Steaming hot food was served on the table—a total of three dishes and one soup: corn and rib stew, braised tofu with scallions, hand-shredded cabbage, and shredded pork with green peppers.
The woman filled a small, dedicated cartoon bowl with a heap of white rice for little Lu Shiyu. Still not very proficient with her children’s chopsticks, little Lu Shiyu picked up a piece of tofu with a face full of anticipation. However, when she ate it, it felt as though it had no flavor at all.
“Huh?” Little Lu Shiyu’s chubby face puckered. She picked up a piece of cabbage, but it still tasted like nothing.
“Mom, why doesn’t the food have any taste?” Little Lu Shiyu pointed at the tofu and cabbage.
“Did I forget to add salt?” The woman picked up a piece of tofu and said, “No, the taste is quite normal.”
The man also took a chopstick-full of cabbage, tasted it, and agreed that the flavor was normal.
“But, but it just doesn’t have any taste.” Little Lu Shiyu sounded a bit anxious.
“Baby, children shouldn’t eat too much seasoning. this flavor is just right.”
The woman, thinking little Lu Shiyu simply wanted stronger flavors, patted her head soothingly. Little Lu Shiyu closed her mouth and lowered her head to eat the tasteless meal.
How strange. There clearly isn’t any flavor, so why do Mom and Dad say it’s normal? Little Lu Shiyu finished the meal, which tasted like chewing wax. Afterward, she ran back to her room, rummaged through her toy box for a bag of candy, bit it open, and ate a piece. It still had no taste.
Lu Shiyu sat gloomily on the small bay window in her room, unable to fathom why everything she ate was flavorless.
Should I tell Mom and Dad? But if I do, they might take me to the hospital. Little Lu Shiyu didn’t like hospitals, nor did she like injections or medicine.
As she stared blankly at the scenery outside the window, a large bird with two heads slammed straight into the glass. The entire bird flattened against the pane, and the glass spiderwebbed with cracks. Then, the bird fell due to gravity, dropping vertically down the side of the building, leaving only some unidentified transparent liquid on the glass.
“Eh?”
It happened so fast that little Lu Shiyu didn’t even have time to react. Just as she was about to press against the window to look down, the woman rushed in with a panicked expression.
“Yu Bao! Come with Mommy, quickly!”
The woman scooped little Lu Shiyu up by her armpits and pulled her away from the bay window. Little Lu Shiyu blinked as she watched the shattered glass until she was carried out of the room and it vanished from sight.
The woman put Lu Shiyu in the car and drove away. Lu Shiyu didn’t know their destination. Along the way, there were many other cars like theirs, all heading in the same direction. Little Lu Shiyu looked out the window and occasionally saw strange-looking things flash by.
Noticing that the man was not in the car, little Lu Shiyu leaned over the back of the front seat and asked, “Mom, where’s Daddy?”
The woman’s expression was full of tension and fear, but she still forced a strained smile for Lu Shiyu in the back seat. “Be a good girl, baby. Daddy had other things to do and left first. He’ll be back once we arrive.”
The final destination of the traffic flow was a stadium. This stadium had previously been used to display artwork, but it was now being requisitioned as a temporary collective shelter.
There were many people arriving by car like them, so vehicles were stopped several kilometers away from the stadium. They were required to walk the rest of the way; driving inside was prohibited.
The people in the cars had no choice but to get out and start running as fast as they could, as if they would be caught by something if they ran too slowly.
“Come, baby, let’s get out of the car.”
The woman pulled little Lu Shiyu along as they ran with the crowd. Before long, little Lu Shiyu’s speed slowed, and she began to gasp for breath due to lack of physical strength.
“Mom, Mommy, I can’t run anymore.”
The woman turned back, picked her up, and continued running. After a long trek, they finally reached the outside of the stadium. By this time, the woman was sweating so profusely she didn’t even have time to wipe it away. She set Lu Shiyu down and held her hand while they queued at the entrance.
Little Lu Shiyu looked around. It seemed the people coming here were all mothers with young children. After waiting in line for a long time, Lu Shiyu and the woman finally entered the stadium. Even though the air conditioning was on, the place still felt stifling and hot. Due to the running, almost everyone smelled of sweat. The scent of sweat mixed with the smell of the air conditioning drifted through the stadium. Little Lu Shiyu didn’t like the smell and asked if they could leave.
The woman knelt down, tucked the stray hairs behind Lu Shiyu’s ears, and said in the gentlest tone possible, “Yu Bao, remember this: don’t listen to anything anyone says except for the uncles and aunties in uniforms. And don’t go outside. Stay close to Mommy, okay?”
“I know.”
“Then repeat what Mommy just said.”
“Don’t talk to others, can’t go outside, have to stay with Mommy.”
“Good girl,” the woman kissed Lu Shiyu’s cheek. “You must remember this well. No matter what you see, don’t be afraid. The uncles and aunties in uniforms will protect us.”
“Mm!”
As more and more people arrived, the space inside the stadium began to run out.
Little Lu Shiyu overheard two uniformed people talking outside. One said they couldn’t take any more people in or accidents would happen, but the other argued that this was the nearest shelter; if they refused entry, what would happen to the people who hadn’t made it yet?
Little Lu Shiyu didn’t understand what they were talking about; she only knew her mother was calling her, so she ran back.
The woman tore open a bread wrapper and handed the bread inside to Lu Shiyu. Lu Shiyu took a bite, but it still had no taste.
“Mom, when can we go home?”
