Before the government had issued any response, netizens had already begun spontaneously gathering information. The role of the internet was becoming clear in moments like this.
Jiang Cheng closed the owners’ forum and opened several nationally known online forums to look for firsthand information.
Information from all over the country was converging here. She kept browsing the web until the middle of the night. Sure enough, it wasn’t just City S—this event covered the entire nation.
What could affect such a vast area at the same time?
A virus? Or radiation?
Jiang Cheng recalled the strange purple color of the sky in the afternoon when she had been feeding the cat and started feeling dizzy. She had looked up at the time and only thought that dusk seemed to have come too early, even though it was still afternoon.
That evening, she had run a fever, taken some medicine, and then fallen into a deep sleep.
Now that she thought about it, that wasn’t just deep sleep—it was clearly a coma.
The situation was similar all across the country. People gradually woke up to chaos and panic. The unlucky ones died. The lucky ones killed the mutated monsters and survived. Some people were injured. Many described the mutated monsters as “biting people like rabid dogs.”
That was vivid. That was exactly the feeling Jiang Cheng had when she first saw the monster in the garden tearing into Shen Wei.
By now, most people had reached a consensus: stay home, lock the doors, and wait for government instructions tomorrow.
Jiang Cheng closed her laptop and got up to check on Moli and Shen Wei again.
Moli was burning hot. Shen Wei was ice cold. Both had been bitten by mutated monsters, yet their conditions were completely different.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t a doctor. She could only take fever-reducing patches from the fridge and stick them on Moli to cool him down, then shake out a blanket and cover Shen Wei to keep her warm.
She silently prayed that she hadn’t gotten it backwards.
Just then, she heard the sound of sirens in the distance. She couldn’t tell whether it was police, fire trucks, or ambulances.
But the sound was stirring.
It meant that after the initial chaos, the government forces had managed to organize effectively and were now mobilizing.
Jiang Cheng looked out the window. In every lit apartment, she could see silhouettes of people. Clearly, everyone was feeling that sense of “finally,” “we’re saved”—a relieved, uplifting feeling.
She hoped so.
Jiang Cheng checked the door again to make sure it was locked. She left the porch light on and turned off the main light.
Then she curled up on the sofa, clutching the baseball bat to her chest, and fell asleep.
Many people couldn’t sleep at all right now. She had noticed earlier that most apartments still had their lights on. A lot of people had woken up from their coma, realized something was wrong, and never even left their apartments. They had just pressed against their windows, watching the horrifying scene unfolding in the garden below. Then they had wisely stayed inside their safe apartments.
Their minds were in a tangled mess. How could they possibly sleep?
Jiang Cheng was probably the person in the entire complex who had expended the most physical energy.
She had even felt hungry again before sleeping. She ate a few more cookies to fill her stomach before lying down and quickly drifted off.
The moon hung high over the city, sickly pale.
Jiang Cheng slept deeply.
She didn’t know that the person and the cat occupying her bed—their blood, their cells, their genetic chains—were all undergoing silent, earth-shattering changes.
Moli’s paws flexed, claws extending and retracting many times. His body and limbs twitched slightly.
As for Shen Wei, her skin gradually changed from a deathly pale gray to a greenish hue. If she had turned this color before Jiang Cheng fell asleep, Jiang Cheng would have seen it and become alarmed—the mutated monsters lost their normal human skin tone, their skin turning a livid blue-black.
But unfortunately, up until Jiang Cheng went to sleep, Shen Wei’s skin had only looked like that of someone who had lost a lot of blood.
Because of that, Jiang Cheng hadn’t sensed the danger.
Shen Wei’s skin changed little by little. It was similar to the mutated monsters she had encountered before, but not exactly the same. Her skin turned even greener—a pale gray-green, lighter than livid blue-black.
Her skin texture changed too. Gradually, it lost the grain of human skin and began to look like artificial green leather.
The change happened silently, until suddenly Shen Wei’s eyes snapped open.
Those eyes had no white anymore—they were completely pitch black!
Human beings really do have something called “the sixth sense.”
In her sleep, Jiang Cheng’s heart suddenly tightened. Her eyes flew open—and met a pair of pitch-black eyes.
Shen Wei was standing in front of the sofa, bent over, “looking down” at her, almost nose to nose.
Jiang Cheng didn’t know how long she had been asleep, but the sky wasn’t yet light. The moonlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows cast long shadows of Shen Wei across the floor and sofa.
