The next few hours were the longest wait of Dia's life.
The world outside the window was collapsing at a visible rate. More and more mad dogs appeared on the streets, no longer just attacking humans but also tearing into each other. A once docile Golden Retriever was now gnawing on the corpse of a stray cat, blood dripping from its mouth, its eyes as red as two burning coals. Smoke billowed from the windows of several buildings in the distance; it was unclear if it was arson or an electrical issue. Police sirens wailed from all directions but soon faded into intermittent whimpers, finally falling silent.
Dia leaned by the window of the activity room, observing the situation outside through the gaps in the blinds. His left arm still ached, the bandage soaked through with blood, but he dared not change it – there wasn't much left in the first-aid kit, and he had to use it sparingly.
"Brother Dia," Xiaoyu walked up to him, her voice hushed, "Old Zhou isn't doing well."
Dia turned his head. Old Zhou lay on a makeshift bed, his face as pale as paper, his lips tinged with purple. Xiaoyu had wrapped his right leg with bandages several times, but blood still seeped through, staining the fabric a dark crimson.
"He has a fever," Xiaoyu touched Old Zhou's forehead, her brow furrowed. "I gave him fever reducers, but they don't seem to be working."
Dia squatted down and felt Old Zhou's pulse. It was rapid and weak, like a string about to snap.
"Those dogs..." Old Zhou suddenly spoke, his voice as hoarse as sandpaper on wood. "Those dogs aren't right. I've raised dogs for over a decade, and I've never seen eyes like that... those aren't dog eyes..."
"Stop talking, save your strength," Dia pressed his shoulder.
But Old Zhou seemed not to hear him, staring blankly at the ceiling, his pupils dilated. "When they bit me, I could feel... something entering through the wound... like something alive crawling in my veins..."
Dia's hand trembled slightly.
Something alive crawling in his veins.
He remembered the surge of heat from his chest last night, Afu saying "there's something moving in my belly," and the feeling of "something flowing away" when he placed his hand on Grandma Zhang's chest.
If spiritual energy could make plants grow wildly and animals become violent, what would happen when it entered the human body?
He dared not think about it.
"Brother Dia!" Uncle Wang's voice came from the doorway, urgent and tense. "Come quickly!"
Dia hurried to the door. Uncle Wang pointed in the direction of the stairs, his face ashen. "Downstairs... there's something downstairs."
Dia listened intently.
At first, he heard nothing but the suppressed sobs of the children in the activity room and Old Zhou's heavy breathing. Then, he heard it – a faint, dense rustling sound from downstairs, like something crawling.
Many, many things.
"What is it?" Xiaoyu's voice trembled.
Dia didn't answer. He walked to the window and carefully lifted a corner of the blinds.
The scene on the street made him gasp.
The manhole covers were pushed open, and black, greasy water surged out from underneath, carrying a nauseating stench. But that wasn't the most terrifying part – it was what was emerging from the sewers.
Rats.
Countless rats.
They poured out from every manhole, every crack, every drain, flooding the streets like a black tide. Each one was as big as a small cat, their fur wet and matted, their eyes glinting with an eerie red light in the sunlight. Their teeth – Dia saw clearly – were twice as long as a normal rat's, sharp as nails, and coated with some unknown slime.
"My God..." Uncle Wang's voice was almost a groan.
These rats weren't just mutated. They were organized.
Dia saw that they weren't scurrying around like the mad dogs. Instead, they advanced in neat formations along both sides of the street. Where they passed, everything was devoured – the roots of street trees were gnawed off, the tires and chassis of cars parked by the roadside were bitten through, and even the cement pavement was deeply grooved by their sharp teeth.
A man rushed out from a residential building, brandishing a cleaver, hacking wildly at the rat swarm. The cleaver struck, splitting several rats in half, but more rats immediately swarmed forward, climbing onto his legs, his body, his face.
The man's screams lasted only a few seconds.
When the rat swarm dispersed, only a bare, white skeleton remained on the ground.
Someone in the activity room vomited.
Xiaoyu covered Afu's eyes, her own tears streaming down uncontrollably. Several younger children began to scream, their mouths clamped shut by the volunteer aunts.
"Quiet!" Dia roared in a low voice, the chill in his tone making everyone shudder. "No one makes a sound!"
The activity room instantly fell silent, leaving only suppressed sobs and trembling breaths.
Dia looked out the window again.
The rats had advanced to the outer wall of the orphanage. They stopped at the base of the wall, as if sniffing for something. Dia saw a few rats lift their heads, their noses twitching in the direction of the orphanage, their red eyes glinting greedily in the sunlight.
What were they looking for?
Food? Or...
"Brother Dia," Xiaoyu's voice was barely a whisper, "those rats... are they looking for us?"
