Jiang Cheng was also woken by the screams.
With the frame-structured building carrying sound easily, and Jiang Cheng living right next door, she heard everything clearly.
Her eyes snapped open as she gasped sharply. Her heart felt wrong for several seconds before she finally came to, slowly pushing herself up.
What was happening next door? Why was the dog crying out like that?
How long had she slept after taking the medicine?
Jiang Cheng sat on the edge of the bed, catching her breath. The dog’s cries next door were bloodcurdling.
After a minute or two, Jiang Cheng felt her strength returning. But the dog’s cries next door grew softer—and then stopped altogether.
The entire neighborhood fell into a terrifying silence again.
Even more chilling than before.
Jiang Cheng stood up. Her legs were still a bit weak, but they steadied after a few steps.
First, she turned on the light.
Turning on the light was meant to chase away fear. Yet somehow, the harsh white light illuminating her empty apartment felt strangely unsettling.
The dog next door had completely stopped barking. But the way it had cried out like that—something was definitely wrong. Either something had happened to the dog, or something had happened to the person.
Jiang Cheng picked up her phone and dialed the emergency number. But the call—which should have gone through immediately—rang several times with no answer.
She hung up and redialed twice. Same result.
She called property management. No answer either.
Jiang Cheng hung up again and glanced toward the floor-to-ceiling window.
That was when it suddenly hit her—why her familiar home felt so strange at this moment. It was too quiet! Where was the sound of traffic from the nearby road? She couldn’t hear a thing.
It was so quiet it was terrifying.
Jiang Cheng felt that the whole world was wrong. She even had a vague feeling that something was off about herself. But now wasn’t the time to figure out what was happening to the world. She could only focus on what was happening right around her—what was going on next door.
Why had the dog gone completely silent?
Jiang Cheng picked up the baseball bat she kept at home for self-defense and opened her door.
The youth apartments were small units, with twenty-four on each floor. The hallway stretched long, resembling an office building. Looking down it, all she saw were doors.
At this moment, there wasn’t a single person in sight.
Even though the dog’s cries had been so terrible just now, not a single door had opened for a look.
Jiang Cheng walked over and knocked on the neighbor’s door. “Hello?”
“I’m from 0306 next door.”
“Is everything okay? Do you need help?”
The dog next door was actually quite cute—the only downside was that it barked whenever anyone walked past the door. But the neighbor was a reasonable person. When other neighbors complained, he apologized, making it hard for anyone to stay upset with him.
But now, as Jiang Cheng knocked, the dog that usually went crazy at the sound of footsteps was completely silent. Yet there were faint sounds coming from inside—clearly someone was home.
Jiang Cheng kept knocking. “Hello? Do you need help?”
“Hello? Anyone home?” Jiang Cheng lied. “I called property management. They’ll be here soon.”
She half-suspected that a burglar had gotten into the neighbor’s apartment.
The neighbor loved his dog dearly. If he were there himself, the dog shouldn’t have cried out like that. After knocking several times without hearing the dog again, she feared the dog might already be dead—killed by an intruder.
To be safe, she invoked property management to intimidate whoever was inside.
After she finished calling out, she heard distinct footsteps, growing closer as they approached the door.
Jiang Cheng tightened her grip on the bat. She had a plan: if the person who opened the door was a stranger, she would pretend not to know the neighbor—act as if she’d mistaken them for someone else—to keep the situation calm and prevent them from hurting her.
If there really was an intruder, property management and the police would ultimately have to handle it.
As she was strategizing, the door suddenly made a bang—like something had slammed hard against it, making her jump.
Jiang Cheng gripped the bat even tighter, staring at the door. “Hello? Are you okay?”
From inside came the chaotic sound of hands slapping against the door, mixed with a grating noise—like scratching and pounding at once.
Then, the doorknob moved.
Not enough to open the door—but then it moved a second time.
Alarm bells went off in Jiang Cheng’s head. She instinctively stepped back.
The doorknob moved a third time, and the door creaked open.
When she saw half a face through the gap—the face of the neighbor she’d met a few times—Jiang Cheng let out a breath of relief. “What’s going on, you—”
Her voice died in her throat as she took in the neighbor’s eerie, completely black eyes.
At that very moment, the “neighbor” lunged at her!
Jiang Cheng instinctively raised the baseball bat to block, just managing to stop the outstretched hands. But the force with which the neighbor lunged was far stronger than she expected. He grabbed the bat and charged forward, driving her back.
