From the outbreak of the zombie virus on Saturday evening to now, Tuesday, three days had passed.
The S City Emergency Management Command Center had finally issued an update.
This time, after being trapped for days and mired in fear, the citizens finally heard the word “rescue” in the announcement.
—
[To All Citizens:]
[Under the directive of the Central Emergency Committee, the Eastern Region Garrison troops have overcome numerous difficulties, successfully reorganized, regrouped, and redistributed supplies, forming the first rescue contingents. According to the unified deployment, they will set out for S City at 18:00 today to carry out mutant cleanup and municipal rescue operations.]
[Water, electricity, gas, communications, and internet—all key infrastructure has been taken over by the government, with professional personnel remaining at their posts to ensure the operation and stability of all critical systems.]
[We fully understand that every minute of waiting is agony, and every moment of perseverance is hope. We urge all citizens to remain calm and take all necessary measures to ensure your own safety.]
[Through wind and rain, racing against time, we will not give up on a single citizen.]
[You are not fighting alone! All rescue personnel will do their utmost to clear a path to life and rebuild order for survival!]
—
The engineering guy named Gao Yuxuan had already hacked the property’s broadcast system.
He connected the TV news to the system, and the government spokesperson’s voice drifted throughout the entire neighborhood, audible to everyone.
At first, cheers even broke out in the complex. But as the announcement went on to detail the specific arrangements for the rescue operation, the cheers faded.
The rescue forces would enter from the south of the city and advance district by district. But Youth Apartments was located in the new tech development zone in the far north of the city—very far north.
S City was a megacity with a population of over ten million. How long would it take for the troops to push from the south all the way to the north?
Everyone fell silent.
Some even posted a thread on the forum, saying: [Comparing public disaster relief data from previous years, the number of troops deployed to S City is less than one-eighth of what was sent for a single flood relief operation in the past.]
People replied one after another:
[That’s because this is nationwide, right? Before, they’d concentrate forces on one disaster area, but now the whole country is a disaster zone. They can’t just save S City and ignore the surrounding cities.]
[The military itself also suffered heavy losses, right? I mean, with the zombie situation.]
[Jiang Cheng said before that the military lives in such dense quarters that it’s even more high-risk than ordinary communities. She was right.]
[But no matter what, since the government rescue has started, things will get better sooner or later, right? Right?]
[Probably… right?]
[It should, just don’t know how long it’ll take to clear all the way to us.]
[So, preliminary estimate: one week?]
[Whoa, that long?]
[Think about how big S City is—a city with over ten million people!]
[Did you guys hear that several homeowners from Yujing Xiangyuan got bitten to death?]
[Huh? What happened?]
[When did that happen?]
[Just today. People from Jixiang Jiayuan saw it from their buildings—on Jixiang East Street.]
Between Yujing Xiangyuan and Youth Apartments lay Jixiang Jiayuan.
Jixiang Jiayuan was east of Youth Apartments, with Jixiang West Street running between the two complexes.
Yujing Xiangyuan was east of Jixiang Jiayuan, with Jixiang East Street running between them.
[What happened exactly?]
[They ran out of food and came out looking for some. But there are too many zombies over on their side.]
[Why didn’t they clear them out first?]
[What do you mean ‘clear them out’? You think every complex is like ours—organized, disciplined, and combat-ready? Damn it, even Jixiang Jiayuan is riding on our coattails. We cleared that whole stretch from Jixiang West Street all the way to Buyduo. We even helped them wipe out the zombies inside their own complex. Without us, they wouldn’t even dare come down from their buildings.]
[Exactly.]
[True.]
[Fuck, people from Jixiang Jiayuan are bad-mouthing our complex!]
[???]
[???]
[Where?]
[On their homeowner forum.]
Everyone went over to take a look.
It turned out that Li Jiangbing had taken a few dozen people to Buyduo to get disinfection supplies, and people from Jixiang Jiayuan had seen them.
The street between Jixiang Jiayuan and Youth Apartments’ east gate was Jixiang West Street. Although it had been cleared by the Youth Apartments crew more than once, it was still an open road, not a sealed-off area, so zombies from farther away would inevitably wander over from time to time.
Jixiang Jiayuan couldn’t organize their own people, and individual households were too few in number to dare go out. Then suddenly they spotted a team from Youth Apartments swarming out with carts and coming back loaded.
