Sixty-seven people were trapped in the canteen, joined by Yan Fengji, Meng Zizhao, and their group of twelve.
That brought the total to seventy-nine.
One side of the canteen featured a large glass wall. It had no iron shutters—a design choice intended to let students and faculty see the dining area from outside. Now, that same transparency kept everyone awake at night.
The red eyes of stray cats and dogs glowed in the darkness, swaying like wheat stalks in a field, their countless numbers illuminating the night.
It had been over ten hours since the animals and plants began mutating at four in the morning. Even during the day, the sunlight had failed to break through, leaving the world shrouded in a dim, gauzy veil that concealed the horrors lurking in the shadows.
After trekking past the school’s experimental building and several other campus landmarks, Yan Fengji, Meng Zizhao, and their group finally reached the canteen. They shared their experiences with those who had never left the building.
“The animals are mutating in size,” their senior explained. “There was a stray kitten near our experimental building—one I used to feed.”
Yan Fengji glanced at her. His senior, who had remained silent and composed throughout their journey, closed her eyes and spoke in a raspy voice.
“It was about forty centimeters long. Now, it’s at least sixty.”
The trek from the experimental building to Jiangpu Canteen had taken far longer than usual due to the transformed landscape.
Fortunately, as a group of young and able-bodied adults armed with makeshift weapons, they were enough to deter the straggling strays. The animals had not dared to attack.
The women had been kept in the center of the formation, ensuring no one was left alone.
During their journey, their senior had not forgotten to observe the changes in the outside world. Now, she shared the data she had gathered. “If all animals are mutating by this same ratio…”
Someone began calculating, the heavy atmosphere shifting into one of sharp tension.
“Beyond their size, there’s also their bite force, their agility—”
Dou Qing joined the conversation. Among the seventy-nine people, some were drifting off to sleep, exhausted by their wounds.
Yan Fengji’s senior students, all medical students, had just finished securely bandaging them with whatever materials were available, preventing the open wounds from becoming further infected.
As Dou Qing spoke, all eyes turned to him. A beautiful girl sat beside him, her chin resting in her hand, listening to everyone in complete silence.
Meng Zizhao remained outwardly impassive, but he caught the subtle change in Yan Fengji’s expression as he glanced at Fang Yangyang.
“We don’t have the equipment for experiments or data analysis,” Dou Qing said, his voice low and grim. In the dead of night, his precise words carried a chilling weight.
“This morning, a girl was…”
He took Fang Yangyang’s hand, his thumb stroking the back of it in a gentle, soothing gesture.
“That yellow dog jumped nearly five feet into the air.”
It had clamped its jaws onto the girl’s neck, killing her in a single strike before dragging her body into the shadows to feast.
Those who had witnessed the attack fell silent. One young man choked back a sob, wiping his eyes as his composure finally shattered. “So what the fuck is going on?”
“Is this the apocalypse? Damn it! I wasn’t ready for any of this! I just called my parents yesterday to say I’d be home this weekend—”
He broke into loud, racking sobs, his grief igniting the rest of the group. The girls wept softly; the men’s eyes turned a raw, angry red.
Of the seventy-nine, the eldest was the cafeteria worker, a forty-seven-year-old woman whose own children were the same age as the students before her. Tears streamed down her face, her grief a mixture of horror at the world’s collapse and agony for her child’s unknown fate.
“I don’t know if my baby is okay… I shouldn’t have rushed to work today. I should have stayed home… it would have been better than being here at the school.”
The canteen worker wiped her cheeks with her plump hand, her shoulders shaking. Beside her, a young woman sobbed so violently she trembled. The older woman reached out and pulled the girl into an embrace, and they wept together.
Yan Fengji swallowed hard. He heard a senior student sniffling and another sobbing softly. He caught Meng Zizhao’s eye, and they both realized their own emotions remained remarkably steady.
He glanced at Dou Qing and Fang Yangyang.
They, too, seemed largely untouched by the surrounding grief. Dou Qing murmured a few words to Fang Yangyang, who shook her head in silence.
