After repelling another wave of cockroach attacks, Lin Su was startled by the screams coming from the nearest exit.
From her position, she couldn’t see the exit, but the continuous, piercing screams made it clear that the situation outside was bad.
Wen Shiyun spoke at this moment: “Could there be cockroaches outside as well?”
It made perfect sense. Lin Su also suspected there were cockroaches outside the stadium; otherwise, the screams wouldn’t be so numerous. People, thinking they were escaping danger, might have jumped from one swarm of cockroaches straight into another, how utterly hopeless that must have been!
The surrounding neighbors, hearing the screams as well, instinctively drew closer together, tucking in their necks.
Lin Su ignored them and instead scanned her surroundings carefully.
Above the entire stadium, swarms of cockroaches were darting back and forth. These monstrous creatures lunged at anyone in sight with no pattern at all. Meanwhile, on the central soccer field, many people had already fallen. Their bodies were covered in blood, and from a distance, it was impossible to tell whether they were alive or dead.
The security team and stadium staff were desperately trying to keep the cockroaches from biting anyone.
Around the track encircling the field, some people had been resting there earlier. Being closer to the stadium exits, fewer had fallen, but they were blocked in the passage leading out. Some had already reached the exits, only to encounter cockroaches there.
The remaining people were in the stands. Most of them were in relatively better shape. Many, realizing they couldn’t escape, had steeled themselves to fight the cockroaches.
So the number of casualties in the stands was relatively lower.
Still, even with everyone fighting hard, the cockroach numbers were overwhelming. Lin Su had no idea where they kept coming from. Her instincts told her it would be smarter to find a safer place to wait it out.
She quickly considered the stadium’s layout and came up with a plan.
“Shiyun, Rongxuan, cover me,” she said.
Lin Su crouched and began putting on her isolation suit. Once fully suited, she climbed up to the top of the wall in the stands. The wall was about twenty centimeters thick, solid enough to walk on carefully.
From their current position, if she followed the wall for roughly 100 meters, she could reach the internal corridor of the stands. There, she would find small vendor stalls and restrooms.
Her goal was a small enclosed area where cockroach activity would be minimal.
It took Lin Su about ten minutes to traverse that 100-meter stretch. Cockroaches attacked along the way, but the special material of her isolation suit provided enough protection to repel them, though she couldn’t allow cockroaches to stay perched on the suit for long; prolonged biting could still damage it.
Once she leaned against the wall and got a clear view of the internal corridor, Lin Su finally exhaled in relief.
Everyone else was busy rushing toward the first-floor corridors, so this stand-level passage was mostly empty. Even the number of cockroaches here had decreased accordingly.
After confirming their escape route, she quickly climbed back and quietly explained her plan to Wen Shiyun and the He siblings. Then everyone started putting it into action. Nearby, Lai Huaming heard the plan but didn’t make a sound, he just asked Lin Su with his eyes. Lin Su, knowing he was a low-maintenance kind of person, nodded. An extra pair of hands could always help later.
So the families began covering for each other, helping one another put on isolation suits.
Lin Su led the group, with He Rongxuan and Lai Huaming at the rear. In the middle were the elderly and children, protected by Wen Shiyun and He Qingfei.
With so many people moving like this, naturally, the surrounding neighbors saw them.
But before anyone could react, they saw the group climbing up to the top of the high wall.
“What are they doing?”
No one answered. Lin Su, who reached the ground first, helped grandfather He and grandmother He down. Then came her own parents, followed by Wen Shiyun carrying Lai Huaming’s daughter. After that, the rest came down one by one.
Once everyone was together, they drove off the approaching cockroaches while heading straight for a boutique with a closed rolling shutter.
In a few quick moves, they pried the door open, entered, and pulled down the shutter. Then they cleaned up the remaining cockroaches and blocked the ventilation and drainage pipes with store items. Once everything was secured, they pulled off their isolation suit hoods and let out long, relieved breaths.
“Climbing over like this, we left a lot of things on the stands. What do we do now?”
Because they had to climb the wall, they had abandoned unnecessary items. Now everyone carried only two bottles of water and some food.
“The government will take care of us. Don’t panic yet,” said grandfather He. As a veteran and former hospital director, he began calming everyone down.
Knowing they were safe from cockroach attacks in this enclosed space, everyone felt less anxious.
Lin Su had already started eating some compressed biscuits, swallowing them with water with difficulty, occasionally reminding others to replenish their energy first.
“I guess things outside aren’t looking good either,” Wen Shiyun said, pulling out a compressed biscuit and sitting beside Lin Su with a sigh.
“I heard those screams too. I wonder what the situation outside is like?” He Qingfei, being a doctor, was particularly sensitive to human screams. While fleeing earlier, she had been too busy to notice, but now that they had settled, her goosebumps hadn’t faded.