On that round trip, any stray zombies on the road would naturally have been taken out along the way.
So some people from Jixiang Jiayuan dithered and hesitated, finally mustering up the courage to go out—purely to freeload off the route.
But when they came back, they jumped on the forum and started cursing, saying the supermarket was completely cleaned out of food. At that moment, they seemed to have conveniently forgotten that they’d also gone on a panic-buying spree themselves just yesterday. In any case, they blamed everything on Youth Apartments, claiming they’d been hauling stuff out of Buyduo trip after trip until it was empty.
Fucking ridiculous!
The people from Youth Apartments were furious. They all swarmed over to Jixiang Jiayuan’s forum and started flinging insults.
At first, a few people fired back, but to be honest, Jixiang Jiayuan was clearly in the wrong, and not many were willing to step up and defend their complex. The fight died down pretty quickly.
In no time at all, the front page of Jixiang Jiayuan’s forum was completely flooded with posts from Youth Apartments residents.
Jiang Cheng just skimmed through all of this quickly.
She’d checked the homeowner forums of several nearby communities. By today, a few complexes had finally organized themselves, but some still had no one stepping up to lead, remaining a complete mess.
Many posts were crying out that they had no food left at home, that their babies had no formula.
Switching over to the major national forums, the hot topic was “What exactly is the zombie virus?” Many biology and medical professionals were weighing in, raising various objections to the biological characteristics of “zombies,” arguing from a biological standpoint that such a creature couldn’t possibly exist. Yet this very thing existed in reality—right downstairs from everyone, or even next door, lunging at the scent of flesh and blood.
All kinds of viewpoints were tangled into a chaotic mess.
The public’s understanding of zombies had been updated again. Previously, everyone thought that people bitten by zombies simply died. Now they realized that only those whose necks had been bitten clean through actually died. As long as the neck wasn’t severed and the head remained intact, you might see a person lying in a pool of blood, seeming “dead”—but after a while, they’d sit right back up and turn into a zombie.
Jiang Cheng suddenly understood. No wonder all the bodies dragged out of that double room had their necks bitten through.
In that tiny room, in a quiet environment, the zombies’ biting went completely uninterrupted—so they just kept biting and biting until the neck was severed and the person was truly dead.
Li Ziqing’s boyfriend, who lived on the same floor as Jiang Cheng, had had his neck broken that way.
As for the few whose necks weren’t severed for some unknown reason, they became infected and mutated into second-generation zombies—like the one on the fifth floor that had leaped out from behind the original zombie’s back to bite someone.
The first encounter in the garden happened at night, and at the time nobody dared go downstairs, so they hadn’t observed this phenomenon.
With this new information, Jiang Cheng realized that the zombie virus was more contagious than she’d previously thought.
The situation they faced was even grimmer than expected.
Another hot topic on the forums was that some major cities, like S City, had finally received rescue news—some people were optimistic, others pessimistic.
The central government had established an emergency command center, but specific rescue operations were managed, directed, and deployed by local emergency command centers in each area. Resources across cities were extremely uneven.
The phrase “rebuild order for survival” in S City’s government announcement was being interpreted in all sorts of ways.
Meanwhile, residents of smaller cities were furious that rescue priority was going to the big metropolises, feeling that their right to life was being ignored.
People in even smaller places, like rural areas, had no voice at all.
Broadband had only been developed for a few years. Only in big cities like S City did most households have internet access; in many smaller cities, broadband penetration was still very low, and rural areas were essentially silent zones.
Other issues—power outages, water cuts, gas shutdowns, even fires—had broken out on a small scale in many places.
S City was a major metropolis. After the initial panic, surviving government personnel had set up a temporary emergency command department. Professionals risked their lives to break through zombie hordes, rushed to critical posts, and stood their ground.
But not every place could be like S City.
With current technology, water and power plants could basically run automatically for a long time without issue. But that didn’t mean failures couldn’t happen.
And when it came down to the end-user level—water pipes, electrical wires, circuit breakers—failures were perfectly normal even in peacetime.
In normal times, someone would come to fix it immediately, and service would be restored quickly—so quickly that residents barely noticed the inconvenience.
But now, these failures couldn’t be repaired in time. Once broken, they stayed broken. Once shut off, it wasn’t coming back.