Dia didn't answer. He turned to look at everyone in the activity room – twenty-three children, averaging less than ten years old; three volunteer aunts, each more frightened than the last; Uncle Wang, his face pale but still standing; Old Zhou, lying on the ground, half-dead.
Just these people. No weapons, no retreat, no support.
"Everyone, retreat upstairs," Dia's voice was low and firm. "Move quietly, don't make a sound. Take any food and water you can carry, leave the rest."
"But Old Zhou..." Xiaoyu looked at Old Zhou on the ground.
"I'll carry him," Dia squatted down, slinging Old Zhou's arm over his shoulder. He exerted force to lift him, but Old Zhou wasn't heavy. However, Dia's left arm was injured, and every step sent a piercing pain through him.
They began to retreat to the third floor.
The activity room was on the third floor – no, the orphanage only had three floors, and the activity room was on the second. The third floor contained storage rooms and a few small rooms, with no external exits, but the windows were higher and more concealed.
The rustling sounds grew closer.
Dia could hear the rats climbing the orphanage walls, gnawing at the doors and windows on the first floor, squeezing in through every gap. The first-floor doors were old wooden ones, no match for them at all.
As soon as they reached the third floor, the sound of shattering glass came from downstairs.
Then came the sound of a tidal wave of rustling, like thousands of claws scratching at the floor, the walls, the stairs.
"Quick! Into the room!" Dia pushed Old Zhou to the ground and quickly closed and bolted the iron door at the end of the third-floor corridor. This iron door had been installed years ago, supposedly to protect against typhoons, but now it seemed it had to defend against something far more terrifying than a typhoon.
The door was hit, once, twice, three times. Then came the sound of claws scraping against sheet metal, sharp and piercing, like fingernails on a blackboard.
"They're coming up..." Uncle Wang's voice trembled.
Dia scanned the people in the room. Twenty-seven – twenty-three children, three volunteers, Uncle Wang, Old Zhou, himself. All crammed into this storage room, less than twenty square meters, the air growing increasingly stale, fear spreading like a plague.
The pounding on the iron door intensified.
The rats were piling up. Dia could imagine the scene outside – hundreds, thousands of rats stacked on top of each other, gnawing at the iron door with their sharp teeth, ramming it with their bodies, scratching with their claws. The iron door was sturdy, but how long could it hold? Ten minutes? An hour? A day?
He couldn't gamble.
"Is there anything we can use to block the door?" Dia asked.
Uncle Wang looked around and pointed to some old cabinets and bed boards in the corner. "Can these be used?"
"Bring them over."
Several people quietly moved the cabinets and bed boards behind the iron door. Dia checked the windows again – they were small, too small for an adult to squeeze through, but the rats...
He looked at the gap between the window frame and the wall.
It was enough. As long as the rats could get their heads through, they could squeeze their entire bodies in.
"Block the windows too," Dia said.
Another flurry of activity. They nailed some bed boards onto the window frames and stuffed old clothes into all the gaps.
After they finished, the pounding on the iron door outside stopped.
An eerie silence fell.
Everyone held their breath, listening. No sound, no rustling, no banging, nothing. It was as if the rats had vanished into thin air.
"Did they leave?" a child whispered.
"Shh—"
Dia pressed his ear against the iron door.
Nothing.
No – that's not right.
He heard it. Not banging or scratching, but a more subtle, more hidden sound. Like something gnawing at the wall – not the iron door, but the brick wall next to it.
The rats were digging through the wall.
Their teeth were harder than steel bars, sharper than blades. Cement bricks were like tofu before them.
"Everyone, retreat to the innermost part of the room," Dia's voice was calm, unnervingly so for an eighteen-year-old.
"Brother Dia?" Xiaoyu looked at him, her eyes filled with fear.
"Do as I say."
The children and volunteers retreated to the back of the room, huddling together and trembling. Dia stood at the front, holding the cleaver he had brought from the kitchen. The blade was still stained with dog blood, now dried and blackened.
Uncle Wang stood beside him, holding an iron pipe. "I'll be with you."
Dia glanced at him and nodded.
The crack in the brick wall grew larger.
First, it was as fine as a hair, then it widened to the width of a finger, and finally, an entire brick was pushed in from the outside, crashing heavily to the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust.
A rat squeezed through the crack.
It was larger than any Dia had seen outside, about the size of an adult cat, completely black, its fur matted with mud and blood. Its eyes were deep red, like two glowing embers, emitting a dim light in the dim room.
It saw Dia, opened its mouth, revealing two rows of uneven, nail-like teeth, and let out a hissing sound.
Then it lunged.
Dia's reaction was so fast he didn't even realize it himself.
The moment the cleaver swung, his body seemed to be taken over by something. Not thought, not judgment, but something more instinctive, more primal, driving him. He could see the trajectory of the rat's movement in the air, predict its landing spot, calculate its most vulnerable point.
The blade sliced through the rat's abdomen, precisely cutting its skin and muscles without hitting bone. The rat's body split in two in mid-air, its innards and blood spilling onto the floor.
