At this moment, the situation in the gymnasium was far from optimistic.
Although humans could fight the cockroaches, the sheer number of them was overwhelming. Like ants killing an elephant, so many cockroaches attacking a single person meant that even a single bite could leave no part of the person unscathed.
This onslaught by the cockroaches left many ordinary people unable to react in time, already covered in wounds, and some even died from excessive blood loss.
When the security team arrived carrying flaming torches, those still conscious saw waves of cockroaches burning and falling. Many were moved to tears. People who had lived in peaceful times had no experience surviving such disasters.
Cheng Jiajia was now hiding in a recessed corner of the gymnasium near an entryway.
Earlier, when she had evacuated from Qingshui Villa, she had stayed on the grass. Back then, seeing the people on the stands, she had thought they were crazy. The stands were cement and hard as stone, it had to be more comfortable on the grass.
Later, when the cockroaches attacked and many people rushed toward the exits, Cheng Jiajia felt even smarter. If she had stayed on the stands, she wouldn’t have had time to escape the gym.
But reality soon slapped her hard.
Those closer to the exit than her were instantly covered in cockroaches the moment they stepped out. She, not far behind, witnessed the entire horrifying scene.
It was amid the screams of those people that Cheng Jiajia hid in her current spot.
Her corner was slightly recessed, and there weren’t many people around. Once she squeezed in, she quietly pulled a small bottle of insecticide from her bag and sprayed it on herself.
At that moment, she didn’t care that insecticide was toxic, she didn’t know if cockroaches this large would even be afraid of it. She treated the spray as if it were mosquito repellent.
Apparently, her gamble had paid off.
After spraying herself, the cockroaches refused to come near her.
Such a strange sight didn’t go unnoticed. Immediately, people reached for the bottle in her hands.
Cheng Jiajia, knowing the situation, promptly threw the insecticide bottle as far away as she could. Watching many people chase after the nearly empty 100-milliliter bottle she had used, she felt a sudden surge of malice in her heart.
“Better if they all die!”
However, less than ten minutes after she threw the bottle, the security team with flaming torches arrived.
Cheng Jiajia watched, eyes wide, as the guards sprayed fire toward the cockroaches in the air, indirectly saving those who had tried to snatch her insecticide. She found the situation extremely annoying.
But no matter how annoyed she felt, with officials present, all she could do was stay low and keep quiet.
It was only at this moment that Cheng Jiajia finally had the presence of mind to look for her parents.
Her parents didn’t have isolation suits and had come separately, but they had also evacuated to the same gym. The gym was sheltering people from three different residential communities, all under the same neighborhood committee. With so many people around, she had only managed to contact her parents once by phone after arriving.
Now, after such a chaotic disaster, she had no idea where her parents were. That thought flashed through Cheng Jiajia’s mind, and she immediately started thinking schemingly.
Most of the people who had evacuated here were carrying food and water. Now everyone was busy fighting off the cockroaches, and luggage was scattered everywhere. Cheng Jiajia crouched down and slowly began moving along the scattered supplies on the floor.
With just a few movements, she managed to gather quite a lot of resources.
In such chaos, almost no one noticed her actions.
However, He Rongxuan, not far from her, was originally focused on saving a patient whose major artery had been cut by a cockroach. But when his eyes swept over the scene, he saw something unbelievable.
A woman whose face was unclear, covered in blood, was moving along the floor. Wherever she passed, the bottled water and food bags lying on the ground disappeared.
He Rongxuan knew he wasn’t imagining things, the woman really made the items vanish.
“Doctor He, can this patient be saved?”
A security team member responsible for protecting He Rongxuan saw him suddenly pause and assumed the patient was beyond help.
In the current situation, they could only treat patients strictly according to emergency priorities. If a patient couldn’t be saved, they had to quickly move on to another patient. Wasting time on someone who couldn’t be treated was not an option.
Resources were limited, time was limited, and there were only so many doctors. This brutal triage system was the only way to manage.
Hearing the voice brought He Rongxuan back to focus. After bandaging the patient’s wound, he turned back, but the woman was gone.
Still, he was certain about what he had seen.
At this time, Lin Su was preparing to get up and check the situation outside.
Suddenly, her vision flickered, and a strange message appeared:
【The female lead fell from grace way too fast…】
A single, abrupt comment with no context left Lin Su puzzled. She wondered what exactly Cheng Jiajia had done.
However, Lin Su ultimately didn’t go to scout outside. The broadcast had reminded everyone to stay put. The security team would handle medical treatment, transportation, and clearing the cockroaches.
And so, they stayed in the boutique shop for the entire day. During this time, He Rongxuan brought some food and water over for them, his expression tinged with a hint of inner conflict.
Lin Su didn’t pay it much mind. It wasn’t until all the injured had been taken to the hospital that they reopened the rolling shutter and returned to the interior of the gym.
By this time, the central area of the gym was piled with corpses.
As soon as Lin Su and the others entered through the corridor, they saw the scene before them.
Most of the bodies had only bones left in the limbs and faces; a few were still smeared with blood, making them extremely gruesome.
“Ah…”
Many people whispered in shock, unwilling to approach the center of the court.
