Muscles was startled by the banging on the door. Muttering to himself, he walked over: “What’s going on here now?”
One apartment had let out screams, another was thumping from inside. What was happening to all his neighbors on the same floor?
Jiang Cheng immediately shouted to stop him: “Don’t go over there! Go back to your own place! Now!”
Muscles looked at her. “Huh~?”
The mutated monster in this apartment reached the door handle even faster than Jiang Cheng’s neighbor had. The angle and force were just right—unlike Jiang Cheng’s neighbor, who had fumbled several times before pressing the handle down, this monster succeeded on the first try.
The door creaked open.
Muscles was standing right outside the apartment.
The monster stood just inside the door.
Two normal eyes met two pitch-black eyes.
Drool dripped steadily.
Muscles: “…”
“RUN—!” Jiang Cheng shouted.
The monster opened its mouth, letting out a hoarse, rasping roar, and lunged forward with outstretched arms.
Muscles let out a yelp, turned, and ran: “HELP! A GHOST—!!”
For all his bulging muscles—broad, thick shoulders, arms so swollen they couldn’t hang flat against his sides, the very picture of a burly tough guy—Muscles was a coward.
He wasn’t afraid of living people. But he was afraid of ghosts.
What the hell was this monster? He was about to wet himself!
Mom!
The baseball bat was right by the door. Jiang Cheng grabbed it and sprinted out.
Muscles was quite far from her, near the other end of the hallway, very close to the dead end. He only managed a few steps before he ran out of space.
He turned his head to look.
The monster with pitch-black eyes and drool and slime dripping from its mouth was actually a familiar neighbor from everyday life. But right now, the neighbor radiated a kind of deathly aura.
Its two hands were outstretched like claws, lunging at him.
Muscles was utterly terrified. He instantly ducked down—the same instinctive evasive reaction Jiang Cheng had had when she first came face to face with the monster next door. It was a natural response: dodge.
This monster neighbor also crashed into the wall. But since the two of them had been close to the end of the hallway to begin with, and they hadn’t built up much speed in those few steps, this monster didn’t slam into the fire door with enough force to break its arm, unlike Jiang Cheng’s neighbor.
The monster’s outstretched hands hit the wall, stopping its momentum. It turned its head to look.
Muscles, having dodged that lunge, scrambled away on all fours, stood up, and turned his head too.
They were face to face again.
The monster let out a roar.
Muscles took off running toward Jiang Cheng: “Ahhhhh run! Why are you coming over here ahhhhh!”
Jiang Cheng charged toward him and bellowed: “MOVE—!”
She gripped the bat tightly.
Muscles nimbly sidestepped, clearing a path and revealing the monster chasing behind him.
Jiang Cheng used the momentum of her sprint, wound up the bat, and swung it with all her might!
Muscles turned his head to look behind him and caught the scene perfectly—
Teeth, saliva, and blood sprayed through the air.
The monster’s body lifted backward into the air.
The silhouette of the girl gripping the bat looked more powerful than every man pumping iron at the gym.
Everything felt like slow motion from a movie, as if the world had frozen for an instant.
Then with a thud, the monster fell to the ground, landing on its back.
In one fluid motion, Jiang Cheng stopped her forward momentum, spun around, and before the monster could get up, she brought the bat down on it again and again with vicious strikes.
She heard the door of Li Ziqing’s apartment start banging too. She needed to finish this quickly. Otherwise, if Li Ziqing also came out, she’d have to fight two at once.
The baseball bat was thicker at the top and thinner at the bottom, heavier at the top and lighter at the bottom. It was incredibly easy to swing—way, way better than a mop handle.
Jiang Cheng’s strength really had increased compared to before she lost consciousness. With a proper weapon in hand, she shattered the monster’s head in just a few strikes.
The walls on both sides of the hallway were splattered with a sticky mess of red and white.
Muscles clenched his glutes and pressed his entire body flat against the hallway wall, watching in horror as his slender female neighbor beat another neighbor—someone he usually recognized—to death.
