Chapter 26

However, the residents had all seen the midday news, and news about the abnormal plants was spreading like wildfire online—so even though they wanted to go out, they didn't quite dare.

Police officers in the distance noticed the crowd gathering and hurried over. A few people slipped away from the community before the officers arrived.

"Going out is not recommended for now! Everyone, stay calm!"

The city wasn't completely sealed off, but dozens of casualties from aberrant plants had already occurred today alone. Now the streets were patrolled by officers dispatched to maintain safety—the entire city was effectively under semi-lockdown.

"How can we stay calm? The temperature's hit forty-three degrees! How are we supposed to survive without air conditioning?!" one person said heatedly.

"It's not even about the air conditioning," another complained. "The heat we can endure, but no water to cook with, no water to wash vegetables, no water to drink—can we endure that? Either you send us supplies, or what?"

"Exactly! We barely have any food at home either. We can't last more than a few days. What are we supposed to do—starve to death?! Our phones are dead too! We'd die in our homes and nobody would even know! Might as well go out somewhere with power and water, find some food—maybe we'll get lucky and avoid those plants."

The crowd grew more and more agitated, their voices rising.

"Everyone, calm down!" the officer repeated, nearly crushing his walkie-talkie in his grip.

He didn't know much more than they did, and couldn't answer their questions. But he knew there were dozens of seething civilians in this community, and if he didn't stop them, it could jeopardize the work of the Biosecurity Prevention and Control Command.

"Please cooperate with us," "The government will guarantee everyone's needs," "Hold on a little longer—things will get better."

He repeated these phrases over and over, but nobody wanted to hear it. A few people had already started rolling up their sleeves, trying to shove past the two officers.

Just as the situation was about to boil over, a siren wailed in the distance, rapidly approaching. A contingent of special police in tactical gear filed out of the vehicles in an orderly manner, dragging along a few people who had tried to escape moments earlier. The crowd in the community immediately quieted down.

"Everyone, listen to me," the lead officer said, looking exhausted and speaking at a rapid clip. "It's not just our community without power and water—almost the entire city has lost power and water, except for a few areas."

The residents exchanged horrified looks. Only then did they notice that the hotel across the street had no lights on either. It was seven in the evening, the sky dimming, yet the streetlights remained dark.

"Then what do we do..." someone said helplessly. A few people in the crowd began to sob.

"We understand your concerns, so please rest assured," the officer said, his steady voice like a soothing balm to their frantic hearts. "We are coordinating supplies right now. Water and provisions will be delivered to every household soon. Please trust the government, stay home, and don't go out and interfere with the Command's work!"

"How long until delivery?!"

"Thank you! Thank you! We're so grateful!"

"Can we request specific items? My kid's almost out of formula."

The crowd buzzed with questions, but their emotions had finally settled.

"Here's what we'll do—elect a community committee. Consolidate everyone's needs and have the team leader relay them. When supplies arrive, they'll handle distribution as well." The officer knocked on the gate railing. "Alright, everyone head home. Plant-clearing operations haven't reached this area yet, so try not to go out. You've got plenty of plants in your community, and the risk is high!"

The crowd nodded eagerly, offering apologies and thanks as they dispersed back to their homes.

Throughout the exchange, the officer's walkie-talkie never stopped buzzing. After dealing with the community, he immediately called his team back to the vehicle and rushed off to the next location.

Lin Tu pulled the curtains closed. Would this even work? Could the government really bring the disaster under control?

—Lin Tu didn't know. But she had a gut feeling that another wave of chaos wouldn't be long in coming.

The next day, government personnel did indeed deliver supplies to every community. As a member of the community, Lin Tu received her share too—

An aside: presumably a special feature of [Anju], no one in the community questioned why Lin Tu had suddenly appeared. They seemed to passively overlook the issue, treating it as natural that she had always been the owner of Units 101 and 201 in her building, just someone who'd recently returned from out of town.

Supplies were distributed per household. As the owner of two units, Lin Tu could have claimed two portions, but to avoid complications—and since she didn't lack supplies anyway—she only took one.

The supply package wasn't much: a 5L bottle of mineral water per household, seven or eight large loaves of bread or five or six self-heating rice or hotpot meals, one tomato or half a head of lettuce, and a serving of ready-to-eat meat. Lin Tu got a braised pork trotter.

