But the night would stand in the way of people’s vision.
Shen Qi sat dazed on Nuonuo’s back, letting it carry her toward the open square.
Time rewinds to half an hour earlier.
After Nuonuo suggested they leave the rubble, it began clawing away the debris blocking their path.
This scared Shen Qi badly, if it accidentally caused a collapse by clearing carelessly, both she and Nuonuo would be done for.
There was no light at all inside the rubble, Nuonuo’s glowing eyes stood out like searchlights.
Shen Qi couldn’t stop it. Nuonuo worked nonstop, and while making sure nothing collapsed, it dug out a passage and even found a platform they could stand on.
Shen Qi was stunned.
Only then did it truly sink in, Nuonuo was no longer the ordinary dog it used to be. It was now enormous, with claws and teeth sharp enough to cut through concrete slabs like tofu, and it had detection abilities far beyond any rescue team’s equipment.
All this made her think of even more.
Her own dog… seemed to have mutated quite a bit.
Then what about Little Tiger? Would the little cat mutate too? Would it also gain abilities to protect itself?
What about other animals?
……What about humans?
Nuonuo walked onto the platform and looked at Shen Qi gently.
【Don’t be afraid, poop-scooper, I’ll get you out.】
Shen Qi no longer hesitated and walked straight over.
She trusted Nuonuo. In a situation like this, the worst that could happen was death, and if Nuonuo wasn’t afraid, why should she be?
And so, Nuonuo carried Shen Qi and leapt down from about the sixth floor, landing smoothly.
Shen Qi: “……”
Well, riding the free Nuonuo-brand jump-off-the-building elevator was actually pretty fun. Other than being a bit rough on its owner, no other complaints.
The world really had turned surreal, a dog carrying its owner off a building in the middle of the night and surviving unscathed, was this the twisting of human nature or the collapse of morality?
Outside, everything was rubble. Most survivors looked filthy, dressed lightly, clearly having just run out of their buildings. Even more people, trapped on higher floors, hadn’t managed to escape in time. They might be dead, or they might still be waiting in the rubble for rescue.
Shen Qi knew that if not for Nuonuo, she’d be one of those people buried helplessly in the rubble right now.
Shen Qi gripped Nuonuo’s back fur tightly, letting it carry her through the wreckage toward the square.
As Nuonuo walked, Shen Qi was forced to endure the stares of other survivors.
She was simply too conspicuous.
Not to mention how bright Nuonuo’s light-bulb eyes were in the dark, its appearance alone, resembling a gray wolf, with its massive, powerful build, was enough to strike fear into anyone who looked twice.
Such an enormous beast, yet obediently carrying a young woman on its back, it was genuinely unbelievable.
Yang Fan was one such onlooker. He worked at the same company as Shen Qi.
Shen Qi was the prettiest of the company’s new employees, and word was her family background was decent too, so quite a few men had their eyes on her, Yang Fan included.
Right now his eyes were nearly popping out of his skull.
Not only because he saw Shen Qi riding on a dog, but because that dog’s size was abnormal, downright terrifying.
Since he lived close to Shen Qi, Yang Fan often engineered “chance encounters,” hoping to get an early advantage.
Just yesterday afternoon, he’d “run into” Shen Qi again while she was walking her dog, and back then, that dog’s size wasn’t even half what it was now. There was no way it could have carried a person!
And Yang Fan knew for certain that Shen Qi’s household only had one dog and one cat.
So, in less than a night, this dog had grown as if pumped full of hormones?
Yang Fan shivered, his steps toward the square slowing more and more.
He thought of the turtle he kept at home. When the earthquake first started, the shaking hadn’t been too strong, and since he lived on the first floor, he’d easily grabbed the little fish tank and run outside.
But he didn’t expect the turtle to grow bigger, its eyes turning a bloodshot red, looking as if it had contracted some disease.
Yang Fan had been startled when he first saw it, but since he’d kept it for several years, he couldn’t bear to abandon it, thinking he’d find a vet once the earthquake stopped.
Then the turtle, catching him off guard, smashed straight through the tank, leapt up, and bit off one of his fingers.
The pain shot straight to his heart, and as Yang Fan writhed in agony, watching the turtle’s crimson eyes grow brighter as it slowly chewed, the hair on his body stood on end, and he turned and ran in terror.
What in the world!
Yang Fan loved watching sci-fi movies about biohazards and animal mutations, and he naturally jumped to the conclusion that the turtle must have mutated from some kind of stimulus.
Shen Qi’s dog, just like the turtle, had also grown huge, and its eyes glowed too, not red, but who was to say every animal’s mutation looked the same!
If a little mutated turtle could bite off a whole finger in one go, then a dog that size, supposedly with some North American gray wolf bloodline in it, could probably swallow a small child whole!
Just thinking about this made Yang Fan’s finger hurt even more.
He immediately turned around and ran toward a nearby supermarket instead.
He’d heard the building’s owner came from an earthquake zone, and that people said he was foolishly rich, having used only top-grade earthquake-resistant materials in construction. As long as it hadn’t sunk into the ground, it would be a better temporary shelter than the square.
Even if the supermarket really did sink underground, Yang Fan still wouldn’t go to the square.
He held his throbbing finger and shivered, he absolutely, absolutely would not go anywhere near that dog!
……
Before Shen Qi even reached the square, she could already hear the commotion.