Driven back by the force, Jiang Cheng stumbled several steps before her back slammed against the opposite neighbor’s door with a loud bang.
She reacted quickly. The moment her back hit the door, she let go of the bat, slid down, and scrambled out from underneath.
Her “neighbor,” however, wasn’t nearly as quick. Losing his target, he kept lunging forward and collided heavily with the opposite door.
The bat clattered to the floor.
Jiang Cheng scrambled up and looked back. The “neighbor” turned to look at her too.
His eyes had no whites at all—completely pitch black.
Saliva dripped steadily from his mouth.
A sound like a whimper came from his throat.
Then, the next second, this inhuman creature opened its mouth wide and let out a hoarse, rasping roar!
The stench emanating from its mouth was rancid beyond belief.
Jiang Cheng ran for her life!
“Help—” she screamed at the top of her lungs as she ran. “Someone help!”
When a single woman is in danger, shouting for help is the right thing to do. Last time she encountered a pervert, her shouts had brought several helpful neighbors running.
But this time, not a single door opened along the empty hallway.
Her sharp cries for help echoed through the entire corridor.
What Jiang Cheng didn’t know was that she and the neighbor next door were among the first to wake up.
Unfortunately, after waking up, she was still human—but the neighbor had become something inhuman.
By now, Jiang Cheng understood what had happened to the dog next door. Even though she’d only been pinned against the opposite door for a moment, she’d gotten a close look at the flesh and dog hair caught in the neighbor’s mouth, as well as the large patches of crimson staining his T-shirt.
What she couldn’t understand was why.
She remembered coming home on Wednesday and running into this neighbor as he was leaving to walk his dog. He had been perfectly normal then. How had he suddenly turned into something so horrifying?
Behind her came the pounding of footsteps and hoarse roars, chasing after her.
Her thoughts raced as she reached the end of the hallway.
She was running so fast that she practically crashed into the fire door leading to the stairwell. Jiang Cheng skidded to a halt, yanked the fire door open, slipped inside, and immediately slammed it shut, holding it tight with all her strength!
A split second later, there was a loud smack as the “neighbor”—unable to stop his momentum—slammed full force into the door.
Jiang Cheng even heard a sound like bones cracking.
The stairwell fire door had to be pulled open from his side, unlike the apartment doors which pushed outward.
The neighbor had been chasing her with his arms outstretched like a zombie. The cracking sound she’d heard was likely his wrist or arm breaking against the fire door.
Jiang Cheng gambled that in his current state, he wouldn’t be able to open this door.
Thumping sounds began—like a body slamming against the door.
Jiang Cheng had guessed right.
In his current state, with his limbs so uncoordinated, the neighbor couldn’t manage the “pull” motion.
But Jiang Cheng didn’t linger. A fire door that couldn’t be locked wouldn’t keep her safe. She turned and ran downstairs.
She had chosen a low floor specifically because it would make escape easier in case of something like a fire. This wasn’t a fire, but the “easy escape” part certainly applied.
The first-floor lobby was supposed to have a security guard on duty 24/7.
Jiang Cheng pushed open the fire door on the first floor, ready to call for help—but instead, she saw a familiar security guard lying face-down on the floor, completely still.
Her cry for help caught in her throat. She ran over and turned the guard over. “Hey? Hey! Are you okay? Wake up! Wake up!”
The guard’s body was still warm—or rather, the warmth hadn’t yet faded.
But his face was ashen.
Jiang Cheng thought back. The neighbor’s face just now had seemed similarly ashen—a livid, greenish-gray.
Everything upstairs had happened so fast. During that brief moment when she’d looked at the neighbor, her attention had been consumed by those black, white-less eyes and that drooling, bloody mouth.
Now that she thought about it, everything else was blurry—but his face had definitely been that same gray-green color, even more livid than the guard’s.
Jiang Cheng reached out and felt for the guard’s breath. Her heart sank—there was none.
The warmth in his body was indeed just residual heat.
This security guard was already dead.
Jiang Cheng clenched her jaw, her breathing rapid and heavy.
Thankfully, she managed to hold onto her sanity. She grabbed the walkie-talkie from the floor. “Hello? Is anyone there? Anyone? Hello? Hello—”
But the walkie-talkie, like the silent stairwell, yielded no response.
Realizing this, Jiang Cheng didn’t hesitate. She dropped the walkie-talkie, stood up, and decided to head directly to the property management office.
The management office had security guards, a few things that looked like electric batons, and that big fork-shaped tool with a crescent-shaped head.
