This is machine translated and all copyrights belong to the author. Please note that the translator might take creative liberties for better readability. Thank you for reading.
Quieter than a cat, less trouble than a potted plant.
“Damn it!” Lu Zhao slammed the steering wheel fiercely. He had been driving smoothly on his way to Jian Hua’s house when, in a moment of distraction, his car flipped over, accompanied by screams.
Anyone else would have been too shocked to react, but Lu Zhao quickly realized the truth: he had missed an opportunity to enter the abandoned world.
Unbuckling his seatbelt, he noticed the front of his car was slightly deformed as if struck by something, and the doors wouldn’t open. He struggled to move to the passenger seat and crawled out through the broken window.
The scene outside stunned him. Buildings and shops on both sides of the road were damaged to varying degrees, with signs and billboards lying scattered on the ground. It looked like the aftermath of a tornado, with uprooted decorative trees and branches strewn everywhere.
People were running in panic, some were trapped in cars, crying for help.
Lu Ruo’s gaze fell on a car thrown against a ginkgo tree, the large hole in its windshield revealing the terrified faces inside.
“Could it be?”
Lu Ruo’s face turned pale as he ran forward and saw a shallow, charred crater in the middle of the road. The irregular shape of the crater confirmed his suspicion.
“…A man-eating squid?”
He gasped and collapsed to the ground.
Creatures from the abandoned world, even if dead, wouldn’t appear in reality.
In the original story, ability users fought monsters with extensive experience and mastery of their abilities. According to the original timeline, monsters wouldn’t appear for several more months, so why was there already a squid?
Though not the most terrifying creature in the original story, the man-eating squid was one of the most voracious. Once it detected an ability user, it relentlessly pursued them to devour. Excellent at camouflage and ambush, many ability users fell victim to it early in the plot. Its sudden appearance in Huai City terrified Lu Zhao.
“Is it dead?” Lu Zhao circled the crater nervously.
A Ferrari, upside down and barely recognizable, lay nearby.
In his twenty-plus years here, he had made a lot of money through various channels. He had considered buying a sports car to enjoy the thrill but decided against it to stay low-key. The car before him resembled the model he had seen at a show in Hongcheng last year, with a price tag in the eight digits, not something ordinary people would drive.
“Could it be Li Fei?”
Lu Zhao looked up at a shopping mall nearby and rushed inside.
From the seventh-floor restaurant, with its clear tempered glass windows, he could see police cars cordoning off four streets near Ginkgo Avenue.
“The battlefield is quite extensive,” Lu Zhao muttered to himself, imagining the scene of Li Fei in a high-speed chase with the man-eating squid in hot pursuit. He shuddered.
Only Li Fei, with his magic eyes, could escape such a fate.
“The fight seems to have ended here, and Li Fei is nowhere to be seen. It looks like—-” Lu Zhao’s eyes shifted, contemplating the feasibility of selling the news about the famous actor’s possibly wrecked Ferrari on Ginkgo Avenue to a tabloid.
Unless Li Fei didn’t claim insurance and bought another identical Ferrari, evidence would eventually leak.
The more conspicuous Li Fei was, the safer Jian Hua would be in the shadows.
***
“What is this nonsense? Who did this, idiot! How could they let this happen?”
Red-haired Jack cursed and frantically browsed web pages, hurriedly emailing his American counterparts. With most ability users still unawakened, the appearance of monsters in the abandoned world was an absolute disaster.
Jack refreshed the page again, only to find that several Weibo posts with on-site photos had been deleted.
“Shit, lucky I saved them in time!” he muttered, enlarging the photos to study the marks on the car and the hole in the window glass. Annoyed, he slapped the bed. This was definitely the work of a man-eating squid!
He couldn’t stay in China any longer.
Jack’s fingers trembled as he booked a flight, but his sudden movement aggravated his injury, causing him to howl in pain, drawing strange looks from everyone in the hospital ward.
This red-haired foreigner was in the hospital for an embarrassing injury.
Nosy individuals had tried to inquire, but the nurses, maintaining patient confidentiality, only laughed behind closed doors at the “hit by a durian” description in his medical record.
“Bed 2, time for your dressing change!” a nurse entered with a tray.
“I’m checking out!” Jack insisted, sweating profusely.
“You can’t leave yet, your wound hasn’t healed. We’re not responsible if you leave now!” The nurse, fearing Jack wouldn’t understand, spoke slowly and added several “NOs.”
What’s more important, his “happiness” for the rest of his life or his life itself?
Reason told Jack to choose the latter, but he didn’t want to give up the former.
“I want to see my doctor, to discuss my condition!”
His loud demands reached the hallway, where two serious-looking police officers looked up.
“No, nothing unusual in our ward,” the on-duty nurse was talking to them.
Patients’ relatives coming out of the hot water room gossiped, “There’s a problem on the fourteenth floor! A light fixture fell suddenly, and no one saw how it hit the ground.”
“The walls in the hallway are all blackened. Is it haunted?”
“I saw a car with military plates on the first floor!”
“Where?”
People crowded to the window of the ward, seeing two ambulances outside. People in military uniforms moved stretchers into the vehicles, accompanied by a nurse holding an IV bag, obviously not from the hospital, judging by the dark green trim on her hat.
“Hey, wait!” Assistant Lin rushed out of the hospital building, shouting frantically, “What are you doing, taking our company’s people away?” He had just gone to pay a fee and returned to find the ward empty.
Assistant Lin was stopped before reaching the cars but recognized one of the officers.