It was the same composure she had shown an hour ago when she opened the cafeteria doors for them—as if she were simply helping students line up for their meals.
The world has changed, he thought. Emotional collapse is inevitable.
On the first day of the apocalypse, the Jiangpu Canteen took in seventy-nine people. That night, amidst the low sobs and endless tears, no one could sleep soundly.
They drifted into fitful naps, only to be jolted awake by nightmares.
It was September—too early for extra blankets. At Xichi University, electricity meters always peaked in September as students blasted their air conditioning.
This meant the canteen wouldn’t be freezing at night, yet everyone still trembled. They weren’t shivering from the cold, but from the terror of tomorrow and the red-eyed monsters watching from beyond the glass walls.
In the end, they huddled together, separated by gender.
Fang Yangyang lay in Dou Qing’s arms, her breath soft and steady as she leaned against his waist.
Before this, Dou Qing had never imagined she would agree. When he’d suggested she lean on his shoulder to sleep, his heart had pounded with anxiety. He’d worried she would think he was trying to take advantage of the chaos.
Her reaction had surprised him, leaving him with a quiet sense of contentment.
Fang Yangyang had simply placed her powder-blue backpack beside him. Under his gaze, she unzipped it and pulled out a women’s jacket—not too thick, but enough for a night’s sleep. She held the jacket, nudged him, and then gently pressed herself into his embrace.
She spread the jacket over both of them and buried her face in his chest.
“Get some rest,” she whispered. “We have more to worry about tomorrow.”
She didn’t glance at anyone else—but Dou Qing felt Yan Fengji’s gaze sweep over her before settling on him.
Dou Qing gave him a slight nod, hiding an ill-timed smile. He wrapped his arm around Fang Yangyang and leaned against the wall, trying to sink into a deep sleep to prepare for tomorrow—a tomorrow that would likely be even worse.
***
The second day of the apocalypse arrived.
There was still no signal.
Some students, their phone batteries critically low, had no choice but to power them down. Others were helping the cafeteria staff prepare breakfast.
The canteen’s power continued to flicker, just as it had the day before. A few people stood by the glass doors, watching the sky and scribbling notes about the mutated animals they spotted outside.
“How many students do you think are still alive in the Jiangpu dormitory area?” someone asked, their voice heavy with worry.
Meng Zizhao frowned, then forced a bright smile. “There won’t be any large-scale casualties yet. The water hasn’t been cut off.”
The human body could survive for over twenty days with water but no food. This was a fact backed by reliable experimental data.
Meng Zizhao’s clear, steady voice offered a much-needed sense of relief to those who had been slipping into despair.
“I’m a pilot, not an expert on experimental data,” he said with a grin, “but even I know that as long as we have water, we can survive for at least twenty days.”
The tension and anxiety that gripped their hearts were rooted in a single, terrifying truth: the world had changed. Outside, monstrous stray animals roamed, and even the birds in the trees seemed to have mutated, their beaks sharpening into lethal points.
They were seventy-nine people in total.
Their food supplies, which had initially seemed enough for fifty to last a week, were now clearly insufficient to sustain them all for even half that time.
Self-preservation was a primal instinct. Everyone wanted to survive.
The city’s water system could fail at any moment. But the dormitory area was different from most places. The students had buckets, washbasins, and other containers—enough to have stored large quantities of fresh water when the apocalypse first struck, securing their survival for the time being.
Moreover, this particular dormitory housed nearly a thousand students. Many were juniors and seniors buried in their final projects and theses, and they had a habit of stockpiling bread, instant noodles, and snacks in their rooms to avoid leaving their desks. This hoard would buy them a precious amount of time.
Yan Fengji nodded. “Yes. As long as the water keeps running, we’re in good shape.”
On the second day of the apocalypse, a group from their party of seventy-nine had already gone to the cafeteria warehouse.
They had taken stock of every pot, pan, and bowl, and while water still flowed from the pipes, they had begun to fill every available container.
Suddenly, a girl’s voice, soft and sweet, broke the silence. “The water won’t run out. And even if it does, there’s a solution.”
It was Fang Yangyang.
