“I’m okay.” After answering, Jiang Cheng couldn’t help but raise her hand.
Moli didn’t dodge. The tips of her fingers gently landed on top of Moli’s head.
Fluffy.
A fluffy little head.
Jiang Cheng carefully, slowly lowered her palm and stroked Moli’s back—he was a bit bigger than when she had first seen him a week ago, but still a normal-sized cat.
Nothing like the fierce, panther-like form he had just taken.
Earlier, in that enclosed, confined space, with an agile and vicious mutant. She had truly escaped death by a hair’s breadth—it had been even more dangerous than her encounters with the previous four.
And Moli had bitten through the mutant’s neck with a single pounce. Such immense fighting power.
Though she couldn’t explain what she had witnessed, Jiang Cheng finally managed to compose herself. She couldn’t help but take a deep breath, pull the black cat into her arms, and press her face against him.
“Thank you!”
“You saved me again.”
The back of her shirt was soaked through, all from lingering fear.
Moli didn’t struggle at all. His body was soft and warm.
Warm to the point of being hot.
Jiang Cheng opened her eyes and looked down at the cat in her arms. The little black cat had closed his eyes again, as if asleep.
Jiang Cheng immediately and carefully placed the black cat on the sofa.
She knelt beside the sofa, lifted his leg, and carefully examined the wound on his belly.
The bandages she had applied earlier had probably burst open during his transformation. The wound from the security guard’s bite had been so hideous and terrifying, but now, in his black fur, there was no sign of any injury at all.
Jiang Cheng thought back to Moli’s transformation just now.
It was fantastical. But from a scientific perspective, such a physical change would inevitably require massive amounts of metabolism. In that process, it was indeed possible that the wound had been repaired by newly generated cells.
But the fact that he had collapsed again meant he probably hadn’t fully recovered his strength.
He had risked everything to save her.
Jiang Cheng held Moli’s paw, unable to speak.
Ever since her parents died and her relatives fought over the inheritance, there had been no one in this world who would “risk everything” for her the way her parents would.
At this moment, Jiang Cheng felt that she had found family again—even if Moli was just a cat.
Jiang Cheng gently stroked Moli’s fur. His body had no wounds now, but it was still burning hot.
In humans, a high fever could lead to dehydration and death. Moli’s body temperature was far higher than a human’s fever temperature.
Jiang Cheng thought for a moment, stepped over the messy floor, and brought a bowl of water. She dripped it into Moli’s mouth one small spoonful at a time.
Moli swallowed. He did indeed need to rehydrate.
Jiang Cheng fed him several spoonfuls until he stopped swallowing.
That was all she could do. Moli would certainly need food to replenish his energy as well, but he was in a state of deep sleep, and he wasn’t a tiny kitten that could drink milk. Jiang Cheng couldn’t feed him right now.
So she gently picked him up and placed him back on the bed, hoping he would recover and wake up on his own.
For now, there was something she had to do.
She walked over to Shen Wei’s body, crouched down, and examined her carefully.
Shen Wei’s skin was a grayish-blue, with a thick, leathery texture.
It was completely different from human skin now.
Her neck was almost completely bitten through. A cat’s bite force is nothing to underestimate—they are top-tier fighters among animals of the same size. And that was before Moli had grown gigantic.
After she had finished observing everything she needed to, Jiang Cheng dragged Shen Wei’s body to the door. She checked through the peephole to make sure the hallway was clear, then quickly opened the door and dragged the body out into the hallway.
There were now three bodies in the hallway on this floor.
Jiang Cheng locked the door, wiped her hands clean, and instead of tidying up the messy living room, she opened her laptop and logged into the owners’ forum to post:
【!!!WARNING! PEOPLE BITTEN BY MUTANTS WILL ALSO MUTATE!!!】
In the body of the post, she described everything she had observed objectively.
[The mutation occurs approximately six hours after being bitten. This is only based on a single observed case, so the timeline may not be universal.]
[Vision is poor. They rely on smell and hearing—mainly hearing—to locate targets. However, the influence of lighting cannot be ruled out; the room was very dark at the time.]
[They are coordinated and agile. Very difficult to deal with.]
After posting, Jiang Cheng copied the content of the post and pasted it onto several other major forums.
Only then did she have time to browse the forum pages.
She had gone to sleep just after midnight, and now it was around four or five in the morning, not yet five. In the four hours she had slept, the forum had been flooded with all kinds of posts.
Jiang Cheng skimmed through them and realized she wasn’t the first person to warn everyone. It turned out that a few others had already encountered situations similar to Shen Wei’s.
She found and read those posts, jotting down the times on a piece of paper.
Sure enough, Shen Wei was just a single case—her mutation time wasn’t universal. Among the cases Jiang Cheng recorded, the fastest mutation occurred within half an hour.
Compared to a community like the youth apartment complex, where single owners and renters gathered and everyone hid in their own separate space, regular residential communities were actually more likely to encounter situations like Shen Wei’s.
Because regular communities mostly consisted of families living together. In one apartment, there could be parents, children, even grandparents—several people at once.
If just one person mutated, it was a human tragedy.
Jiang Cheng also noticed that not everyone fell into a deep sleep like Shen Wei had. Shen Wei’s case might have been caused by severe blood loss. Some people showed no symptoms at all before mutating.
In one post, two people had worked together to kill a mutant. One of them had been bitten on the arm—a minor injury. After they escaped back into their apartment, they were both exhausted, so the other person went to the kitchen to cook some noodles.
In the time it took to cook the noodles, the person who had been bitten mutated.
Broadband had become widespread in cities over the past couple of years, but it hadn’t reached towns and villages yet. Compared to the total population, the number of people who could go online was already a minority. Among those who survived such a traumatic event, only a fraction would think to post warnings for others.
