Su Wan’s gun remained still.
For a moment, silence filled the cave, then it became chaotic.
The cries of the child, the woman’s strained breaths, and the dull thuds as people backed away and their backs collided with the concrete walls.
“Come out, one by one, hands up,” Su Wan said.
The first to come up was the man clutching the fruit knife.
His legs were so weak that he almost fell while crawling.
Then came the woman, the old man, and the two children.
Finally, there was one left in the access hole.
A smell wafted up – sweet and fishy, mixed with sweat and decay, like old internal organs that had been left out for too long.
“He came up too,” Lu Chen said.
“He has a fever…
It’s been two days,” the man’s voice trembled.
“In the daytime, he was fine.
He even got some relief after drinking the water you gave him -”
“Come up.”
After a long silence, one hand grabbed the edge of the access hole and a person was dragged onto the ground.
His eyes were half-open, and his pupils were like covered with a layer of sludge; with each breath, a “ho, ho” sound escaped from his throat.
Shen Wanqing crouched down, lifted the eyelids, and felt the carotid artery.
She moved quickly and calmly.
Three seconds later, she stood up and stepped back a step.
“It’s changing.” She said.
Lu Chen looked at the man – the one who was bitten was his younger brother.
The man’s hands were also shaking, and the fruit knife dropped to the ground with a “ding” sound.
“Will you do it?” Lu Chen crouched down and looked at him levelly.
“Or shall I do it?”
The man opened his mouth, but his throat churned for a long time, only to produce a sound that didn’t sound like human speech.
He reached out to grab the knife, but halfway there, he withdrew.
“I’ll do it.”
An old man with white hair emerged from the crowd.
Someone behind him called him “Old Feng”.
He bent down, picked up the knife, and turned back and said, “Turn your heads around.
The child close your eyes.”
The man on the ground jerked suddenly, and the sound in his throat changed pitch.
Lu Chen didn’t wait any longer.
He stepped forward, one hand clamped onto the man’s back of the neck, and the other hand took the knife, cutting it in one motion.
Blood sprayed across half the wall.
The man slumped down.
Old Feng looked at Lu Chen, not at the knife, but at his face.
The man knelt beside his younger brother, as if his bones had been taken away.
The child shouldn’t have looked, but he did.
A pair of eyes poked out from behind the woman, about seven or eight years old, staring fixedly at Lu Chen.
Not out of fear – but out of hatred.
That kind of hatred was pure, concentrated, and without a single trace of noise.
Old Feng pushed the child back into his arms and whispered to Lu Chen, “You shouldn’t have let the child see.”