When picking up her supplies, Lin Tu didn't open the door. She claimed she was sick and afraid of contagion, then lowered a rope from the second floor to haul the package up.

The committee member distributing supplies kindly asked if she needed any medicine, saying he could report it to the government. Lin Tu shook her head and thanked him, and that was that.

After receiving her supplies, Lin Tu lounged comfortably on her cooling water mat, doodling and sketching while tearing into the pork trotter.

Xiao Huang eagerly came over, and Lin Tu grabbed some dried meat from the snack shelf for him. Together, human and dog enjoyed their meal.

Over the next few days, supplies were delivered every other day, but the quantities grew increasingly erratic. Sometimes there were no vegetables; sometimes there wasn't even enough bread for one person.

The city's residents were isolated on separate islands, cut off from outside news, left to wait anxiously for the government to announce the end of the disaster.

In the meantime, members of the Biosecurity Prevention and Control Command, wearing full protective suits, finally came and pulled up every plant inside and around the community by roots and stems.

For a moment, the community looked barren and strange, but the sense of safety was overwhelming—people gradually grew optimistic. Even if supplies were scarce, as long as they held out, this inexplicable plant mutation disaster would soon end.

The only unbearable part was that power and water still hadn't returned—and now the gas was cut off too. They used to be able to heat up their bread, but now they had to choke down cold, hard loaves.

Then, on the twenty-first day, the long-awaited supply deliverer never showed up.

The sky dimmed. A night passed, then another day. Still, no supplies arrived.

"What's going on?!" The long-quiet community erupted in noise again.

People gathered once more in the courtyard below, but this time, there were no police patrols outside, and no officers appeared.

Under the scorching light of the setting sun, the bare street looked desolate.

"I..." A man was about to climb the gate to peer outside when he felt a sharp sting on his hand.

He let out a cry and yanked his hand back, revealing bead-sized drops of blood welling up from his skin.

"What?!"

"What's happening?!"

Then they saw it—hair-thin vines clinging to the railing, writhing like tiny worms as they lunged at the man. It wasn't until those black, grotesque vines peeled away from the railing that anyone noticed the metal had already been corroded into a pitted, pockmarked mess.

"Save me!" The vines moved fast. In the blink of an eye, the man was bound against the gate.

The crowd watched in horror as the hair-thin vines burrowed into his forearm, his upper arm, even his shoulder blade. In an instant, his healthy skin turned pale and sickly.

"Damn it!" A burly man cursed and rushed forward, grabbing the victim's collar and trying to yank him free from the railing.

But everything happened too fast—the man was already firmly lashed to the gate, and even the burly man couldn't pull him loose.

"Watch out!" someone behind shouted a warning.

The burly man stumbled back just in time. A vine had snaked toward him without warning.

The vine was dotted with tiny black granules. When it extended too far from the railing and couldn't overcome gravity, those granules dropped to the ground and sprouted new vines at astonishing speed. These supporting vines propped up the thickest one at the top, which continued lunging at the man.

Plants growing legs—before now, nobody would have believed it. Now, they did.

"It's dodder?!"

"Run! Run!"

The crowd staggered backward. One man tripped in his panic; the burly man grabbed him and hoisted him up—

"Thanks, Brother Zhao Chong..." his voice trembled, close to tears.

"It's nothing, Brother Li. Move!"

Brother Li—one of the committee members who distributed supplies—ran alongside Zhao Chong, casting a despairing glance behind him, praying for police to appear. But all he saw was a swarm of Medusa-like black vines whipping through the air, and a twisted, motionless figure lashed to the gate.

The crowd scattered in all directions. From the second floor, Lin Tu watched it all clearly.

She didn't know if those vines were actually dodder, but she noticed that as soon as the crowd was far enough away, the vines stopped reproducing and retracted back to the railing. Their sensing range was probably limited... just like zombies, Lin Tu thought.

As for why the police hadn't shown up, Lin Tu had a rough idea.

After discovering the usefulness of a radio in the last disaster, she'd kept one at home and regularly picked up useful information.

