"That familiar ceiling!" Jiang Ling's first glimpse of her room's ceiling upon waking was a lingering mold stain from a previous leak. She still remembered her father climbing up to the roof to patch it. Jiang Wenwen lay beside her, already asleep. She must have been the one blowing into her ear.
Jiang Wenwen woke up when she noticed the person next to her starting to stir. She rubbed her eyes and then shouted, "I'm awake! I'm awake! Hehe~" She happily grabbed the terminal on the bedside table and pressed the button. After a short busy tone, Huang Yun's voice came from inside: "What's wrong? I'm still at work!"
"Wake up! She's awake!" Jiang Wenwen kept shouting at the terminal screen.
"Stop, stop, stop! I get it! I'll come in the evening! Does that Wen Jia know about it?"
"I haven't told him yet. Shouldn't I inform my wife first?"
Jiang Ling sensed something was amiss and quickly asked the classic line: "Where am I? What time is it? And what else happened?"
"Ahem~ Don't worry about these for now. If you feel any discomfort, tell me quickly and I'll bring you medicine in the evening!" Huang Yun's happy voice and the noise of children came from the other end of the terminal.
"See you tonight!" Jiang Wenwen hung up the call, waited for a few seconds, and dialed another number.
"Your little friend is awake!" She was not very excited this time, but still shouted inside in a light and relaxed tone.
"Okay, I understand!" Some chaotic voices were heard first, followed by Li Wenjia's voice.
Jiang Ling supported herself on the bed, trying to change her sitting position. Then the quilt slipped off her body, and she saw that she was wearing pajamas.
Jiang Wenwen, who had hung up the phone, saw her sitting up and asked, "How are you? Are you hungry? Are you thirsty?"
Jiang Ling carefully felt her body, then moved her joints under the quilt. She turned her head to look at Jiang Wenwen beside the bed and replied, "Nothing's wrong, and I'm neither thirsty nor hungry!"
"It has to be you. You've been sleeping for a month and there's no problem at all!" She exclaimed in admiration, her big eyes always examining Jiang Ling.
"I've been sleeping for a month?"
Jiang Wenwen opened the curtains a little to let the light from outside illuminate the room. "Yes, I took care of you for a month. You should thank me!"
The view outside was bleak, with ruins everywhere and gray-black snow falling from the sky. Jiang Ling discovered that the gaps in the room's windows were sealed with a glue-like material, and a layer of brown film was pasted on the glass.
"How about it?"
"Thank you~" she whispered to thank her cheap dad.
"It's not all my credit, Wen Jia also helped a lot!" Jiang Wenwen originally wanted to brag about his own contribution, but now he feels a little embarrassed, so he starts to be humble.
"By the way, where am I?"
"Have you forgotten? This is your own room! This is our home!"
"ah?"
"Oh! I see. We were also surprised at that time. The city was hit by five or six bombs, and the surrounding houses all collapsed, but our house was completely fine!" She showed an exaggerated expression.
“No radiation?”
"You were the one who had the most radiation in the house at that time."
"Ah, what about you guys?"
"Wenjia speculated that our metabolic rate would increase significantly after we transform into beasts, but it's only 20 percent higher than normal right now. Even ordinary people have to increase it by 30 to 40 percent these days."
"By the way, do you want to take a test? Let me look for it." Jiang Wenwen searched in the drawer of the bedside table, and then took out a test kit for measuring blood radiation levels.
"Hmm!" Jiang Ling tried to use the needles in the box to take a blood sample, but gave up after trying a few times. The needles couldn't break through her skin, and the ones she had broken off.
Jiang Wenwen shrugged: "You've been like this for a month. Wen Jia almost wanted to shoot you."
"Did he do anything?"
"He found a job with a search team not far from here. He brings some stuff over every now and then..."
According to Jiang Wenwen, they spent two weeks reinforcing the building. They also renovated it, using the top two floors as their home and the lower four floors as a temporary base for the search team. Sometimes other search teams would come, and they could restock the space with low-radiation purified water and clean bandages.
The two of them just watched the black snow falling outside the window. After a while, Jiang Wenwen seemed to suddenly remember something: "By the way, what is this ring? I found it in your drawer!" She pulled out a black round ring from the desk in the room. Compared to her body size, it looked more like a necklace than a bracelet.
After a moment's recollection, Jiang Ling finally remembered what it was. "That! That's a storage device. Let me teach you how to use it!" She took the ring from Jiang Wenwen and slipped it on her right wrist. Glancing around, she chose the water cup on the cabinet as her target and demonstrated how to use it to Jiang Wenwen.
"Here, this is for you," she said casually, tossing the ring to Jiang Wenwen. This storage device didn't have any identity verification, so it seemed anyone could use it. If what the "observer" in the dream said was true, then this thing should be no different from a storage box.
Jiang Wenwen had never received a gift from her "son" before, so she treated the ring as a treasure. She wiped it with her clothes, then ran out of the room with a "dong dong dong" sound, not knowing where to put it.
Time passed slowly, and around dusk, heavy footsteps were heard on the stairs: "Open the door! I'm Li Wenjia!"
"Coming, coming!" Jiang Ling slipped on slippers and opened the security door. The outside of her home had been drastically transformed. Jiang Wenwen was right: they had transformed the house into a ground-level fortress. They'd laid a three-proof plastic sheeting in the hallway, like something out of a Contagion movie, sealing it off from the outside world. Three figures stood on the stairs, one of them Li Wenjia.
"Oh~ You look good!" He was still chattering.
"What are you standing there for? Come in and talk!" Jiang Wenwen called out to everyone.
"Let me introduce them. These two are my teammates. They came here by chance. This is Uncle Ma! This is Qinghai!" The two men nodded to Jiang Ling.
Several people were led into the house by Jiang Wenwen, and then she arranged them to sit on the sofa.
"It's okay, they both know a lot about your family situation, just chat casually. They are members of the Magic City branch of the Quick Reaction Force!" Li Wenjia introduced.
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