Chapter 2: The Health Administration Bureau — Su Ze Closed His Eyes Along With Them.

Su Ze sat there until the sun slanted west before rising to inform the nurses’ station.

The attending physician who came rushing over after receiving the news had red-rimmed eyes, more agitated than Su Ze, the actual family member.

“How could this happen! When I did rounds at noon she was doing fine…”

But no matter how baffled or furious he was, the facts were the facts, and no one could change them. Only then did Su Ze learn that Su Qiuyu had signed a body donation agreement.

Because she had died of cancer, most of her organs couldn’t be transplanted, so only her corneas were removed. Her body would be preserved at low temperature for future medical research and teaching.

“We thank Ms. Su Qiuyu for her contribution to the advancement of medicine. All together, bow—one minute of silence.”

Su Ze stood behind the medical staff and closed his eyes along with them.

In that instant, he felt it, keenly and truly: his ties to this world had grown one strand weaker.

Walking out of the inpatient building, Su Ze felt momentarily adrift, unsure of where to go.

After a moment’s thought, he decided to return to Su Qiuyu’s home first.

Back in high school, Su Ze’s outstanding grades had earned him a guaranteed admission spot to the School of Economics at Zhongdu University along with a full scholarship. He hadn’t returned to Liyang once since then.

After graduation, he turned down every olive branch the investment banks threw his way, rented an apartment in Zhongdu, and made his living trading stocks.

In his year since graduating, he had barely left home. Aside from delivery riders, his only regular contact was Su Qiuyu, who had called him every week for five years running.

It was precisely because of Su Qiuyu’s persistence that when the phone failed to ring one day, Su Ze knew something had happened.

He’d packed his computer on the spot, terminated his lease, and taken the earliest flight back to Liyang. Then he’d moved into Su Qiuyu’s home, shuttling to and from the hospital every day, preparing her three daily meals.

Now that this fixed routine had been abruptly canceled, he felt at something of a loss and could only go back for now and take it from there.

Mind made up, Su Ze circled back around the outpatient building the way he’d come, intending to hail a taxi at the hospital entrance.

The moment he rounded the corner, he saw a cordon set up outside the emergency department, a crowd of onlookers gathered around it—several of them still holding up IV drip bags.

“…It really was a bioweapon! I was getting an IV in the outpatient wing and watched the ER get sealed with my own eyes. A whole bunch of hazmat workers going in and out… tsk tsk!”

“You’re full of it, right? If it were really a bioweapon, would you still be standing here gawking?”

“I heard some rich folks took their fun too far and people died. Those ambulances came from Green River Manor, if you know what I mean.”

“Then shouldn’t it be the police responding? Why the Health Administration Bureau?”

“The way I see it, it’s an alien virus that came down with the meteor shower. Ever seen Resident Evil?”

“Then shouldn’t we stock up on supplies or something? Hahahahaha… ahem, you know what, I just remembered I’ve got somewhere to be…”

“I should go pick up my kid too…”

“Me too…”

Within just a few minutes, more than half the crowd around the emergency department had melted away, those leaving wearing strange, elusive expressions, carrying a nameless panic.

Su Ze paid this no mind and headed straight for the exit—though as he passed the emergency department, he sniffed the air carefully.

Blood… and… a fishy, briny smell?

Liyang sat deep in Hua State’s interior. Its only river was the Green River, which originated from Changling Mountain. All seafood had to be air-freighted in cold storage—how could anything smell this fresh and alive?

His curiosity piqued, Su Ze glanced back—just in time to see a squad of fully armed hazmat workers carrying several stretchers out of the emergency room, then loading them into vehicles moments later.

Each stretcher held a long, opaque white plastic bag, contents unknown. But judging by the size and thickness, they didn’t look like they held people.

At least, not adults.

The vehicles picking up the hazmat workers weren’t common models either. Their pure-white compartments looked extremely solid, with large characters printed on the doors: Liyang Health Administration Bureau.

Once the hazmat workers were aboard, the vehicles started up immediately. The person in the passenger seat pressed a siren against the roof, and before long they were roaring off in formation.

Watching this oddly familiar scene, Su Ze frowned slightly. Only after the convoy vanished at the end of the road did he raise his hand to hail a taxi.

Su Qiuyu lived on the fifth floor of an aging residential complex, with no elevator. The apartment was old work-unit co-op housing, so all the neighbors knew one another, roots and all.

Seeing Su Ze, a few old men and women strolling the grounds called out from far off: “Little Ze, when’s your grandma getting out of the hospital?”

Su Ze paused, shook his head at them, and entered the stairwell, leaving the old folks staring at one another.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t tell me Old Su… But wasn’t she doing just fine before?”

“Probably so. It is cancer, after all. Old Li from Unit Two was diagnosed and gone within days.”

“But Old Li needed a liver transplant—Old Su’s case was different! Didn’t Little Ze say her surgery went really well?”

“Not that I mean to measure a gentleman’s heart by a petty man’s ruler! But you all know Old Su’s situation—a lonely widow with no one. Once she’s gone, there’s the apartment, the savings, the funeral payout, the medical insurance… it all adds up to quite a bit.”

“Little Ze isn’t that kind of person.”

“How is he not? Did you see even a trace of grief on him? Ah, the morals of this world decay by the day—no honest hearts left!”

The old folks sighed and shook their heads, entirely forgetting that just a month ago they’d been praising Su Ze’s devotion—bearing the cost of Su Qiuyu’s surgery despite sharing no blood relation with her.