A few days ago, the government had broadcast a message over the radio: "Due to the southwest monsoon intensifying from level 3 to level 4-5, a large number of dandelion and willow catkin seeds are expected to drift toward the city. The government is marshaling forces to attempt to intercept these dandelion seeds." Lin Tu had been waiting for updates, but instead, the radio went silent, and the supply deliverers vanished.

In the past two days, occasional civilian transmissions crackled over the radio. Some said the government mission had failed and people had fled with supplies; others said to hold on a little longer. In any case, more and more people were venturing out to find supplies on their own, and some were preparing to drive the seventy-plus kilometers south to Nanhai Lake, which supposedly had abundant water, fewer mutated plants, and drinkable water.

None of that concerned Lin Tu, though.

Outside, the sun blazed; inside, Lin Tu spent every day lounging in her air-conditioned room.

She hadn't forgotten to exercise, of course—it was just too hot outside, so she worked out indoors. She'd initially planned to continue her boxing drills with the heavy bag, but thanks to the boost card, her strength had increased so much that she punched straight through the bag...

After cleaning up the mess and cursing herself for it, Lin Tu switched to push-ups, weightlifting, pull-ups, and other exercises.

But with her newfound strength, working out intensely in a cramped ten-square-meter room left her feeling stifled—like she couldn't fully let loose. *Once I have the money, I'm getting a home gym*, Lin Tu silently resolved. For now, to avoid dying at the jaws of some plant, she'd have to make do with this.

After exercising, of course, came refueling—her favorite part of the day.

She'd stockpiled plenty of fresh meat in the freezer. In the four-square-meter space sat a custom shelf measuring 2m by 2m by 1.5m, leaving only a narrow gap for her to squeeze through.

On the shelves, the beef alone was a sight to behold: sixty 200g portions of blade steak, thirty portions of fattier ribeye, twenty tomahawk steaks and twenty boneless beef short ribs, plus a stack of forty boxes of beef roll slices. Pork and chicken were likewise preserved in every cut, along with four cases of salt-frozen prawns—over three hundred in total—and one case each of salmon, turbot, and large yellow croaker.

There were over twenty bags of frozen mixed peas, carrots, and corn, plus individually packaged frozen broccoli, bok choy, lettuce, radish, tomato, green beans, and more—one case of each. For fruit, there were half-cases of frozen pineapple chunks, mixed berries (strawberry, raspberry, blackberry), mango chunks, dragon fruit chunks, and peach chunks.

There were also quick-frozen convenience foods: dumplings, wontons, and siomai in varieties like corn-pork, shrimp, bok choy-pork, and chive-pork, plus bamboo shoot and other fillings—three or four packs of each, tailored to her tastes.

Lin Tu typically ate two meat dishes, one vegetable dish, and a serving of fruit per meal. Her kitchen was fully equipped—steaming, stir-frying, pan-frying, boiling, stewing, braising—she could do it all. Steamed dishes included steamed yellow croaker, garlic vermicelli steamed prawns, and cold-steamed eggplant; stir-fries were waxed pork belly with green beans, shredded pork in yuxiang sauce, and freshly picked peppers with meat. For the pan: pre-portioned steaks and fried eggs. For boiling and stewing: meat and fish soups, hotpot, braised chicken, red-braised pork.

Of course, in the spare moments before and after meals, Lin Tu rewarded her hard-working self with energy bars and chocolate bars in every flavor. And ice cream was a must—she'd stuffed quite a bit into the cramped freezer gap.

After the residents hung a bedsheet with "SOS" spray-painted on it from the rooftop of the building directly across from the community gate, they waited through another night. By the next morning, they finally realized: no one was coming to save them.

At eight in the morning, a knock came at Lin Tu's door.

"Do you have any extra supplies?" It was Li Tong, the committee member in charge of her building—the same one who'd asked if she needed medicine earlier.

"The mother in our community with a one-year-old child fainted from exhaustion and hunger. We figured her life isn't just hers—she's got a kid to care for—so we thought we'd ask around to see if anyone has spare food to help her."

His voice was hoarse, and no wonder—by his calculation, he'd eaten almost nothing in three days.

