Chapter 41
The suburban villa Shao Hui had purchased sat on the outskirts of the city, not far from the airport.
Since their group had arrived on a private jet, they contacted the airport terminal en route to see if any flight crew were available or willing to fly back to T City. They could easily offer a ride to stranded airport personnel.
The main terminal was already in complete disarray. Fortunately, the control tower and operations deck were secured by armed guards, and because the disaster had struck during an afternoon shift change, a sizeable group of airport staff had managed to survive.
The captain who had flown them in earlier was still sheltering in the crew rest quarters. Once communication went through, a terminal staff member relayed his situation.
“Mr. Mu, if you want him, you will have to retrieve him from the T5 lounge in Terminal 2 yourself.”
“I’ll transmit an interior schematic, but please be aware: the path between here and there is swarming with… non-human entities.”
“Understood,” Mu Feiyi replied evenly. He scanned the digital blueprint on his screen, dialed the captain directly to confirm his condition, and lit a cigarette. “The jet is parked on the apron by Terminal 3, while the captain is holed up in the T5 lounge over in Terminal 2.”
A grim, self-deprecating chuckle escaped his lips. “Operations estimates there are between fifteen hundred and twenty-three hundred people trapped inside the concourse.” He shook his head at the staggering figure.
“It’s going to be a bloodbath,” Qian Minghang said, his eyes hard and unwavering. He had to go. He had to get home, no matter the cost, because his younger sister was waiting for him.
Looking in the rearview mirror, he felt a sudden pang of guilt toward the two men beside him. They didn’t have to walk into this meat grinder with him. “Are you two sure about this? You really don’t have to risk your lives for my sake.”
“I have to see my parents with my own eyes!” Qian Shan said, his voice trembling slightly, though his resolve was unmistakable. “Even if they’ve turned into those things… at least I’ll have closure!”
“He’s right. Everyone needs closure,” Mu Feiyi said softly, glancing down at his phone. His mind drifted back to the young master of the Yu family. “I wonder how he’s holding up right now.”
“Why not call him and find out?” Qian Minghang asked as he merged onto the airport bypass. Wreckage was everywhere; multi-car pileups choked the shoulder, and shattered glass littered the lanes.
Fortunately, their reinforced luxury SUV was built like a tank. Ordinary fender-benders barely scratched the paint.
“I…”
Before Mu Feiyi could decide, his phone buzzed violently in his palm.
His pulse jumped, expecting the youth’s name to flash across the display, but a frown quickly touched his brow.
It was an unlisted, private line. Who could possibly be calling him at a time like this?
Hesitating for a fraction of a second, he slid the green bar across the screen. The voice on the other end bypassed all pleasantries.
“Mu Feiyi? Is this still Mr. Mu?” an elderly, measured voice inquired. “This is Liu Qinghao. Are you currently in a safe location?”
“I am,” Mu Feiyi answered, genuinely taken aback. Liu Qinghao was the influential statesman he had traveled all the way to City D to court. Why was the elder reaching out to him directly?
“I am flying back to City D tonight,” Liu Qinghao said calmly. “Can we arrange our meeting for tomorrow?”
Mu Feiyi tried to decipher the man’s underlying motives. After a brief pause, he replied smoothly, “I am currently at the airport gates, preparing to board a flight back to T City. As for a meeting… I’ll have to consider it.”
The world had shifted beneath their feet. Had civilization held intact, Mu Feiyi would have waited days just for a five-minute audience. But now? The game had changed completely. Once the apocalypse descended…
Regardless of whether governmental authority held, the cross-border transport corridor they had planned to discuss was dead in the water.
Elder Liu sounded surprised. “You’re leaving? Is it for the sake of the Mu Corporation?”
“It has nothing to do with the Mu family,” Mu Feiyi replied honestly. “I am returning to ensure a few close friends are safe.” He paused, asking the one question that mattered: “Elder Liu, is this outbreak confined to our region, or is it global?”
On the other end of the line, Liu Qinghao let out a heavy, sorrowful sigh. “It is everywhere. I cannot say more over an open channel; we can only discuss the details face-to-face.”
