I picked up my phone, and the screen showed that it was a video call from Xiao K. I hesitated for a moment and glanced at Ji Lin'an. Qianliyan frantically signaled to me with his eyes to answer, but just to be on the safe side, I hung up the video call and immediately called back. The other party answered instantly.
Little K excitedly said, "Hello, hello. I apologize for being so forward, but I called you directly because I saw you hadn't replied to my message."
I tried to calm myself down: "Hello."
Little K asked, "Are you one of the lucky ones?"
I said, "Mm."
Little K exclaimed excitedly, "Great! I'm lucky too! Where are you?"
I said, "I'm in City S."
Little K said, "I'm in G City, not far away. Do you want to come to our base? We have a Lucky Ones base here, and there are already more than twenty people gathered here."
Just as I was about to reply, the call suddenly ended, showing that the signal was interrupted. I sat down on the sofa dejectedly. Ji Lin'an, with his keen eyesight, walked over and sat down next to me. Ji Lin'an asked, "What happened? How did you get in touch with this person?"
I handed my phone to Ji Lin'an: "I just saw that this person updated her status on Douyin and contacted her immediately. Not only does she have a signal, but someone on Weibo also updated their status. It must have been that the network signal suddenly came back on just now, but it's down again now."
Qianliyan suddenly sat up: "We're saved! The network signal being restored might be because the government organized a rescue operation and managed to recover the signal. The next step is probably to search for survivors!"
Ji Lin'an frowned: "I don't think things are as good as they seem. In all this time, have you seen any survivors when you passed by police stations, fire stations, and military bases? We've encountered very few survivors; almost all of them were lucky."
I said, "Perhaps only the lucky ones survived? We have skills and weapons, yet we barely manage to get by, let alone ordinary people."
Ji Lin'an frowned seriously: "In short, we should be cautious. We'll observe for the next few days. If the network is restored, we can try to contact Xiao K again to find out what's going on there. Zhu Chen is our biggest threat right now. If he cooperates with the copyist, the three of us might not be able to defeat the two of them. If things get critical, we'll have to abandon this shelter."
Just then, the lights in the house suddenly started flickering, and the sound of running water came from all directions—the kitchen, the bathroom, the smart toilet. A dozen seconds later, the flickering stopped, and the water stopped running. Before the three of us could even process what was happening, I pointed to the kitchen and asked, "Was the water just... just now?"
Qianliyan nodded blankly: "It seems like the power came back on. I heard the alarm sound of the fire suppression system activating."
I nodded: "I heard that too, what's going on?"
Qianliyan shook his head. I went to the bathroom and tried turning the tap on and off, but the water stopped flowing again. Ji Lin'an remained silent. I opened my phone and refreshed social media. Aside from the messages I'd seen before from Xiao K and a question mark from a Weibo user with a blank profile picture and the username "Wufeng," there were no new messages. I opened Wufeng's private message and sent him: "Hi, can I contact you after receiving this message? My phone number." The message failed to send due to no network connection. I clicked resend, and the message was automatically sent when the network connection returned.
The three of us fell silent. Perhaps the sudden change affected our mood. There was surprise and happiness, but also an inexplicable sadness and loss. We went about our own business aimlessly. I kept scrolling through social media. Ji Lin'an wanted to go into Qianliyan's creative space to make something, and Qianliyan took Ji Lin'an into the space.
I got tired of scrolling on my phone and got up to water the vegetables in the garden. Just then, I suddenly heard the sound of water. I rushed into the house and found that all the faucets and spouts were running. The TV on the second floor was turned on and automatically played the news broadcasting the start of the apocalypse, reporting on the riots. The smart speaker was playing piano music. I ran upstairs and found that all the smart curtains were open and every light in the house was on. I went into the master bedroom and heard the air purifier making a loud humming sound, and the kettle on the tea table making a bubbling sound as it boiled water.
I was startled by this sudden and bizarre change and sent a message to Ji Lin'an at a loss. Less than a minute later, the two of them came out of the space. I rushed to Ji Lin'an and leaned into his arms. The two of them were also stunned by the scene in front of them.
With a look of horror, Qianliyan asked, "What happened?"
I shook my head in fear. Ji Lin'an reached out and took my hand to look around, turning off the faucets one by one, shutting off the stereo, and sitting in the living room. He picked up the remote and turned on the live TV, but there was no signal on any of the channels. When he got to G City TV, the screen appeared. On the screen was a man in his thirties who said, "...There are already more than twenty survivors in the shelter. We hope that survivors from all over the world can come to G City and work with us to create a new home."
After he finished speaking, the screen played again: "Hello everyone, I am survivor Jiang Haiming. I am currently at the survivor shelter in G City, located in the Sunshine Resort in G City. Our shelter already has more than twenty survivors..."
The following content was the same as what I had heard before, playing on a loop. Just then, my phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number. I was a little confused, but then I remembered leaving a message for Wufeng on Huibo. Maybe it was him calling. I answered the phone, and Ji Lin'an and Qianliyan leaned over. I cautiously said, "Hello."
There was an unusual silence on the other end of the phone. I spoke again, "Hello, can you hear me?"
The other person hummed in response but didn't say anything more. I continued, "Are you one of the lucky ones?"
The other person kept saying "uh-huh," so I asked, "Did you see what was on TV?"
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