Lin Tu thought for a moment. The red bean bread the government had distributed wasn't her favorite flavor, so she hadn't touched a single slice. But pulling out all of it would be too conspicuous. She counted out a few portions of two slices per day and tossed them back onto the shelf, leaving herself two days' worth, then took the remaining seven or eight loaves.

"I've kept a few days' worth for myself. I've got seven or eight left. I'll lower them down with a rope." Lin Tu said softly.

"That's wonderful!" Li Tong was overjoyed. As the supply distributor, he knew best—seven or eight loaves was, by his calculation, the most Lin Tu could possibly spare.

"Thank you so much. Everyone in the community will be grateful to you!" Li Tong continued, "We're holding a community-wide meeting at two this afternoon. One representative from each household will attend to discuss next steps. Even though you're sick, I hope you can make it!"

Lin Tu nodded in agreement. She then used the rope to lower the bread from her window, letting it cool in the air before letting it down.

At two in the afternoon, Lin Tu put on a mask, slung her broadsword across her back, and raised a parasol against the sun as she made her way to the meeting point.

It was a residential unit, owned by none other than Zhao Chong. He'd knocked down the wall between the living room and kitchen, so the space could hold nearly a hundred people from the community.

Zhao Chong was already built strong from regular training. He'd been the one to rush in and save someone yesterday, and today he was providing his home as a meeting space—so as he stood in the crowd now, even the committee head just watched as people clustered around him.

"What are we going to do, Brother Zhao Chong?!" everyone clamored.

Seeing that most people had arrived, Zhao Chong finally gestured to another man, who brought out several steel pipes from the back room, with kitchen knives taped to the ends.

"We have to rely on ourselves! We need to take out that dodder at the gate!" Zhao Chong declared in a booming voice.

Around him, people stared in disbelief.

"This morning, our committee members went door to door—our community has run out of food!" Zhao Chong said. "But right past the gate, everyone knows there's a convenience store just to the right..."

"That's my store!" one of the residents protested.

"Your store?" someone sneered. "Then why don't you go get the food from it yourself? What good is complaining now?"

"Mind your own business! It's wrong to covet someone else's property!"

"Let Brother Zhao finish!"

"Don't worry," Zhao Chong said. "If it's your store, we'll give you a bigger share of the supplies we collect. What we need to worry about right now... is how to get those supplies!"

He swept his gaze across the crowd. "Let me be clear: going after that dodder is extremely dangerous, so we need as many people as possible. I promise here and now—any family that contributes will get a larger share during distribution!"

"And those who don't contribute?" someone asked.

"They get less, obviously." Zhao Chong said.

The door to Zhao Chong's home was wide open. The moment he finished speaking, a few people quietly slipped out. These were clearly the ones who still had stockpiles at home—they'd only come to see if there was something to gain. Seeing Zhao Chong trying to round up volunteers, they scurried off before they could be caught.

Following their lead, another dozen or so people peeled away. Watching their backs, a shadow of gloom crossed Li Tong's eyes.

Zhao Chong, however, was unfazed: "Those people won't get a single share of the supplies, rest assured. Now, please sign up enthusiastically—the more the merrier. Strength in numbers. Will a few committee members please record which building and unit each volunteer is from?"

Few people stepped forward immediately—but Lin Tu was one of them. Having an aberrant plant lurking near her home was inconvenient for coming and going, so she'd decided to take the chance to eliminate it.

At the same time, a gaunt, lanky young man took his place beside her.

His hair was a mess of black, jagged bangs that nearly covered his eyes. Beneath them, his face was pale, his features deep-set but still boyish. Those large eyes, hidden behind the hair, never looked directly at anyone—they were heavy with gloom.

People around them couldn't help but laugh. Lin Tu turned to look and realized that among all the sturdy men, only she and this youth looked like a pair of helpless orphans.

Lin Tu: *I could pick each of you up with one hand, you know.*

She adjusted her glasses and stepped aside. The youth followed, standing beside her.

Perhaps inspired by Lin Tu and the boy, more people began to sign up after that. Out of ninety-four households, twenty-one signed up. From a certain angle, that was already quite a lot.

There was no time to waste on the dodder—if they waited two more days, they might not even have the strength to lift their steel pipes.

So, at Zhao Chong's call, they decided to strike immediately.

