Chapter 34
But in the end, Jiang Qingyu still said nothing.
Some things were best touched on lightly and left there. Although he was the one who had developed a good impression first, there was no need for him to be so anxious. It was better to let things happen naturally.
Meimei strolled from the foot of the bed to the side of the pillow, then softly flopped down. Her back and head nestled into the hollow of Jiang Qingyu’s neck, fluffy and warm, her purring extremely sleep-inducing.
On top of that, Jiang Qingyu lowered the soundproofing effect a little, just to the point where he could faintly hear the sound of rain.
In the middle of the night, he was half-awakened for a short while by Meimei getting up to eat a midnight snack. Hearing the rain outside, with the night still deep, he realized he could still go back to sleep. He felt extremely at ease.
He wrapped himself in the blanket, tucked it under his chin, turned over into another position, and continued sinking into dreamland.
Rainy days were truly too good for sleeping. Jiang Qingyu even suspected that if this rain continued for a while longer, his daily sleep time would increase by several hours.
After getting up, he felt as if all the bones in his body had gone soft. Then he looked at Fu Jingqiu, only to find that the man had already finished warming up and completed several sets of exercises.
Jiang Qingyu turned his head to look at the rain outside the window. The drizzling rain was endless, and the temperature was extremely low. Just seeing this scene made him want to lie flat, let alone exercise.
He gave Fu Jingqiu, who was wiping his sweat, a thumbs-up. “Respect.”
Fu Jingqiu smiled at him. “Hungry?”
Jiang Qingyu shook his head. “I’m okay. I just still want to sleep.”
Fu Jingqiu said, “Enough. You can’t sleep too long. If this keeps going, your schedule will be reversed day and night.”
Jiang Qingyu lazily leaned against the sofa. “I know. That’s why I forced myself to crawl up, isn’t it?”
After saying that, he actually yawned again.
With one leg resting on the sofa armrest and swinging lightly, his whole body was upside down, his upper body sprawled over the sofa. He raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Come, come, come. Please order. What do you want to eat today?”
Without thinking, Fu Jingqiu said, “Anything is fine.”
“Heh.” Jiang Qingyu laughed through his nose. “I knew you’d say that.”
Fu Jingqiu said somewhat embarrassedly, “I’m not that picky. My tastes are also all right. Everything you made before was delicious.”
“Okay.” Jiang Qingyu was still collapsed there. “Then I’ll get up and cook when I’m hungry.”
Fu Jingqiu laughed helplessly. “Call me if you need help.”
Jiang Qingyu reached for his phone. “Of course I’ll call you. I can’t manage it by myself.”
Fu Jingqiu was just about to respond when he saw the person who had been sprawled on the sofa, swinging his leg, suddenly sit up with a whoosh. Holding his phone, Jiang Qingyu rapidly swiped across the screen, looking very tense. Fu Jingqiu put down the things in his hand and walked over. “What’s wrong?”
Jiang Qingyu immediately handed him the phone. “Look at this.”
Fu Jingqiu took it. Jiang Qingyu tapped the screen, and the paused video continued playing.
The filming angle seemed to be from upstairs. The focus was zoomed in, and the video was slightly blurry and shaky, but the scene of the man in the frame holding a young person and frantically tearing into him was perfectly clear.
The man seemed to have gone mad. He forcibly tore a large chunk of flesh from the other person’s neck. A large amount of blood instantly gushed out, only to be washed clean by the rain.
Seeing this, the person recording the video could not help letting out a small cry of surprise, followed by a string of “holy crap,” and the video shook even more violently.
The young person who had been bitten did not manage to struggle for long. Soon, he stopped moving completely.
After the middle-aged man realized this, he casually threw him to the ground and wandered aimlessly in another direction.
A few seconds later, the following video footage had clearly been spliced together. The young person who had originally been lying motionless in the rain suddenly stood up in an eerie posture, then ran in another direction on both hands and feet. There was no sign that he had just been injured.
After Fu Jingqiu watched the entire video, his brows were tightly furrowed, and his expression was extremely serious.
As soon as this video was posted online, it caused a huge uproar. There were doubters, and there were also many people stirring up trouble in the chaos. Most people felt the video was fake and reposted it one after another, waiting for a debunking.
But once the view count grew large, the video was banned. Many people had saved the video in advance and reposted it.
It was posted and banned again and again. Later, people simply posted screenshots and left all kinds of contact methods to share it with netizens.
The internet was a mess, and no official statement had appeared. Instead, residents from the same residential community saw the photos online and, after comparing them, confirmed that it was downstairs from their own home. They did not dare go out, so they put on raincoats and poked their heads outside to look around, trying to find the two people in the video.
Jiang Qingyu stood beside Fu Jingqiu and leaned in to watch as Fu Jingqiu searched and browsed through a series of things online. Only when they truly could not find anything new did Fu Jingqiu hand the phone back with a solemn expression and say, “I’m going to make a call.”
“Oh, okay,” Jiang Qingyu said. “Then I’ll go back to the bedroom first. You can call.”
He guessed Fu Jingqiu probably wanted to confirm the authenticity of the online video and ask a friend who had channels.
Thinking about it now, if he did not know about the apocalypse, suddenly seeing this kind of video online would have frightened him too.
Two or three minutes later, there was a knock on Jiang Qingyu’s bedroom door.
He answered and opened the door. “How is it?”
Fu Jingqiu’s expression was slightly dark. “The video isn’t fake.”
