Shan Ran hauled all the supplies from the car down to basement level two.
Down there was a fifty-square-meter cold room where meat and other items that needed freezing or refrigeration went.
The online packages were heaped together too, one big chaotic mess. Shan Ran scratched at the loose hair by her temple, yawned, and felt tears prick the corners of her eyes.
Then she just turned around and stopped looking at the heap behind her.
As long as you don’t look at it, it isn’t messy at all.
In two days she’d napped for all of half an hour, she really couldn’t hold out any longer. Everything else could wait until she’d slept.
The construction site upstairs was a mess too. There was only one bedroom on basement level one, so Shan Ran sighed, shifted the unconscious Meng Xinye over to clear a spot for one person, and dropped into bed and slept.
A dreamless night.
Shan Ran opened her eyes, looked at the handsome sleeping face in front of her, and blanked for a moment.
After a hazy little while, she remembered she was home.
Not a month into the apocalypse, but home from ‘before’ the nightmare beasts had even appeared.
Shan Ran propped herself up, pinched the bridge of her nose to collect herself, then got up.
It was ten in the morning.
Her phone showed a message: that batch of weapons would reach the harbor soon.
Two hours later, Shan Ran arrived at her destination.
This was Dock Three, the Xie Group’s cargo ships and private vessels had a dedicated berth here.
Right now the whole dock was clogged with ships that hadn’t been unloaded, and the containers that had come off were stacked in heaps, not yet carted away.
Today was the fifth day of the fevers, and the working population had shrunk by nearly half, some who weren’t even feverish had simply taken leave.
Shan Ran’s gaze swept across a few unattended containers, and her fingers twitched without her meaning them to.
‘Really want to know what’s inside.’
Xie Qingheng’s assistant had been waiting at the dock for a while, spotting Shan Ran, he came over.
“Miss Shan, here are the things you asked for.”
As he spoke, he wheeled over two crates nearly as tall as a person.
The lovely young woman before him pushed the two unremarkable-looking crates to her side, her expression placid, as if what they held were a girl’s pretty clothes rather than weapons of enormous killing power.
“How’s Brother Qingheng doing?”
The assistant’s brow furrowed. “The Young Master was in the first wave of fevers. The Master came down the next afternoon. On my way here, I heard the Master has already woken, but the Young Master is still unconscious.”
At that, the assistant looked at Shan Ran, paused, and his expression turned hesitant.
“If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”
“Yes, Miss Shan.” The assistant went on. “Right now they’re suppressing the news outside, but I doubt they can keep it up for long, when the people who fainted from this round of fever wake, their bodies show abnormalities.”
Shan Ran’s expression didn’t change. She nodded for him to continue.
“You already know, Miss Shan?” The assistant blinked, then seemed to grasp it all at once. “No wonder you wanted so many, ‘so many’, weapons.”
“What information do you have?”
“Starting yesterday, people have been waking one after another. At first they didn’t notice anything wrong, then some of them, maybe from some shock, or some unusual thought, well, in short, their bodies began showing supernatural phenomena. For now the people up above are tentatively calling it ‘esper ability’. It’s thrown the scientific and medical communities into turmoil. All the upper-tier families have issued strict orders forbidding their core members from going out, and are watching their feverish patients closely. The Xie Group is on full alert too. If you hadn’t contacted me fairly early, there’s no way I could’ve gotten this shipment across.”
“When Uncle Xie woke, did he find out what ability he has?”
The assistant shook his head. “That I don’t know. These things can’t be discussed over comms. Once the Young Master wakes, you can contact him yourself.”
Shan Ran asked a few more idle questions, and then the assistant hurried off.
She loaded the crates into the car, glanced back at the distant heaps of giant mystery boxes, and left with great reluctance.
With two crates of treasures in hand, Shan Ran felt much more at ease, and her mood on the drive back was excellent.
In the early days, people’s abilities weren’t very powerful, and the nightmare beasts that came out were all of the lowest grade.
Abilities this early were easily exhausted, honestly less useful than weapons. Never mind firearms, even a blade or an axe might serve better.
Driving back, as she entered the town, people gradually grew more numerous, and so did the unrest.
“Aaaahh!! Help!”
By the roadside, a man’s head suddenly burst into flame. Terrified, he rolled on the ground screaming his head off, and the few people around him were scared too, some called for help, some tried to beat out the fire with their jackets.
In the middle of the chaos, the flames on the man’s head abruptly vanished. He hadn’t burned into a horrifying lump of char, you couldn’t even see a trace of scorching.
He patted the ash off himself, exchanged a horrified look with the passersby, then collapsed from exhaustion.
“What was that? Did his head just catch fire?”
“It did, right? How’d it just disappear again? Is he doing street magic?”
A passerby’s head suddenly turned into a fish head. The expressionless fish head somehow still managed to look panicked and afraid, its eyes rolling wildly, its mouth opening and closing in rapid little gulps. Then she dropped to the ground, both hands clutching her throat, as if she couldn’t breathe at all, like a fish thrown onto dry land, thrashing on instinct now that the water was gone.