Jiang Cheng rested the bat on the ground, caught her breath for a moment, then straightened up and jerked her chin toward Muscles’ apartment. “Go back inside and lock the door!”
Muscles was incoherent. “He! You! I!”
The door of Li Ziqing’s apartment was still banging.
“Don’t go near that apartment. Go back right now. She’s about to come out.” Jiang Cheng strode past him. “Other people might have turned into monsters too. Go back and talk on the owners’ forum!”
Muscles stayed plastered against the wall like a gecko. He watched Jiang Cheng hurry toward her own apartment, then glanced at the gruesome corpse of the neighbor lying on the floor.
He looked back at Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng had already jogged to her doorstep, slipped inside, and slammed the door shut with a smack.
Just then, the neighbor directly across from Muscles woke up. Still groggy from just waking, he heard the shouting in the hallway.
A man yelling about ghosts, a woman yelling to go back, then someone screaming for help, another yelling “move!”—followed by various chaotic sounds.
The neighbor rubbed his temples, shook off the drowsiness, got up, and opened the door to see what was happening. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”
He looked up and locked eyes with Muscles, who was still pressed flat against the wall across the hall.
Muscles looked at this neighbor—whose eyes were normal—then glanced at the monster corpse on the floor.
The neighbor followed his gaze and also saw the corpse and the horrific scene.
Two normal, living people stared at each other again. “…”
Muscles wanted to say “It wasn’t me,” but he opened his mouth and didn’t know how to explain.
The neighbor stared at this muscular man for one second… then slammed his own door shut with tremendous force, fumbling to lock it.
Muscles jolted. He took a running leap, jumped over the corpse, shouted “Check the owners’ forum!”—then scrambled into his own apartment in a panic and slammed the door shut too.
The door of Li Ziqing’s apartment kept banging.
But fortunately, Li Ziqing didn’t happen to touch the door handle and open it. She banged and scratched at the door from inside, but after Muscles had fled home and shut his door, there were no other sounds in the hallway. Gradually, Li Ziqing quieted down and stopped making noise.
Back inside her apartment, Jiang Cheng stood the baseball bat by the door so she could grab it easily when going out.
Shen Wei and Moli lay on the bed. Facing the foot of the bed, against the opposite wall, was Jiang Cheng’s dresser, which also served as her computer desk. Jiang Cheng pulled out the chair, sat down, opened her laptop, and logged into the owners’ forum. She started a new thread and began typing rapidly:
【!!!!ATTENTION TO THOSE WHO JUST WOKE UP! SOME PEOPLE ARE TURNING INTO MONSTERS WHEN THEY WAKE UP!!!!】
She used multiple exclamation points in the title to grab attention.
In the body of the post, she wrote: 【Everyone pay attention! Some people wake up with pitch-black eyes and livid skin! Anyone who mutates into this state completely loses their mind and will attack any person or animal they encounter like wild beasts! They will bite through flesh and blood with their teeth! Everyone must stay alert and find any suitable weapon nearby to defend yourselves! The head of a mutated person is their weak point—strike the head until they are incapacitated!】
What did “until they are incapacitated” mean? Of course, it meant beating them to death.
But Jiang Cheng couldn’t write that.
Now that she was back in the safety of her apartment, she realized she had already killed four people today.
Of course, those four were all mutated monsters—she had acted in self-defense. But she didn’t know how things would unfold from here. She certainly couldn’t just write the word “kill” outright.
That was fine, though. When people are attacking in fear and self-defense, they don’t stop easily. Once you come face to face with a monster, your attack will be a matter of kill or be killed.
She just needed to tell everyone the monsters’ weak points.
[The mutated individuals are uncoordinated. You can dodge them by running and making sharp turns. You can also attack their lower limbs—knees, ankles, etc.—to make them fall, then continue attacking the head.]
[The police and property management aren’t answering any calls. The affected area may be extremely large. It’s not safe outside right now—some people passed out in the garden, and there’s no telling if they’ll wake up as humans. I suggest everyone stay indoors and observe for now.]