As he walked toward the living room, he explained, “The middle-aged man in the video had just been discharged from the hospital the day before. In the early stages, he had fever and unexplained unconsciousness. The hospital’s instruments couldn’t find the cause of his illness, so they first prescribed antipyretics and anti-inflammatory injections.”
“After being unconscious for two days, he suddenly woke up, and all of his previous symptoms disappeared, so he applied to be discharged.”
Jiang Qingyu said, “In other words, he was just discharged yesterday, and today he turned into… this?”
Fu Jingqiu nodded. “That’s right.”
Jiang Qingyu said, “If I remember correctly, before this, there were already rumors of a new type of flu. There should have been quite a few people who developed symptoms earlier than he did, right? What about them?”
At this, Fu Jingqiu’s expression became even uglier. “There have already been cases like this. The patients were kept in the hospital for observation. But because information between different regions isn’t synchronized, today’s situation happened.”
Jiang Qingyu wanted to speak but stopped.
Although Fu Jingqiu’s mood was heavy, he still noticed the change in his emotions and took the initiative to ask, “What do you want to say?”
Jiang Qingyu said, “Do you think this could be zombies?”
Fu Jingqiu: “Zombies?”
Jiang Qingyu said, “Like in those apocalypse movies, Resident Evil, Train to Busan, things like that. Have you seen them?”
Fu Jingqiu said, “I understand.” His brows tightened. “To be honest, their symptoms are very similar.”
He looked rather worried. “I hope the situation can be controlled.”
Actually, Jiang Qingyu did not know how things would develop either. The information the system gave was all very general. The future was still a challenge.
Fu Jingqiu suddenly said seriously, “How much have we stockpiled before?”
Huh?
Was that something he could say?
Jiang Qingyu said uncertainly, “Uh, a lot?”
Fu Jingqiu said, “We may need to buy some compressed biscuits and canned food.”
Hey, no, wait.
Actually, with Jiang Qingyu’s current stockpile, there was no need at all to stockpile those things.
Moreover, no one knew how bad things would get later. It would be better to leave those convenient and filling foods to the people who needed them more.
“Mm…” Jiang Qingyu hesitated. “Actually, I stocked up on some other things. In terms of food, we probably don’t need to worry.”
Fu Jingqiu said, “This may be a long war. We need a lot of food.”
Jiang Qingyu said, “Yes, I understand. Do you remember what I said before about liking to stockpile things? I’ve been buying supplies these days. The RV’s space is much larger than you imagine. Food takes up the biggest share, and it’s all already stored.”
Fu Jingqiu gazed at him for a moment. “All right. I’ll transfer you another sum of money. For the next period of time, we still need to stockpile supplies.”
Was he handing the authority over what to buy to him? That was even better.
Jiang Qingyu nodded like a chick pecking rice. “Okay, okay. You can rest assured about this part. I’ll definitely arrange it properly.”
Fu Jingqiu said, “The glass on your vehicle?”
Jiang Qingyu patted his chest. “Don’t worry about that. It’s absolutely the best material. Windproof and bulletproof, custom-made at great expense!”
Fu Jingqiu said all right, then asked, “The tires?”
Jiang Qingyu said, “It has to keep running on the road. I’m the kind of person who likes to get things done in one step. The quality is absolutely no problem.”
Fu Jingqiu said, “Good. I got the self-defense items sorted out two days ago, so don’t worry about that. Because we still don’t know what the situation is for now, and because we don’t have a fixed residence, it’s best for us to stay away from cities and crowded places.”
Jiang Qingyu nodded again. “Okay. I’ll listen to you.”
Fu Jingqiu’s mind really did work very quickly. In just a little more than ten minutes, he had already thought of these countermeasures. His crisis awareness was very strong.
After their brief exchange ended, Fu Jingqiu went to set the automatic driving route. Jiang Qingyu’s receiving account then received a transfer. He tapped it open and looked, then was somewhat speechless.
Did Fu Jingqiu transfer him all the money from selling his house?
The RV set off again. Jiang Qingyu took his phone and searched through online shops. For the time being, he did not notice anything abnormal; they were still operating normally. He tentatively asked the sellers, and they said they could ship.
Jiang Qingyu thought about it, then bought more things, paying extra for SF Express air shipment. He tried to choose shipping locations as close to himself as possible. If they shipped that day, the items could arrive the next day.
The conditions were a bit strict, but not completely impossible. A higher price was not a problem for him at all.
If he was lucky, he could gain a little more supplies. If he was unlucky, then let the items be left for people who could use them.
Because of the heavy rain, there were almost no vehicles on the road. The reason they had rested here for the night was because next, they needed to cross a desert highway that would take eight or nine hours by car. Most of the journey was through uninhabited areas, and there was not even a signal.
Fortunately, before this, the RV had refreshed an oxygen supply reward. Otherwise, Jiang Qingyu really would not have been able to guarantee that he would not get altitude sickness in a place over four thousand meters above sea level.
Speaking of which, this was actually his mistake. Probably because he had not had this concept before, Jiang Qingyu had surprisingly not stockpiled oxygen cylinders.
Yesterday, when they left the hot spring hotel, he had urgently bought a batch nearby, but he still wanted to buy more professional medical oxygen concentrators.
He did not know what the situation would be like once they reached the next county or town, so he could only buy them online now.
Jiang Qingyu held his phone and busied himself for a while. Then he poked his head into the driver’s area to take a look. Unexpectedly, Fu Jingqiu was still browsing information online. It seemed he was also worried about the current situation.
But to say something extremely selfish, he could worry about anything—just not his mother and younger brother, who had wanted to harm his life.