He Rongxuan, as the older brother, was preparing eight-treasure porridge for his grandparents. Their digestion wasn’t good, so he hadn’t dared give them compressed biscuits. The porridge had been brought by Lin Su’s aunt.
Hearing his sister, He Rongxuan sighed as well.
Lai Huaming, who had come along opportunistically, was now thankful for his quick thinking. He had been scrolling his phone and noticed that every post, short video, and comment across social media platforms was about the cockroach attacks.
The fact that these people still had time to send messages indicated that their situation was manageable. However, many others likely lost their lives in this sudden cockroach assault.
Unlike Lai Huaming’s vague reflections, Lin Su was already trying to figure out the cause behind the emergence of the cockroach horde.
Especially after noticing that these massive cockroach swarms appeared almost exclusively in An City and its surrounding suburban areas.
This made it clearer that the cockroach armies were unique to An City nationwide.
Connecting this with what made An City different from other parts of the country, only one explanation remained.
“It’s the wildfires.”
When Lin Su said this, many people were puzzled. Wen Shiyun, however, immediately understood: “You mean the appearance of these cockroaches is caused by the wildfire?”
Lin Su nodded. She recalled the traits of the cockroaches and let her imagination run: “Actually, these cockroaches have always existed. It’s just that the wildfire stimulated them to appear earlier than usual.”
This was Lin Su’s own deduction. Online, there was still no official announcement about the cockroach army. But many people in other cities were already posting that insecticides were sold out everywhere.
This only strengthened Lin Su’s conviction: the cockroach army in An City was not an isolated case. Other regions hadn’t experienced it simply because there were no wildfires to provoke them.
She went further and reasoned that these cockroaches were likely afraid of fire.
That’s actually good news!
Lin Su stomped hard, crushing the struggling cockroaches on the floor completely.
Elsewhere, on Wu’an Mountain, around three in the morning, another panic-inducing event occurred.
The security team assigned to dig firebreaks was suddenly attacked by things emerging from the grass and dead branches.
However, this security team consisted of either firefighters or former soldiers, and they were wearing isolation and fire-resistant suits. These small, sporadic attacks had no effect on them.
Because of this, they didn’t realize during the night that the small flying creatures attacking them were actually cockroaches, each roughly the size of a child’s palm.
When these cockroaches swarmed over An City in large numbers, it finally drew official attention.
But even the fastest response could not stop the cockroach horde from attacking, which is why An City suffered such heavy casualties.
Fortunately, the authorities eventually discovered the cockroach army’s weakness and began deploying personnel to eliminate them.
After resting in the boutique for more than ten minutes, Lin Su and the others received an official alert on their phones. At the same time, the long-silent broadcast in the gymnasium crackled back to life.
In less than half an hour, the screams outside the gym finally ceased. The air carried a pungent stench of burnt protein. Even though the ventilation openings in their small compartment had been blocked, Lin Su and the others could still smell it.
Wen Shiyun leaned his head close to the rolling shutter, listening carefully to the sounds outside. All he heard were rhythmic footsteps and the opening and closing of vehicle doors. The previous flapping of cockroach wings had completely stopped.
He turned to Lin Su and nodded. Then he slightly lifted the rolling shutter, and indeed, they saw numerous figures in white isolation suits walking toward the gym.
Only now did everyone in the boutique finally relax.
From the open shutter, Lin Su could see the ground outside was littered with blackened cockroach corpses, clearly the remnants of those burned in the fire.
“No wonder it felt so warm when the door opened,” He Qingfei said, sitting on the floor, observing the scene clearly.
“We’ll leave a little later,” Lin Su replied.
No one dared to venture out yet, they still didn’t know how many cockroaches outside remained.
At that moment, the He siblings received messages simultaneously. After reading them, expressions of inner struggle flickered across their faces. Finally, He Rongxuan said, “I’ll go outside to help with first aid for the injured. Qingfei, you stay here and take care of Grandpa and Grandma.”
He Rongxuan had thought about entrusting his grandparents to the Wen or Lin families, but reconsidered. One cannot simply offload personal responsibility onto friends. The best approach was for his sister to stay and care for their grandparents, with Wen Shiyun and Lin Su’s help, allowing him to go outside to save others with peace of mind.
Lin Su didn’t speak upon hearing this. If He Rongxuan had asked her to take care of his grandparents, she would have agreed, but she would have reconsidered the relationship between the families. Still, in this critical moment, his arrangement was the most practical.
He Qingfei understood as well and nodded. “Go ahead, brother. Grandpa and Grandma are in my care.”
Watching He Rongxuan leave without hesitation, Lin Su felt a surge of respect in her heart.