After writing that, she posted it. Jiang Cheng refreshed the forum page and saw that two new threads had already appeared.
Thread 1: [Are you there, are you there! It’s me, it’s me! I’m 0320! Contact me!!! Please!]
Thread 2: [Someone’s been killed!! A murder on the 3rd floor of Building 2!]
0320 was Muscles. Jiang Cheng clicked on his thread.
Muscles: [My phone number is XXXXXXXX. Call me! Please!]
Jiang Cheng picked up her phone and dialed the number. “Hello?”
Muscles’ voice was trembling. “Is that you? The one from 0306?”
“It’s me.” Jiang Cheng moved her mouse and clicked on the second thread. “For details, check the post I just made.”
“I’m looking at it right now! Is this for real?”
The big man sounded like he was about to cry. Jiang Cheng felt helpless. “Didn’t you just see it with your own eyes?”
Muscles murmured, “How could this happen?”
“How would I know?” Jiang Cheng told him. “My neighbor in 0308 turned too. He bit his dog to death and chased me downstairs. The security guard downstairs also turned. I ran into another mutated one in the garden.”
“0308?!” Muscles’ voice shot up. “You mean Xiao Bai and Xiao Bai’s dad?”
The dog next door did indeed have white fur. Jiang Cheng had also heard other dog-owning neighbors call out to it: “Xiao Bai.”
She confirmed it. “Yes.”
Muscles asked, “What about Xiao Bai’s dad?”
Jiang Cheng was silent. She didn’t answer.
Muscles heard the silence on the phone. He understood.
He felt like crying. “Am I dreaming? Maybe I should just go back to sleep.”
Jiang Cheng completely understood how he felt. It had only been about forty minutes since she woke up, and she herself had a strong sense that this was all a dream.
But she said softly, “It’s not a dream. It’s real. Some people are turning into monsters, and a lot of people haven’t even woken up yet. There’s no way to know how many will turn. That guy in 0317 was probably bitten to death by the woman. If that girl can get her door open, she’ll come running out too.”
Heavy breathing came through the phone.
But at least the person on the other end was an adult. Muscles pulled himself together, sniffled, and asked, “So the security guard and the one in the garden… you also…?”
Jiang Cheng made a sound of agreement. “Mm.” She admitted it.
“Badass! I never would have guessed.” Muscles’s voice was full of genuine admiration. He had seen Jiang Cheng many times before—she was a pretty girl who looked harmless. Who would have thought that in a crisis, she’d have the guts to go for the kill?
“My name is Li Jiangbing,” he said. “What’s yours?”
“Jiang Cheng.”
“Jiang Cheng, so what do we do now?”
Why was he asking her? Jiang Cheng wasn’t responsible for him.
“A lot of people haven’t woken up yet, or just woke up. Personally, I’m choosing to stay in my apartment and observe for now.”
“Okay, okay, okay! Then I’ll stay inside too and not go out. Let’s at least wait until tomorrow during the day.”
“Mm. Find a weapon.”
“Got it. I’ve got plenty of gear here. I have nunchucks, a T-baton, and a collapsible baton. Want me to give you one?”
“Not right now,” Jiang Cheng said. “I have a baseball bat. It works well.”
Li Jiangbing said, “Alright, let’s leave it at that for now. Hang up, but let’s stay in touch.”
Jiang Cheng: “Okay. Keep an eye on the forum.”
She hung up. Jiang Cheng heard another scream from the hallway: “Ah—! Somebody help! There’s a dead body!”
She heard Li Jiangbing open his door and shout, “Get back inside! Lock your door! Check the owners’ forum!”
Even though Li Jiangbing had been useless in a crisis, at non-critical moments, his large frame was pretty intimidating. Two slamming sounds followed in quick succession—he had actually shouted that neighbor back inside.
But Jiang Cheng knew that more and more people were gradually waking up.
Some opened their eyes and were still human.
Some opened their eyes and were no longer human.
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