“Understood,” Mu Feiyi said simply, ending the call without further inquiry.
Qian Shan and Qian Minghang turned to him in pure bewilderment. “You’re turning down Elder Liu?!”
From any perspective—strategic, political, or personal survival—staying behind with an elder of Liu Qinghao’s standing was infinitely safer than charging blindly into an infected airport concourse.
“No, I have my own plans,” Mu Feiyi replied with absolute finality. His mind was set, and nothing would sway him.
Seeing his iron resolve, the brothers dropped the subject. Ahead of them, Qian Minghang brought the vehicle to a halt: “We’re here.”
Hundreds of miles away, the little hamster pressed his soft, pink paws against the cold glass of the passenger window. His furry cheek squished flat against the pane as he stared out at the swirling snow.
The digital timer hovering in his vision had shed its hours, ticking down through the final twelve minutes and fifty-odd seconds. They were still at least half an hour away from home.
Fortunately, Yu Yuanzhou had already called Tianwei, ordering her to barricade the villa doors and wait inside while they rushed back.
“Come on,” Yu Yuanzhou said suddenly, pulling their heavy truck onto the snowy shoulder. Reaching down, he scooped up the milk-tea-colored hamster and tucked him neatly into his warm coat pocket.
“Eh? Eh? Squeak?”
The little hamster peered out from the fleece lining, his front paws propped on the edge of the pocket as he tilted his head in confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“Stopping by the convenience store to grab you a drink,” Yu Yuanzhou murmured with a soft smile. He gently patted the creature’s head down, grabbed a red shopping basket from the rack by the entrance, and strode toward the refrigerated cases at the back.
Keeping his voice low, he asked, “What do you want?”
Yu Xiaoyuan had already hoarded cases of Coca-Cola, Sprite, Mirinda, and Fanta—mostly standard full-sugar varieties, with a few diet sodas thrown in. In the wasteland, where calories were life, sugar-free drinks had virtually zero survival value.
Now, smelling the cold air, the hamster popped his head out again, waving a tiny paw toward the lower shelf: “Yakult! Yakult!”
“All right.” Yu Yuanzhou swept the remaining bottles of probiotic yogurt into the basket, clearing out both the reduced-sugar versions and the classic pink-sleeved multipacks.
“And that tea! That one!” Even if pre-bottled convenience-store milk tea was mediocre, it was still milk tea! “The jasmine blossom one!”
In an apocalypse, a little hamster couldn’t afford to be too picky.
The round furball stood on his tiptoes, his whiskers drooping slightly. “Uncle’s pocket is way too deep,” he mumbled under his breath, his little legs growing tired.
Yu Yuanzhou grabbed several cans of black coffee and iced tea for himself, along with every peanut product in the store—peanut brittle, roasted ‘drunkard’ peanuts, and peanut butter wafers. Grabbing the remaining barbecued pork pineapple buns from the bakery shelf, he carried the basket to the checkout counter.
Above them, the invisible countdown had dwindled to just one minute and thirty seconds…
The cashier kept his head down, mechanically running items across the scanner. “Do you need a plastic bag, sir?”
“Give me plenty,” Yu Yuanzhou replied, checking his watch. “Fifty of the large heavy-duty ones.”
Before the sentence even cleared his lips, the cashier’s skin suddenly drained of color, turning a ghastly, mottled ash-gray. His eyes rolled up into his head, showing only glassy whites, and he collapsed behind the counter with a heavy thud.
Yu Yuanzhou looked up instantly.
The countdown had hit zero.
His breathing hitched, his pulse pounding against his ribs. Though he had prepared for this moment for days, witnessing the sudden fall of human life made the hair on his arms stand up.
The little hamster immediately popped his head out of the coat pocket. “Uncle… Uncle!”
“Hmm?” Yu Yuanzhou’s face hardened as he calmly set his purchases back into the basket.
