Chapter 122
Chapter 122
“I can’t take it anymore.”
They had barely walked a dozen yards when Chu Jingchu doubled over laughing.
She crouched on the ground, curled into a ball, her shoulders shaking so violently that she could barely string a sentence together. “I can’t… Chen Qingshui, you did that on purpose, didn’t you? Hahahaha…”
Qingshui stood there, staring at her without expression.
“I really didn’t do it on purpose.”
It wasn’t as though she had never seen people doing that before. She had simply been too tense at the time. The moment she heard those strange noises, her first thought had been: danger.
How was she supposed to know it was that kind of “danger”?
Wen Lianfeng stood to the side with her arms folded, unable to keep the corners of her mouth from curling upward. Her face, usually so scrutinizing, now showed a rare hint of amusement.
“Sure, sure. Whatever you say.”
Chu Jingchu wasn’t listening at all. She looked up, her eyes narrowed to slits from laughing. Her usually sardonic face was now bursting with glee, like a cat that had just stolen a fish.
Qingshui glared sullenly at her, then at Wen Lianfeng, who was also smiling.
Now she felt even worse.
“Ahem.”
Wen Lianfeng cleared her throat and tried to force down her smile. She glanced at Chu Jingchu and said with mild exasperation, “Stop picking on the kid.”
Chu Jingchu immediately sprang to her feet.
She walked over to Qingshui, reached out, and patted her on the head.
Her touch was gentle, imbued with deliberately exaggerated “maternal affection.” She put on a stern face and tried her best to look serious, but the laughter in her eyes was impossible to hide.
“Be good, kiddo. Your big sister has work to do. Take care of yourself.”
Qingshui stared at her in silence.
Chu Jingchu’s face practically screamed, “I’m trying so hard to hold it in.” The corners of her mouth twitched, her eyes quivered, and her entire body teetered on the brink of breaking into laughter again.
She might as well not have bothered comforting her.
Qingshui looked away, silently turned around, and headed for the stairs to the rooftop.
Wen Lianfeng watched the two of them banter, and her gaze faltered slightly.
She suddenly realized it had been a long time since she had laughed like this. Ever since the apocalypse began, her nerves had been stretched taut like a bowstring.
There was never any knowing whether death or tomorrow would come first. This moment of levity felt almost unreal.
A trace of softness quietly thawed the hardness in her eyes, and she followed the figure ahead of her.
…
On the rooftop, Qingshui expertly picked up a pair of binoculars, adjusted the focus, and swept them across the surrounding landscape.
The wooded hills, the rice paddies, and, on another rooftop nearby, Chu Jingchu’s face grinning mischievously straight at her.
Expressionless, Qingshui moved the binoculars away.
Nothing unusual.
She silently lowered the binoculars, then began another sweep.
Beside her, Wen Lianfeng was also using binoculars, but she observed their surroundings differently from Qingshui.
Qingshui scanned broad swaths of land to assess the general situation. Wen Lianfeng, meanwhile, focused on the easily overlooked details.
Without turning her head, she asked calmly, “How much of what the Director said earlier do you think we can trust?”
Qingshui paused. After thinking for a moment, she replied, “Seventy percent.”
“Why?”
“Just a guess.”
Wen Lianfeng seemed amused by her answer. “All right.”
Only after confirming there was nothing unusual in the vicinity did she lower her binoculars.
“About that air-raid shelter base,” she began, her voice turning serious, “I have a bad feeling about it.”
Qingshui looked at her.
“If there were infected soldiers, they would definitely have searched that place. And if…” She trailed off, but her meaning was already clear.
Qingshui thought for a moment. “Maybe… they’re strong enough to have defended it?”
Wen Lianfeng nodded without arguing. But then she asked another question.
“Do you think this place could hold out?”
Qingshui fell silent.
Her gaze slowly swept across their surroundings.
Aside from a few abandoned rice paddies in the distance, this place was practically in the middle of nowhere.
If it had taken many deaths to defend the Psychiatric Hospital when the apocalypse first broke out, then a month later, when the Madmen were scouring the world for humans, they should definitely have found this place.
The building was so large and conspicuous. How could it possibly have escaped the Madmen’s notice?
Yet it had held out.
Qingshui frowned.
“How did you learn about this shelter in the first place?”
She looked at Wen Lianfeng.
Given the Director’s personality, she didn’t seem like someone who would willingly spread word of it.