Listening to the old folks “cite evidence” proving his “long-premeditated scheme” and “wolfish ambitions,” Su Ze climbed the stairs at an unhurried pace. It took him several minutes to reach the fifth floor, and he was so exhausted the hand holding his keys trembled.

Having finally made it inside, the first thing he did wasn’t rest—he stood in the doorway and glanced at the windowsill first.

Su Qiuyu’s apartment wasn’t big—fifty square meters of floor space, two bedrooms and a living room, with a poorly designed layout. Entering, the dining area sat to the right, the bathroom and kitchen directly across from it, the living room to the left, and the two bedrooms deeper in.

The dining area had windows on two sides with excellent natural light—but one look up would land squarely on the bathroom. Unappetizing for meals, yet a waste to leave unused. Su Ze didn’t know how anyone else would handle such a space, but Su Qiuyu had turned it into a botanical garden.

The aging complex had no greenery, and the old folks’ pastime was puttering around the outdoor exercise equipment. Su Qiuyu, however, had tended her plants in the dining area every single day, cultivating flowers and inner peace together.

The plants here were numerous and varied, and all of them had once been lush and thriving.

But Su Ze hadn’t watered them in a week.

Plants are hardy—a few days without water wouldn’t kill them. The drought-tolerant ones still looked reasonably perky, and the thirstier ones were merely yellowed and wilting.

Su Ze actually wanted to rip every last one of them out. But these plants had been Su Qiuyu’s, and he had no right to dispose of them, so he could only leave them be.

Examining the state of those plants carefully, Su Ze—who had been adrift with nowhere to go only moments ago—suddenly had his answer: return to Zhongdu.

Zhongdu was the capital of Hua State, its political, economic, and cultural center. Whatever was happening, that would surely be the safest place.

Su Ze took out his phone to book a flight, only to find, upon checking, that there were no tickets for the next several days—unless he took the high-speed rail.

Getting to Zhongdu by rail required a transfer, and even that was sold out today; only a few tickets remained for tomorrow afternoon.

Su Ze glanced at the balcony.

Just one night. Nothing should go wrong.

He booked the high-speed rail for tomorrow afternoon, put away his phone, slipped on his slippers, and went through the living room straight into the guest bedroom.

The moment the guest bedroom door clicked shut, the plants in the dining area stirred without wind. The drought-tolerant plants swiveled their leaves aside, revealing a flowerpot sitting on the windowsill.

The pot wasn’t big. Nothing remained inside it but a hole in the soil, with crumbs of dirt scattered around it. On close inspection, one would find those crumbs weren’t only inside the pot but outside as well, trailing all the way to the edge of the windowsill—winding, and unmistakable.

In the bedroom, Su Ze, knowing nothing of this, walked to the bed, picked up the chocolate bars from the nightstand, and wolfed them down.

A few calorie bombs down the hatch, his strength slightly replenished, Su Ze lay down on the bed to rest.

Normally he’d sleep until ten at night, then get up, wash, eat something, and work until the market closed at five in the morning, after which he’d go out to collect the breakfast he’d ordered for Su Qiuyu.

But today was the weekend—no stocks to watch, no meals to deliver. He could sleep straight through to morning.

Having set his wake-up time, Su Ze slowly closed his eyes.

Nine o’clock at night.

The plants in the dining area abruptly began shaking violently, rustling and crackling. Every plant that had still looked lively that evening wilted flat, and from between the fallen branches and leaves came the faint sound of chewing.

A few seconds later, something flat crawled out from the pile of withered foliage, trailing behind it a long, serpentine body. The moment it emerged, it began crawling toward the bedroom where Su Ze slept.

Its head was very flat, like a cartoon cat whose head had been squashed flat in an animation—no eyes, no nose, no ears, only a single slit running clear across its entire head.

As it drew closer, the flat-headed monster raised its head and parted its slit slightly, revealing dense, ring upon ring of jagged teeth. Transparent liquid dripped between them, and the moment it touched the wooden floor, a wisp of smoke rose, leaving black circular scars.

Its movements weren’t agile, but its sheer bulk carried it to the guest bedroom door in little more than a dozen seconds, making one wonder just where so massive a body had been hiding before.

Su Ze had woken the instant the dining room acted up. He’d realized almost immediately that the front door was blocked and jumping out the window would be suicide—hiding and waiting for an opening was the only option.

There were few hiding spots in the room. After a moment’s thought, he rose soundlessly from the bed and stood against the wall behind the door, planning to wait for the thing to enter, then slip out on whatever chance presented itself.

Su Ze could roughly guess what the unidentified creature outside was—humans couldn’t produce that kind of fine, continuous sound, after all. He just couldn’t think of any plant that could crawl along the ground.

At least as far as he remembered, Su Qiuyu hadn’t kept any vines.

Just as Su Ze was racking his memory over plant species, the bedroom door suddenly boomed—and then the impacts came faster and faster, thicker and thicker.

Boom! Boom-boom! Boom-boom-boom!

Watching the door shake harder and harder, Su Ze reached out and gripped the doorknob.

It wasn’t that he had a death wish. Su Qiuyu’s apartment hadn’t been renovated in decades, and every last fixture was on the verge of aged failure. If he let the monster slam against the door unchecked, no one could predict how the door would give way.

If it fell at the wrong angle and the whole door crashed flat, then he, hiding behind it, would be left completely exposed.

Feeling the rhythm of the monster’s assault, Su Ze drew a deep breath—and at the exact instant it slammed into the door, he gave his wrist a light turn.