An older woman was shrieking at the top of her lungs, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, some clearly her acquaintances trying to comfort her, others just there to watch and gather news.
At a time like this, being cut off from information was the scariest thing. Although the crowd there didn’t look like a reliable source, Shen Qi still chose a spot not too near, not too far, and sat down cross-legged to listen and figure out what was going on.
It was now past four in the morning, more than an hour since the main shock had passed. For early autumn in h City, this was normally the coolest, most pleasant time of day.
“Oh, what a sin, what a sin! That Dahuang, I fed him well for four or five years, never once made him work except to guard the house against thieves, I didn’t even have the heart to. When the earthquake hit, I wanted to bring him with me, but who would’ve thought he’d turn around and bite me! My leg’s all torn up now!
“They say a beast is a beast, you just can’t tame them properly. If my son weren’t so filial, carrying me all this way on his back, who knows where my old bones would be right now!”
The old woman went on and on, dramatically voicing her grievance against “Dahuang” while showing off her filial son.
A gossiping middle-aged woman chimed right in: “Oh my, Dahuang never acted like this before, he always seemed so well-behaved to me?”
An old man, apparently the old woman’s rival, snorted loudly: “Tch! Listen to her! Fed him well, my foot! Dahuang’s been beaten for four or five years, that’s how he survived! Well-behaved, sure! Everyone in the village loved that dog, except for this vicious woman Liang Chunhua, she never took proper care of him, always finding fault with him just to vent her temper. Getting bitten, serves her right! This is nothing compared to what Dahuang’s endured! If you ask me, this was still too light! Karma, that’s what it is!”
Listening with her ears perked up, Shen Qi quickly figured out who these people were.
They were villagers from a village-within-the-city, and, it turned out, from Liang Family Village, the one closest to Shen Qi’s residential complex.
The old woman, Liang Chunhua, wasn’t about to back down and raised her voice even higher: “Fourth Uncle, what kind of talk is that! Can a beast be compared to a person? Feeding him at all was already a huge favor on my part! As for beating him… he’s my dog, a few smacks won’t kill him, so what of it!”
A little girl, hiding behind her mother, poked her head out and said, “When the earthquake happened, Grandma Chunhua kicked Dahuang, and his eyes went red from the pain, it was so pitiful!”
Liang Chunhua snapped, “Shut up! What does a little brat like you know!”
The little girl shrank back and stayed quiet.
Her mother, shielding her, frowned and snapped back, “Auntie, why are you picking on a child? Qingqing doesn’t lie, heaven sees everything you do!”
Liang Chunhua shot back, “You shut up too, you widow who brings bad luck on husbands and sons, it’s not your turn to speak here!”
The woman’s face went livid, but she didn’t argue further. She knew there was no reasoning with an unreasonable person, better to stay far away than get dragged into the mess.
If Liang Chunhua hadn’t insulted her Qingqing, she wouldn’t have bothered engaging with her at all!
The woman stayed silent, but the crowd of onlookers had plenty to say. By now, most people had figured out what had actually happened, there were still more reasonable people in the world than not. So the rest of the villagers from Liang Family Village, along with survivors who’d run out from the surrounding neighborhoods, all began chiming in.
Things like “Kids tell the truth, don’t be upset, ma’am” and “If you keep a dog, you have to take responsibility for it, you reap what you sow”, most of it siding with the woman against Liang Chunhua.
Shen Qi absentmindedly petted Nuonuo’s head, thoroughly enjoying the show.
She kept a cat and a dog herself and couldn’t stand seeing cats or dogs mistreated, so in this whole affair, she looked down on Liang Chunhua’s behavior.
But Shen Qi had no intention of getting involved, it was other people’s business, after all, and meddling could easily bring trouble on herself. Watching the show was enough.
Yet, as the saying goes, sit outside and trouble falls from the sky [1]sit outside and trouble falls from the sky (rén zài wài miàn zuò, guō cóng tiān shàng lái, 人在外面坐，鍋從天上來) Idiom, literally “a person sits outside, and a pot falls … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3166610_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3166610_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.
Liang Chunhua, thoroughly worked up by everyone’s scolding, her beady eyes full of resentment, swept her gaze around, and of course it landed on Shen Qi, leaning against Nuonuo, watching the show.
As if she’d found a new target, Liang Chunhua’s eyes went wide and she pointed straight at Nuonuo and Shen Qi, shouting: “You two can just shut up too! A dog that big, oh my, if it bites someone it’ll probably kill them! If you don’t beat it and scare it enough, it’ll cause trouble sooner or later! I’m only doing this for everyone’s safety! This little girl clearly doesn’t know any better, running around causing trouble, who brings a dog like that into a crowd of people!”
Since raising a large dog, Shen Qi had heard remarks like this more times than she could count, and she was more than a little exasperated, sitting this far away and still getting dragged into it, how absurd.
Not wanting to waste her breath, she simply closed her eyes and pretended not to hear.
Liang Chunhua wouldn’t let it go: “Young girls these days, no respect for their elders at all! Ah, a worthless girl really is worthless [2]worthless girl (péi qián huò, 賠錢貨) Metaphor, literally “money-losing goods”, an old patriarchal slur for daughters, seen as a financial loss to the family since they’d … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3166610_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3166610_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, even the city ones are no better!”
Shen Qi’s eyes snapped open, a cold glint flashing in them.
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