“I forgot to buy extra trash bags! Take all the commercial shopping bags from behind the counter, and look over there…” Scrambling up to his uncle’s broad shoulder, the mouse pointed toward the back corner. “They keep the industrial garbage liners near the utility closet!”
Outside, the muffled, violent sounds of screeech—bang! Bang! echoed through the snow as vehicles collided on the street. Seeing the cashier drop without a word, Yu Yuanzhou knew the identical horror was playing out across the entire city.
Stepping over the fallen worker, he pushed open the narrow door behind the counter leading into the private inventory room, where no surveillance cameras were mounted.
“Shift back and pack them into your space,” Yu Yuanzhou said, his voice tense as he glanced back at the motionless clerk. “How long before he turns?”
“A few minutes at most. We have to be fast!”
The hamster dropped to the floor, transforming back into the slender form of Yu Xiaoyuan in the blink of an eye.
The convenience store used colossal commercial trash cans, meaning the corresponding plastic liners were enormous and tear-resistant. Realizing he had completely neglected household waste disposal on his master lists, Yu Xiaoyuan swept every roll on the shelves into his dimensional pocket.
He spotted an unopened master carton of five-spice peanuts and tossed it straight into the Kuntian Jade. Convenience stores rarely kept deep inventory, so the supply room yielded only a single carton of heavy trash bags, but he also discovered sealed boxes of sunflower seeds and seasoned walnuts.
Sprinting back out to the shop floor, he methodically swept through the short-shelf-life goods: fresh milk, artisan yogurt, steaming oden skewers, artisan ice creams, and his favorite savory crisps.
Finally, he gathered all the rolls of plastic checkout bags behind the cash register, stuffing them into his dimensional space.
He didn’t touch anything else.
In the opening days of the collapse, plummeting temperatures and the terror of infection would keep surviving humans huddled inside their homes. Most would hold out behind locked doors, surviving on whatever dry goods were in their pantries.
By the time their food ran out and desperation drove them into the streets, fresh dairy, soft bread, and cooked oden would have rotted into toxic sludge anyway. But the non-perishable goods—the instant ramen, self-heating hot pots, canned beans, and frozen dumplings—would keep desperate survivors alive.
Yu Xiaoyuan slipped a single sweet corn sausage into his hoodie pocket, leaving every other packaged meal untouched on the shelves.
When survivors finally organized scavenging runs, neighborhood convenience stores would be their first lifeline; large supermarkets were too dangerous, teeming with hundreds of infected workers and shoppers.
Once society fractured, Yu Xiaoyuan planned to make a run on the mega-marts himself, using his abilities to rescue bulk meats, farm produce, and whole grains before they spoiled.
Out on the curb, Yu Yuanzhou was already leaning out of the truck cab, waving urgently. “Little Yuan! Are you done?!”
“Coming!”
Yu Xiaoyuan darted back to the cash register, reaching over to snatch the final stack of commercial shopping bags to use for household trash.
The moment his fingers touched the plastic, a gray, withered hand shot out from beneath the counter, jagged black nails clawing toward his wrist!
Yu Xiaoyuan recoiled on pure instinct, pulling his hand back as he vanished the remaining bags into his space, the sharp claws missing his flesh by millimeters.
The creature let out a wet, guttural roar, thrashing its limbs against the floorboards. In less than five minutes, the cashier had completed his grotesque metamorphosis: his flesh was pale gray, his eyes milky and sightless, his jaw lined with elongated, canine-like teeth, and his fingernails blackened into half-inch talons.
Fortunately, the narrow gap of the checkout counter acted as a natural cage. No matter how violently the creature snarled and flailed, it couldn’t drag its twisted limbs over the barrier.
Seeing that the infected were still slow, uncoordinated, and mentally vacant, Yu Xiaoyuan let out a shaky breath of relief.
Scooping up one last chilled bottle of cola from the front display, he jogged through the automatic doors: “Uncle, I’m clear!”
Yu Yuanzhou hadn’t witnessed the cashier’s awakening, but he had watched a young commuter collapse on the sidewalk across the street. Within minutes, the figure had dragged itself upright, swaying on unsteady feet as it shuffled forward.