Residents were utterly devastated.
Even fire rescues were few and far between.
The city fire department had arguably been the first government force to mobilize after the zombie virus outbreak. Yet they were caught between two dangers: raging fires and attacking zombies.
These past two days, the death rate among brave and steadfast firefighters had been extremely high. The vast majority died from zombies within the fires.
That was why, on Sunday, they’d clearly heard the sound of fire trucks—but in the past two days, the sirens had vanished.
In reality, any area that hadn’t experienced damaged lines, burst pipes, fires, or explosions was already incredibly fortunate.
Jiang Cheng had actually analyzed and interpreted S City’s new announcement today as well. But thinking about it in the abstract was useless—she’d have to wait and see the actual situation tomorrow to know what was really going on.
Jiang Cheng was now thinking about another issue. She clicked the browser closed, swiveled her chair 180 degrees, and faced the bed.
Mo Li was lying at the foot of the bed.
If she scooted her chair forward a little, she could reach him.
His fur was jet-black and smooth, feeling absolutely wonderful to the touch.
Mo Li opened his eyes, their jade-green irises reflecting Jiang Cheng’s image.
Jiang Cheng gently scratched his fluffy little head with her fingers. Mo Li stretched out his neck in comfort, tilting his head back with his chin pointing straight up at the ceiling.
She watched him, then stopped her fingers and asked softly, “Mo Li… do you really need to sunbathe?”
Mo Li now seemed to have recovered to a basically healthy state—”basically” meaning he could move around on his own, go eat his cat food, and drink water on his own.
Although it was strange that the litter box was still so clean not a single grain of litter was out of place, Mo Li had clearly regained basic mobility.
But Jiang Cheng wasn’t fooled by these simple appearances; she could observe subtler issues.
Mo Li displayed completely different states—in body temperature, mental condition, and vitality—between day and night.
Once the sun went down, Mo Li would enter a state that seemed like low battery, lying still for long stretches. This was completely different from when Jiang Cheng had first met him a week ago.
But during the day, when the sunlight could reach him, he seemed to recharge like a battery.
Others wouldn’t notice the difference, but Jiang Cheng could.
Mo Li’s jade-green eyes just looked at her, unable to understand what she was saying.
Jiang Cheng decided to try something. She cupped her hands together and gently enveloped Mo Li’s head.
A week ago, she’d awakened to the fact that she was a transmigrator. Back then, she’d still wanted to continue her peaceful, ordinary life, so she’d overlooked some of the anomalies that occurred when she first met Mo Li.
But over the past two days, information from before her transmigration had begun seeping into her mind like water through cracks.
And so she remembered those overlooked details—
A faint electric current flowing through her heart.
A psychic sense of almost understanding what the kitten was trying to convey.
And it had happened more than once.
[Mo Li, Mo Li.]
Cupping Mo Li’s fluffy little head in both hands, Jiang Cheng stared into his eyes and tried to communicate through consciousness.
[Mo Li, do you need to sunbathe to recover your energy?]
[Do you need sunlight?]
[Sun?]
Suddenly, for a split second, a strange sensation coursed through her heart.
At the same time, Mo Li lifted his head slightly: “Meow.”
[Yes.]
It worked! She and Mo Li could really communicate!
Jiang Cheng held her breath and focused her mind: [Can you transform again?]
“Meow.”
[&%￥#]
The meaning was unclear. It seemed even Mo Li himself didn’t know the answer.
Jiang Cheng changed her question: [Besides sunbathing and eating cat food, is there anything else you need me to do?]
But this question seemed too complex for Mo Li. He let out a soft “meow”—this time without any meaning, purely out of confusion.
For a little cat, this question was too complicated.
He might understand “sunbathing” and “eating cat food,” but he couldn’t grasp the meaning of the whole sentence.
Jiang Cheng released her hands. Mo Li’s clear green eyes looked at her.
She looked back at him.
So—was this communication her ability? Or his?
Did it have anything to do with the infection and mutation?
No. No, no, no.
The first time she’d felt that psychic current with Mo Li was when they encountered that flasher from Building 4.
It had nothing to do with the zombie virus at all. It had happened several days before the virus even broke out.
It only had to do with her and Mo Li.
Or maybe only with her?
Why was that?
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