of Jiang Cheng’s bat was a contest of pure power.

Shen Wei’s coordination and agility were both greater than the earlier mutants, but she hadn’t lost that “raw strength” trait either. She even used her arms to block the bat and protect her head.

She knew her head was a vital spot.

In the brief span of a few moments, the two women engaged in a simple yet fierce life-and-death struggle within the small space.

Although Jiang Cheng’s physical stamina had been enhanced after her high fever, it was clear that the mutant’s strength had increased even more. Every clash was a high-intensity drain on her energy, and after just a few rounds of attack and defense, she could feel her arms going numb and her stamina flagging.

Her breathing had become ragged, and the back of her T-shirt was soaked through with sweat.

Shen Wei had now completely lost her human habits. Whenever she squared off against Jiang Cheng, she would crouch with her knees half-bent, body slightly hunched, both hands spread out in front of her like ghost claws.

She’d had long, beautiful manicured nails, but in this situation they looked like nothing short of lethal weapons.

And she had blocked the bat with her arms several times—Jiang Cheng could feel that her bone density seemed to have been enhanced beyond that of the four she’d killed earlier.

Shen Wei fixed her pitch-black eyes on Jiang Cheng, opened her mouth, and let out another breath. Her teeth shone pale white.

To be honest, the living aren’t frightening, and the dead aren’t frightening either. But something that was neither alive nor dead—that was truly unsettling to the core.

That exhaling sound was utterly inhuman. A fresh wave of goosebumps broke out on Jiang Cheng’s back, and she couldn’t help but shrug her shoulders.

That single instant of distraction was all Shen Wei needed. She pounced.

Jiang Cheng reacted quickly and swung the bat down hard. But this time, Shen Wei caught the bat!

Jiang Cheng knew immediately that something was wrong. The thought barely flashed through her mind before she was flung through the air by an enormous force, the bat flying from her hands, her body crashing into the sofa.

She opened her eyes and saw Shen Wei above her, mouth wide open, leaping down at her. There was nowhere to dodge, nowhere to hide.

Jiang Cheng’s pupils contracted sharply.

Was she going to die here?

Time’s fast and slow defied description.

Shen Wei seemed to hang in the air, frozen, as she lunged.

But the next instant, she vanished from Jiang Cheng’s field of vision—she disappeared so fast that Jiang Cheng couldn’t even see it, only hearing the massive crash against the sideboard and an extremely clear sound of bones shattering.

Shen Wei hadn’t “vanished”—she had been knocked aside the very instant she lunged at Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng propped herself up, trembling, and stared at the creature that had knocked Shen Wei away and bitten through her neck—

Completely black, with long, sleek limbs, its body larger than a big dog, almost like a leopard.

Was it what she thought it was?

Normally, that would be impossible. But if humans could turn into monsters, what was impossible anymore?

After gazing at the pitch-black creature for a long time, Jiang Cheng tested a name: “...Mo Li?”

The black creature turned its head. Its eyes were a piercing green, still blazing with murderous intent.

It had Shen Wei’s neck clamped in its jaws.

Shen Wei’s head now hung at a right angle. Though some flesh and blood still connected it to her body, the main connection was clearly severed. Her limbs had gone limp—she was well and truly dead.

The leopard-like creature released its grip, let go of Shen Wei, and walked toward Jiang Cheng.

With every step it took, its body shrank a little more.

Jiang Cheng sat on the sofa, watching as the beast that could easily kill a mutant shrank back into the familiar black cat. It jumped lightly onto her lap and looked up at her with green eyes.

A faint electric current ran through her heart.

This had happened before—back then it had felt like someone had lightly poked her heart, giving Jiang Cheng a feeling of being “stirred inside.”

Now she felt it again.

It wasn’t language, but it reached her heart directly—subtle, faint, unmistakable.

“I...” Jiang Cheng stared at Mo Li and answered instinctively. “I’m fine.”