Her greenish skin gave off a thick, solid appearance.
Her pitch-black eyes looked like something from an alien in a sci-fi movie.
Jiang Cheng held her breath, not daring to move.
Miraculously, even 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 slowly moved, from Jiang Cheng’s nose down toward her heart, over her chest.
Jiang Cheng didn’t know whether Shen Wei was “looking” at her, “smelling” her, or perhaps… “listening” to her?
Just then, the neighbor upstairs got up to use the bathroom and flushed the toilet. The loud rush of water sounded without warning above their heads.
Shen Wei’s head jerked up toward the ceiling.
Now!
Jiang Cheng abruptly sat up and shoved Shen Wei away! Then she sprang to her feet, swung the baseball bat, and struck fiercely at Shen Wei’s head.
Shen Wei stumbled backward. The bat whistled toward her, but she instantly shifted her center of gravity down and narrowly dodged the blow.
Jiang Cheng’s swing hit nothing but air. Her balance wavered, and she had to take a diagonal step forward to steady herself. Gripping the bat tightly, she stared at Shen Wei in shock—that dodge had been so precise, agile, and fast that even many normal, healthy living people couldn’t have pulled it off.
Weren’t monsters supposed to be unsteady and uncoordinated after mutating?
The porch light wasn’t very bright—it was a soft, warm yellow, and only illuminated a small area near the door.
Jiang Cheng had deliberately not pulled the curtains closed before sleeping, so moonlight and outdoor lights also filtered in.
She could make out faces, but the room was still dim overall.
In that split second, the bat had swept past Shen Wei’s skull. Shen Wei had ducked down to evade. Then, instead of standing back up to a normal upright posture like a person would, she stayed in that crouched position, her black eyes fixed on Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng gripped the bat tightly, also frozen in place.
Already, in the dim yellow light, she could see that Shen Wei’s skin was different from the four mutants she had encountered earlier.
Jiang Cheng immediately realized that Shen Wei was a more advanced existence than the previous mutated monsters. Her limbs were coordinated and agile—nothing at all like the four mutants Jiang Cheng had killed before.
The one human and one monster faced off in the dim room.
Jiang Cheng felt sweat begin to seep from the back of her neck, forming droplets that slid down the hollow of her spine toward her waist.
Shen Wei seemed completely untired by maintaining her crouched stance. But for Jiang Cheng, holding the baseball bat and staying perfectly still was impossible.
The moment Jiang Cheng moved even slightly, Shen Wei’s face moved with her.
When Jiang Cheng stopped and held still, Shen Wei also stopped. But she seemed to grow irritated by this. Suddenly, she opened her mouth and exhaled sharply.
It was like the prelude to a cat fight.
But when a “person” exhaled like that, it was terrifying. The hairs on Jiang Cheng’s arms stood on end.
Jiang Cheng suspected that Shen Wei’s eyes couldn’t see her clearly. She seemed to be using her hearing to locate her.
Jiang Cheng glanced down at her feet. The trash can was right beside her.
Slowly, carefully, Jiang Cheng moved her foot. Light as a feather, she pressed the tip of her toe against the trash can. In the next instant, she pushed off with her foot and sent the trash can flying. Or rather, it wasn’t exactly a “kick”—she had actually “nudged” the trash can with her foot.
The advantage of this was that the sound at the moment she exerted force was minimal, far quieter than the noise the trash can made when it hit the ground.
As expected, Shen Wei lunged toward the direction where the trash can landed.
The moment Shen Wei moved, Jiang Cheng moved too. The bat whistled toward the back of Shen Wei’s head.
But incredibly, Shen Wei dodged again, quick as lightning. She twisted her body and leaped toward Jiang Cheng.
However, Jiang Cheng had already anticipated this possibility when she swung that first strike. As soon as her swing hit nothing but air, she didn’t hesitate—she swung the bat again, this time at the empty space in front of her.
Her prediction was correct! Shen Wei, lunging in for the attack, seemed to throw herself right into the path of the bat. She was knocked off course by Jiang Cheng’s strike and missed her target.
Shen Wei turned and pounced back. Jiang Cheng didn’t stop swinging the bat, striking her again and again, driving her back.
Fortunately, although Shen Wei was more agile and quicker than the earlier mutants, she didn’t attempt any kind of “surprise attack.” As long as she could locate Jiang Cheng’s position, she just kept lunging in straight lines.
