Ten minutes later, the shaking of the ground gradually stopped, and the plants stopped their frantic growth, but the dust kicked up by collapsing buildings blotted out the sky.
Fortunately, Yao Tao had her mask on, so the dust didn’t drive her away.
The survivors were still reeling from shock.
By now the plants and trees had grown nearly as tall as buildings, and even herbaceous plants had grown taller than people.
Yao Tao gripped her safety rope and kept a wary eye on the sky.
She knew this was only the beginning of the apocalypse, the truly terrifying things were about to appear.
Across the street, the hardware wholesale district was already out of sight, crushed beneath an enormous tree. The eastern portion had been driven completely into the mud, and only the northern section still stood mostly intact.
Yao Tao pulled insect repellent and mosquito-deterrent spray out of her space, doused herself thoroughly, and sprayed the remaining half-bottle around her.
Finally, she pulled out her fire shovel and gripped it tightly.
Down below, the crowd suddenly stirred in alarm.
“Something bit me…”
“Whose dog is that, not keeping it on a leash, you trying to get someone killed!”
“That doesn’t look like a dog…”
“It’s a bee!”
“…I got stung.”
“Me too… ow, that hurts.”
“That’s not right, bees aren’t that big.”
“A hornet, maybe?”
“Looks like it might be a fly…”
“Nonsense, since when are flies that big?”
“Look over there!” someone pointed at the sky.
A black swarm of flying insects was closing in on them.
Someone swatted one down with a slap, the bug that landed on the ground was the size of an adult’s fist.
Its shape… was unmistakably that of a fly.
“What… what is this thing?”
“Seriously a fly?”
“A fly this big, and it bites too, run!”
Up on the roof, Yao Tao watched a swarm of mutated flies come flying toward her. As they drew close, they caught the scent of the insect repellent and perfume and swerved away.
Yao Tao didn’t let her guard down.
The battle… had only just begun.
Having lived through the apocalypse once already, she felt no fear at all toward mutated flies. They were only the first wave to mutate, and the smallest in size.
In a few days, people would start seeing flying mutated cockroaches, big as compact cars, chasing people down to bite them…
Down below, people scattered in every direction, fleeing the mutated flies, with no attention left to spare for anyone else.
Only then did Yao Tao pull out another coil of safety rope, tie it to a branch of the mutated plant, and climb down along the plant to the top of the collapsed hardware wholesale district.
In her past life, she’d come here once with Zhu Hua’s team.
Except by then, most of what was here had already been picked clean by survivors, only the large, immovable equipment remained. Since she had her space, no matter how heavy something was, she could carry it away.
They’d made quite a haul that day, hauling off several solar generators.
Relying on memory, Yao Tao located a collapsed opening.
In her past life, survivors had gotten into the interior of the hardware wholesale district through this exact gap.
More than half of the first-floor structure had collapsed, hardware parts scattered everywhere across the ground.
She didn’t spend much effort collecting the items strewn across the floor, instead she turned on her flashlight and pushed deeper inside.
Her goal was clear: those solar generators.
Suddenly, a dark shape lunged at her from ahead.
Pure instinct took over, her fire shovel swung out hard.
“Squeak!” A rat the size of a large dog screeched as the blow struck its head, thrashing its legs wildly as it screamed.
Without hesitation, Yao Tao raised the shovel again, a finishing blow.
The mutated rat convulsed twice and went still.
Yao Tao shone her flashlight on it, confirmed the mutated rat was truly dead, and only then continued on.
Along the way, she gathered no small amount of things into her space. She didn’t skip anything, no matter how random, water pipes, fans, motors, water pumps… even wire, nails, and hinges, nothing escaped her.
Her space had no real limits, so she loaded it up without restraint.
Whether these things would actually prove useful… well, in the apocalypse, the first step to living well was having supplies. Bartering was the norm among survivors, and no one ever complained about having too much in hand.
Passing a stall selling labor-protection gear, Yao Tao tossed work uniforms, work caps, latex gloves, safety goggles, and helmets into her space without a second thought.
She was moving fast, and accidentally tossed in a money tree plant that had been sitting in a pot on the stall.
Of all the timing, right at the moment she threw it in, the money tree began to mutate.
Uh oh!
Her heart skipped a beat.
If a plant mutated inside her space, it would ruin her existing stockpile.
But by the time she found the mutated money tree inside her space, all the supplies around it were completely fine, and the mutated tree hadn’t grown especially huge either.
She pulled the money tree out of the space, it had only shot up a little over two meters, its pot cracked from the growth.
What was going on?
Why had the money tree suddenly stopped mutating? Was something limiting the growth of mutated plants?
She knew for a fact a mutated money tree could never stop at just two meters.
During the apocalypse, she’d seen plenty of household money trees that had mutated, after mutation they’d keep shooting up into the air, growing as tall as a five-story building.
In her past life, she’d also accidentally put a mutated plant into her space before. Back then the mutated plant had thrown her whole space into chaos, and Zhu Hua had scolded her over it, ignoring her for six days afterward.
She remembered all of that clearly, there was no way she was wrong.
It seemed that after her rebirth, her space had somehow changed.
Could it be… the “fridge light”?
She suddenly recalled the flicker of light that appeared whenever something was put into the space.
Maybe that light had something to do with it, it was possible.
She beat a mutated rat half to death, then found a bag, stuffed the rat inside, and collected it into her space.
The space lit up faintly.
After a moment, she pulled the mutated rat back out.
Living things died once inside the space, but the mutated rat’s mutated features had disappeared.
Once animals mutated, changes would appear on the surface of their bodies, with a blood-red “tumor” splitting off near the heart. Now, this mutated rat in front of her, though its size hadn’t changed, had lost the blood-red “tumor” at its heart.
Looking at it, it appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary rat, its only distinguishing trait was its larger size.
Something clicked in Yao Tao’s mind.
Could her space actually purify mutation?
She killed a few more mutated insects, sent their bodies into the space, then pulled them back out.
Sure enough, the mutated traits on the insects had vanished.
She was so excited by this discovery she nearly bit her own tongue.
If mutation could be purified, then the whole apocalypse would be one giant buffet for her.
Deep-frying a grasshopper the size of a city bus, grilling a goat the size of a tiger…
Slurp!
Now that would be delicious.
As she cleaned up the mutated rat, she kept moving forward. In the distance, flashlight beams flickered, figures moved back and forth, and mixed in with it all were a woman’s screams and a man’s cursing.
Yao Tao tightened her grip on the fire shovel, staying alert.
In the apocalypse, the most terrifying thing wasn’t the mutated creatures, it was living, breathing people.
“What is this monster!”
“Damn it, it’s too agile.”
“Hurry up and hit it, you’re all useless!”
“Aaaah, it jumped on me…”
…
Yao Tao didn’t even need to get closer to guess what was happening.
These were survivors from within the hardware wholesale district, and they’d run into an attack by mutated rats.
As Yao Tao approached, the mutated rat suddenly abandoned its attack on the survivors and lunged straight at her instead…