The third time the sky turned purple—flames engulfed the city, Moli took human form, water, electricity, gas, and communications all cut off, and humanity was forced to abandon the city and relocate outward.
Jiang Cheng had been misled by these events, thinking this was the third stage.
Until Song Jingshuo snapped her out of it.
Sure enough, once she guarded her state of mind and ensured her mentality didn’t collapse, the extreme cold weather immediately withdrew.
The sun came out, the sky cleared, spring arrived.
She was being observed.
She was being watched.
She was being spied on.
Jiang Cheng sneered.
Sure enough, it was all aimed at her.
The one watching from behind—did they treat her and everyone here as some kind of entertainment?
Like crickets in a jar.
Fighting cocks in a cage.
People poured out of the buildings.
Earth-type superpower users removed all the warm corridors in the courtyard. The courtyard became spacious again.
Everyone stripped off their down jackets, cotton coats, and cotton pants, stomping wildly in the mud, laughing and shouting, screaming and celebrating.
Song Jingshuo tossed a few seedlings into the mud.
Strawberries, grapes, apples, mangoes, pears—rapidly taking root, growing, and bearing fruit.
Cluster after cluster, piece after piece.
Everyone surged forward to pick them and eat, juice dripping everywhere.
Singing, dancing, throwing mud.
Until someone soberly advised: “Stop throwing it—it might have shit mixed in.”
A crowd of people: “…”
A torrent of mud flew at that person!
—
The youth apartments’ collective dormitories disbanded. Everyone started moving, returning to the apartments they’d originally lived in.
In Jixiang Jiayuan, everyone joyfully carried their mattresses back to the bedrooms—no more squeezing into the living room to sleep.
Windows opened for ventilation—all fresh, clean air, no more stinking smells in the rooms.
It was like returning from “surviving” to living.
From the outbreak of extreme cold in October to its end across the new year in March, the Tech District’s population had decreased from over thirty thousand to twenty-four thousand.
Among them, suicides accounted for half.
Everyone regretted it—if those people had just held on a bit longer, they might have survived.
But humans, sometimes, were weak, were fragile.
And who said holding on meant victory?
The mysterious man said: [Run! Run! If you don’t run now, it’ll be too late!]
Uncle Jiang said: [Might as well drive everyone to death.]
Sister Mao said: [What’s coming now? Sounds like they just don’t want people to live, huh.]
This was everyone’s question too—what was coming now?
The mysterious man’s broadcast cooled everyone down from the “victory” celebration.
Everyone was anxious.
Who exactly was this person? A prophet?
If so, what was coming that people couldn’t escape?
Zheng Junwei and several other settlement leaders had communicated with Jiang Cheng via radio.
Everyone’s mood was heavy.
Because no one knew where the next disaster would come from, or what it would be.
The unknown was the most terrifying.
—
Zhao Yi and Zhang Lesi also moved back to Zhang Lesi’s apartment.
Zhang Lesi stretched out on her bed in a “大” shape, sighing: “My own bed is the most comfortable!”
The quality of life in the collective dormitories had really been awful.
Everyone stank.
Today, Zhao Yi and Zhang Lesi had both gone to the bathhouse to shower.
The girls had scrubbed each other’s backs, washing themselves clean and fragrant.
Zhang Lesi and Zhao Yi also hadn’t made love this freely and without reservation in a long time. Both of them still had such vigorous vitality.
Youth, after all.
Or perhaps it was madness before the unknown danger arrived.
After all, you never knew when death would knock.
Like now—if extreme cold suddenly made a comeback, the two of them would freeze to death directly in their own apartment.
So Zhang Lesi said: “We still have to wear clothes. Though death ends everything, I still don’t want anyone to find me dead naked.”
Zhao Yi: “Actually, when burying, they’d…”
Zhang Lesi: “Shut up!”
Zhao Yi obediently shut up.
The two still properly put on clothes to sleep, not doing the naked-sleeping thing, lest their death appearance be unseemly.
After lying there for a while, Zhang Lesi asked: “If it’s like you said, then when we die, will we go to another world?”
Before Zhao Yi could answer, she added: “Or maybe aliens will come and take us all away. Right?”