The skin on the man’s bare wrists was a sickening, mottled gray—a dead hue that no living human could ever possess.
At first, the creature had stumbled aimlessly. But the moment the scent of living blood drifted through the icy air, its upper torso jerked, its legs broke into an awkward trot, and it lunged forward.
Its gait was still clumsy, but with every step, the stiff tendons seemed to loosen, its coordination improving at a terrifying pace.
The infected were adapting.
Right now, an alert human could easily outpace them, but in a week? In a month? Their speed and lethality would reach horrifying heights.
The second Yu Xiaoyuan scrambled into the cab and slammed the door, Yu Yuanzhou buried his foot into the throttle. The heavy commercial truck roared forward, its massive steel bumper plowing aside stalled sedans and abandoned cars like cardboard boxes.
Vehicles that blocked the center line were shoved aside without hesitation; wherever living drivers were still trapped inside, Yu Yuanzhou steered wide to avoid crushing them.
“It’s terrifying…” Yu Xiaoyuan whispered, looking down through the window.
The truck’s high ground clearance kept them safely out of reach. Even when wandering ghouls caught their scent, the creatures could only claw uselessly at the massive tires, howling in frustration as the vehicle surged past.
Yu Yuanzhou kept his steering wheel straight, deliberately avoiding running the fallen civilians over. Sitting beside him, Yu Xiaoyuan saw the conflict in his uncle’s eyes.
The older man looked upon the walking dead with lingering pity and grief, viewing them as tragic victims of an inexplicable disaster. Deep down, his uncle still saw them as fellow human beings.
But they aren’t, Yu Xiaoyuan thought, his dark eyes solemn. The moment the black miasma claims them, they cease to be human forever.
Between the living and the infected, the natural order had collapsed into a brutal dynamic of hunter and hunted—though in these opening moments, it was impossible to tell who was the predator and who was the prey.
While the massive freight truck offered an impenetrable shield against the grasping hands outside, its colossal frame was clumsy and difficult to maneuver through the choked lanes. Yet its sheer presence proved a beacon of hope; seeing the heavy crimson rig bulldozing through the snow, several private sedans carrying living passengers hastily fell into line behind it.
Inside those trailing cars, people were trembling with terror. The roadways were choked with stalled traffic, leaving them too petrified to step outside. Outside their doors, corpses hammered violently against the glass, each blow heavier and more frantic than the last. Nobody knew how long the tempered windows would hold before shattering into jagged fragments, stripping them of their only sanctuary.
Trapped in their steel boxes, terrified drivers leaned on their steering wheels, screaming at the monsters and blasting their horns in blind panic. The blaring noise, however, only acted as a dinner bell, drawing shambling figures from every corner of the boulevard.
Yu Xiaoyuan glanced back through the side mirror, keeping his silence. If those survivors wanted to follow their tracks to safety, he wouldn’t stop them.
Fortunately, their immediate destination was close at hand: a logistics depot owned by a subsidiary of the Yu Corporation. The fleet stationed here consisted of older models. Given their tight timeline, Yu Yuanzhou had prioritized the primary distribution hub earlier, securing haulers that were practically brand new with pristine paint from the recent year-end turnover. This regional lot held secondary reserves.
Because of the holiday, the depot was officially closed. Aside from the automated security gatehouse, the yard was deserted. The elderly watchman had already turned, but the poor man was locked securely inside the glass booth, scratching fruitlessly at the reinforced window.
Yu Yuanzhou scanned the perimeter. Confirming no stragglers were nearby, he stepped down from the cab with practiced composure, swiped his master keycard to roll the automated gate open, and pulled the truck into the yard.
Minutes later, the compound gates rattled open again.
Yu Yuanzhou emerged astride a rugged, all-terrain motorcycle, with Yu Xiaoyuan sitting behind him, his arms wrapped securely around his uncle’s waist. As they accelerated past the bewildered motorists idling at the curb, Yu Xiaoyuan flipped his helmet visor up, calling out a final, earnest piece of advice:
“While these things are still clumsy and slow, grab whatever food you can find and break out of the city!”