So for Jiang Cheng, it wasn’t difficult to predict her trajectory—every strike could land on Shen Wei. But Shen Wei’s strength was simply too immense.
In her encounters with the previous four mutants, their lack of coordination had allowed Jiang Cheng to dodge nimbly and apply technique rather than brute force. In reality, there hadn’t been any prolonged power struggles between Jiang Cheng and those four mutants.
But in this confined space, Shen Wei kept lunging at her in straight lines, and each swing of Jiang Cheng’s bat became a direct contest of strength.
Shen Wei’s coordination and agility were both enhanced compared to the earlier mutants, yet she hadn’t lost the characteristic of “immense strength.” She even used her arms to block the baseball bat and protect her head.
She knew her head was her weak point.
In just a few short moments, the two women engaged in a simple yet fierce life-or-death struggle in the cramped space.
Although Jiang Cheng’s physical strength had also increased after her fever, it was clear that the mutant’s strength had increased far more. Each confrontation was a high-intensity drain on her energy. After just a few exchanges of attack and defense, Jiang Cheng felt her arms growing sore and numb, her stamina gradually giving out.
Her breathing became ragged, and a large patch of sweat soaked through the back of her T-shirt.
Shen Wei had now lost her “human” habits. When facing off against Jiang Cheng, she always crouched slightly on bent knees, her body arched forward, her hands spread out in front of her like ghostly claws.
She had once worn long, beautiful manicured nails, but under these circumstances, they looked exactly like lethal weapons.
Moreover, she had blocked the bat with her arms several times, and Jiang Cheng could sense that her bone density seemed stronger than that of the four people she had killed earlier.
Shen Wei “stared” at Jiang Cheng with her pitch-black eyes, opened her mouth, and exhaled again, her teeth gleaming white.
To be honest, living people aren’t frightening, and dead people aren’t frightening either. But this kind of undead, inhuman creature was simply unnerving on every level.
That exhaling sound was utterly non-human. A fresh wave of goosebumps rose on Jiang Cheng’s back, and she couldn’t help shrugging her shoulders.
In that instant of vulnerability, Shen Wei lunged. Jiang Cheng reacted quickly, swinging the bat at her. But this time, Shen Wei caught the bat!
Jiang Cheng knew instantly that this was bad. The thought had barely flashed through her mind before her body was sent flying by a tremendous force. The bat flew from her hands, and she crashed into the sofa.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Shen Wei in mid-air, mouth wide open, pouncing straight at her. There was nowhere to dodge, nowhere to hide.
Jiang Cheng’s pupils contracted sharply.
Was she going to die here?
The perception of time speeding and slowing was indescribable.
Shen Wei’s mid-air lunge seemed slow, almost frozen.
But in the next instant, she vanished from Jiang Cheng’s field of vision so fast that Jiang Cheng couldn’t even see what happened. All she heard was a massive crash from the sideboard and a very clear, sharp sound of bones shattering.
Shen Wei hadn’t “vanished”—she had been knocked aside mid-lunge.
Jiang Cheng propped herself up on trembling arms and looked at the creature that had knocked Shen Wei away and bitten through her neck—
Completely black, with long, slender limbs and a body larger than a large dog. It was practically 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 staring at the black-furred creature for a long time, Jiang Cheng tentatively called out: “…Moli?”
The black creature turned its head. Its eyes were emerald green, still carrying a fierce, killing intent.
In its mouth, it held Shen Wei’s neck.
Shen Wei’s head hung at a right angle. Though some flesh and blood still connected it to her body, it was clear the main connection had been severed. Her limbs had gone limp—she was thoroughly, completely dead.
The black panther-like creature opened its mouth, released Shen Wei, and walked toward Jiang Cheng.
With each step, its body shrank.
Jiang Cheng sat on the sofa, watching helplessly as this beast that could easily kill a mutant shrunk down into the black cat she knew. It leaped lightly onto her lap and looked up at her with green eyes.
A faint electric current passed through her heart.
Something like this had happened before—it had felt like someone lightly poking her heart, giving her a sense of “a stir in her heart.”
Now Jiang Cheng felt that sensation again.
Though it wasn’t language, a faint, subtle understanding reached directly into the depths of her heart.
“I…” Jiang Cheng stared at Moli and answered instinctively, “I’m okay.”
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