Over the long months, Zhao Yi had still told Zhang Lesi all his guesses and theories.
Zhang Lesi indeed couldn’t instantly resonate and sync with him like Gao Yuxuan could. But she liked his kind of “imagination.”
Zhao Yi: “Didn’t you not believe it?”
Zhang Lesi stubbornly insisted: “I said if.”
Zhao Yi said: “Maybe.”
Zhang Lesi was silent for a moment, then finally admitted: “I kind of believe it now.”
One night, one day—from extreme cold to spring in a single step.
Zhang Lesi was a medical student, a top scholar. She wouldn’t foolishly believe in cults, but she deeply understood that if the spread of the zombie virus was still within the realm of “human capability,” then this extreme cold’s sudden arrival and retreat was absolutely beyond human capability.
Yet the traces of artificial manipulation were so strong and obvious.
It was a higher-level force beyond known science, beyond government, beyond this planet.
Both directions Zhao Yi had given were possible.
Aliens, or a higher-dimensional world.
“Whatever. Anyway, I’m telling you—if we croak and then wake up in some higher-dimensional world, don’t even think about running.” Zhang Lesi huffed. “I’ll find you even at the ends of the earth.”
Zhao Yi laughed, turned over, and held her: “Why would I run?”
He gently kissed her hair and tenderly held her as they fell asleep together.
—
Everyone was asleep. After months of oppressive, unbearable life, everyone had finally returned to their own beds, sleeping extremely comfortably.
The clock on the wall ticked. Tick.
Tock.
At four o’clock, Xiao Huang’s eyes suddenly flew open!
Danger!
Danger!
The youth wanted to warn everyone, but his superpower erupted violently.
His superpower was sensing danger.
Danger overwhelming, from all directions!
No way out—all death!
All death!
Xiao Huang opened his mouth like a drowning fish, wanting to scream and shout, but no sound came out.
Just like that, mouth open, he died.
If Zhang Lesi had been there, she would have described Xiao Huang’s death as fear triggering a surge of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, accelerating heart rate, shortening diastole, reducing myocardial blood supply, ultimately causing cardiac arrest and death. (Note)
Commonly known as… scared to death.
At 4 a.m., while everyone was deep asleep, Xiao Huang was scared to death by his own superpower.
Mouth open, eyes wide, full of terror.
…
A few minutes later, concrete supports stretched, rebar groaned.
The earth roared like a giant beast awakening!
Moli opened his eyes only two minutes after Xiao Huang.
In an instant, he sat up, scooped up the sleeping Jiang Cheng around the waist, and crashed through the floor-to-ceiling window, leaping out from the third floor!
Jiang Cheng woke the instant she was lifted, immediately followed by the huge sound of shattering glass and the feeling of weightlessness.
The next second, Moli landed safely with her in his arms.
Jiang Cheng’s hand pressed into the wet mud. She looked up, about to ask what was happening, when she lost her balance and fell to the ground.
The ground shook violently—it was impossible to stand.
The ground tilted. Jiang Cheng rolled to a lower spot, her body completely out of control.
Moli leaped lightly, scooped Jiang Cheng into his arms, and jumped high, avoiding the ground’s sudden fissures and uplifts.
Concrete and steel ruptured, buildings collapsed, the courtyard sank, revealing densely packed zombie bones buried beneath!
Instantly, deeper still collapsed—the zombie bones fell into the underground garage!
Deeper still collapsed—bones, private cars plunged toward the pitch-black, bottomless fissure!
Many people didn’t have time to wake up and were taken directly by death.
Rumbling and screams mixed together in the darkness.
No electricity—pitch black everywhere.
Invisible death reaped lives in the night.
Some fire-type superpower user started lighting fireballs—finally there was light.
Fireballs lit up one after another, flickering. Some extinguished and disappeared.
Many voices, rumbling, indistinct.
People’s ears were temporarily deafened by the shock.
The ground was like a plastic ruler you bent with your fingertip and released in school—bouncing and vibrating, waves surging.
People were bounced up as if they’d lost mass, slammed into walls, rolled off, crushed into meat paste by falling concrete.
The world was torn into fragments.
From high buildings to underground.
