Chapter 1: Luxury on a Rainy Night
Su Wanqing curled up on the wool mat by the bay window, the tip of the silver fork poking into the cherry flesh, and the dark red juice flowed down her silk cuffs.
The cell phone next to him made the glass coffee table buzz. The pop-up window of the homeowners group covered the playing "Empresses in the Palace". The resident of Room 602 in the group sent three vomiting emojis in a row: "The old beast in Room 301 secretly took pictures of female students!"
The video played automatically. The camera slanted in from the crack of the door. The girl in bear pajamas huddled in the corner, shivering. The two packets of braised beef noodles in her arms were swollen from the rain.
The bald landlord's plastic slippers were stepping into the puddles. The reflective water surface reflected the oil stains on the back of his head. The torn Durex box lay on the edge of the trash can.
"My daughter is only a junior in college!" The decorator of 502 suddenly sent a voice message in the group, mixed with the noise of the electric drill, "You dare to touch her!"
Then there was a photo of a bloody kitchen knife. Su Wanqing forwarded the video to all members and specifically @ed the number of "Counselor Zhang" in the emergency contact list.
The jade bracelet suddenly burned my wrist and made it numb. A translucent red light shone from the bracelet surface, marking the landlord’s WeChat profile picture with a scarlet label of “Malicious Reporter”.
When Su Wanqing pulled open the stem of the second cherry, she remembered that in her previous life, it was this bald man who brought the neighborhood committee to kick open her door, saying that someone had reported her for secretly storing compressed biscuits.
The number of messages in the owners’ group reached 99+, and the piano teacher in room 603 posted a 59-second voice message: “301 has removed all the fire hydrants on the seventh floor! They have stockpiled more than 20 barrels of mineral water!” It was followed by a blurry photo, in which barrels of water were piled up to block the emergency exit.
Su Wanqing licked the juice off her fingertips and opened the landlord's circle of friends. The latest update was five minutes ago: "Sharing instant noodles during special periods, private chats for women only."
The housewife in room 402 suddenly burst into tears: "My twins are so hungry that they drink toilet water." The voice could be heard as the child's hoarse sobs, like a cat with its neck strangled.
Someone suggested forming a group to rob a convenience store, and the owner of the tattoo shop at 701 immediately sent out a chain list with bloody fingerprints.
Su Wanqing took out a box of cherries from the space, picked out the most wilted one and took a couple of bites, then took a picture of the core facing the heavy rain outside the bay window.
The purple-red juice flowed along the cracks between the tiles onto the "GUCCI" carpet label, and she casually posted the photo to the group.
The messages that were scrolling across the screen suddenly stopped, leaving only the dull sound of raindrops hitting the bulletproof glass.
The landlord's voice message suddenly popped up: "Some people are still showing off their wealth at this time?"
The voice seemed to be squeezed out from between teeth, "Everyone remember that 1601 did not help the dying today!"
The red light of the jade bracelet flashed more urgently. Su Wanqing touched the new cracks on the bracelet and remembered that when her last bag of instant noodles was snatched away in her previous life, this group of people also @her room number in the group.
At this moment, the anti-wolf alarm suddenly screamed, and the surveillance screen showed a dark shadow passing by the door of 601.
Su Wanqing took out a half-box of cold Tomahawk steaks from the space, and deliberately placed the label with today's date facing upwards and threw it behind the fire hydrant in the stairwell.
At the moment when the gravy was dripping down the door, there was a sound of a plastic box rolling downstairs, followed by the dull thud of a heavy object hitting the wall and a man roaring, "I saw this box first!"
The sound of rain was mixed with the crisp sound of broken glass, and a new message popped up in the owners’ group.
The proprietress of the curtain shop at 702 posted a video: three men were rolling on the fourth-floor platform and tearing each other apart, with instant noodle residue mixed with rainwater all over their faces.
Su Wanqing turned off her cell phone and picked through the cherries with her silver fork, looking for the rotten one that had been pecked by a bird.
The jade bracelet suddenly vibrated three times, and a red light gathered into an arrow on the landlord's profile picture, pointing to the "Report 1601 for hoarding supplies" he was typing.
Su Wanqing pressed the record button and recorded the sound of the fork poking into the fruit pulp very clearly: "How many boxes of Durex can you make with those 20 buckets of water?"
The group chat fell into silence again. Heavy rain hit the bulletproof glass on the 30th floor. Su Wanqing listened to the fighting downstairs and suddenly laughed out loud.
The silk nightgown slid down her shoulders, revealing an old scar on her collarbone where a zombie had bitten through it.
Su Wanqing kicked away the cherry pits that were rolling by the bay window. The wet wool mat rubbed against the soles of her feet and made her feet itchy.
The eyepiece of the military telescope was covered with a layer of white mist. She pulled off the belt of her silk nightgown and used it as a rag. As the velvet fabric wiped across the lens, a tuft of purple hair swayed across the railing of the opposite rooftop.
The raindrops hit the telescope shell, making crackling sounds. In the camera, the purple-haired boy was slumped beside the water tank, his blue and white school uniform trouser legs torn into strips, his ankles swollen like steamed buns.
Su Wanqing adjusted the focus and saw three purple marks across his wrist, as if he had been tied up with a fire hose all night.