A second rat squeezed through the crack, then a third, a fourth, a fifth.
Dia's cleaver didn't stop for a moment.
His movements were incredibly fast, each strike landing precisely on the rat's most vulnerable spot – the neck, the abdomen, the spine. His body weaved and dodged in the confined space like an impossibly agile cat. The rats were fast, but they could never be faster than Dia's blade.
Uncle Wang was also fighting, swinging the iron pipe with all his might, smashing rats into pulp. But he soon realized he could barely help – Dia was holding off all the rats alone, his blade a silver flash, drawing dazzling arcs in the dim room.
"Brother Dia..." Xiaoyu murmured from behind him, her voice a mixture of fear and shock.
She had seen it.
Everyone had seen it.
Dia's reaction speed, his strength, his precision – all far exceeded normal human capabilities. The way he killed the rats wasn't like a human fighting, but more like a precise machine in operation – every swing of the blade was perfectly timed, every dodge was flawless, even his breathing rhythm was perfectly controlled.
But there were too many rats.
For every one he killed, three more squeezed through the crack. The floor of the room was piled high with corpses, and blood formed a small stream on the ground. Dia's clothes were torn in several places, and he had sustained more than a dozen wounds, but he seemed to feel no pain, not taking a single step back.
"Block the crack!" Dia roared.
Uncle Wang reacted, moving a bed board and forcefully pressing it against the crack in the wall. Several volunteer aunts also rushed over, using their bodies to hold the bed board down. The crack was blocked, but rats were still squeezing through the edges of the bed board.
"Hold on!" Dia killed the last rat in the room, then turned to help Uncle Wang hold down the bed board.
The rustling continued. The rats piled up on the other side of the bed board, gnawing, pounding. The wooden board vibrated violently, its edges beginning to splinter.
It wouldn't hold for long.
Dia's gaze swept across the room, landing on the ceiling – there was an access hatch leading to the roof, very small, but just large enough for a person to crawl through.
"Xiaoyu!" he called out. "Open that access hatch!"
Xiaoyu hesitated for a moment, then stepped onto a table and climbed up, pushing open the cover of the access hatch. A gust of hot air poured in from outside, carrying the scent of sunlight and dust.
"Send the children up first!" Dia commanded.
Xiaoyu began sending the children up one by one. Afu was lifted up first, then the other children. They climbed onto the roof like a string of little monkeys, one after another.
"Uncle Wang, you go up too!"
"But you—"
"I'll cover the rear! Hurry!"
Uncle Wang gritted his teeth, stepped onto the table, and climbed up. Several volunteer aunts followed. Xiaoyu pushed Old Zhou up – Old Zhou was already semi-conscious, and Uncle Wang pulled him up by the arm from above.
Finally, it was Xiaoyu's turn.
"Brother Dia, hurry up!"
"You first!"
Xiaoyu climbed into the access hatch, then reached out her hand. Dia glanced back at the bed board that was about to break, tucked the cleaver into his belt, stepped onto the table, and began to climb.
He was halfway up when the bed board broke.
Rats poured in like a black flood, instantly submerging the entire room. A few jumped onto the table, biting at Dia's shoes.
Dia kicked hard, shaking off those rats, and was then pulled onto the roof by Xiaoyu and Uncle Wang.
The cover of the access hatch was closed again, and Uncle Wang placed some solar panel brackets on top of it. The rats pounded and gnawed below, but the cover was made of sheet metal and could hold for now.
Dia lay on the roof, gasping for breath.
The sunlight shone on him, warm and comforting. The sky was still so blue, too blue to be the color of the end of the world.
He looked down at himself – his clothes were torn beyond recognition, he had at least a dozen wounds on his body, his old injury on his left arm had reopened, and blood had stained his entire sleeve. But his mind was clear, and though his body was exhausted, he wasn't as weak as he might have imagined.
"Brother Dia..." Xiaoyu knelt beside him, tears streaming down her face. "You've lost so much blood..."
"It's okay," Dia sat up and looked around.
The orphanage roof wasn't large, but it was enough to hold all of them. Twenty-seven survivors, huddled together, trembling in the sunlight.
Downstairs, the rustling sounds gradually faded. The rats, finding no prey to pursue, began to turn towards other targets.
More sounds came from afar – screams, cries, the shattering of glass, and some low, beast-like roars. The entire city was falling, people dying every second.
Dia closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
The air carried the smell of blood, smoke, and that indescribable, ancient scent.
He opened his eyes and looked into the distance.
On the horizon, there was a faint, colorful band of light, visible in the sunlight.
Those lights were still there.
And that voice was still there – deep, deep within him, in his blood, in his bones, in every cell of his body, something was awakening.
He finally became certain of one thing.
This world was no longer the world of yesterday.
And he was no longer the him of yesterday.