The young man in military uniform spoke sternly, “Geng Tian’s wound has become infected, showing unknown bacteria in the blood tests. We have several other patients with similar conditions, all transferred to Haicheng Military Hospital for treatment.”
“Is it contagious?” Assistant Lin asked instinctively.
“Don’t know yet, they need to be quarantined for observation. We’ll keep you updated!”
While they spoke, the cars started moving. The military officer put on his mask, got into the car, and the ambulance sped away, dusting Assistant Lin’s face with dirt.
Regaining his composure, Assistant Lin anxiously pulled out his phone to call Li Fei and report the situation.
The phone rang several times before it was finally answered.
“Dean! Red Dragon took Geng Tian away from the hospital!” Assistant Lin urgently recounted the situation and then asked, “Where are you? Why weren’t you on the fourteenth floor? And what about Jian Hua?”
“…”
Li Fei sleepily accepted the cup of lightly salted water passed to him by Jian Hua.
Geng Tian, oh right! Li Fei suddenly remembered, realizing that the attack by the rainforest squid while leaving the hospital had happened two and a half days ago.
Jian Hua hadn’t eaten anything, leaving Li Fei to consume the stored food. Now, aside from his protesting stomach, Li Fei felt energetic, having slept soundly on Jian Hua’s sofa.
This kind of eating and sleeping routine, interspersed with groggy bathroom breaks, was quite enjoyable.
Li Fei was a sound sleeper, neither snoring nor talking in his sleep, always covered up to his chin. If not for Li Fei curled up on the sofa, Jian Hua would hardly notice there was someone else in the house.
Jian Hua’s impression of the movie star was someone always in the limelight, a film killer, so high-profile that he never used the same vehicle twice for award ceremonies, often featured on the front page of entertainment news.
It was hard to imagine a movie star sleeping peacefully on a fabric sofa costing less than three thousand yuan for two days without a single complaint.
No one had ever stayed overnight at Jian Hua’s home.
His bedroom walls were covered in thin threads, making everything invisible. Jian Hua would not have lent his bedroom to anyone, as it was a private space within an already private home, let alone his bed.
There are just some things he couldn’t bear to share with others—-
Before Jian Hua could find a suitable excuse, Li Fei had already asked him for a blanket and fell asleep on the sofa without even using a pillow, quieter than a cat and less trouble than a potted plant.
Now, Jian Hua watched Li Fei get up, barefoot on the floor.
Despite his disheveled appearance, a lighting technician could easily turn Li Fei into a magazine cover of decadent and lazy charm.
Li Fei, while talking to Assistant Lin and messing with his tousled hair, said, “You said it was Red Dragon’s people, what can we do? Storm a military area to rescue someone?”
“But wait, Dean, where are you? Why does it sound like you just woke up?”
Li Fei covered the phone, cleared his throat, and then continued, his voice flawless: “You heard wrong, I’m not at the hospital. Go find a place to eat and rest, you’ve been busy all day. I have a little more to do here, and then we’ll head back to Haicheng.”
Before Assistant Lin could ask more, Li Fei hung up.
“What’s your plan for getting back to Haicheng?” Jian Hua asked, returning to the kitchen to wash the cup.
He hoped Assistant Lin wouldn’t faint upon learning the Ferrari was wrecked.
“Don’t worry, I’ll tell him I lent the car to a friend.”
“And changed clothes too?”
What kind of friend would Assistant Lin think it was?
“Uh!” Li Fei prepared to go out and buy some decent clothes, but that wouldn’t change the fact that his clothes were missing.
“Tell him the truth. You were driving down Ginkgo Avenue and—-” Jian Hua turned on the TV with the remote, and the local news channel was broadcasting a live emergency report.
“Is there a squid?”
This was the primary concern for both. The camera panned over injured people and the chaotic scene on the streets. There was no image of a monster lying in city ruins like the ending of an American Godzilla movie.
Jian Hua breathed a sigh of relief: “That’s good.”
“Not really. If there was a monster, it would be blamed as the culprit, diverting attention.” Li Fei rubbed his head, which felt numb from too much sleep. “Red Dragon’s people will be coming for a talk soon. Let’s take this chance to get something to eat.”
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Last Update: December 20, 2023 at 6:53 AM
This is machine translated and all copyrights belong to the author. Please note that the translator might take creative liberties for better readability. Thank you for reading.
Thank you! Great job as always!
Thanks for all your hard work
If no monster bodies appeared before, why now? What changed? Was it Jian Hua’s powers?
Of course not. If it’s his powers, then, in the original novel, the monster might come in from the very first time he got his ability. Most likely, it’s the transmigrated people’s fault, again. 1, they changed the plot. 2, their transmigration probably opened or quickened the opening of the worlds (basically facilitating the transfer much quickly and effectively/ flawlessly). Just like a can. If someone already damaged it, then you won’t need to use energy and time to open a hole on it no? Well, it’s on a much bigger context, but it most likely operated like this.
Lolololololllllll
Lu zhaooo !!!!!. So dedicated to Jian hua but so unfortunate XD
It’s the uncomfortable type of dedicated though. It’s like someone providing everything for you just so he’d be able to sold you with a high price. All the while putting on a good person mask, being persistent, and with bad acting. Knowing someone being fake yet having to put up with them and can’t throw them off/ avoids them is basically torture. In other words, that dedication makes it all the more unpleasant (remember when MC got scolded by his parents just for looking at him & doing nothing?)
so far, i still don’t like lu zhao lol
Thanks for the chap!
“3,000 dollar fabric”
Probably should be changed to 3,000 renminbi or yuan, because $3000 is expensive!
Thanks for the chapter~ (～￣▽￣)～