“Are there working trucks inside that yard?!” one of the drivers shouted back, hurriedly cracking his window.
“There are, but the tanks are completely empty!” Yu Xiaoyuan lied smoothly—the vehicles had already been swept cleanly into his spatial domain.
“Forget it then,” the driver grumbled, rolling the glass shut. “Those heavy rigs drink fuel like water anyway.”
The man paused, weighing the young man’s parting words. Finding food and getting his family out made far more sense. Looking around in mounting despair, he muttered to himself, “How could this happen? How did everyone just turn into monsters in the blink of an eye?”
The motorcycle was swift, agile, and remarkably nimble. Their gated estate lay just down the arterial road, and by weaving through narrow alleys and pedestrian paths, the bike halved their travel time.
At the main entrance of the community, the massive wrought-iron gates were already chained shut. The security guard on duty peered through the reinforced glass, trembling as he recognized the owner of the central villa, and hastily clicked the side pedestrian gate open to let them slip through.
“Mr. Yu! There are… there are infected inside the grounds as well,” the guard stammered, his voice pale with shock. “Our team is doing everything we can to clear the paths. Please don’t worry, the perimeter patrol is actively sweeping the avenues.”
The catastrophe had only just begun. Most people naively assumed the initial wave of sudden collapses was the extent of the disaster. They had no idea that this was merely the prelude: over the coming hours, high fevers would begin sweeping through the surviving population.
From that burning trial, some would succumb to the infection, while a fortunate few would awaken supernatural abilities.
Yu Yuanzhou patted the guard’s trembling shoulder. “If things take a turn for the worse, don’t throw your life away. Go home to your family.”
“No, sir… we have our duties,” the man insisted. At these luxury property management rates, and until public order completely dissolved, the security firm was obligated to protect its elite residents.
Yu Yuanzhou pressed no further. Guiding the motorcycle past the checkpoint, he walked alongside Yu Xiaoyuan down the manicured avenue.
Along the private street, several familiar faces from the neighborhood had already transformed. Security officers had managed to pin them with long metal riot forks, hauling the thrashing figures into an empty ground-floor maintenance shed.
Because the luxury development had a low density, most residents employed full teams of private chefs, maids, and gardeners. The Yu family had dismissed their domestic staff days ago, which had spared them from sudden indoor ambushes.
Other households had not been so fortunate. Piercing screams echoed from several grand estates. Up on the second-floor terrace of a nearby mansion, an elderly woman leaned over the railing, shrieking in hysteria toward the patrolmen below: “Help us! The nanny… the nanny has gone mad! She’s biting everyone!”
“Aaaagh!”
A sudden, wet crunch cut her screams short.
Yu Yuanzhou froze, his gaze shifting toward his nephew.
Yu Xiaoyuan’s dark eyes were remarkably calm, yet filled with warm, unwavering trust. “I’ll back you up, Uncle.”
Reaching behind his lower back, the youth produced an exquisite, hand-forged Tang dao, holding the hilt out toward the older man. “The end of the world is here. We have to learn to fight for ourselves.”
“Yes… fight for ourselves,” Yu Yuanzhou murmured, his knuckles whitening as his fingers locked around the ray-skin hilt. A shudder ran through his body before steadying into cold resolve.
“Stay right behind me!”
Drawing the polished steel, Yu Yuanzhou charged straight through the wide-open front doors of the screaming household.
Frenzied cries were drifting from the master suite on the third floor, though judging by the wet, choking sounds that followed, they were already too late.
Yu Yuanzhou understood the brutal reality: if they didn’t steel their nerves and learn to kill these creatures now, the infected would evolve during the coming Seven Catastrophes, leaving humanity utterly defenseless.
“Don’t be afraid, Uncle. Right now, their reflexes are clumsy,” Yu Xiaoyuan said, flicking his wrist. A gleaming, steel nine-section whip appeared in his grip. With a sharp snap of his arm, the flexible links hissed through the foyer, lashing around the shins of an elderly figure shuffling out of the kitchen.