Wen Lianfeng gazed at the hazy gray sky in the distance. After a moment of silence, she softly answered, “An online friend. She told me.”
“A friend I happened to meet online.” Her tone shifted subtly. “She… is a patient here.”
A patient.
Qingshui froze for a moment.
She thought back. So far, apart from the few of them, no one here seemed especially close to Wen Lianfeng. That supposed “online friend” had never appeared.
Maybe she was already dead.
“Her name is Bai Mingyi.” Wen Lianfeng’s voice was soft, as if reminiscing. “She said she’s been locked up here since middle school.”
Wind blew from afar, carrying the scent of the wilderness.
“She herself doesn’t even know if she’s sick.” Wen Lianfeng’s lips curled slightly, but the smile held no warmth. “At first, I just treated her like a kid starved for affection and a bit neurotic. And then…”
She paused.
“Later I realized, she really is very…”
She frowned, as if searching for the right word.
“Psychic?”
Qingshui said nothing, just listened quietly.
“At first, I didn’t tell her my true identity,” Wen Lianfeng continued. “I just kept her company, chatted with her, and listened to her ramble about all sorts of nonsense. Until one time-”
Her gaze grew distant.
“She named the perpetrator of a major case. A serial murder case, unsolved for three years, with no leads.”
“I actually had a brain fart and looked into what she said.”
She looked at Qingshui.
“And then, the killer really was exactly who she said.”
Qingshui’s breath caught slightly.
“Later I asked her how she knew,” Wen Lianfeng’s tone was calm, but beneath that calm, something was stirring. “Guess what she said?”
Qingshui looked at her.
“She said, ‘I dreamed it.'”
Wen Lianfeng laughed and shook her head, a hint of indescribable complexity in that smile.
“As an atheist, my first reaction was to privately investigate her background. It really checked out. A poor kid. Her parents, former teachers, classmates all said she was neurotic, always talking nonsense, and nobody believed her.”
“Things like this aren’t unheard of. Some cases are solved through, you know, supernatural stuff like dream revelations,” Wen Lianfeng’s voice became a bit ethereal. “But I still felt something was off, though there was nothing I could do. After all, in ordinary people’s eyes, she was just a mental patient.”
“After that, I still chatted with her often. Her words were sometimes disjointed, and some of her dreams… I kept them in mind.”
She paused for a moment.
“She said-”
The wind suddenly picked up, making their clothes flap noisily.
“Everyone will die.”
Qingshui’s pupils contracted slightly.
“The end of the world… a sea of crimson… chaos… despair…”
Wen Lianfeng frowned, as if struggling to recall and piece together those disjointed words.
“Also,” she looked at Qingshui, something in that gaze making Qingshui’s heart suddenly pound.
“The earth will split open.”
Earth. Split open.
Qingshui’s breath, in that instant, completely stopped.
Her heart started pounding violently. Thump. Thump. Thump. Each beat like a heavy hammer slamming inside her chest.
She didn’t know why those words would make her react this way. They sounded so absurd, so unbelievable, so much like the ravings of a madwoman.
But her body just, just couldn’t stop trembling.
It was as if something in her mind was surging, struggling to break through some barrier. But the barrier was too thick, too deep, and those things only rammed against it a few times before sinking back down.
Only her heartbeat remained, and those words.
The earth will split open.
Wen Lianfeng didn’t notice Qingshui’s abnormality. She just kept talking, lost in her memories.
“She was often put in solitary. I don’t know how she managed to contact me every time.” Her voice was very soft. “Later, we lost contact for a while. I was worried about her, but couldn’t get away. I just had someone check on her situation.”
“She seemed to have started rejecting all electronic devices. She just locked herself in her room and refused to see anyone.” Wen Lianfeng’s frown deepened. “At the time, the nurse in charge told me she was even afraid of cameras.”
Qingshui heard her own voice, a bit hoarse: “Afraid of cameras?”
“Afraid. So afraid she’d wrap herself in her blanket and tremble.” Wen Lianfeng said. “She said there were eyes behind those cameras, things watching her.”
Silence. The wind kept blowing.
“Just when I’d finally managed to get a leave and was about to go see her,” Wen Lianfeng’s voice suddenly cut off.
She gazed at the distant gray-white sky, silent for a long, long time.
Then she spoke softly:
“The apocalypse broke out.”
Qingshui said nothing.
“And I also received another message from her.”
Wen Lianfeng turned her head and looked at Qingshui.
“She said-”
“I’m not crazy.”