Chapter 123

Chapter 123

“I’m sick.”

Chu Jingchu’s muffled voice came from the pillow.

She lay facedown on the bed with her face buried in the covers, both hands clutching at her hair. She had folded in on herself like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, every inch of her posture radiating utter despair.

“Actually, I’m the one who’s sick,” she mumbled even more indistinctly. “Yeah, all of this must be in my head. The Madmen, the apocalypse, the prophetic dream…”

She abruptly raised her head. Her face was flushed from being pressed against the pillow, her hair stuck out in every direction, and her eyes were wide.

“None of this is scientific at all!”

Wen Lianfeng leaned against the headboard and stared at her expressionlessly.

“And the Madmen are scientific?”

Chu Jingchu froze.

Wen Lianfeng continued in a tone as calm as if she were discussing the weather. “What about that Progenitor from before, and that C…”

She paused. Qingshui expressionlessly supplied, “CF.”

“Right, CF.” Wen Lianfeng nodded. “Weren’t you the one who suggested all that? A game world, the Spawn Point, infection by the Progenitor. Is any of that scientific?”

Chu Jingchu opened her mouth, then closed it again. Helplessly, she flopped back onto the bed and mumbled into the pillow, “But… I was just guessing wildly.”

She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, her tone turning a little more serious. “Didn’t you also say later that this isn’t a game, Sister Wen? That it’s reality?”

The room fell silent for several seconds. Then Chu Jingchu suddenly sat up, frowning.

“Actually…”

She looked at Wen Lianfeng and Qingshui, speaking more slowly now.

“I’ve had a prophetic dream before.”

Qingshui and Wen Lianfeng both straightened slightly.

“And I don’t think I’m the only one. Some people around me have had them too,” Chu Jingchu continued, an indescribable note in her voice. “It happened when I was probably a sophomore in college.”

“Once, I dreamed that a vase fell from the roof of a building. I tried to dodge it, but I fell down a slope and broke a bone.”

“After I woke up, I spent the next few days constantly watching overhead and paying close attention to anywhere something might fall from.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “Nothing happened, so I gradually let my guard down.”

“Then, a month later, I was on my way to get a replacement ID card. I was walking down a perfectly ordinary street when, for some reason, I suddenly looked up.”

“And I saw a vase falling straight toward me.”

Chu Jingchu’s voice was soft, but every word was crystal clear. “I ran forward to dodge the vase.”

“But there was a puddle right there, and I ended up tumbling down a slope.” She smiled, her expression complicated. “Just like that, I earned myself a month-long vacation with a broken bone.”

“As I lay on the ground, I watched the people gathering around me and listened to them talk. Their words, their expressions, even where each person was standing…” She looked at Wen Lianfeng and Qingshui. “I’d already heard and seen all of it in my dream.”

Silence descended over the room.

A long while passed before Chu Jingchu spoke again.

“You know how the saying goes: at the end of science lies the supernatural.”

She shrugged. “I’m an atheist, but there really are many things in this world that… can’t be explained.”

“Maybe your friend really did just happen to have… a prophetic dream.”

Wen Lianfeng did not answer immediately. She remained silent for several seconds before nodding.

“All right. Let’s set aside why she had that dream for now.”

She looked at Chu Jingchu and Qingshui, her gaze sharpening.

“I’m more concerned about what she said.”

“Chaos and despair represent the present.”

“Scarlet refers to the Madmen.”

“Then what does it mean that the earth will split open?”

Chu Jingchu tilted her head.

“Exactly what it sounds like?”

She held her hands together as though grasping an invisible sphere, then abruptly spread them apart while supplying her own sound effects. “Crack, crack, boom!”

“The earth explodes, and every human dies.”

She looked at Wen Lianfeng with an innocent expression. “Something like that.”

Wen Lianfeng said nothing. She merely stared at Chu Jingchu, her expression difficult to describe.

Chu Jingchu sheepishly lowered her hands and cleared her throat. “I was just throwing it out there…”

“No.”

The sudden voice made Wen Lianfeng and Chu Jingchu turn toward Qingshui at the same time.

The girl who had remained silent all this time now had her head slightly bowed, her lashes casting shadows beneath her eyes.

“It’s an earthquake,” she said.

Wen Lianfeng’s brows drew together slightly.

Qingshui did not look at either of them. She only stared at the hands resting on her knees, at the knuckles that had turned faintly white from how tightly she was clenching them.

Something churned in her mind.

She remembered an offhand remark Ji Feifan had once made.

“Maybe those Madmen crawled out of the ground.”

Perhaps the reason they had been besieged by zombies for more than twenty years in her previous life was that… those zombies had come from underground, emerging without end, like the Spawn Point Chu Jingchu had described…

The cracking sound she had once heard. Song Yunting’s urgency when he told her to leave. The prophecy from Wen Lianfeng’s friend.

They all pointed to the same truth.

The earth really was going to split open.

Or rather, it was already splitting open.