The piercing wail of the alarm continued to shriek inside Happy Cabin Unit 36, the red and blue warning lights flashing wildly through the frosted glass across seven faces. Han Che's grip on the fire hydrant valve was deathly tight, the cold numerical probability of "37.8%" echoing endlessly in his mind. Outside the door, the thud of military boots and the ultimatum crashed down like a hammer.
At the very moment the door was about to break open—
Boom!
A deafening roar, like the pulse of the earth's core, erupted suddenly. The entire cabin shook violently. The floor undulated like ocean waves, carts toppled over, and the alarm cut out intermittently, as if gasping its last breath.
Inside Unit 36, time froze. Seven pairs of eyes simultaneously turned toward the southwest—the edge of Wangjiawa Urban Village.
On the outskirts of Wangjiawa Urban Village, this forgotten wasteland had become a cemetery for medical waste. Black garbage bags piled up like mountains, emblazoned with the glaring yellow label "Anning Virus Medical Waste," exuding a pungent stench of mixed disinfectant and rot in the wind.
That early morning, Old Man Wang, who made a living by scavenging, froze in shock at the sight before him.
Covering the garbage mountain was a thick layer of dark crimson substance. It was like half-frozen congealed blood, or living moss, rising and falling slowly like the chest of a sleeping behemoth, breathing. Even more terrifying, he watched the edge of this dark red "carpet" silently devour a protective suit, melting it away like strong acid eating through metal.
"Ghosts! The garbage mountain has awakened!" Old Man Wang fled in terror, screaming, "The garbage mountain is alive!"
The pandemic panic had barely faded, and a new terror spread like wildfire.
WeChat groups and short-video platforms were flooded with chilling footage. In the distance, a huge, terrifyingly dark red "swamp" had covered the entire garbage dump, steadily "flowing" toward the urban village. It swallowed a tricycle loaded with plastic bottles, wrapping around it like thick syrup coating a cookie, and vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye.
"It's crawling to the edge of the tin shed! The shed's smoking! It's collapsing!"
Panorge triggered chaos.
Supermarkets were emptied overnight, alleys clogged with fleeing traffic, and wild rumors spread like wildfire. The authorities responded swiftly: military trucks roared into the periphery, soldiers set up cordons, spraying disinfectant frantically through gas masks.
Yet the enormous dark crimson entity ignored everything. The footage from military drones was even more terrifying—up close, the surface of the "carpet" pulsed with bulging nodules, dark golden light flowing inside, crisscrossed by a network of "blood vessels" that pulsed with eerie glowing viscous liquid.
It devoured everything: a floral shirt was licked, instantly charred and melted; a stray dog was touched by the mucus, its entire leg dissolving and collapsing, soon consumed completely.
It resisted attacks: bullets pierced the bulges, and the holes closed in an instant; after being burned by flames, the surrounding mucus surged back to cover the wound, healing completely within minutes.
It even "spit" mucus: a huge bulge split open, spewing forth fluorescent green mucus that turned a pile of furniture into a pool of stinking liquid within ten seconds, only to be absorbed by the microbial mat.
"It can't be killed by guns! Fire can't kill it! It's coming!" The crowd collapsed completely, their wails and screams crashing against the human wall of soldiers.
Deep inside the abandoned air-raid shelter in the suburbs, now converted into a high-level isolation laboratory, experts stared through reinforced glass at a fist-sized dark red sample on the lab bench—taken from the edge of the microbial mat on a risky expedition.
"Its structure is uncanny," a virologist said, his voice parched. "The basic building blocks are indeed mutated Anning Viruses—the same ones causing this outbreak—but they've formed unprecedented organization. These viral coats are not only exceptionally robust but, more shockingly, seem to autonomously harness inorganic matter in the environment—sand grains, metal oxides, and glass shards—to construct silicate composite structures with life-like properties."
A materials scientist added: "This layer of 'living stone' has self-repair and proliferation capabilities. Its crystal structure adapts and changes in response to external stimuli, like possessing a collective intelligence."
"Its energy acquisition defies our understanding," a biophysicist chimed in. "Besides efficiently decomposing and absorbing matter to obtain chemical energy, its internal photonic crystal structure can capture and convert electromagnetic waves across a wide wavelength range—from visible light to radio waves. It can even harness geothermal gradients. This is an extremely efficient, hybrid energy source form of transcendent life."
"What's the mechanism behind that low, rumbling hum, like the earth thrumming?" an acoustician asked.
"It could be a superposition of multiple mechanisms," the senior expert replied. "But the most disturbing hypothesis is that it may be a form of communication we cannot comprehend—one that bridges the macroscopic and microscopic scales, capable of acting at a distance."
An information scientist added gravely: "We're stuck analyzing its genetic material. These viral fragments are spliced together by some force in a seemingly random yet highly functional way. It defies the central dogma—it is the dogma itself."
An ecologist spoke slowly, his voice heavy: "Viruses are Earth's ecological 'decomposers,' quietly sustaining material cycles for billions of years. But in the past three years, humans have created hundreds of millions of tons of 'new matter' that nature cannot recognize at an unprecedented rate—plastic protective suits, polymer materials, chemical waste residues... These piles of medical waste are like cancerous ulcers on Earth's body, blocking normal ecological metabolism."
"This 'pulsing microbial mat,'" he continued, "is likely an extreme 'immune response' activated by Earth's ecosystem. It has mobilized the oldest, most fundamental 'scavengers'—viruses—and forced them to aggregate into this ultimate 'cleaner.'"
"Will it stop once it clears all the garbage? Will it... hibernate?" someone asked, trembling, clinging to the last shred of hope.
The senior ecologist shook his head solemnly, his gaze fixed on the still-expanding crimson on the screen. "It may pause temporarily. But more likely..." He paused, his voice low and warningful, "it will persist, and continue to identify the source of these foreign bodies—*human activity itself*—as an object requiring ongoing management and control."
The lab fell silent, save for the sound of restrained breathing—and the continuous, cold, rhythmic hum emanating from the sample, a pulse that seemed to carry the will of the entire planet.
In Wangjiawa, on that enormous dark red carpet that had covered the garbage dump, devoured shanties, and was licking at apartment buildings, several huge bulges near the city accelerated their pulsing rhythm abruptly. The dark golden light inside surged like boiling lava, and thick, scarlet slurry surged forth, forming pseudopods as thick as prehistoric giant serpents. They reared high, overwhelming and oppressive, stretching silently and resolutely toward the dense buildings of the urban village.
Meanwhile, inside Happy Cabin Unit 36, the seven individuals—the Ouroboros—who had been interrupted in their escape attempt by the external tremor and the army's response to the anomaly, felt a violent impact on their mental link. A vast, cold, primal yet alien terror pulsed from the southwest.
A fragmented thought, a cacophony of absolute cold, searing agony, hollow bewilderment, sharp alertness, suffocating fear, frenzied agitation, and dead despair, exploded simultaneously in the depths of each of their consciousnesses—like a delirium clawing its way out of the abyss:
"This is what we're looking for!"
"It's here!"