The woman’s gray hair was still pinned in an elegant, meticulous bun. Even the low, guttural hisses emerging from her throat carried an eerie remnant of her aristocratic poise.
Yu Yuanzhou recognized her instantly. She was a respected retired professor from an old scholarly dynasty—always gentle, impeccably polite, and gracious whenever they crossed paths on evening walks.
Yet now, the nine-section whip snapped taut around her ankles. With a sharp tug, Yu Xiaoyuan pulled her feet out from under her, and the creature crashed face-down onto the marble floorboards with a heavy thud.
A wave of bitter sorrow washed over Yu Yuanzhou. Looking down at the struggling, snarling figure, he whispered softly, “Let me see you off, Professor. You lived a life of grace and dignity; you wouldn’t want to exist like this.”
Steeling his trembling hands, he raised the Tang dao and brought the edge down cleanly through the nape of her neck.
The master-crafted steel parted flesh and bone without resistance.
“Uncle, to the upper floor—hurry!” Yu Xiaoyuan had already bounded up the curved marble staircase.
Yu Yuanzhou took a ragged breath, cleared his clouded eyes, and charged up the stairs behind him.
The masters of the house were already gone. In the end, they managed to rescue only a young maid who had locked herself inside a master walk-in closet, shivering among the designer coats.
Yu Yuanzhou asked if she wished to remain barricaded here or make a run for it.
The woman chose to leave without a second’s hesitation. “My husband and my little boy are at home waiting for me.”
“The streets outside are teeming with those things,” Yu Xiaoyuan warned. He held little optimism for her odds, yet every mortal had the right to choose their own fate.
“I don’t care—I have to go!” The middle-aged woman’s tear-streaked face hardened with fierce maternal desperation. “My son isn’t allowed to carry a phone at his boarding school. I need to get to the campus before the gates fall.”
Yu Yuanzhou’s chest tightened. A high school campus—a dense, crowded death trap.
He parted his lips to urge caution, but Yu Xiaoyuan caught his sleeve with a gentle, discreet tug. In the end, they could only watch in silence as the woman grabbed two heavy kitchen cleavers from the counter and sprinted through the courtyard into the falling snow.
“Why did you stop me from warning her?” Yu Yuanzhou asked quietly, using a damp kitchen towel to wipe the black residue from his blade.
Before departing, they carefully locked every ground-floor door and secured the reinforced windows. This villa was one of the prime structures Yu Yuanzhou intended to preserve, and he had no desire to see it looted or burned in the opening panic.
“It would have been pointless,” Yu Xiaoyuan replied softly, heading down the driveway. “No warning in the world will stop a mother from reaching her child. The more you describe the horrors outside, the more desperate she will become.”
“You’re right,” Yu Yuanzhou admitted with a heavy sigh. “If you or Tianwei were trapped out there, nobody could hold me back either.”
He looked at his nephew as they turned toward their own gate. “Are we clearing any more houses?”
“The cold is deepening,” Yu Xiaoyuan noted, glancing at the darkening horizon. “Night is falling.”
His plan was to keep their household sealed indoors over the coming days, though circumstances had a habit of forcing one’s hand. They would take things one step at a time.
“We need to plug in every battery bank, charge every power tool, and top off every vessel that can hold water,” Yu Xiaoyuan said, stomping his boots against the freezing threshold. “The municipal grid and water mains could fail at any moment.”
Inside their estate, the electrical lines were still humming, and the central heating had been running at maximum output since dawn.
Once they stepped through the perimeter, Yu Yuanzhou secured the heavy front iron gates with industrial security chains, repeating the process for the rear garden entrance.
Passing the massive three-ton cistern in the courtyard, he saw water rushing steadily from two high-pressure hoses into the open hatch. Tianwei had clearly engaged the lines the second they had departed. Running commercial hoses days earlier would have drawn unwanted neighborhood gossip, but amidst the open chaos, filling emergency water was entirely unremarkable.