Her best hope was to find other people. But even if she couldn’t find anyone, at least she might find usable weapons.
Jiang Cheng pushed open the glass door of the building and stepped outside.
But a deafening crack rang out overhead. Broken glass rained down like shards of ice, and at the same time, a thud—a “person” also fell from mid-air onto the open space below the building’s entrance stairs.
That “person” didn’t cry out in pain or even groan. Instead, it immediately lifted its head.
Pitch-black eyes.
Jiang Cheng was still gripping the door handle, frozen in place.
The thing that had fallen onto the steps wasn’t a “person” at all—it was the very neighbor she had trapped behind the fire door in the stairwell.
He had broken the glass window at the end the stairwell and chased after her—jumping down from the upper floor.
Or perhaps not jumping. “Falling” was more accurate.
His feet were clearly injured from the fall—one ankle was twisted at a 90-degree angle, and the other leg was bent starting at the knee. When he saw Jiang Cheng on the building’s entrance steps, he tried to stand but failed. So he clawed at the ground and crawled upward instead.
But his wrists and arms had already broken upstairs when he couldn’t slow down and slammed into the wall.
His crawling was just as deformed.
It made him look even more horrifying.
Jiang Cheng stepped back, closed the building door, and watched through the glass as the monster that had been her neighbor crawled toward her, inch by inch.
All she could hear was her own ragged breathing.
Don’t panic, she told herself. You can’t panic.
She had experienced the monster’s strength firsthand. She knew that even with his wrists and arms damaged, this glass door might not stop him.
She couldn’t just wait to die.
Heaven helps those who help themselves.
Jiang Cheng’s eyes quickly scanned the building lobby. She spotted the cleaning supplies in the corner—the janitor’s tools.
She saw a traditional mop with cloth strips.
The mop handle was a sturdy wooden stick.
Jiang Cheng grabbed the mop and swung it. The heavy cloth head severely hampered her leverage.
She hurried to the security desk, pulled open a drawer, and found no scissors—but inside was a ring of keys. She glanced back at the glass door. The monster neighbor was still crawling upward.
Glancing back and forth, she used the serrated edge of one of the keys to saw at the rope binding the mop head.
Thank goodness for the property management’s stinginess—they never replaced the old mops. This one was already worn out, and the rope tying the mop head was already heavily frayed.
A few strokes were enough to cut through the rope. Jiang Cheng removed the mop head, leaving herself with a smooth wooden stick.
She looked up again. The neighbor’s head and shoulders had already crawled past the highest step. His broken arms were flailing toward the glass door.
Jiang Cheng gripped the wooden stick tightly, took a deep breath, and suddenly pushed the glass door open—charging outside. Raising the stick like she’d seen in TV dramas, she brought it down hard on the monster’s skull!
The sound of a skull cracking was not pleasant.
It almost made her teeth ache.
But those pitch-black eyes reminded Jiang Cheng clearly that the thing before her was no longer “human”—it was a mutated monster of unknown origin.
Swallowing all her revulsion, she gritted her teeth and brought the stick down a second time!
Attacking the head was effective!
The monster’s movements visibly slowed.
Jiang Cheng clenched her jaw and struck again and again—until the monster’s skull shattered, splattering disgusting fluids and chunky solid fragments across the steps.
She had killed someone.
So what?
When facing a monster, protecting yourself came first.
If the police came, that’s what she’d tell them.
The muscles in her arms twitched faintly from the short burst of explosive force.
Jiang Cheng stood there, gripping the wooden stick now coated with vile liquid, breathing heavily.
She thought she had at least a moment of safety—half a minute to rest. But then a sharp, piercing howl came from below the steps.
Instantly, Jiang Cheng dropped into a defensive stance and looked down.
This time, it wasn’t human. It was a very familiar black cat.
Its glowing green eyes were eerie in the darkness.
Its fur stood completely on end. It let out a grating cry at her—like a provocation, like a declaration of war.
Jiang Cheng breathed heavily, gripping the stick tightly as she aimed it at the black cat below the steps. “…Moli?”
Had even the cat turned into a monster?
Jiang Cheng clenched her jaw.
Moli let out a fierce cry and turned into a black blur—leaping at her with astonishing speed and agility!
Jiang Cheng felt her heart tighten, as if an electric current had passed through it. A sense of danger—or perhaps killing intent—rushed toward her.
She gritted her teeth and swung the wooden stick with all her might—
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