Ke Bei didn’t refuse. She took the combat knife and casually tossed the watermelon knife to her son, Xiao Tian, who was standing nearby.
“How can you give a knife to a child?”
Cheng Qian hurried to stop her, but when his gaze landed on Xiao Tian, who had just received the knife, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything further.
Earlier, with the lights off, he hadn’t noticed, but now… Cheng Qian could hardly believe it: after just one sleep, his son had grown several sizes!
Xiao Tian, standing by the bed, was still a little thin, but he already looked like a big kid, no longer the two-year-old from yesterday.
Even knowing it was due to special ability, Cheng Qian was momentarily stunned.
Having eaten his fill and slept, Xiao Tian’s ability had fully recovered, and he was brimming with energy.
“Dad, I can use it!”
He grinned proudly at Cheng Qian, brandishing the knife in the air with a flurry of swings, even finishing with a stylish flourish.
His movements were impressively skillful.
Seeing his son, who should have been playing with teddy bears, handle a knife so adeptly left Cheng Qian with a mix of emotions he couldn’t quite describe.
He felt both pride and an uncontrollable pang of worry, his emotions so tangled that his fingers clenched into fists.
Seeing him like this, Ke Bei reached out and patted the back of their son’s head, lightly scolding, “Behave yourself, don’t cause trouble.”
Then she turned to reassure her husband: “It’s okay. Xiao Tian knows what he’s doing, he won’t hurt himself.”
Cheng Qian didn’t explain, just reached out to ruffle his son’s hair, and together the three of them left the house.
They didn’t take the elevator, choosing to walk instead.
Cheng Qian held back for a moment, but in the end he couldn’t resist confiscating Xiao Tian’s knife.
One hand held the knife, while the other tightly gripped the little boy’s hand.
The hallway was quiet. Every household had their doors closed, and if it weren’t for the light seeping through the cracks and the faint sound of movement, one could almost think everyone was still lost in sleep.
But how could that be possible?
With screams like those piercing the serene morning, it was impossible that anyone wouldn’t have been awakened.
The three of them had no time to wonder what the neighbors were doing. They hurriedly descended the stairs, but just as they were about to leave the building, they all stopped simultaneously.
In just a few hours, the outside world had completely changed.
Ke Bei even felt a moment of disorientation, as if they had returned to a post-apocalyptic scene.
The building they were in was at the innermost part of the community. The entrance faced a circular driveway, and at the center of the driveway was the community’s pedestrian plaza.
At the center of the plaza was a large terrazzo-paved open space for children to play or for elderly residents to exercise. Surrounding it, near the edges of the driveway, was a ring of greenery planted with clusters of roses and many young fig trees.
But now the driveway had disappeared. Wild grass had spread from the green areas, covering all the hard surfaces.
Those fig saplings, which had once only reached about a meter tall, had now grown into large trees, each at least two or three meters high.
Planted too densely at first, they now crowded each other, covering the ground completely and forming a wall of trees around the plaza, making it impossible to pass through.
Their branches intertwined above, blocking the sky completely.
Standing at the doorway and looking at the thicket stretching before them, the three felt as if they were on the edge of a dense forest.
And this wasn’t even the most terrifying part. The most terrifying were the roses, which had also grown rapidly, turning into several-meter-tall flowering trees.
Their branches were thick and sturdy, covered with jagged leaves and countless thorns.
Each thorn was as long as a human finger, rough and sharp, with hooked tips that glinted coldly in the dim light.
Just imagining those thorns piercing skin sent a shiver down the spine.
Their branches stretched outward, crisscrossing into a tightly woven barrier, a kind of living fence bristling with thorns.
Trying to pass through such a mass of thorny branches would be nearly impossible.
Cheng Qian scanned the area and realized that passing through this thicket was the only way forward.
He grabbed Ke Bei and pulled her behind him, then spoke in a low, serious voice: “I’ll clear the way up front. You and Xiao Tian stay behind me.”
“No, Dad! I’ll go! I’ve always handled these things myself!”
Before Cheng Qian could finish speaking, Xiao Tian objected.
Wanting to prove his capability, the little guy wrenched his father’s hand free, hopped to the edge of the thicket, grabbed a fig tree branch, and casually snapped it—
Crack! The branch, as thick as an arm, broke into two with ease.
Seeing this, Cheng Qian’s eyelids twitched uncontrollably.
He never imagined his son would grow up to be so unmanageable!
“Come here right now!”
He rushed over to Xiao Tian, swung his knife to chop away the rose branch reaching out, then grabbed the boy by the collar, scolding, “I’m still here! You’re not allowed to run ahead!”
He then forcibly pulled him behind.
“Ah!”
At that moment, a sudden, piercing scream came from their side.
The sound was very close, not far from where they stood.
All three of them stiffened and looked toward the source of the scream.
Through the faint light filtering from above, they saw an elderly man lying on the ground less than twenty meters ahead. Near his head was a dark shape over a meter long.
It was too dark to make out exactly what it was, but they could see the old man struggling desperately to fight it off.
“Take care of the child!” Cheng Qian shouted, pushing Xiao Tian toward Ke Bei, then ran toward the threat.
Ke Bei caught Xiao Tian and hurried to follow.
Just then, the old man let out another chilling scream!
Even from a distance, Ke Bei could see the dark shape lunging onto the man, its position at his neck, tearing at him frantically.
The old man struggled desperately, but it was useless, his strength and agility were clearly no match for the dark shape.
Fortunately, by this time, Cheng Qian had already reached them.
Ke Bei saw him kick the creature into the air, then raise the watermelon knife and swing it down with all his might.