“When the uncles and aunties in uniforms have handled the things outside, we can go home.”
“What about Daddy?” Lu Shiyu took another bite of bread and asked, “Why hasn’t Daddy come yet?”
The woman was silent for a moment and shook her head. “Mommy doesn’t know either.”
A few more days passed. People in the stadium began to grow restless with the cramped, idle life. Arguments and thefts began to occur. One night, little Lu Shiyu snuck out of the stadium’s main gate, wanting to breathe some fresh air.
However, she was quickly spotted by a uniformed uncle. He was holding a gun and only relaxed when he saw it was just a child.
“Didn’t your mother tell you that you can’t come out? Go back, quickly.”
Lu Shiyu jogged back inside the stadium but remained crouched at the door, looking out. Seeing that she had gone inside, the uniformed man stopped bothering her and continued his sentry duty.
At that moment, a four-legged creature suddenly ran out from the darkness.
Because the ground around the stadium was flat and open, it was spotted as soon as it appeared. Little Lu Shiyu squinted her eyes to look closely. The thing looked very much like a deer, but it was different from the deer on TV. Its body was covered in many, many eyes. The spots where a sika deer’s markings would be were occupied by eyes that were opening and closing.
Little Lu Shiyu thought she was seeing things and widened her eyes to see better, only for her vision to be covered from behind.
“Mom?” Smelling the familiar scent, little Lu Shiyu didn’t struggle. Then she heard several gunshots and the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. She was led back inside with her eyes covered the entire time.
This time, the woman uncharacteristically lost her temper. Little Lu Shiyu could only lower her head and listen to the woman’s criticism, which was laced with suppressed rage.
Over the next few days, such events happened frequently. Strange-looking animals would suddenly appear, only to be dealt with and dragged away by the uniformed personnel. The order inside the stadium became even more chaotic.
One day, two women suddenly started arguing over whether one had stolen the other’s gold ring. Eventually, it escalated into a physical conflict. The area around them cleared out, forming a vacuum zone surrounded by people who were eager to watch the drama. Finally, several uniformed officers came in to stop the conflict from escalating further.
Just as it was about to be revealed whether one had stolen the item or the other had framed her, disaster struck.
A glass window in the stadium was suddenly smashed, and the things that burst in were several bats as large as basketballs!
These bats might have been attracted by the lights inside the stadium at night. The hideous creatures began attacking everywhere as soon as they entered. Although the security team protecting the stadium had guns and could kill a bat with one shot, the bats flew in completely unpredictable patterns and were extremely difficult to hit. The stadium instantly fell into chaos. No one knew who started it, but people suddenly began running outside.
Little Lu Shiyu and the woman were separated by the panicked crowd. At that moment, a bat charged straight at little Lu Shiyu.
Just as the bat was about to reach her face, Lu Shiyu woke up.
Lu Shiyu sat on the ground with a start, a layer of cold sweat breaking out on her back. The others looked just as terrified.
Lu Shiyu looked at her hands; the surrounding environment had returned to normal.
“What’s the situation now?” Lu Shiyu gasped with lingering fear, her heart beating like a drum. She even began to wonder if what she was seeing now was reality or a hallucination.
“The powder from that plant must have a hallucinogenic effect,” Tang Zeyu said, sweat dripping from his forehead. He also seemed to have just escaped a nightmare. “But the powder is all used up now.”
The plant that had looked like an egg before it opened was still there, but now its petals were fully unfurled and the tentacles inside had become active.
Chen Yunliang took advantage of the fact that the powder hadn’t been blown away by the wind yet and immediately took tools from his bag to collect the residue.
Lu Shiyu took a deep breath, adjusting her thoughts until she had completely separated the hallucination from reality.
Yes, her parents did look like that, and her home was indeed like that. However, she was already in her teens when the mutated apocalypse broke out; she wasn’t a kindergarten child at all. Furthermore, she hadn’t gone to that shelter in the hallucination. Instead, she had hidden in the underground air-raid shelter of her residential complex. Because the adults felt it was unsafe for children to go out, Lu Shiyu hadn’t left that shelter until the base was built. She certainly hadn’t been squeezed into a stadium with others watching mutated creatures pop up.
Therefore, with careful analysis, one could quickly find which parts were real memories and which were fake ones created by the hallucination.
Lu Shiyu guessed that these hallucinations were pieced together based on one’s own perceptions, much like a dream—bits and pieces from here and there, eventually forming a chimeric whole.
So, although she had never been to the shelter, she had heard the members of the Flying Eagle Squad talk about them, allowing her to see it in the hallucination.
However, thinking of the hallucination she had just seen, Lu Shiyu couldn’t help but sigh. If not for the hallucination, she might have forgotten what her biological parents looked like. Too much time had passed, and she had no photos of them. Her memories were starting to blur. She hadn’t expected to see them again in such a strange way, even if it was just a brief hallucination.
“We lost consciousness for three minutes just now,” Chen Yunliang said, glancing at his watch. “Fortunately, we didn’t encounter any danger.”
“No way? I felt like at least a month had passed.” Shao Xingyang scratched his head.
Yan Hong said, “That’s just the illusion the powder gave you. Just treat it like you had a nightmare.”
The plant had opened completely after spraying the powder. Its petals were dusted with bright yellow pollen, and a bit of crystal-clear liquid began to secrete between the tentacles. A few flying insects were attracted to it to feed.
Looking at the fully opened plant, Lu Shiyu suddenly remembered seeing this plant in a book.