Lin Su quietly counted how many people were still able to stand, only about two hundred. The rest were either dead or injured and sent to the hospital. The situation here alone was already so tragic; who knew what the rest of An City looked like.
“The cockroaches outside are being cleared. Please continue to stay here until the cockroaches are completely eliminated.”
The staff responsible for settling them gave a few simple instructions and then let everyone find a place to sit and rest.
“There are dead bodies here, how are we supposed to stay here!”
A middle-aged man’s voice rang out in the crowd. With over two hundred people present, no one immediately knew who had spoken. But as soon as he said it, it acted like a signal, and the others started making noise as well.
“Exactly! We pay all these taxes, and now so many people have died. Why shouldn’t we, the living, get properly settled!”
“It’s so hot, and these corpses are going to start stinking. What if we get sick, whose responsibility would that be?”
Similar complaints rose one after another. It sounded like many people were speaking, but in reality, most of the voices were the same, meaning only a few people were actually causing the trouble.
Lin Su noticed that many of the other people’s expressions were filled with grief and fear. Several were still sobbing and shaking. Obviously, these people could not participate in such chaos.
The lead staff member seemed to expect this kind of trouble and immediately hardened his tone: “If you don’t want to stay here, you can leave. The city is full of giant cockroaches right now; who knows how many have already died.”
This quickly silenced the dissenting voices.
Lin Su exchanged a glance with Wen Shiyun and prepared to head back to the boutique shop to stay put. Obviously, with the situation outside unknown, staying here was still the safest option.
However, as soon as they returned to the boutique shop and hadn’t even settled down, they heard the sound of someone prying at the door.
The rolling shutter had been pulled down again when they entered. Now someone was trying to force it open. Without hesitation, Wen Shiyun pulled it up.
Outside were five middle-aged men, looking dirty and disheveled. They clearly didn’t expect the shutter to suddenly lift and stepped back in fright.
Then they started cursing loudly. However, when they saw that there were still quite a few people behind the rolling shutter, they muttered angrily and left.
“Should I go keep an eye on them?” Lai Huaming asked eagerly.
During this time, following the actions of the Lin and Wen families was the smartest decision Lai Huaming had ever made in his life.
Earlier, when everyone had gathered, he noticed that all the neighbors in the villa area were gone, he didn’t know if they were alive or dead. If he hadn’t moved with the Lin and Wen families, his own family might have been lost too, especially his one-year-old daughter.
“No need. They won’t dare do anything here.”
There were now many official personnel and security guards around. Although the gym hadn’t been fully cleared inside, Lin Su felt it would soon become a temporary shelter again.
Sure enough, the five middle-aged men, just as Lin Su expected, didn’t dare cause trouble. After being scared off by Wen Shiyun, they found an empty convenience store, squeezed inside, and seemed very satisfied. They pulled down the shutter, then sprawled on the floor, lying on their backs in every direction.
What they didn’t notice was that there was a small corner compartment in the convenience store. Cheng Jiajia was inside that compartment, finishing organizing supplies. When she tried to come out, she saw several burly men lying haphazardly outside.
With the exit blocked and no windows in the store, she could only sit in place and wait for those men to leave before moving.
However, the small compartment was pitch black, and Cheng Jiajia had been busy collecting the unexpectedly discovered supplies. She didn’t notice the few small, dark things quietly crawling toward her from the corner.
By mid-afternoon, the gym’s broadcast system went off again. This time, the announcement was recruiting cleaners.
Lin Su, hearing the wages for the cleaning jobs, thought it was actually quite decent. However, no one present felt tempted. They had already recovered some of the supplies they had left behind while fleeing, plus what He Rongxuan had brought from the officials before leaving. For now, they weren’t lacking food or water.
But while they didn’t lack supplies, the others did. The cleaning positions were quickly filled, and work began.
Cleaning, disinfecting, even scraping off a layer of soil from the grass, over the next period, many people inside the gym would be doing exactly this. In addition, more people were gradually being brought in from the city.
Those who were slightly injured or uninjured were all sent here.
The gym had become a temporary shelter.
The earlier survivors, as well as those who came later, if they were smart, had, like Lin Su and the others, secured small compartments for themselves. Those who were slower were placed in the stands.
As for the grassy area that had been used to pile corpses, even after several layers of soil were scraped away, no one dared stay there. That had been the place with the most deaths during the cockroach attack. A lot of fresh blood had seeped into the soil.
Although officials had scraped away multiple layers and sprayed plenty of disinfectant powder, everyone still preferred to huddle together rather than approach the grass.
Because of this, many didn’t notice that there were many small, dark things rolling in the soil. These little creatures had extremely sensitive noses and could easily detect even traces of coagulated blood among the soil and disinfectant powder, then begin devouring it to grow stronger.
Lin Su and the others stayed in the boutique shop. Although they had heard that the cockroaches outside had mostly been eliminated, the wildfires were not completely extinguished. The air outside was reportedly still full of ash. They would have to wait until the fires were fully out and the air slightly improved before returning home.
That night, everyone began eating dinner at their own spots. Each person had a hard, plain bun and a bottle of water.
The food supplied by the officials over these days was naturally limited.
But everyone treasured this free food. As they slowly ate, a sharp scream from a woman rang out from a nearby shop.