“Slash!”
Blood splattered everywhere.
The creature let out a piercing, ear-shattering scream, but it quickly went silent.
Its body was chopped into several pieces by Cheng Qian’s strike midair.
Ke Bei and Xiao Tian ran up and realized that the dismembered chunks of flesh were a mutated gray rat.
They had seen too many of these things in their past lives, and both of them showed expressions of disgust.
Cheng Qian crouched to check the old man’s injuries.
By now, the old man had stopped moving, with blood gushing in thick streams from his neck.
His face and neck were covered in bite marks, and one ear had been torn off almost completely, leaving only a small piece of skin and flesh still attached to his face.
Blood covered his entire face.
Although the wounds looked horrifying, none of them were fatal.
The real danger was that the rat had bitten the old man’s trachea in its last attack.
Blood gushed from his body, soaking the surrounding ground.
The grass was dyed red.
“Mom, can this grandfather still survive?” Xiao Tian asked quietly from the side.
Ke Bei shook her head.
Cheng Qian picked up the old man, who had already stopped breathing, and carefully placed him on the open ground at the building’s entrance.
“Later, tell the security guard to have his family take him home,” he said in a low voice.
Ke Bei didn’t respond.
She had already noticed a small suitcase not far from the deceased. Anyone fleeing alone this early must be a solitary elder.
Where would any family even be to pick him up?
But she didn’t want to argue with her husband over this, so long as he felt some relief in his heart, that was enough.
At that moment, a sudden gust of wind brushed past her side. Ke Bei spun around, thrusting her combat knife straight into the rose tree that had lunged at her!
The rose tree had probably been tracking the scent of blood.
With Ke Bei’s knife driven in, its long-reaching branches suddenly recoiled, rustling as if in pain.
Without hesitation, she jabbed the knife deeper into the trunk, then spun it in a circle.
The trunk twisted violently as if in agony. The clawing branches all recoiled, and the leaves rustled loudly.
Her actions provoked the nearby rose trees, and almost instantly, countless branches surged toward her and Xiao Tian.
Some branches stretched four to five meters, whipping down through the air with a cutting wind, their thorns flashing an eerie, cold glint.
Cheng Qian rushed forward, cutting the branches into pieces with dizzying speed.
But his actions only enraged the trees further.
They grew denser, more entangled branches, swinging wildly, trying to form a circle to trap all three of them inside.
Cheng Qian swung his knife!
Without appearing to exert much force, a branch as thick as an arm split instantly in two.
While chopping, he called out to Ke Bei: “You two go to the parking lot, get the car, and then wait for me at the community entrance.”
His movements were sharp and fierce, but his voice remained calm.
Even as he spoke, it didn’t slow the speed of his strikes.
In the time it took to say that, the branches extending around them had already been chopped to the ground by Cheng Qian.
Obviously, this road was impossible to drive through.
Hearing Cheng Qian say that, and seeing his speed and skill…
Ke Bei didn’t hesitate for a second, she grabbed Xiao Tian and ran.
Even from far ahead, they could still hear the snapping of branches behind them.
On the rest of their path, the mother and son didn’t encounter any serious attacks.
It was only when they ran across the plaza, approaching the parking area, that a flock of mutated sparrows appeared from nowhere.
Each sparrow was the size of a hen, flapping their wings and chirping aggressively as they swooped toward them.
But these newly mutated creatures, barely able to control their own bodies, were no match for Ke Bei and her son, they were as easy to deal with as a ready-to-cook meal.
After only a few strikes, all the sparrows were cut down and stored in their space.
Cheng Qian’s parking spot was on the opposite side of the plaza, and there wasn’t a single person nearby.
Many of the cars were surrounded by branches, forming green cocoons. Even if someone had managed to reach them, they likely wouldn’t have been able to open the doors.
Ke Bei searched her space, found a fire axe among the tools she had stored, and with her son’s help, chopped the branches off the car and stored the vehicle inside the space.
They didn’t linger. Once done, they ran back to the roadside.
By this time, Cheng Qian had already cleared the blocking branches as well.
When the three of them reached the community gate, they realized it wasn’t open, and the entrance was already packed with people.
Many carried bags and boxes of various sizes, some held children, and some supported elderly family members.
Obviously, they had fled from their homes.
People crowded at the gate, talking anxiously. Some tried to jump over the railings, while others tried to break into the security booth.
Yet, the security booth, which should have been manned 24/7, had its lights on but the door was tightly shut. Looking through the window, it was empty, not a single person inside.
“Did the security guards just abandon us and run?” someone yelled, kicking the locked gate in frustration.
“Jump over it, don’t rely on them. Your life comes first!”
“Easy for you to say! I might be able to make it, but what about my mom? And the guards? Damn it! If you’re going to run, why lock the main gate?!”
“They probably didn’t… maybe something happened to them too? This gate can only be opened from inside the security booth. The guards are supposed to patrol and clock in at night, what if they ran into trouble while on their rounds…”
The speaker trailed off, but the people around him couldn’t help shivering.
Those who had managed to get out first lived near the outer buildings of the community. Being farther from the mutated greenery, they hadn’t suffered any attacks.
But that didn’t mean they couldn’t see or hear what was happening deeper inside.
In fact, compared to Ke Bei and the others, the residents on the outskirts could see even more from their windows.
Hearing the crowd’s murmurs, Cheng Qian’s expression grew even more serious.
He squeezed through the people, signaling them to step back, then flew a kick straight at the security booth’s door!
Bang! The door swung open on impact.
A strong, pungent stench of blood immediately hit them.
Another round of screams erupted from the crowd.