Screams everywhere.
The ground tilted, floor slabs breaking layer by layer.
People’s fingernails scraped bloody marks into the concrete floor, yet couldn’t grip anything. The floor buckled upward, gravity dragging bodies sliding, screaming as they fell through the fissures.
One after another, like dumplings dropped into a pot.
Su Yu roared: “Hold tight, hold tight!”
Because of the mysterious man’s crazy prophecy, she’d felt uneasy and voluntarily slept with the little kids tonight.
Things happened too fast. The instant she opened her eyes, some children had already lost their lives.
No time—there was simply no time.
The shield that sprang up in an instant only covered four girls.
They and Su Yu clung tightly together, because the shield distinguished “inside” and “outside.”
From the “inside,” you could freely pass through the shield to the “outside.”
If you were flung out during the massive quake, you’d leave the shield.
Only Su Yu wouldn’t be passively ejected from the shield, so everyone held on tightly together—no matter how violently it shook, they wouldn’t be thrown out.
Su Yu looked up. A massive concrete floor slab pressed down, trying to smash them into meat paste.
Su Yu kept her eyes open, not blinking.
White light radiated in all directions, illuminating the night.
—
Song Jingshuo also lived on a high floor.
The shaking was too violent—he couldn’t even get up, his head hitting and bleeding profusely.
Song Jingshuo slapped his left palm onto his own dripping blood. The vine ring on his wrist, bearing a single green leaf, absorbed the human blood and suddenly burst into growth, exploding in an instant!
Roots like fine threads shot toward all the cultivation vessels in the room, taking root and drawing nutrients!
The vine grew thick as a dragon’s body, thunderously breaking through the already-cracked wall, coiling around Song Jingshuo as it burrowed out of the building, spreading frantically downward all the way!
—
Zhao Yi ran, pulling Zhang Lesi!
He knew he couldn’t let go of her hand—Zhang Lesi couldn’t see!
Actually, he couldn’t see either. The stairwell was too dark. But the more that was true, the more he couldn’t let go of Zhang Lesi’s hand.
Rebar and concrete twisted.
People were as weak as leaves blown by the wind.
The two were bounced up to the ceiling and slammed hard onto the floor.
Zhao Yi’s head rang, his shoulders, back, chest, and knees in agonizing pain. He instinctively clenched his hand—but grasped only air.
“Lesi!” Zhao Yi opened his eyes and looked up. “Lesi!”
There was light before his eyes. Fireballs large and small—from upstairs, downstairs, outside—light leaking in—
The building split vertically. He was on this side, Zhang Lesi on that side, the middle collapsing.
She lay at the break, as if unconscious.
“Lesi—!” Zhao Yi shouted.
Struggling to stand, he activated his superpower. The concrete floor rapidly grew toward Zhang Lesi’s side, forming a bridge.
Zhao Yi ran toward Zhang Lesi amid the shaking: “Lesi—!”
Zhang Lesi had been running for her life with Zhao Yi, hating herself.
Why couldn’t her eyes still see! Why had she become a burden to others!
The massive force made the ground surge like waves, bouncing her and Zhao Yi to the ceiling and slamming them to the floor.
Zhang Lesi was slammed nearly unconscious.
She heard someone shouting her name: “Lesi—! Lesi—!”
Zhang Lesi struggled to raise her head and saw light.
Everything went from blurry to clear.
The man she loved was shouting her name with his heart torn apart, building a concrete bridge, crossing the fissure, charging toward her: “Lesi—!”
Exactly like her fantasy of love.
It had to be earth-shattering.
Zhang Lesi smiled, then watched helplessly as half the building behind Zhao Yi tilted, toppled, and collapsed.
The concrete bridge broke.
Zhao Yi ran, jumped, leaped into the air: “Le—si—”
He reached out to her.
Zhang Lesi pushed herself up and also reached out to him—
The two hands ultimately didn’t grasp each other.
Everything seemed to slow down. Zhang Lesi blinked once.
Zhao Yi fell.
Time’s flow suddenly accelerated!
The next instant, Zhang Lesi jumped down after him.
Without hesitation.
If she died, she died. Worth it.
She’d said it—her taste in men was excellent.
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