So the actual number of cases occurring was likely far greater than what was being posted online.
So far, Shen Wei’s mutation time was the longest among known cases. She had been among the earliest to wake up, and the timing was calculated from the moment she woke up. That didn’t mean there weren’t cases with even longer incubation periods.
If someone suffered a minor injury and showed no obvious symptoms like losing consciousness, wouldn’t they be able to hide easily among the crowd?
Jiang Cheng rested her chin on her hand and stared at the screen, these thoughts flashing through her mind.
But thinking about these things now was getting ahead of herself. Jiang Cheng closed the laptop, stood up, and looked at the living room.
The dining table had been overturned, chairs knocked to the floor. The glass on the sideboard was shattered. Mugs and glasses had fallen and broken, leaving shards of glass all over the floor.
Jiang Cheng righted the table and chairs, swept the broken glass and fragments into the trash can.
She looked up at the floor-to-ceiling windows. The sky outside was beginning to lighten—dawn was approaching.
She put the broom away and went to the bedside to check on Moli.
Moli had his eyes closed, but his breathing was even. His body temperature was still high. When she gently touched him, he would open his eyes for a glance before closing them again, looking very weak.
Jiang Cheng washed some rice and put congee on to cook. Then she soaked a small bowl of cat food in warm water. She carried it over and gently nudged Moli: “Eat something.”
All living things need food to replenish their energy. Moli’s fantastical transformation must have consumed an enormous amount of energy. Given how weak he was now, it was impossible that he didn’t need to replenish.
Jiang Cheng tried putting one softened piece of cat food into Moli’s mouth, and he swallowed it. Her guess was correct.
Moli could barely move right now. Jiang Cheng experimented and found that feeding him three or four pieces at a time was the most efficient—fewer than that slowed things down, and more than that required Moli to lift his neck, which seemed very difficult for him in his current weakened state.
So Jiang Cheng fed him four pieces at a time. Moli cooperated well—every time she put four pieces in his mouth, he swallowed, without even needing to open his eyes.
He ate the entire bowl of cat food, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
Jiang Cheng was a little worried he might poop or pee on the bed, so she found an old pillowcase, folded it, and tucked it under Moli.
Moli kept his eyes closed and let her do whatever she wanted.
The congee was ready. Jiang Cheng ate a simple breakfast.
As she ate, she went online and opened the owners’ forum. She saw someone saying they had no food at home and asking what to do. A kind neighbor had already replied, offering to share some.
Below that, someone asked: [So when can we go outside?]
Another person asked: [Are we still going to work on Monday?]
These two questions were actually being discussed quite heatedly. Many people wanted to know what to do about going to work on Monday and whether they would be attacked by monsters on the road.
Jiang Cheng put a spoonful of congee into her mouth.
Scrolling further down, she saw someone else say they planned to wait until “tomorrow during the day” to go out and take a look. Since that post had been made at night, “tomorrow during the day” meant today.
Jiang Cheng finished her breakfast and cleaned up. She turned on the television. Still no news or government announcements.
She turned the volume down but didn’t turn the TV off, planning to leave it on. That way, if there was an emergency government broadcast, she could catch it in time.
Soon it was seven or eight in the morning. Jiang Cheng gave Moli water again.
Around this time, there started to be movement in the hallway. Not mutants—just ordinary neighbors. After all, people can’t turn their homes into prisons. Some of them couldn’t take it anymore.
Even though there were three bodies lying in the hallway, that didn’t stop someone from finally working up the courage to come out and take a look.
Once there was a first person, a second and a third quickly opened their doors. Soon, the neighbors had all come out, gathered around the bodies, and started murmuring among themselves.
Li Jiangbing also came out. He was bragging to the others about how he had killed Li Ziqing: “I saw her wandering around the hallway. That wasn’t good. What if she bit someone? So I went back inside, grabbed my weapons, and came out…”
Right now, he was holding a T-baton in each hand. With his large frame, he was quite intimidating to the neighbors.
Especially since no one had seen his cowardly side from yesterday except Jiang Cheng. The neighbor who had woken up later and just come out also assumed that the body Jiang Cheng had killed was actually killed by Li Jiangbing.
Everyone praised him: “Thank goodness we have you.”
“I looked through my peephole—it was terrifying.”
“Me too. I hadn’t even figured out what was happening yet. I thought someone was being murdered.”
“Um, this… does this count as murder?”
“…It can’t, right?”
Li Jiangbing said, “I don’t think so. If any police officer saw one of these with their own eyes, they’d know we had no choice but to kill it. Go take a look inside her apartment—her boyfriend was bitten to death by her.”
Li Ziqing’s apartment door was still wide open. Everyone couldn’t help but go over and peek inside.
The apartment was so small you could see everything at a glance. Li Ziqing’s boyfriend had died a horrible death—his entire neck had been bitten through.
Someone threw up.
Someone’s voice trembled: “So they eat people too?”
Li Jiangbing let out a laugh and said, “When the police come, they should give me a bravery award. If they call this murder, there’s no justice.”
Li Jiangbing wasn’t too worried.
He had come face to face with a mutant. He knew they could no longer be considered “human” at all. The police would understand that too.
Besides, during that mass waking-up period yesterday, many humans and many mutants had died. He had stayed up online until dawn and saw that this was happening everywhere. So he stopped worrying.
Deep down, he felt that the law wouldn’t punish everyone.
He was just curious: “When did another one show up?”
There should have been only two mutant bodies in the hallway—Li Ziqing and Li Ziqing’s next-door neighbor. So why were there three bodies now?
Li Jiangbing’s voice was loud and brash: “Who is this? I’ve never seen her before. She’s not from our floor, is she?”
Leave a Reply