"Wait," Lin Tu suddenly said, looking at the group of people armed with steel pipes scavenged from the community's discarded building materials. "Do you even know how to kill it?"

The crowd stared at her blankly.

They had no knowledge whatsoever of mutated plants, so none of them had any idea how to "kill" one.

"What, you think you know?" A man sneered, annoyed that she'd interrupted their departure. "You're a girl—don't go spouting off and trying to give orders. Be grateful you get to tag along and earn some extra rations. How to kill it? We've got numbers. We'll beat it, smash it—it'll die no matter what."

Lin Tu rubbed her brow. It was scorching outside, and she wanted to kill the plant at the gate and get back to her air conditioning as fast as possible—she didn't have time to waste on these people.

So she snatched the steel pipe from the man beside her, raised her leg, and with a creak, bent the pipe in half with ease.

The crowd fell utterly silent before the bent pipe.

"Hey! Aren't you that..." Suddenly, someone in the crowd had a revelation. He pointed at Lin Tu, then looked at what she had slung across her back, and his eyes lit up. "You're that girl who cut down that mutated shrub on Nantian Road with one swing of your blade, aren't you!"

Someone had filmed it while fleeing and posted it online, where it went viral. Because Lin Tu was well-trained, with a sleek figure and good looks, swinging her broadsword in wide, decisive arcs and taking down the shrub in one stroke—it made the burly Luo Yongzhi beside her look like he'd hardly contributed at all.

At the time, many people had analyzed it frame by frame and concluded it was staged or edited. There was no way anyone was that skilled. Even if Luo Yongzhi had been the protagonist, they wouldn't have believed it. They'd mocked the video's poster as some lunatic trying to profit off a disaster.

That man had shared the same opinion back then. Now... he'd met the real deal.

Lin Tu didn't deny it. She simply drew the meter-long broadsword from her back, confirming his suspicion.

"Hey, what about your five or six teammates?" the man hurriedly asked.

Lin Tu thought for a moment. Zhang Jie and the others...? She said flatly, "They're almost all dead." The man choked on his words.

She continued, "Listen to me. You all lure the dodder's vines away—spread them out as much as possible. I'll find its main stem and cut it down. Once it's severed, the rest of it won't be nearly as dangerous."

The crowd nodded eagerly.

With Lin Tu—a player—on their side, the group killed the dodder without a scratch on anyone. After collecting the dodder's roots and the soil attached to them, Lin Tu followed the group to the convenience store.

The store wasn't stocked with much, but to people who'd gone three days without food, even a single loaf of bread was a monumental gain.

The group suppressed their urge to eat on the spot, packed all the supplies into boxes, and headed back to the community.

Three or four shops down the same street, there was also a breakfast joint and a tobacco-and-liquor store (which also sold assorted snacks). One man started heading that way when Lin Tu stopped him just in time.

"Careful!" Lin Tu grabbed him, saving him from stepping on a dandelion that had drifted to the ground.

*Here it comes*, Lin Tu thought. The seemingly delicate dandelion was pitch black, its fine root trailing behind like a worm, crawling slowly across the ground. Sensing someone nearby, it desperately crawled toward the man.

"Holy shit!" The man nearly fell over in fright.

Finding no success, the dandelion changed direction and crawled toward a manhole cover by the roadside. When it reached the cover, its roots sank deep into the metal, and then, at a visible pace, it began to grow taller.

"What's it doing?" someone asked in fear.

"You don't know about dandelions?" someone else responded quickly. "It's absorbing iron from the metal so it can grow, bloom, and produce more dandelions."

"Then why was it crawling toward me earlier?"

The others looked at him with knowing smirks. The man's face went pale instantly.

"Let's not go that way," Zhao Chong said, frowning. These mutated plants gave him a prickling feeling on his skin. It wasn't just this dandelion—he had a sense there were more threats on this street. "Let's head back."

"You..." He was about to call the group away when he saw Lin Tu crouch down in front of the dandelion, pour a bottle of water over it.

"What are you doing?" Zhao Chong asked.

"Nothing." Lin Tu stood up. Beneath her feet, the dandelion had shriveled into a ball, somehow wilting. It could no longer cling to the metal, its roots going soft and limp against the ground.