The utility knife slipped in the rain, and the boy reached for the handle with trembling hands. As the blade touched his fingertips, it was blown into the gutter by the wind.
The jade bracelet suddenly made a buzzing sound, and red light shot out from the center of the bracelet, reflecting a rotating triangle symbol on the telescope lens.
Su Wanqing felt an electric current pricking her wrist bone, and a translucent image of a human skeleton appeared on her retina.
The projection of the purple-haired boy's ribs was clearly visible in the heavy rain, and a metal shrapnel was embedded in the third bone.
"An SSS-level awakened person with superpowers has been detected." The mechanical sound made his eardrums numb, and a red light marked a countdown at the boy's heart: 11 minutes and 23 seconds.
Su Wanqing picked at the rubber eye mask of the telescope and recalled a similar scene she had seen in the air-raid shelter in her previous life - when the man who could control fire died, an infusible ice flower popped out of the bullet casing.
She took out a bag of beef jerky from the space, and was stunned as soon as she tore open the jagged bag.
The production date was clearly printed as "October 7, 2023", which was the day when her throat was bitten off in her previous life.
The sound of the fighting downstairs suddenly changed. Someone bumped into the fire door and the crisp sound of broken ribs could be heard throughout the building.
As the hard soles of her hiking boots stepped into her sheepskin slippers, Su Wanqing stared at the rooftop opposite and sneered.
The child held the half-broken utility knife and pointed it at his neck, with the tip of the knife leaving a white mark on his Adam's apple.
Memories of past lives came flooding back. On the night when the iron door of the air-raid shelter was knocked open by zombies, a man in a white coat also held a scalpel against himself, and was eventually pushed out by his companions to be fed to the mutant dogs.
"Start rescue mode." A holographic screen popped up on the jade bracelet, and a red box popped up in the supply list: two bags of beef jerky can be exchanged for a climbing rope.
Su Wanqing threw the box of leftover steak into the corridor. The greasy packaging bag hit the door frame of Room 601 and bounced back. Immediately, chaotic footsteps were heard downstairs.
The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!
Someone shouted, "1601 is throwing food again," and the vibration of the metal handrail could be felt under my feet.
When the fiber belt of the stab-proof pants cut into his waist, the purple-haired boy in the telescope suddenly looked up at the sky.
The rain washed away the tattoo on his collarbone, which was an iris pierced by an arrow.
Su Wanqing touched the newly cracked lines on the jade bracelet and recalled the system's warning just now - death before awakening of superpowers would cause an energy explosion, enough to collapse this 30-story apartment building.
At the moment the metal buckle of the climbing rope bit into the window frame, a dull sound of heavy object falling to the ground was heard from the rooftop opposite.
The purple-haired boy fell into a puddle of water, and his utility knife flew out of his hand toward the water tank, the blade making a harsh friction sound as it scraped against the iron sheet.
Su Wanqing fastened the hood of her raincoat and rolled her boots over the cherry juice on the bay window, leaving a winding trail on the bulletproof glass.
The noise of scrambling downstairs suddenly turned into screams. As Su Wanqing slid down the rope, she caught a glimpse of the bloodstained kitchen knife stuck between the ribs of a person and could not be pulled out from the window of the seventh floor.
The old lady in Room 401 squatted in the emergency passage and ate a packet of instant noodles. She looked up and saw her hanging in the air. She grinned with her toothless mouth: "Where are the fairies scattering flowers?"
The alarm of the jade bracelet was particularly piercing in the rain. Su Wanqing kicked open the air conditioner on the fifteenth floor, and the climbing rope swung in an arc in the air.
The purple-haired boy on the opposite rooftop began to twitch, and the shrapnel burned into orange-red in the perspective view, as if someone had stuffed a branding iron into his chest.
When the system countdown jumped to 5 minutes and 17 seconds, she finally touched the rusty handle of the rooftop iron door.
The utility knife was stuck in the gap of the gutter, and the blade reflected the figure of Su Wanqing climbing over the railing.
The purple-haired boy whimpered with his Adam's apple rolling, and dug his fingers into the moss at the bottom of the water tank.
Su Wanqing squatted down and tore the beef jerky packaging, and the sauce dripped onto the other's cracked lips.
The boy's carotid artery was throbbing, and the water drops hanging on his eyelashes were hard to tell whether they were rain or tears.
"Swallow it." She pinched the boy's chin and stuffed the dried meat into his mouth. His teeth chattered as her knuckles rubbed against his.
The jade bracelet suddenly emitted a red light to scan the other person's pupils, and a bright red prompt box popped up on the holographic screen: [Probability of awakening the second personality 97%].
In the distance, there was a loud noise of hail hitting a billboard, and the roar of the first wave of zombies was swept onto the rooftop by the wind and rain.
The boy suddenly bit her finger, his canine teeth piercing the fiber layer of the protective gloves.
Su Wanqing slapped him in the face with her backhand, and her wrist strength was so great that her slapped his head onto the water tank.
The accumulated water that fell off the iron sheet poured over the two people. The countdown of the jade bracelet stopped at 00:00:03, and the red light suddenly burst into a light cocoon that enveloped the dying body.
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com