Fortunately her head returned to normal before long, though the brief suffocation still left her face-down on the ground, dry-heaving for quite a while.
The onlookers’ faces were even more horrified than the woman’s own, so much so that they forgot to take pictures.
Someone leapt from a tall building, their arms turned into wings, and they flew around smugly for a bit, then the wings turned back into arms, and they crashed to the ground from a great height with a scream, smashing into a horrifying pulp.
Someone else ran through the streets and alleys at uncanny speed, laughing all the way, people could barely make the person out, but could hear that joyful laughter clearly.
…..
A scattering of photos and videos surfaced online, but click in a moment later and they’d all been deleted.
Abilities had only just appeared, researchers still didn’t understand them, and the Cabinet chose to lock down the news, keep a lid on it as long as they could.
Shan Ran witnessed several ability incidents on the way back. Her mood, relaxed and pleasant a moment ago, tightened up again, and she sped home.
Home, she found the workmen were two fewer than yesterday. When she asked, she learned the two had come down with fever after going home the night before, caught the last bus of the fever wave.
Xie Qingheng’s assistant had prepared easy-to-carry pistols, longer-range rifles, and devastating machine guns, along with plenty of bullets and grenades.
Checking the time, already nearly five, Shan Ran decided not to go out again, and stayed home to tidy the heaped-up supplies.
In the book, after the nightmare beasts appeared, the Third Continent stayed in chaos for a long stretch. The continents up above had their own hands full, the administrators they sent simply didn’t care whether the people here lived or died in a crisis.
The Third Continent could only save itself. All sorts of groups sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain, some merged to form small bases, and small bases combined into large ones.
But because of chaotic management, mixed crowds, and clashing agendas, many of the spontaneously formed small bases ultimately collapsed.
It was only about three months later that the official safe zones began formally opening to the public.
Outside the safe zones, order remained in shambles.
Shan Ran would have to hole up in the villa for at least three months. She had to prepare half a year’s worth of supplies for two people.
A rough calculation said two more trips out should do it.
Early the next morning, Shan Ran went out again, driving her heavy-duty RV to keep stocking up.
This time she prioritized medicine.
It was the sixth day of the fevers, most of the people who’d fallen ill on the first and second days had woken, and the streets were far livelier than the past few days.
Talk online was a total mess, but life had to go on.
Some supermarkets, convenience stores, and pharmacies had reopened.
Shan Ran went to a pharmacy that was open nearby, the shelves held only half the medicine they used to.
The clerk had been cooped up at home for days and couldn’t stop running his mouth today, chattering away nonstop.
“Few days back so many people fainted from fever all at once, scared us half to death, everyone crammed in here to buy medicine, nearly knocked the shelves over. Fever reducers, cold medicine, all snapped up in a swarm. One minute a rumor says this drug can cure it and a crowd comes grabbing for it, the next minute it’s the end of the world’s coming, so anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, iodine, gauze, all gone too. Couple days ago I just shut the place up and called it a day.”
As he spoke, he glanced at Shan Ran’s basket, full of anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, and the like.
The clerk smiled awkwardly. “Actually, who’s to say. I’ve seen some folks who look like they’ve mutated. Maybe the end of the world really is coming.”
Shan Ran nodded solemnly. “If it really is, you’d better hurry and stock up.”
“……”
Just as Shan Ran was checking out, a man in his twenties walked in from outside.
He wore a sleeveless tank, his body sturdy and heavily muscled, and held a phone to his ear, talking in a thunderous voice.
“2345Ma, don’t worry, I’m not sick! Everything’s great right now!”
“Really, I’m fine, I’m strong as an ox now! Got more muscle than before. I’ll video-call you when I get home so you can see.”
“I tried it out, I can carry two, three times as many bricks as before. Relax, I’ll be able to make double the money from now on!”
“……”
As Shan Ran walked out, the man was still talking.
Looked like he had a strength-type ability.
The first reaction to getting a power was ‘now I can do more work and earn more money’, truly heaven’s chosen beasts of burden [1] 牛马, internet slang for people fated to toil endlessly for others’ benefit jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2777444_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2777444_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.
Along the way, Shan Ran saw two or three more people brimming with hope for life because they’d gained abilities, certain this was the dawn of a new world.
But she also saw some with gloomy faces and venomous eyes. Maybe it was from having lived through two lifetimes, but Shan Ran was now extremely sensitive to the emotional states of others.
“Murder! Murder! Help!”
Up ahead, a woman drenched in blood suddenly came running out of a residential compound. She was in her forties or so, running and screaming for help, her throat hoarse and helpless from shrieking too shrilly.
A man with a slight limp soon chased out after her.
He was covered in blood too, a knife in his hand, his face vicious as he fixed on the woman ahead.
Lame leg or not, the woman was injured, and he quickly caught up.
Just as he was about to grab a fistful of the woman’s hair, an arm suddenly thrust out from the side and blocked him.
The man had already gone berserk with bloodlust, not caring who was in front of him, he stabbed straight in with the knife, only it was as if he’d stabbed a rock, the blade letting out an ear-splitting screech.
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