Zhao Chong: "..." *How does she manage to make every terrifying aberrant plant look so pitiful?*

Back at the community, quite a few people had already come out to greet them. Before Zhao Chong could even speak, they swarmed forward, trying to pry open the boxes to see what was inside.

"What do you think you're doing?!" Zhao Chong snapped.

Li Tong—who, being thin and small, hadn't participated in killing the dodder—smiled ingratiatingly. "I'm here to help distribute the supplies."

"Heh." The group had just faced life-and-death danger and hadn't even had a sip of water since returning, and now people were already coveting what they'd risked their lives to bring back.

"Helping distribute," as if it were his place to allocate anything. Whoever went out and fought, whoever brought the stuff back—it was theirs. Not a single committee member had joined, yet they all thought they could still run the show.

Still, no one wanted to tear the veil entirely.

"Our own people haven't gotten their share yet!" One man reached in, grabbed a bottle of water, and gulped down half of it, making everyone else swallow hard—

*Why had they even bothered to hold back at the store and haul everything back like idiots?*

"Alright, that's one bottle deducted from your share," Zhao Chong said. "Those who went out and helped distribute first."

Earlier, while collecting supplies, they'd already estimated how much each person would get.

For example, water—they'd each expected two bottles. But now... The moment Zhao Chong gave the word, everyone stepped forward one by one, grabbing two bottles each and hugging them to their chests. Seeing there was still plenty left in the boxes, they exchanged glances, then went up and took two more each.

The sizable boxes were emptied in an instant.

"How can you do this!" someone in the crowd shrieked.

Then came the food.

Most of the filling food—bread, crackers, things like that—was handled the same way. People again took a little extra, and in no time, the food boxes were empty too, leaving only snacks like chips and spicy strips that wouldn't fill anyone up.

"You promised you'd distribute food to us!"

"Yeah! You can't go back on your word!"

"And that was my store!"

The crowd erupted. They'd never faced a mutated plant before, so of course they had no idea how terrifying they were. All they knew was that this group had gone out, come back without a single casualty, and now refused to share the loot.

Zhao Chong shot to his feet, brandishing his steel pipe menacingly, and bellowed, "If you've got the guts, go get your own!"

"Exactly..." one of the returning group chimed in, "It's not like we left you nothing. There's still some to divide up. You all stayed home doing nothing and still get this much—and you're not satisfied?"

"We're all from the same community, but we're not family. It's already generous of us to give you anything. Shouldn't you be thanking us?"

"The convenience store guy—we'll give you a bigger share later. Don't tell me you expect to take everything. Without us, you couldn't even get out that gate."

Their words had a sliver of logic, but they were also callous and self-serving. The others argued with righteous indignation, but in the end, the distribution method remained unchanged. Both sides stood their ground, and the meeting broke up in bad blood.

That evening, Zhao Chong came to Lin Tu's door.

Through the closed door, he asked, "I'm thinking of leaving this place. Do you want to come with us?"

"Where to?"

"Haven't decided yet. The thought just came to me..." Zhao Chong's voice was low. "I never realized people could be so selfish. Maybe it's the end of the world, but I don't want to stay in this community playing the fool for everyone."

Lin Tu considered it. "Then I'd suggest heading south, to Nanhai Lake. It has plenty of water, and it's the safest place I know of right now."

"Really?" Zhao Chong's voice lifted. "Then will you come with us?"

"No." Lin Tu said firmly. Why would she go to Nanhai Lake when she had perfectly good air conditioning? To take a swim in forty-degree heat?

"Why not?" Zhao Chong said, sounding a bit disappointed. "Don't you think the people in our community are too selfish?"

Lin Tu's voice came through the door: "Is there anyone who isn't selfish?"

"True enough. I'm selfish too—but this is what I earned with my life. It's my right to be selfish." Zhao Chong sighed and walked away from Lin Tu's door.

The next morning, he took yesterday's group out to the bus terminal two streets away and drove back a city bus. They got lucky—of the twenty-one who went out, eighteen came back. They loaded the bus with their families and departed at dawn, heading south.

Li Tong tried to stop them, but failed.

They would have to find their own way now.