She was leaning against her boyfriend, a young man with a pale, scholarly face and glasses. She was striking in her own right.
Under the flickering fluorescent lights of the cafeteria, her clear eyes and delicate features made her an unforgettable sight.
All eyes turned to her. Fang Yangyang seemed to blush faintly, the tips of her ears turning a light red from the sudden attention.
“Xichi has a backup water system,” she said, revealing information no one else knew. The crowd stared, stunned. “The backup system for our campus is Jing Lake.”
Jing Lake was located within the Xichi University campus. As one of many lakes in Xichi, it had never been as famous as the social-media-worthy Matcha Lake.
Most people’s impression of it was simply that it was large, far from the academic and dormitory buildings, nestled near the back mountain.
“There’s also a backup power station near Jing Lake,” she continued. “If we truly lose all water and power, we just need to find the professors and students from the electrical engineering department…”
“…and we can basically solve the problem.”
After speaking, Fang Yangyang leaned her face against Dou Qing’s arm and fell silent.
Everything she had just said was completely new to them.
“How do you know all that?” someone asked. “It’s not even on the campus map.”
Every new student received a campus guide and map upon enrollment. Xichi University was so vast that navigating it without a map was nearly impossible. Yet even on that map, Jing Lake wasn’t marked as a “backup water supply,” and no one had ever heard of a backup power station nearby.
Yan Fengji remained silent.
Fang Yangyang’s voice was soft and gentle as she replied, “This information isn’t in the campus guide or on the map.”
“Then how do you know?”
Her calm, unhurried tone seemed to soothe the anxious atmosphere. Her voice, as melodic as a song or a recited poem, drifted through the air. Even a girl who had been wiping away tears turned to look at her.
“It’s confidential,” she said, offering a small smile to the questioner. “My family works in this field, so they know about these things.”
Now, there was no need to hide the truth. The sooner she revealed it, the better—calming everyone down was the priority.
Human nature was unpredictable. Who knew if they would start fighting over future water shortages?
ability would only begin to awaken on the fifth day of the apocalypse. Once they did, those with water-based abilities would never have to worry about thirst again. In reality, as long as a team had one such member, the threat of dying from dehydration would vanish.
The “Four Days of Darkness” described in the original novel were no joke. During those first four days, when mutated plants and animals were ahead of humanity, people in the world’s darkest corners cowered in fear.
They spiraled into emotional breakdowns, unleashed their worst impulses, and committed unspeakable atrocities.
The Four Days of Darkness weren’t just about the slaughter by mutated beasts; they were also about humans turning on each other. This chaos wiped out forty percent of the global population.
The best outcome was to settle everyone’s nerves as early as possible and survive those four days in peace.
Everything she had said was drawn directly from the original apocalyptic novel.
After speaking, the young girl offered a shy smile.
“I know everyone’s scared,” she said softly. “I’m pretty scared too.”
Meng Zizhao crossed his arms and watched the beautiful girl with amusement. She sat beside Dou Qing, her gentle voice effortlessly soothing the crowd—far more effectively than his own clumsy attempts to play the layman, using subtle persuasion and a smile to claim that “as long as we have water, we’ll survive.”
Fang Yangyang.
Her eyes shone with a hope that brought a warm glow to the hearts of all who looked at her.
“But really, there’s no need to worry,” she assured them. “At least for now, we have food, water, and each other to rely on.”
Thud.
A white-furred cat with blood-red eyes slammed into the glass wall outside, but it didn’t even leave a scratch.
Startled, the group turned to look. When they saw the glass remained completely intact, a few people chuckled.
“Damn, this reinforced glass is the real deal.”
The others chimed in, and even the cafeteria worker couldn’t help but add, “I’ve worked here in Jiangpu for two years, and I’ve always heard how good this glass is…”
Dou Qing turned his head and saw Fang Yangyang smiling at him.
The smile was soft, sweet, and bright—a shimmering light embedded in her eyes like a precious gem.
His heart melted instantly, turning into syrup that flooded the ground.
“You’re amazing,” he murmured.
Then, under the gaze of several nearby people, he proudly enveloped her soft, delicate hand in his own.