Checking his watch, Yu Yuanzhou calculated the flow rate. “It should be full before midnight.”
Pushing open the heavy front door, a wave of comforting, radiant heat enveloped them. Yu Yuanzhou shrugged out of his damp coat, watching his daughter eagerly scoop up the little hamster from the entryway credenza, peppering the furball with affectionate little kisses.
He was torn between exasperation and fond amusement. “Give the boy some room to breathe. He’s your brother, not a plush toy.”
Couldn’t she see the little creature’s velvety ears were pinned flat against his head in pure, disgruntled protest?
“I was terrified when you two didn’t come back on time!” Tianwei said, slumping back against the living room sofa once she saw her father was completely unharmed.
She let out a long, shuddering breath. “You have no idea what it felt like sitting here alone, watching that digital clock tick down to zero and vanish into thin air. At first, the neighborhood was dead quiet. I honestly thought the prophecy was wrong—that the disaster wasn’t coming.”
A bitter smile touched her lips. “And then the screaming started. Mansion after mansion, all down the avenue. When I opened the curtains, there were people dragging their limbs through the gardens, tearing into the landscapers!
“I was shaking so hard I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed my phone and started calling my closest friends, telling them to lock their doors and stay inside, but…”
Her voice trailed off, thick with grief. So many lines had rung out without an answer.
Yu Xiaoyuan had warned them of a ninety-percent infection rate. Those unanswered calls meant only one thing.
Tianwei couldn’t decide whether those who turned instantly—spared the agonizing terror of watching their world burn—were the fortunate ones or the cursed. But now that the apocalypse had officially arrived, civilization was like a runaway freight train with severed brakes, hurtling headlong into the dark.
Yu Yuanzhou fell silent for a moment, then turned and headed up the stairs to his study. He began systematically calling through his personal contacts, desperate to check on the survival of his closest associates and partners.
A handful were remarkably lucky: some had been dozing through an afternoon nap behind locked bedroom doors, while others in distant time zones had been sleeping peacefully, entirely unaware of the nightmare unfolding around them. Receiving his urgent warnings gave them a precious fighting chance to secure their rooms before it was too late.
Downstairs, Tianwei sat in the quiet parlor, a lingering shadow of confusion and fear in her eyes. For all her corporate acumen, her ambitions had always been rooted in boardrooms and retail strategy. Even after two weeks of frantic preparation, staring into the abyss of an uncivilized world was deeply disorienting.
Seeing her quiet distress, the little hamster wiggled his chubby rear, scrambling up the sofa cushions with an earnest “heave-ho, heave-ho” before nestling himself directly into his sister’s open palm.
“Don’t be frightened. The little hamster will let you cuddle him,” he squeaked softly, looking up with wide, comforting eyes.
Reaching up with tiny pink paws, he wrapped his arms around her index finger, gently swaying back and forth. “Sister… Big Sister.”
He was warm, soft, and utterly precious.
Tianwei looked down at the tiny, milk-tea-colored creature curled in her hand, listening to his sweet, rhythmic chirps.
The icy knot of fear in her chest melted away.
“Good boy,” she murmured, gently stroking the downy fur along his spine with her thumb. “You’re right. We are already far more blessed than the people outside.”
The darkest dread that had haunted her and her father had not come to pass: they had retained their humanity.
In a world falling to pieces, that alone was a monumental grace. “Whatever comes next, our family is whole, safe, and together.”
“Mm-hmm!” The hamster nodded vigorously, his dark eyes shining. “Exactly!”
“Now we just have to hold out through the Seven Catastrophes,” Tianwei murmured, glancing through the reinforced glass at the blizzard outside. “How low do you think the temperature will drop?”
The digital climate display inside the villa registered a cozy twenty-four degrees Celsius, but the wireless sensor mounted in the courtyard was already flashing an alarming minus ten.
And yet, barely hours earlier when Yu Xiaoyuan and his uncle had set out on their final supply run, the afternoon air had still hovered near a mild eleven degrees above zero.
